Queens of the Apocalypse

Queens of the

Apocalypse

Rob Rosen

Copyright 2015 by Rob Rosen

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Published in the United States by Fierce Publishing

Second Edition

ISBN-10: 0983767858

ISBN-13: 9780983767855 

For Kenny,

thank you for rocking my world.

PRAISE FOR ROB ROSEN’S NOVELS

Queens of the Apocalypse

One part tongue-in-cheek humor, one part sweet romance, and one part paranormal free for all.   The action in the novel is stunningly fast paced, the dialogue clever, and the characters simply hysterical! ... Rob Rosen is one of the most cleverly gifted m/m writers on the scene today.

– Joyfully Jay

Vamp

This is a highly original twist on the whole vampire/werewolf genre. Snarky, saucy, witty. It will keep you howling.

– The San Francisco Examiner

Queerwolf

You have to read this book. It is by far the funniest, best crafted novel I’ve read in a long time! It marches on without a pause, and sweeps you along in its action packed wake, leaving you gasping for breath and wiping the tears from your eyes from laughter! – Reviews by Jessewave

Southern Fried

Hands down, this is one of the funniest and oddest books I've ever read, and I mean that in a really good way! – Rainbow Book Reviews

Hot Lava

Hot Lava by Rob Rosen is, for this reader, another vastly entertaining and winning book. Actually, I’d go so far as to say that it is a winner for anyone who loves humor, mystery, adventure and, oh yes, men… lots of sexy men and some very steamy lovin’ – Dark Divas

Divas Las Vegas

A rollicking, roller coaster of a read, sure to keep you smiling. Five stars out of five on your fun reading slot machine! – Echo Magazine

Sparkle: The Queerest Book You'll Ever Love

A gloriously, uproariously funny and immensely touching novel that’s impossible to pigeonhole into a single genre. Part who-dunnit, part satire, part memoir, with a perfectly portioned serving of poignancy on the side, this story will surely touch your heart and tickle your funny bone.

– Top 2 Bottom Reviews

FOREWORD

BY SISTER ROMA

Two hours. That’s the answer to the #1 question people ask me: "How long does it take you to do…all that? Most people just nod and give an appreciative coo, while others are completely flabbergasted. Two hours? Wow! That’s a long time! Though, there are many who reply with Two hours? Is that all? Your makeup is so perfect/beautiful/amazing which, by the way, is the correct and perfect response. You see, the first thing you must know about all drag queens is this: we love compliments, flattery, and adoration. We don’t spend two hours in the mirror beating our mugs and agonizing over the perfect outfit and accessories to go unnoticed. I’m just going to admit it: I crave attention—and I get a lot of it. I mean, I’m not The Most Photographed Nun In The World™" for nothing. I love interacting with people—it gives me life. I’ll never understand the occasional queen who gets all dolled up and goes out, then acts like a complete bitch. If you don’t like interacting with people, you’re wearing the wrong shoes, lady.

The second thing you must know about drag queens is that it takes balls to wear a dress. True, our balls may be tucked up and put away for future use, but trust me, our balls are huge. We are fearless, brave, and tough as nails. I will boldly go where no drag queen has ever gone before. I’ve spoken at national press conferences, flown on airplanes, shopped at Safeway, stumbled drunkenly through the Tenderloin at 4 a.m., and marched proudly in the first ever Fresno Pride Parade—all in high drag. And if you’ve ever been to Fresno, I don’t have to tell you which was scarier.

The Fresno chapter of the KKK was out in full force, complete with their God Hates Fags signs and six year old children flipping us the bird. They were almost as hateful and scary as the right-wing Christians protesting at the National March on Washington in 1994. Now there’s the face of evil. But this is America, so both the KKK and the Fundamentalists have a right to their opinion; they have just as much right to protest as we do to celebrate. Don’t worry, I know that most of those people are bat-shit crazy, but, to be completely honest, I admire their conviction. They believe they’re right and I’m wrong just as much as I KNOW that I’m right and they’re wrong. I take a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that I’ve enraged, shocked, and pissed off a group of close-minded, homophobic bigots. Those are the people who need to see me and hear what I have to say, goddammit. And, yes, in case you can’t tell, I’m a bit of an activist, so having such huge balls comes in really handy.

Here’s another thing you should know about drag queens: don’t call us by our boy name when we’re in drag. Don’t call a drag queen or anyone who presents themselves as female ‘him’ or ‘he’ or ‘sir’ or ‘man’. It’s rude. In public, it’s pretentious to attempt to show familiarity with a drag queen by letting others know that you know her ‘real’ name. To be honest, my given name is rarely used by me or anyone else. If you ask me my name, I’ll tell you it’s Roma; that’s the name I chose and I’m proud of it. Everyone calls me Roma, especially my closest friends. Even friends from high school and some family members who knew me long before I did drag call me Roma, whether I’m in drag or not. It doesn’t get any more real than that.

