SLAY

Once a month, every month, we go to the club and we slay. Let the smooth edges of the music slide across our exposed shoulders like silk, like Britney’s snake, like the arm of a lover we’ve just met. We come home with blood in our mouths, fur on our knuckles still receding. The thin cuts from breaking fresh and red down our hands and arms, our chests and faces. Our jaws and teeth sore, still a little swollen from the transformation. We throw on some fresh clothes, dump the bloodied ones in the outside trash. We text a time to meet for brunch and then we all sit together, pushing our eggs around our plates like it’s nothing, this monthly trauma, like we’ve just gotten our periods and oh my god are we all finally on the same cycle? We laugh because we are still coming back to our bodies, because at first humor is the only kind of consciousness that is tolerable. And it is quite the joke, isn’t it? Werewolf drag queens? The stuff of B-horror movies, sexploitation films. But here we were, real as the mimosas in our manicured hands. Last month, one of us joked that we felt long in the tooth, and we all threw our heads back to howl. 

We never thought of ourselves as mutants, but I guess some people saw it like that. We were in constant transformation, but hadn’t we always been? Hadn’t everyone always been? To be human was to change. We had reached a higher plane. We tucked, we stuffed our bras. If we had to, we filled our veins with hormones. Some of us cut away at ourselves, with the help of doctors or razors, whichever felt more like home, whatever home was supposed to be. We broke ourselves to make the breaking a choice. We were family.  

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We are the best of the best, we are the house that dominates the drag scene. We kill as long as we have the stage and a murderous pair of heels and a damn good song. We spin, and we let the beaded fringe of our skirts rattle over our thighs. We throw the long hair of our wigs out over our shoulders and then pull our hands up our silk-smooth, shaven legs, careful not to let our fresh red nails snag the fishnets or the nylons we wear. We smile and the whole crowd melts. They look and they look and they look and we let them. We strut out to take the dollar bills from the bachelorette parties and the straight-but-curious and the oh-no-not-me-I-could-nevers and the liberal anthropologists and the best friends and the beards and the hags and the drunks and the allies and the whole entire spectrum. We are radiant, and this—killing—is how we can afford to stay radiant. 

Slaying is our one night off, because who can work knowing that the bodies we love so dearly, the changeable bodies we maul and remold and fight against and show off with, are about to break open? So on nights when the full moon rises high in the sky, we slip on a sparkly red dress or a slick new suit, and contour and tuck and bind, or sometimes we slay simply as we are, unedited. So many of us feel out of place in our own skin, even when we change at night, even when we become something closer to who we really are. The one place we feel at home? That’s on the dance floor at our favorite bar, Tits Up, a drink in one hand and a new lover on the other. 

Under the half-dome of the ceiling, the spinning disco ball threw multicolor lights across our faces. All around us, sharp-lined eyes flashed like pinpricks in the dark bar. Even in the dead of winter, skin was everywhere, moving in time with the music, and we were no exception. We liked to dance against the moon, until we could feel our milk teeth pushing out from the base of our gums. When we could take it no longer, we’d hand our heels to a friend, and shuffle out, discreet as we could. We’d run down the alley at the end of the block, to the park on the water that closed after sundown. Then it was a quick dash under cover of the trees to the nearest abandoned construction site, far from the eyes of the bustling nightlife. Then we’d break open, tears in our eyes, the streaks from our mascara only more shadows in the light from the moon. 

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We knew our history. House LaBeija. DuPree. Xtravaganza. We were respectful to our elders. We were old school, or we wanted to be. We all had different styles: femmes and kings and butch queens and comedy queens and then there were some of us that were just starting out. But of course we were all the same, so we made our own house. 

We were the House of Breaking. The House of the moon. The House of blood and bite and bone. Nobody, not even the horror queens, wanted to be in our house, but that didn’t mean we didn’t command their respect. People in the drag community knew what we were, and they kept an open mind, or they kept their mouths shut, anyway.

One night, we were out at a show, one night. A Williamsburg show, in a newer place.

