Chapter 14: School Spirit (Part 3)

Ryan

The atmosphere in the apartment was electric. Jordan and Harper were crammed in the bathroom, giving each other makeovers and donning brightly colored wigs: Jordan's bright blue and Harper's violet. They had done their makeup and were barely recognizable, Jordan because she never wore makeup, and Harper because she never wore anything but black.

Sam had mixed some drinks to go with their dinner. "This a school-sponsored drag show," she explained, handing Ryan and Charlie each a red solo cup. "Chances are there won't be any drinks."

"What fun is that?" Pete asked, already on his second.

Ryan sipped his drink, nearly gagged. Everyone else was chugging theirs. Down the hatch, he thought, and took a few swigs as if they were shots. His chest burned. It was better to be drunk for this. He was weirdly nervous. Aside from the pride parade that was their apartment, Ryan hadn't been in many queer spaces. He had no idea what to expect.

It seemed like the next thing he knew, he was walking into the venue with club music pumping in his ears and no clear memory of how they'd gotten there from the apartment. How strong had those drinks been? They sat at a table near the stage.

"They're gonna love you guys," Jordan was saying to Pete. "They love straight boys." She squinted at Ryan. "And hot gay guys."

Ryan's face felt hot. Charlie laughed. "You are a hot gay guy," they said, nudging him. Ryan gazed around the room, wondering how many of the other students were gay and if they would think Ryan was hot. He knew in high school he'd been considered "hot," but that was the girls who said it, which didn't count. To Ryan's surprise, the audience seemed to be mostly women. The guys he saw were either uncomfortably straight or femme. One guy with carefully styled hair and glittery eye shadow winked at him, and Ryan immediately looked away.

"I'm going to go get some ones," Sam said, fanning a couple of twenty-dollar bills. "Anyone else?"

Charlie must have noticed Ryan's blank look, because they leaned in and said, "For tips. You gotta tip the drag queens."

"Oh." Ryan pulled out his wallet. He had about a hundred in cash. He felt like there was some reason why he shouldn't spend it, but he couldn't remember what it was. Taking out a twenty, Ryan asked Sam, "Can you get me some?"

Sam grinned.

Ryan studied the stage, which didn't look like much, just an elevated platform with some purple and orange lights strung up behind it. Across the room, however, where Sam was standing in a line, a drag queen in a purple wig sat exchanging money. Somehow, on television, drag queens didn't look so much larger than life.

"Less get this party started," Pete said at Ryan's side. He plunked two glasses of what looked like soda with grenadine on the table.

"I didn't think they served drinks here," Ryan said, at the same time that Jordan said, "Are those Shirley Temples?"

Pete shrugged. "They called them Jimbos." Without even glancing over his shoulder, Pete pulled out a small bottle of rum and dumped a healthy amount into one of the cups.

"Are you kidding me?" Ryan pushed Pete's hands to hide what he was doing at least a little. "You're going to get us kicked out."

"No one cares." With fumbling fingers, Pete tried to screw the cap back on the bottle, then remembered the other cup and dumped more rum in.

Ryan used his body to try to block Pete from the view of anyone who might be in charge. "What are you doing? Didn't you drink enough back at the apartment?"

After he got the cap back on, Pete slid the rum back in his pants pocket and picked up one of the cups. "I juss wanna have a good time. What's the big deal?"

Sam returned with the ones all fanned out in one hand. Running her hand over them, she said, "Who's ready to make it rain?"

Harper and Jordan waved their hands around. "Me! Me!"

Ignoring them, Ryan said, "We're on campus, is what."

"So? I don't go here. What are they gonna do, kick me out of school?" Pete cracked up.

"They could kick me out of school," Ryan stressed.

"No one's getting kicked out of school because Pete over here is a lush," Sam said, sliding a pile of ones toward Ryan.

Charlie nudged him. "Don't let him ruin the night."

Ryan sat back. No one else seemed to notice how much Pete drank. He knew he was drinking more than he used to, but it seemed like it was just expected in college.

Pete nudged the second cup over to Ryan. "Come on, you know you wanna."

"I'm not drinking that," Ryan said firmly. If Pete was going to drink irresponsibly, he would need to be the responsible one.

