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Episode II:
In which DJ fabulous has a sexy party and finds himself in the middle of a trans-gender geriatric brawl

I was standing in the middle of the posh hotel room. It was five thirty in the morning, but I was wide awake. Truth is I was hungry, and it’s hard to go to sleep on an empty stomach. One of the odd things about being a DJ is that while your job is to be in sync with people on a dance floor, because of the hours I keep I am decidedly out of sync with most people and much of mainstream American life. So it’s entirely normal for me to find myself at nearly six a.m. wanting to have dinner, and feeling a little blue that one friend is sound asleep on the floor, and the other is curled up nicely on the bed in my hotel room and no one wants to come to breakfast with me.

As I was heading for the door my telephone began to ping and ring at once. I fished my disappointingly expensive mobile phone out of the pocket of my blazer and didn’t recognize the number, never answering calls from numbers I don’t know I pressed the “ignore” button and read the text message. It said simply: Come up to our room? I had no idea who it was, so I replied I can’t right now, sorry. But the person on the other end of the conversation wasn’t taking no for an answer. They continued to pester me, so I finally asked Which Room? They replied with the room number. I slipped into my sandals and headed up there to see what all the fuss was about.

I walked into a dark hotel room, the blue light of the television was flickering and illuminated a woman standing there holding the remote control, and another woman seated on the couch. A man, the one I knew was standing at the door smiling at me with eyes soaked in the olive juice of a dirty martini. Journey was playing from the television. It was loud. Suddenly I felt something aggressively licking my toes. I looked down and found a little French Bulldog going to town on the club funk all over my almost bare feet.

One wonderful thing about being a DJ is that I never have to wear shoes. I wear sandals, and while my feel do get a little filthy… I enjoy the casual ease of flip flops and Jesus boots over the awkward and sweaty experience of closed toe shoes. However, being slurped at desperately by a tiny little dog is a strange experience indeed. I tried to calm the dog down. There was no such thing. Any effort to relax the beast sent her into a wild frenzy of snapping and leaping toward my face. I decided to let it go and enjoy the foot wash.

While the dog was licking furiously between my toes I looked around the room. I looked into my friend’s eyes and they peered back at me hopefully. I smiled and stayed a little while. I put Nirvana on the television, but one of the women turned it off. They were looking for Zeppelin, but the digital music service didn’t have them. After a few minutes I said “I’m hungry! Anyone wanna come to breakfast with me?” The trio seemed to be preoccupied in a way that only people who have been drinking since before dinner can be over a remote control and the confusion of the music they want to listen to not actually being available. I looked at my host, his chin up, mouth moving to the unspoken words What do you think? He had such a boyish face, so sweet, so handsome. But I was out of there.

“I’m going to forage for food. I’ll see you soon baby.”

Back in the elevator I imagined all the different ways that might have gone down. I felt a little awkward when the doors opened and I found myself in the early light of day, walking up the street staring into the closed restaurants. There was a bagel shop, it looked like heaven to me. The door was open, but the lights were off. I walked a bit further and found myself on the corner in front of a pharmacy. A twenty four hour pharmacy. Nice!

I walked in and surveyed the possibilities. It was slim pickings. I decided on a honey bun and a bag of Utz potato chips. Not my idea of breakfast, but better than another glass of water. So I headed for the register feeling a little defeated. As I approached the six foot tall beautiful woman behind the counter I was intersected by a hunch backed little woman carrying two impossibly huge plastic bags. She seemed to come from nowhere, stepping silently in front of me and looking up at me curiously with a smile disguised by glasses so thick I wondered if she actually had eyes. This bright bug of a face seemed to say “Can I go ahead of you?” I bowed a little and smiled at the woman’s white sneakers and she ambled up to the register.

Once the huge bags filled with personal sized Evian waters were carefully placed up on the counter, the tall woman and my little bug faced friend spoke to one another in low voices for a little while. It seemed to me like the little woman was hoping to return the water and the tall woman behind the counter, despite her perfect skin the color of an espresso bean, was giving her a little grief.

“Fuck you! You transvestite ass faggot motha-fucka!” Shouted the little woman with the coke bottle eyeglasses.