We were leaning against the wall of the club, out for one last smoke before moonrise. A man, white as Florida beach sand, in a bright red baseball hat, turned on to the street. He was with a few friends of much the same ilk, though they did not have the hats to match. They laughed easily, telling a long-winded story about something basic. We tensed a little, armor on, and the youngest of us, the stunning Miss Maya Condios, bared her teeth. 

The man approached, and as he walked we took all of him in: his look (middle-aged dad), his scent (sweat and cornchips and Aqua Velva), whether he could hurt us (yes). When he got close enough, Maya tilted up her chin and glared down at him imperiously. She blew him a kiss.

“Fucking faggots,” the hat man snarled, and launched a thick glob of spit at us. It landed on Ursa Major’s breasts, smearing the contour applied there. And that was it. 

Maya leapt on him, sunk her teeth into his shoulder, and drew blood. We knew, because it spread like an opening black bud on the white pique cotton of the polo he wore. And because of the unearthly shriek he let forth. His two friends fell on Maya, landing punches left and right, but she dug her teeth into that shoulder and growled, the dark curls of her wig swinging wildly as the man spun beneath her, trying to shake her off. We leapt into the fray, the largest of us prying the men apart from each other, the smallest of us pulling at Maya, begging her to stop. We liked this club, it was good money. We didn’t want to be banned, especially not on account of some homophobic asshole. 

We broke apart, a clump of brawlers glistening with sequins and sweat, and glared at each other. Some of us held Miss Maya back. We could feel the breaking starting beneath her skin. Her arms were shaking with rage, with the coming change boiling in her blood.

“Get her out of here,” one of us said, and the others obliged, rushing Maya down the street and into a dark alley where she could break peaceably, a place away from the leering crowd that had gathered, a place free of reflective surfaces. Maya, always the high femme, hated to watch herself break. She couldn’t bear the masses of fur that sprouted from her knuckles and the way her petite fingers lengthened and gnarled into paws with dirty yellow claws. The stretch and distortion of her face, her nose. The contour would be all wrong, her perfect makeup suddenly a garish mistake on such a wolfish head. As we watched her duck into the alley from our places outside the bar, we could hear her cry, a low mongrel whine. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

The indignant tone in the man’s voice brought us back. It wasn’t the man who’d been attacked, who was looking a little woozy. That was the way it was. He would break later tonight, guaranteed. He had caught it, and you always broke the night you were bitten. We exchanged nervous glances. It wasn’t our way to leave a fellow breaker unsupervised, but it also wasn’t our way to take in bigots. Most often, we bit when in the throes of passion, not out of hate or righteous indignation. And there was no easy way to separate this man from his friends. 

 This was uncharted territory.

“Your friend fucking bit Garrett,” the one man kept saying. “Bit him.”

“What the fuck,” Garrett said, sounding a little weak. His other friend helped him sink to the bench outside of the club. He touched his shoulder and looked at the blood on his hand.

We had a few options. Killing him would be messy. A crowd was already gathering.

“Faggots,” said one of them. 

That word again. We looked at each other. The oldest of us, Rhea Bilitation, stepped right up to the mouthy one, towering over him in her blue sequin leotard, her breastplate nearly touching his face.

“Honey, do you know where you are?” she said, allowing a little of the growl into her voice. “This is New York fucking City, not Fargo or Topeka or wherever the fuck little shit town you call home. You want to call the cops? Do you know what drag queens like us do to cops?”

The man swallowed. Rhea was used to flexing her muscles in dangerous situations. She was the one of us with the most control over her breaking. The smell of the wolf—musk, woods, wet dog—pervaded the air. The man dropped his gaze and stepped back.

“Yeah,” Rhea said. “That’s what I thought.”

A twink across the street let out a cheer. 

“Now get your girl,” Rhea flicked iridescent nails toward the bleeding man on the bench. “And get out of here.”

The men considered for a moment, but then thought better of it, probably because their friend looked so bad. They hoisted the bleeding man up off the bench and to his feet.  

“Better go get that looked at, honey,” someone shouted.

We really hoped they didn’t get it looked at. Exposure would be the end of us. If anything was true of America these days, it was that only so much difference was permitted, and even then on very rocky terms. Now was not a good time to be outed.  

