Xylophone

Chapter One

PEPPER JACK dropped nimbly to his knees, legs

spread, in front of the customer who’d motioned

him over. For a moment, the man’s face

disappeared within a coronal flare of gold and

purple light.

“Check the goods!” someone yelled from the

audience.

They were boisterous tonight.

“Yeah,” the customer said, looking into

Dare’s eyes, “show me those cookies. C’mon.

Gimme a sample.” The man reached for Pepper’s

crotch. With practiced speed and precision,

Pepper gracefully blocked the move with a palm to

the man’s wrist. Those customers closest to the

stage made their feelings known by howling,

clapping, laughing, or jeering. Pepper smiled at the

grabber, slowly waved a forefinger, and shook his

head. The denial was subtle but emphatic.

“Don’t you know,” he crooned, leaning

forward, “the best things in life
aren’t
free?”

Just as a marbled cloud of scent—

perspiration and cologne, alcohol and fruit—

snaked up Pepper Jack’s nostrils like a

psychotropic vapor, the spotlights’ glare shifted

and the customer’s face took shape, receding

hairline to jutting, bearded chin. Poor guy didn’t

even have a chance to request a personal dance, a

pricey bit of special entertainment. He didn’t have

a chance, because the dancer’s perceptional

framework had completely altered.

Pepper Jack was Daren Boothe again, and

many years younger. Although the face Dare

looked at was below him rather than above him

—
above
was where it should have been, where it

had always been—it was Howard Pankin’s face.

Dare’s breath caught. The club’s interior drained

away into shadow. The loud music and raucous

voices paled to white noise. All that remained was

a soul-shaking impulse to flee.

Of course the man wasn’t Howard Pankin.

Not unless there was a necromancer in the

audience. Still, Dare bounced to his feet to get

away, to become Pepper Jack again and seek

refuge at the pole around which he’d earlier been

twined. He didn’t ripple against it this time. He

didn’t suspend himself upside down while

scissoring his legs. The Pankin lookalike had

effectively ended his act.

So Pepper swung into his finale. Rather than

encouraging

more

profitable

attention,

he

performed a perfect, prolonged Dying Swan.

Hooking the pole with one leg, he arched into a

deep, backward dip. Then he rose, abs clenching

with the effort, and gripped the pole with one hand.

Eyes closed, he spun slowly around his pivot, his

silent, sterile, steadfast partner. It accepted what

he gave, and when and how, and made no

demands.

“Adieu, farewell,” he whispered, “auf

Wiedersehen, good-bye.”

After two turns he let his free arm, which

he’d fluidly extended, drift close to his body; he let

his fingers glide over his inner thigh and up the

gullies framing the mound at his crotch. His hand

lingered there for a moment, asserting possession,

before moving higher, ever higher, until he was

caressing his chest, then his neck, then his face.

Still in a slow-motion twirl, he bent his supporting

leg to drop himself languidly to the stage. When he

was seated, he crossed his arms over his chest in a

demure X and lowered his head.

The lights briefly dimmed. A lone, glowing

disc of blue highlighted Pepper Jack’s form.

“I got a pole for you,” a deep voice called

from the back of the house. Approval followed on

a smattering of snickers and applause.

Pepper Jack got to his feet and executed his

signature bow-curtsy before leaving the large,

half-moon stage.

Howard Pankin
.

Jesus. What a shit-rotten way to end the night.

DARE sometimes wondered, as he freed his

ribcage from the throttling grip of a corset, just

how much his fellow entertainers at the Sugar

Bowl were hiding behind
their
stage personas. He

glanced around the light-washed dressing room,

briefly taking in the shrill laughter and snark, the

parade of extravagant wigs, the galactic glitter of

gowns. These queens seemed carefree enough, in

spite of their nonstop bitching and petty rivalries,

but Dare often got the impression drag was but a

frilly fortress.

On certain nights, he sensed there was

something softer than chiffon beneath Juci’s

superheroine costumes, something even more

easily torn. He sensed a true and terrifying

vulnerability in the made-up doe eyes of

Angelique.

Maybe he was only projecting. Not every gay

man had an Incident in his past or a Situation in his

present. Not everyone had secret Issues.

In his mind, Dare always capitalized these

strenuously vague, neutral words. He was willing

to give them weight but not specificity. He didn’t

want to think about Incidents and Situations and

Issues in detailed terms.

Crème Freshe snapped Dare’s line of thought

—an unwitting act of mercy. “Why don’t you go

all-girl or all-boy?” she asked. Her pale

eyebrows, shaped and feathered to perfection,

drew together as she gave Dare the once-over.

Tonight was Crème’s first night at the Sugar Bowl.

“Androgyny’s in,” Dare said in a matter-of-

fact way. He unclipped his stockings from his

garter belt and, lifting each shaved leg in turn,

carefully rolled them off.

Dare didn’t have a drag act. Not precisely.

