the night I played Butterfield 8 at Numbers

As the piece de resistance to my first evening out in drag, I was witness to the most melodramatic acts of over the top machinations I had ever seen in person. I had only seen episodes of the like on Dynasty before it all erupted in a West Hollywood bar one night. After the first round of cocktails, an argument between a couple of drag queens I had just met erupted over something inane as it was asinine. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a queen called Kylie Jean Lucille actually reach across a sea of shoulder pads and yank the wig right off another queen's head. Their escalating screeches soon gave way to the roar of the mostly male crowd who loved the front row exposure they had only seen on television during the days of Dynasty. Krystal and Alexis never did it up as grandly as these queens were chewing up the scenery and tossing insults in glasses filled with tears. From across the bar, a 35 year old broken down alcoholic the queens would adopt and name Kingsley the first time he did drag was busy snapping pictures of the hijinks in between trying to film it for inclusion on the public access television show he hosted in West Hollywood. Paul Trent had graduated UCLA film school 15 years prior and regaled audiences with stories of the way his sexuality was explored in restroom glory holes on and around campus.  He had taken a liking to me when we met for the first time in an aerobics class at the West Hollywood fag gym they called Sports Erection Connection. I had made quite an impression in my signature spandex combinations of pinks and purples with a torn sweatshirt worn off the shoulder as inspired by Irene Cara.   My meretricious apparel was meticulously chosen to match the setting in what was a microcosm of the gay universe. It was a virtual bath house amid a backdrop of hyper masculine camp carried out by muscular God-like clones in a locker room that still sported orange carpet from the 1970s before AIDS wiped everyone out. I spent every moment out of class at the gym in pursuit of a weight I could whittle down to double digits on the scale. The day after the episode and drag brouhaha, I spoke to Kingsley or Paul as he liked to be called in pants. “They’ll be friends again before next weekend. It happens all the time,” he said shrugging off the drama as if it was nothing. I would soon come to learn that the god-awful cryorama jags of pure unadulterated spectacle were delicious in the right dose. But too much of a good thing can spoil the appetite for anything, as I would soon find out. As I drove along Sunset Blvd. the evening I had overtweazed my eyebrows, I was pleased as punch to be back in what appeared to be  Kylie’s good graces. I had looked up to Kylie as the big sister I never had even if she was a he.The Dynasty bitch contest was beneath her, in my estimation. She had vowed never to speak to me again only four days prior when I confessed that I had unknowingly slept with her ex boyfriend. I had no idea I was dishing out sloppy seconds when I bedded the beauhunk to the bane of Kylie's existence. Kylie's issues soon came to the spotlight when it became obvious that it was All About Eve as in all about me. I was Eve to Kylie’s interpretations of Margo Channing with the bravado and hubris to work the room. She could chew up a scene and spit out the lines like a bulimic puking acid.. For the rest of the time I would spend in the lair of Kylie Jean,she made it her life’s mission to have me ruined. I was crushed after she cut off our friendship and sought advice from all who would listen about ways to woo her back . So when I was invited out for a night with the “girls” the next weekend, I couldn’t hide my glee. It didn’t even dawn on me that the sickening sweet tone of Kylie’s voice was meant to mask the venom he meant for my bloodstream.