Rhea touched her short blonde wig and curtseyed to the gathered crowd, then yelled, “Now who wants to see me really slay?”

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Brunch the next day was tense. 

Yes, we had slayed, thanks to Rhea’s recovery, but we did not consider it a victory. At least, most of us did not consider it a victory. Others, including Maya—who looked a little worse for wear after breaking, but still glamorous as ever—were alive with excitement. We were fighting back. Hate could go and fuck itself.

But some of us, the older ones, still felt danger crackling in the air. And more than that, we were less of a unit now. Less “we” more “me,” and that was how drag houses died.

Some of us felt that this was no display of force, nor was it a win for love. Maya biting that man put all of us into danger. 

“We don’t have to take him in, do we?” Maya said, pulling the celery out of her Bloody. “I’m not babysitting that. Hell no.”

“You should have thought about that before you decided to bite him,” Lex said, her pencil mustache from last night’s Gomez drag still Spirit Glued to her upper lip. She took a bite of her cheeseburger.  

Rhea sucked her teeth. “Hopefully the problem resolves itself.”

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First, we had to get ready for our show. Same Williamsburg venue, with hopefully a different crowd. Tres LaVain squeezed into thigh high stiletto boots and a shocking white wig, and Lex prepped her Lady Gaga/Joe Calderone drag. Rhea went red this time, and Maya looked like a space princess from another dimension. Ursa opted to keep the Morticia drag from last night’s duo with Lex, but this time in irony. Williamsburg would eat that shit up. 

$2 PBRs, $3 wells, and the packed-house crowd was revved, bristling with bills ripe for the taking. Lex did a backflip off of the shoddy piano and tips rained down. Ursa’s death drop was amazing, and Maya landed a full back handspring into a split. Tres did an original comedy number. Rhea broke a little onstage, letting her face elongate into a snout and then when she turned around again, she was her regular self, only a little bloody. The crowd roared. 

We had all but forgotten about the fight. 

And then, at three AM, we walked out of the club, and there he was, caked in rust-colored blood. He wore the same white polo shirt, or what was left of it. He looked like death.

“Please help me,” he said. 

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We took him home with us. We piled into the subway and climbed out at the Myrtle-Wyckoff stop. On the way, we learned a little more about our guest: Garrett, no last name, though he did tell us he had a wife upstate and three young kids—two girls and a boy. 

We all agreed; his obvious fear—of himself, of us—made everything much less fun.

“Relax, babe,” Rhea said.

“You’re one of us now,” Lex said, and we weren’t sure how to feel. 

“I… I killed someone, or something,” he said. “I think, anyway.”

“Alright, well, rule number one is discretion,” Rhea said sternly, as she unlocked the door to our apartment building. “Which means don’t talk about kills, or about breaking, while you’re still in the middle of a fucking street, especially not in motherfucking New York City, honey.”

“Breaking?” he asked. Somehow, Garrett had the gall to speak after this reprimand. We exchanged major side-eye. It was a bad idea to fuck with Rhea.

“Could you please shut up,” Maya said, under her breath. The door opened and we pushed him in front of us. 

“You live here?” he said. 

“Welcome,” Tres growled, and opened the door to the apartment. 

We tried to make ourselves comfortable in the living room. Ursa put a kettle on, like she always did when she was stressed. Garrett did not sit. He paced the length of the apartment, which made the whole scene tight and dire. It was not a good look. None of us were sure whether we should start getting out of drag or not, if we should start counting our money. The breach of trust that this man had created by entering our sacred space was more and more damaging by the second, and our resentment toward him—and toward Maya—swelled. 

“Okay, first off,” Rhea said. “Don’t fucking touch anything that doesn’t belong to you. This is not your home, and this is not your space. You are a visitor here, and you will act as such until we teach you how to handle the breaking. When we are confident that you have control of yourself, you will leave, and not come back.”

“You’re experiencing Breaking,” Ursa said, bringing a tray of teacups and a steaming hot pot into the room and setting it down on the coffee table. She served us each a cup as she spoke. “At least, that’s what we call it. You’re a werewolf, for lack of a better term. We don’t really like to use that word—it’s reductive and dehumanizing—but that’s essentially what’s happening to you. You will break—turn—every month at the full moon. More often until you get a handle on the wolf inside you.”