The beautiful cashier and I were equally surprised by this sudden shift in tone, but it was clear that the bags set up on the counter were now leaking. Indeed, water was streaming out of the plastic bag and spilling out onto the floor. I watched the water splashing into reflective beads on the carpeted floor while the two women began to shout at one another.

“Listen to me woman!” Shouted the tall, beautiful woman behind the counter, revealing that she was not a woman at all, but an athletic man in a wig. “It don’t matta if I got a wig or a weave, you need to respect this right here. Ok?”

“Fuck you! You faggot ass freak of nature…” Shouted the little woman.

My hands were getting sweaty clutching my honey bun, and I was relieved when the cashier picked up the intercom and shouted “Ms. Walker! Ms. Walker to the front please!” down into the walkie talkie style handset. Her voice was so deep it distorted the speakers and resonated through the pharmacy, empty apart from me and my unacceptable morning compromise of a snack.

As the two women continued to scream at one another, the door began to open from beside them. slowly but surely, with tiny little baby steps, Ms. Walker began to appear from the back. She was a pumpkin of a woman, completely round with little flimsy legs and tiny little arms, and a perfectly round bright gray afro. I watched her waddle to the cash register wondering how she managed to reach her own hair. The distraction was welcome for everyone, and they adjusted themselves, preparing to retell their stories to the pumpkin lady.

“What seems to be the problem?” Said Ms. Walker through her nose.

“This ugly faggot-ass bitch won’t give me my money!” Shrieked the sweet little old lady.

Ms. Walker stood still for a moment. It seemed like she was going to explode completely. I imagined little bits of Ms. Walker dried into my hair, and face as I explained the whole thing to the EMT by the side of the road wrapped in a shock blanket and sipping bad coffee. The room got warmer and my honey bun was looking like it might be a month or more old.

“Now you listen to me…” Shouted Ms. Walker out her huge flared nostrils. And it was on. The three of them began a shouting match which no one could possibly win. When the little old lady began to reach for the cashier’s wig as if to yank it off her head she reached for the handset again and screamed “Consuelo! Security! Consuelo to the front please! Security to the front please!” I couldn’t decide if she’d already blown the speaker system with her voice, or if she was hoarse from screaming at the little old lady with the bug’s face.

Consuelo and the security guard had been fucking. Either fucking or taking a nap. I think they were fucking because while they rushed out from behind the heavy door behind the counter, Consuelo was hastily buttoning up her smock, and the security guard was zipping his fly and fixing his belt. They were both flushed. The guard stood abstractly beside the door as it closed, surveying the pharmacy as if to say “I didn’t do anything.” And Consuelo’s eyes lit up and she marched directly to the cash register and began screaming at all three of them in Spanish. Her aggression and sheer volume were enough to stop the other three in their tracks and brought the dispute to a complete stop for a moment.

“I don’t understand a god damned work you are saying!” Shouted the little old lady.

And with this the battle continued. I decided that my sweaty and old looking honey bun should go back where it came from, and my bag of Utz should resume their place among the other shiny bags of chips in the metal shelves. I returned everything to its rightful place on the shelves and sprinted out the door to the street. I felt like I was on acid, no, I felt like someone had released a glue very high in tulhol content into the air conditioning unit at the pharmacy. That was the weirdest most impossible thing I had ever witnessed in my entire life, and if you know me… I’ve seen some pretty weird shit.

My heart rate began to slow down as I retraced my steps back to the fancy hotel where I was staying. The morning was already warm, but it wasn’t humid and I like the feeling of the sun on my face. A few more steps and I was once again standing in front of the open door of the bagel shop. The door was still open, the lights were still off. I stood there a moment tasting a warm, fresh bagel in my mind.

“You want bagel?” Said the staccato voice.

I peered into the doorway. There was a little bald Chinese man sitting on a chair the wrong way around smoking a cigarette just inside the doorway of the bagel shop.

“Yes.”

“Come wit me.”

I followed the little man into the shop, past the counter, into the back room where they were making bagels. there were three other people in there, all wearing pink plastic shower caps and clear rubber gloves. None of them looked up from their work. the man stuffed three bagels into a white bag and handed it to me.

“Five dollar.”

I thought that was a lot of money. But I was starving and clearly hallucinating so I handed the man a five and he stuffed it into his pocket and pointed to the door. I walked out of the shop and crossed the street to my hotel, the bagels were warm in the little bag and my mouth was already watering.