The fourth thing you should know about drag queens is very important: we don’t hate women. In fact, quite the contrary. Drag is an homage—a tribute—to women and all things female and feminine. If drag queens didn’t respect women, we’d dress like a member of the Texas Senate, not a smoking-hot member of the Pussy Cat Dolls.

Just for the record, I’m not making fun of nuns either. I am a nun. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence ARE nuns. We minister to our community, we educate, we protect, we fundraise, we feed the hungry, we care for the sick, and we provide spiritual enlightenment. Each of us takes a vow to expiate stigmatic guilt and promulgate universal joy—and we look fabulous doing it. The organization was founded on Easter Sunday in 1979 and remains one of the most controversial and iconic LGBT organizations ever devised. Among other things, the Sisters have always been on the front lines in the battle against HIV/AIDS, focusing on education and raising funds for organizations that provide practical care to the community. The Sisters were the first group ever to produce a safer-sex pamphlet called Playfair (which continues to be updated and reprinted today), and the first group ever to produce an AIDS fundraiser: a dog show at the Castro Theatre hosted by Shirley MacLaine. I’m very proud to be one of the longest standing, continuously active, and most recognizable members of the Order. That being said, if someone had told me that one day I’d be a drag queen who dressed like a nun, I would have thought they had certainly lost their damn mind. Who had ever heard of such a thing?

I discovered the Sisters and drag at the same time, and it was quite by accident. I moved to San Francisco to escape the oppression and banality of Grand Rapids, Michigan immediately upon graduation from college in 1985. (This brings us to the fifth thing you should know about drag queens: never ask us our age. Most of us will give you the age we hope to be perceived by others. I will give you the number of years I’ve been doing drag, which is 26. I’m dreading turning the big 3-0, but I digress.) I was your atypical gay twenty-something living the dream in a new city. I had my own place, a decent job, and I believed the whole world revolved around me. I was out to get made, paid, and laid. I had a wonderful social circle of similarly self-centered but amicable upwardly mobile homos with whom I spent many a happy hour boozing it up in the Castro. One evening after work, I was standing in the middle of the Midnight Sun dressed in my pinstripe button-down shirt and power tie, swilling two-for-one cocktails, and laughing at a clip from Designing Women. Suddenly the front door flew open and in sashayed Sister Luscious Lashes—and my life changed forever. Now mind you, I had never heard of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, I had never known a drag queen personally, and I certainly had never been in drag or even considered it. So you can imagine my utter shock when this queen walked right up to me and said Hello, Michael (oh-oh, I just told you my given name. Don’t ever use it.) It turns out that Sister Luscious happened to be one of my best friends that, until that moment, I had only known as Norman Schrader. Norman was a bartender in the Fillmore (back when there used to be gay bars on Fillmore Street) and one of my best drinking buddies. Norman told me about the Sisters and persuaded me to volunteer at different events with the group, but I always remained in my civilian clothing. That is until one fateful Sunday afternoon when we were getting ready to go to root for the S.F. Eagle’s gay softball team, and Norman casually suggested that I just try the makeup. As it turned out, makeup was like my heroine. All it took was once, and I was 100% hooked.

Aside from discovering a deep, deep love for makeup and drag, the most earth-shattering change in me was on the inside. The Sisters awakened in me a deep sense of love for my community and mankind. They turned my focus from my hair to the injustices and hypocrisies of the world. I was impressed by the accomplishments of the Order, which at the time was just really about six or seven active members, and by the impact this handful of passionate people was having on society and the world. I realized that was passionate and even compassionate and that I wanted to be a part of it. I decided that I wanted to join the Order so that my life would not have been in vain. I want people to say that the world is a better place because I was in it.

There is a lot of power in drag. Drag has been my tool, and Sister Roma has been my vehicle to create change, to bring joy, to expand people’s minds, to make a difference. My, that sounds terribly lofty. Don’t get me wrong, I do it for a lot of other reasons too—like to get dick. Yes, there are guys who are into sex with drag queens. (This may be the sixth thing you should know—whether you want to or not.) I also do it so I don’t have to pay for drinks, wait in line, or pay a cover charge. Actually, these are all perks (even the dick), but it doesn’t hurt.

It might be important to realize that not all drag queens get the same treatment, though. I’ve achieved full-on rock-star status. Not gonna lie. People know me. But the newer queens, they don’t have it so easy. Just like Joan Rivers playing a dive bar in Omaha, a drag queen must pay her dues.