As usual, whispered a little voice in his head.

It wasn't fair that he always had to be the responsible one. He looked around at his group of friends and roommates. They were all drinking, and no one seemed worried. Maybe he was overthinking things, like he usually did.

"I'll drink it if you're not gonna," Jordan said, inching a hand toward the spiked drink.

Ryan picked up the cup. "Clearly I need to loosen up more," he said, and knocked the drink back.

Jacky

It was almost one in the morning and Jacky wasn't nearly drunk enough to fully let loose dancing in the student union. Yeah, there was a disco ball and strobe lights and a Kylie Minogue club mix was pumping through the speakers, but it was still the student union, where he drank coffee between his classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Billy had no such issue. He was grinding up on every guy in the place – at least, the guys Jacky recognized from that first LGBTQ club party he had gone to. Jacky was beginning to wonder if Billy had some secret source of alcohol.

Some people had extravagant costumes, like the person wearing an inflatable T-rex suit or the couple dressed as Sonny and Cher who looked damn near like the real thing. But most of the costumes were similar to Jacky's – something assembled from their closet. The LGBTQ club were more dressed up than most, which could have been attributed to them simply having more sparkly things in their closet.

All of it was intolerable without alcohol. Especially when Jacky saw Cam move in to dance with Billy. That was a hard nope. Jacky turned to leave, slamming into a dude wearing a full cow costume, complete with udders. "Sorry," Jacky muttered.

"Moo," the guy said.

Jacky pushed his way toward the exit. It had been stupid coming here like he could reclaim any part of that feeling he'd had two years ago when he went to a Halloween party as Edward Scissorhands. That night had been his and Ryan's first kiss. As if triggered by the memory, Jacky pulled out his phone and checked for notifications. Nothing.

His thumb swiped and scrolled through his contacts and hit the call button. With the music he could barely hear anything, but only a moment passed before the automated voice said, "No one is available to take your call."

"Fuck," Jacky said.

"Where are you going?" Billy yelled in his ear.

"I gotta make a phone call," Jacky yelled back, and went out the doors.

Outside the club music was muffled, the bass beat thumping distantly. Jacky went back through the contacts on his phone and hesitated in the M's, before hitting call. The phone rang twice before Monica picked up.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Ryan

"That was so fun," Jordan said, bouncing in her heels. "I loved Anna Conda, she was my favorite."

Ryan rubbed his eyes. He wasn't sure how Jordan was still so wired. Everyone else was dragging. Ryan was practically carrying Charlie, and up ahead Pete was weaving from one side of the sidewalk to the other. "That was the one who did Nicki Minaj?" Ryan asked.

"No, that was Hazel Nutt, but I can see how that would be confusing. Anna Conda did the Britney Spears Slave 4 U number."

There was a vague memory of two drag queens dancing with fake snakes, one who had on point choreo and the other making the snake into a not-so-subtle metaphor. "Oh, yeah, okay."

"Which one was your favorite?" Jordan skipped ahead and walked backwards in front of Ryan.

"Uh..." Ryan had to think. Most of the queens didn't stand out to him. "The one in yellow. Lemon Drop?"

"Ooh, interesting," Jordan smirked a little. "And what did you like about her?"

"She was funny. And she did a backflip, in heels. That's pretty impressive." Ryan felt like those were pretty good reasons. He turned to Charlie. "Which one was your favorite?"

Charlie laughed against his side. "The one with the beard."

That had been a queen who had stood out. Ryan hadn't been sure what to make of them, and now hearing that they were Charlie's favorite, he wondered if it was a nonbinary thing or something else. He would never have thought someone with a beard could look feminine – rather, it would be the opposite. Ryan had always kept clean-shaven, even though it was a lot of work. It had never been something he questioned about his own appearance. A memory came back to him suddenly, of Jacky stroking his face one day when he had a bit of stubble. "Do you think I should grow a beard?" he asked.

When everyone started laughing, he realized he had been thinking about it way too long, and the conversation had already moved on.

"Oooh, Ryan's jealous," Jordan sang.

He laughed along, but he was still feeling Jacky's hand on his face.