Instead, he combined dance with gymnastics—

around poles, in cages, on tables and on laps—in a

style that was balletic, athletic, and exotic all at

once. His wardrobe included an array of boned

waist-cinchers with garter straps, tie-backed

corsets, lace-up and suspender pantyhose, fishnet

body stockings, short, clingy mini-slips, and

bustiers with matching garter belts. But there

wasn’t a single wig or gaff or breast form among

his costume pieces.

His was a confuse-the-eye act. The sinuous,

long-legged, wild-haired Pepper Jack at first

appeared to be a woman, or maybe another queen.

But he was neither. The bare ass he displayed was

obviously a young man’s ass. The chest, with its

fine spray of hair between low mounds of pectoral

muscle, was obviously a man’s chest. And the

crotch within the skimpy silk or leather underwear

was
very
obviously a man’s crotch.

Dare extracted the bills that fanned above and

around his black lace, pouch-exaggerating panties.

A few note-bearing napkins were tucked among

them.

“Wow.
You
made out tonight,” Crème said,

enviously eyeing the wad.

After tossing the notes to one side, Dare laid

the money in front of him on his dressing table.

“Like I said, androgyny is in.” He began taming his

teased hair—somewhat long, with a loose, natural

curl—back into its normal state. Thanks to an array

of wear ’n’ wash colorants, his hair always

matched his costumes. Tonight he’d streaked the

gleaming mahogany of its base color with reddish-

gold.

Crème, who was gradually becoming Zachary

again, peered at one of the napkin messages.

“Looks like you have female admirers too.”

Dare shrugged as he yanked a few cosmetic

wipes from a plastic container. “Comes with the

territory.”

“So, are you bi?”

Off came the subtly applied makeup that

highlighted Dare’s eyes, cheekbones, and lips,

further blurring his gender. As he tossed the color-

smeared towelettes into a wastebasket, he was

tempted to answer
I’m whatever I need to be to

earn a living
, but that comeback carried more

cynicism than truth. “Nope,” he said, shoving his

fingers through his hair and then shaking it out.

“I’m as gay as everybody else in this room.” Some

queens were in fact straight or bi or trans, but not

in
this
room.

As much as Dare enjoyed and respected his

coworkers’ acts, he didn’t want to do full drag. It

was too feminizing. And as fetching as he found the

Sugar Bowl’s male dancers, he didn’t want to

flaunt his own masculinity. Dare felt safe,

somehow, keeping people wondering, being half

this and half that, seemingly noncommittal. If no

one could accurately pigeonhole him, no one could

fully want him or, more important, fully have him.

He could be an intensely sexual creature but one

who was too elusive to be captured.

“Maybe you’re a bit gender-fluid,”

Angelique Demone offered. “Maybe we all are, to

different degrees.”

Dare stopped what he was doing and

looked at her. When Angelique—or Rodney, her

street alter ego—talked, he listened. “You think

so?”

“It’s a possibility. Nothin’ wrong with that,

darlin’, so long as it feels right for you.”

This assertion, Dare knew, would give him

plenty to think about. He just couldn’t think about it

now.

“You bitches staying here or going to the

Game Room?” called out Trixie Treat, a.k.a.

Logan Amirault.

Sometimes the talent hung out at the Sugar

Bowl when performances ended and the adjacent

dance floor opened. Sometimes they went

elsewhere for drinks. Dare never hung out at the

Bowl.

He didn’t want to ruin his mystique.

He didn’t want to give away his game.

“I’m going home,” he answered. “That’s

where
I’m
going. I start my second job tomorrow,

and I have to be there by eleven.” He hopped into

his jeans, slid into his rugby shirt, shoved his feet

into a scuffed pair of loafers. “That’s
a.
m.”

“Why on earth…?” Trixie asked.

“Pepper’s in a band,” Angelique informed

them all.

Trixie slapped her hands to the sides of her

face. One long, curved fingernail popped off and

flew toward her lighted vanity mirror—a miniature

sail caught by the wind and flung toward the sun.

“Omigod. You play an instrument?”

Of course that comment got all the girls

hooting and gabbling.

“In… a… band,” Dare reiterated, raising his

voice to be heard.

He knew some of his coworkers already had

him pegged as a player-for-pay who serviced both

men and women. The assumption was probably

based on professional envy—his admirers were

many, and they tipped him well—but those lap

dances did skirt close to prostitution. Thirty-five

bucks, no touching allowed, for a song that lasted

less than three minutes. Considerably more if the

customer wanted to cop a few feels.

A volley of questions came Dare’s way. He

hadn’t said much about his new venture, had just

idly mentioned that he’d scored another part-time

job. Only Angelique/Rodney knew he’d be playing

in a band. Nobody else had seemed too interested.

Until now, that is.

Dare deflected the questions. Suddenly, he

felt very tired. He didn’t want to deal with his

coworkers’ reactions, which he knew would range

from good-natured razzing to mean-spirited

sniping. The divas of the Sugar Bowl were not one

big, happy family.