“How do I get better?” Garrett asked. We had clearly confirmed his worst fears. 

“You don’t,” Tres said, and sipped her tea.  

“What do you mean? There’s gotta be a cure, right?” he said, voice cracking. 

Ursa poured him a cup of tea and pushed it into his hand.

“I know it’s tough,” Maya said. “But we can help you—”

“Fuck you, you’re the one who got me sick,” he spat. 

“Language,” Ursa said, as calmly as she could. She sat on the couch next to Maya and held her hand. Maya was trembling, trying to keep herself under control. 

“Rule number two: you treat us with respect, or we turn you out before you’re ready,” Rhea said with authority. “No more of this homophobic, toxic masculinity bullshit you’re serving. And trust me,” Rhea said. “You need our help.”

Garrett glared at her. “Fine.”

“Good,” Rhea said. “Managing this condition is fully a matter of self-control. We will work with you—at our own expense, by the way, so you’re welcome—for the next few weeks to teach you how we handle the breaking, and what to do during a full moon.”

“What if—what if I killed someone already?” Garrett stammered, fear again in his voice. 

Rhea leaned forward, pulled the man close to her, and sniffed. “This is deer blood. Lucky break. Now, call your family. Tell them your trip has been extended, that you’ll see them as soon as you can. And remember: discretion.”

The man nodded and got up to go into the kitchen, dialing a number on his cell. 

“Don’t think we won’t kill you to keep ourselves safe,” Lex called after him. 

“Please,” Ursa interrupted. “I think we’ve had enough violence for now.”

Lex crossed her arms. 

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Over the next few days, Garrett learned as best as he could how to control his emotions. Apparently, he had never felt like it was okay to even acknowledge his emotions at all, much less known how to control them. We would have pitied him for that, if it weren’t such a huge problem. He listened when he wanted to, which was more and more often. He and Maya became close. Terribly close. A little too close, we thought. 

For a week, we ran Garrett through the gamut: how to control each break until he had found safe cover, where to stash extra clothes for the next day, how to gracefully back out of a conflict (some of us were still working on that one). The more he learned, the more optimistic and kind he became. The more human to us. We marveled when one night we came in to find him braiding Lex’s short hair in the living room, the two of them laughing at an old re-run of The Addams Family. We were even more shocked when the sound of glass shaking in the kitchen cupboards echoed through the apartment one night, and we peeked out of our doorways to find the blue light of the open fridge spilled out onto the kitchen floor, broken into long shadows by Maya’s bare legs lined up with Garrett’s. One of her broad hands pulling his bare ass back and back again against her body, the other buried in his sandy hair, his ear pressed hard against the freezer door, his face screwed up, small moans of pleasure from them both as they rocked against the appliance, Ursa’s many crystal vases clattering in the cabinets above. We exchanged looks as best as we could in the dark, then slipped back into bed.

When we got up the next morning, Miss Maya was sitting on the couch in the living room, a piece of scrap paper in her hand. She was smoking a cigarette, something she only ever did after someone dumped her. 

“He left,” she said. She held up the piece of paper. Thanks for everything, three cold words in chicken scrawl. Tres scowled. Ursa climbed onto the couch with Maya, touched her knee. Lex was silent.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t do anything stupid,” Rhea said, and poured herself a shot of tequila. And that was that. There was no news of Garrett for days. 

Until there was.

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We were at brunch, after a particularly lucrative show the night before. We’d finished eating and gossip hung heavy in the air. It was almost time for the menu to change over to dinner, and all of us were feeling tipsy, loose and bright. All was right with the world, for the moment, at least. 

“That opener,” said Tres. “Do you think she knew her breastplate was all fucked?”

“Her? Please,” Ursa reached out to touch Tres’s elbow. “Honey I don’t even know if that was a breastplate.”

“Girl needs some practice,” Maya agreed, smiling snidely. “And a mirror.”

“Such shade,” Lex said and tutted, then smiled. Maya flicked the umbrella from her drink at her.

Rhea didn’t say anything. She was staring at the TV above the bar. 