This brings us to the seventh thing you must realize about drag queens: we wear many different hats. We are simultaneously the mothers, the sisters, the cheerleaders, the spokes models, and the scapegoats of the LGBT community—but above all else, we are entertainers. The first drag queen I ever saw perform was Odessa Brown at the Carousel bar in downtown Grand Rapids. She performed And I Am Telling You, Jennifer Holiday’s iconic showstopper from Dreamgirls. When that 400-pound black diva got on her knees and started pounding the stage screaming and you, and you, and you, you’re gonna LOVE ME, I did. I jumped to my feet and screamed and cried and threw dollar bills at her. She was a star, and I was starstruck in the truest sense of the word. Back in the day, that’s what drag queens were, local stars headlining at local dive bars, pouring their hearts and souls out for their local fans. Today, thanks to social media and the phenomenon of RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag queens are international superstars. Today’s top drag queens are world-famous moguls with their own brands (RuPaul, ChiChi LaRue); comic geniuses (Jackie Beat, Lady Bunny, Varla Jean Merman, CoCo Peru); and hard-working Hollywood actors (Willam Belli, Shangela). Drag queens are taking over the world, appearing at Pride celebrations, in nightclubs, and on TV and radio around the globe, from Hollywood to Dubai. Today, the sky’s the limit for a man in a dress!

So, c’mon, just try the makeup. And then get some fierceness tips from the queens in the hilarious pages that follow.

xoxo Roma

CHAPTER ONE

THE LEAST OF OUR PROBLEMS

That bitch! shouted Blondella as a silver can whizzed by me.

Which bitch? I asked with a heavy sigh, Lee Press-ons held up for close inspection as the can rolled around the floor before coming to a rest against my fabulous Jimmy Choos. Knock-offs, yes, but the guy on the corner promised me that no one would know the difference. Or at least no one past the first few rows—when the lights were dimmed, of course. And who could possibly spot the glue that held the heels on anyway? From past the fourth row, I mean.

Which bitch? came her world-weary reply. Kit. Bitch used up all my hairspray yet again.

I turned and glanced her way. Blondella Bombshell had her hair jacked up so high it was a wonder she didn’t topple over. Then again, drag queens frequently wobble, but they never fall down. When they’re sober, at any rate. Which, thankfully, we rarely were. One errant match, I made note in reply, pointing at her platinum hive, "and KAPOW!" Then I turned back to the mirror and began my daily moisturizing routine.

She chuckled as she rummaged around for a second can. Be that as it may, Destiny, it was mine, not hers, and she is, as I said, a bitch. The second can was promptly found, another coat applied to the towering, temporarily inferno-less mess that sprouted dangerously above her head like a garden desperately in need of a good pruning.

I nodded. She’s only a bitch when she’s low on sugar.

The chuckle repeated as the heady aroma of jasmine-infused aerosol wafted my way, an ozone hole seemingly widening above our heads. "And exactly what year was Miss Kit Kat low on sugar? She practically owns half the M and most of the & with a lease on the second M as it is."

Blondella had a point. Still, who was I, Destiny St. James, to cast the first stone? Or in Kit’s case, boulder, because one measly stone would barely leave a dent in all that girdle-encased rotundity. Yes, though far be it from me to say it—to her face, as opposed to behind her wide expanse of back—Kit looked like a cross between Aretha Franklin and Jennifer Hudson, pre-Weight Watchers. And by cross I mean take Aretha and take Jennifer and mash ’em together, and voila, you get Kit in size, color, and diva-demeanor. Seriously, she should’ve been counting her blessings that the music at the club was so blaringly loud, because otherwise, she’d be lip-synching to nothing but the squeaking floorboards beneath her size twelve feet all night long.

In any case, in she walked, or at least waddled, a few moments later, the steel door shutting behind her. And yes, I said steel. See, the dressing room had once been a meat locker back in the day, the club itself a converted restaurant located just outside The Castro. Pretty to look at, but, like my shoes, only in dim lighting and from a distance. Or if you weren’t sober. Then again, like us, our patrons rarely were. Thankfully. Because tip ratio equates to drink ratio. In other words, the drunker they were, the better we looked and the more do re mi dough (hairspray, moisturizer, candy bars) for all of us.

Bitches! Kit shouted in cheery greeting, a Snickers bar waved like a wand above her head.

Yes, said Blondella icily. We already covered that. She gave Kit the onceover—twice. Girl, you look like ten pounds of potato in a five-pound sack.

Says the queen in her fifties wearing the fifteen-year-old’s dress, came the snarky reply as Kit took her squeaking seat in front of her makeup mirror. Was there a rummage sale down at the high school, hon?