We arrived at Numbers, the place on the Sunset strip for daddies and their boys. Quilted tufts of red pleather lined the luxurious booths that dotted the dim night spot. The place was built for high priced Hollywood hunk hustlers to ply their trade to the rich, well-heeled and oiled power brokers of Hollywood. David Geffen was rumored to have a private booth reserved there. I had been to Numbers before, having been introduced by my college guy pal Steed who lambasted me for my lack of understanding about the high price of USC tuition as mine was always paid for. “Some of didn’t have rich parents,” he would point out. I have to work for a living.” I lived vicariously through his high priced hustler routine as I eavesdropped on more than one occasion from the adjacent booth while he outlined on a cocktail napkin what it would ultimately cost his companion to elicit his services.  He had the routine down to a science and would always call me the next day with tales of the wealth he had gained by setting high standards. When I waltzed into Numbers on the arms of Kylie flanked by the drunken Kingsley, I regarded that I was indeed noticed. Murmurs of “an all American boy,” could be heard as I walked to a rich red booth. I hopped up on the table and threw one leg over another in a kick-up-my-heels celebratory power gesture. I loved being young, gay and single and looked it in my pink jeans that everyone thought were made by Versace. A bright, polyester top bedecked with butterflies in baby blue hue contrasted with my tight pink painted on jeans. I had youth on my side and knew I was a commodity for the moment. I was the number one It girly boy of the minute in that Sunset Strip boy bordello. I was surrounded by some of the most gorgeous seemingly sophisticated men I had ever seen and none of them were within my grasp as we were all prey to the predators at large. Soon, I found myself scrunched into a lavish center booth nuzzled up next to an overweight, aging self-described Hollywood power broker named Dick after what he tried to see of me. The drinks flowed and my lightweight frame soon fell victim to the effects of too many fruity daiquiris that didn’t feature a hint of alcohol. I drank them down like Slurpees until my world was spinning. In a surreal dreamlike sequence of images, I flashed in and out of states of awareness. The graying geezer feeling me up underneath the table was clearly trying to impress me with tales of his affiliation with ToddA-O the groundbreaking wide screen film format developed in the 1950s by Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband Mike Todd before he perished in the crash of his plane lovingly christened Lucky Liz after his voluptuous wife with the violet eyes. Entranced at the prospect that I was sitting a degree or two shy of affiliating with Elizabeth Taylor, I let myself be wooed by this poster candidate for Viagra with one foot in the grave. I was old enough to be his grandson which would have made him a pedophile to my prepubescent prey if I was a handful younger. As the drinks clouded my judgment, I could feel myself growing under the pink Versace knockoffs. Something about being desired was a thrill. But then, I saw a would be buzz kill as a guy I had brought home to my dorm a few months prior suddenly spotted me and my hard-on being groped by the troll of Todd A-O fame. I was mortified that someone from my burgeoning fuck web should see me doing business like the type I prided myself at learning by the ropes in this working boy bar.“Glad to see you’re still in school", smiled this cute guy who had once climaxed all over my dorm bed.  It was one of my earliest conquests having been brought home from an early night out in the Weho bars. I didn't quite know the rules of the male dominated makeout room when I had hosted the hottie who now mocked me from across the table. He took up a seat next to Kingsley and glared downward at the groping grip of the gray haired geezer who was trying his best to unsheathe my candy table-side. “What are you doing now?” I inquired half-heartedly as I feigned disinterest in a been-there-done-that kind of weariness. He launched into a litany reciting a slew of activities he purportedly did in the months since we had fucked in my student dorm room. “What am I doing now? What am I doing now?” he repeated in seething spurts of spittle. “I’ve been…da da deed ah dah tum."; but his words were a blur. All I could hear was the laughter spat by a drunken Kingsley who took great delight in the episode unfolding before him, what with the graying geezer groping me in between tales of Liz and Todd A-O and the mad like a hornet former boy toy of my early sexual half-life spewing swords like a snake into my space.
The name of the plane that killed Mike Todd was named Lucky Liz as in the way someone was getting lucky at my expense while I did my best turn as Butterfield 8, one of Liz’s best roles.

 Just ask anybody. And on the other side of the booth sat Kylie Jean who weaved a web of cigarette smoke and smut as she described events taking place across the bar where someone was negotiating with her Argentinean heartthrob actor friend, a man called Giorgio like the perfume. "There he is,“negotiating with Giorgio”, which I soon learned was a euphemism for drug dealing or black market sex or anything ferreted across state lines in cadavers used for mules. It was all sweetly sordid and my head slimed in strawberry daiquiri Slurpeed decadence with a twist of lemon. When they rang last call for alcohol, my next moment of clarity occurred sometime around 3:00 AM on the rooftop pool deck of the West Hollywood Palms Apartments, a fag infested, overpriced ratfuck tenement on prime West Hollywood real estate that Kingsley had lived in since the decade he was sober. At my most present moment of clarity in the wee hours of the morning, I lounged languidly in the chaise as the graying geezer of Todd A-O fame tried to lure me into committing unseemly acts.