Garrett’s face was on the news, along with the caption, SEARCH FOR SUSPECT CONTINUES. Our mouths dropped, and Tres gasped. Rhea waved and got the bartender’s attention. The screen cut to footage of helicopters circling a white clapboard house. Yellow police tape fenced off the crime scene. Police swarmed like ants on the yard.

“Could you turn it up for a second?” she asked, her voice flat. We held our breath.

The bartender nodded and turned up the TV. 

…earlier this morning, when police responded to a 911 call from a neighbor after they heard screams coming from the house, a male news anchor was saying. When authorities entered the house, they found the suspect’s wife, Sandy Keller, and the Kellers’ three young children, Christine, Megan, and Johnathan, had been slashed open and left to die in what is seemingly one of the most brutal murders that Rochester has experienced in the last decade. We go live now to Patty, who is on the scene. Patty?

The report cut to a tearful interview with the neighbor, and we turned to each other. None of us knew what to say. Had we not trained him well enough? Did he not listen to anything we had taught? 

The TV showed a cop with a serious expression, giving some kind of official statement. 

Our main suspect, Garrett Keller, is still at large. We have a warrant for his arrest. Anyone with information should call Rochester PD. It is not clear whether the suspect is armed, but he is considered dangerous, the sheriff said. 

Rhea thanked the bartender and passed him a ten dollar bill.

“This is not good,” she said, and the rest of us nodded, suddenly sober. 

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We took a car home together. We were anxious and tense, and we needed to be somewhere it was safe to discuss logistics. If he did get caught, and he would, what if he outed us? What if he didn’t plan to out us, but he got hurt in the scuffle, and needed to go to the hospital? We couldn’t have doctors finding out about what he was, even if he did keep his mouth shut, which we didn’t trust to begin with. Where there was one werewolf, odds are there was another. Or five others, in our case. We didn’t want to split up. 

“Maybe he won’t get caught,” Ursa suggested as the car pulled up in front of our building. Tres snorted.

“Yeah,” Ursa said, in a resigned tone. “You’re right.”

We thanked the driver and got out, started to walk up the steps to the door. 

“Wait,” Rhea said with such authority that we all froze in place, our breath caught. Fear vibrated off us. 

A shadow moved in the darkness of the alcove where the door to our apartment building was. 

“Who’s there?” Rhea said.

The shadow stepped out into the light. Garrett. 

He was wearing a black hoodie with the hood up, khakis and penny loafers. His eyes were wild, and his face and hands were still bloody from the morning.

Rhea tucked one hand into the pocket of her jacket, where she kept her cell phone and a switchblade.

“Please help me,” he said. “I have nowhere else.”

“Why did you kill them?” Maya said, her voice cracking. When we looked, we could see that she had started to cry. “Why would you do that?”

Garrett stepped forward and we all stepped back instinctively. His face fell. He seemed hurt by our retreat.
“I wasn’t trying to—I didn’t want to be alone,” he said. “I was trying to turn them.” He glanced at Maya. “Like how you did with me.”

He stepped toward us and we stepped back. “I don’t know who I am anymore. After all this and then that night—“

“Don’t you dare fucking blame this on that,” Maya growled. Lex reached out a steadying hand. “You’re the one that wanted to hook up to begin with.”

“I was confused—”

“So you went home and slaughtered your family?” Tres said. “Confusion doesn’t justify murder, you asshole.”

We were all quiet for a moment. A siren wailed—a cop car turned down the street and Garrett cursed, pushed past us to run. 

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Weeks passed, then months, with no news. We were wound tight as a tendon, waiting for him to get caught. Waiting to be outed. But nothing happened. Eventually, it became just another scar for us to live with, but not one deep enough to matter. 

Every day brought its own new apocalypse, and we learned to just go with it. We were alive, after all. We were fierce. Why not live? 

We kissed strangers and clacked our heels, laughed and did our makeup, and spun and spun in the glittery pink light of the gay bar, teeth bared wide in big, stupid grins. 

Maybe it would be this way forever, or maybe we would only last another night. We didn’t care. All we knew was that the party was down the street at Tits Up, and the next song? Well, the next song was ours, and we knew every word.