Thirties, came the teeth-gritted reply. "Not fifties."

Kit turned and squinted at the ever-shellacked Blondella. If you say so. Then she giggled and turned back to the mirror, lipstick tube momentarily replacing the Snickers bar.

In truth, none of us knew exactly how old Blondella was. None of us, after all, had ever seen her out of drag, out of makeup, or out of her monstrous expanse of wig. If she had a driver’s license, it was about as well-hidden as the pores on her face. Best guess, though, I’d say forties. High-end. Low in the dim light. And yes, there wasn’t anything above fifty watts within the club’s walls. Mandatory. Drag queens’ law. Enacted and brutally enforced by all ten of us girls. Well, boy-girls. Um, men-bitches, really.

In any case, terms of endearment at an end, we went back to work on our faces. With the club opening in a few hours, we barely had enough time to prepare. Especially once the other performers arrived and war promptly ensued. Because ten of us and six makeup mirrors made Vietnam look like a night at Disney.

So before all hell broke loose, we eagerly primped and preened and glossed and coated and sprayed and glued and—groan—tucked merrily away.

Though, of course, all hell did in fact break loose soon enough.

Seriously.

SERIOUSLY!

All hell and a good part of Oakland, for that matter. BOOOOM! we heard first, with a couple of extra vowels thrown in the middle for effect. Then the floors shook, the steel screeched within its brick encasing, and Kit’s belly Jelloooed, again with a couple of extra vowels in the middle. And then the three of us shrieked, very unlady and certainly unmanly like.

Earthquake! shouted Blondella. Duck and cover. She quickly ducked under Kit’s broad cover.

Me, I dove under the table my mirror sat upon. That didn’t feel like any earthquake I’ve ever felt before, I managed, body trembling, manicured hands grasping the table legs, mouth in a pant. That felt like an explosion. Like a friggin’ bomb went off.

Or a case of Blondella’s hairspray, offered Kit, kicking the drag queen at her feet.

Blondella grunted. Hammer-toed bitch. Stop it, she whined. That was an earthquake, and you’re the thing in here least likely to crumble under your own weight. She paused and reconsidered her remark. Probably.

Then we all sat there and waited for the aftershocks. Because any earthquake that large had to have mighty-ass aftershocks. Loads of ’em. Only, all we heard was our collective breathing. The earth, it seemed, had raised a ruckus and then promptly piped down, which, all in all, was very unlike itself.

Huh, huhed Blondella ten minutes later. Guess that was it. Let’s go survey the damage.

Gin bottles better be in one piece, groused Kit.

Amen, I agreed, hand resting over fake chest at the mere thought.

And so out we went, my heart racing as the steel door swung open and the three of us peeked outside. A trio of relieved sighs followed as we emerged, the club just as we’d left it. Then we rushed up to the bar, only to find that all was a-okay as well. Deathly silent, yes, but in one glorious piece, gin bottles included. Phew.

Guess we eluded catastrophe this time, said Kit, kissing the side of a clear bottle of booze, lipstick smudge left in her hefty wake.

Still, something didn’t seem right, didn’t feel right. Sure is quiet, though, I made note. No one milling about, no cars driving by, no sirens or honks or shouts. Nothing.

The other two craned their necks up, ears pointed to the front door. She’s right, said Blondella. Nada.

Weird, agreed Kit, a lemon-sized lump gliding down her less-than-slender throat.

We each moved forward, side by side by side as we headed for the door, my heart beating in my chest, the padding doing little to hide the obvious lub-dub pounding in double time. Slowly, I opened the door, the sun so bright that we were instantly blinded, hands quickly raised to block the rays as a tear streaked down my face, my mouth going all Saharan on me.

Sunlight: the bane of a drag queen’s existence.

Too bad that turned out to be so literally true, though.

Look, croaked out Blondella, finger pointing left, right, left again, up and down the block, her mouth gaping open, eyes wide, sweat smearing through all that caked-on makeup.

What the… I barely managed.

Fuck? Kit finished my train of thought.

They’re not moving, whispered Blondella, finger still outstretched as we took in one lifeless body after the next, all of them flat on the sidewalks, in the street, hunched over steering wheels, crumpled against buildings, the absolute silence of the grisly scene completely unnerving. Are they…

Dead? It was Kit again.

I moved away from the door, tentatively stepping a few feet up the sidewalk to the nearest body, a woman on her back, eyes staring up into nothingness, chest still. Dry heaving, I bent down, two fingers held out just above her jugular. I pressed down only to retract them a fraction of a second later.

What’s wrong? shouted Blondella, gripping the club’s door.

I jumped up and turned. She’s searing hot, I yelled back.