“Yeah, it’s cute! You expect it to look like a hobbit hole, but it’s really nice.”

“A hobbit hole?” Wes hisses. He’s aiming for indignant, but his mouth splits into a begrudging smile.

Oh, man. He is in love.

August’s phone chimes. Jane, telling her to put on the radio again.

“Hey,” she says. “Do you mind if we put the radio on?”

“God, please,” Isaiah says, pulling the AUX cord out of Wes’s phone. “If I have to listen to Bon Iver for another block, I’m gonna drive into a telephone pole.”

Wes grumbles but doesn’t protest when August reaches forward, tuning to 90.9. The song that comes on is one she recognizes—gentle piano, a little theatrical.

“Love of My Life” by Queen.

Oh, no.

There was, she realizes, a major flaw in her plan. She may not be kissing Jane anymore, but this is worse. How is she supposed to know if, when Jane requests “I’ve Got Love On My Mind,” August is supposed to read into the lyrics? Dear Natalie Cole, when you sang the line When you touch me I can’t resist, and you’ve touched me a thousand times, were you thinking about a confused queer with a terrible crush? Dear Freddie Mercury, when you wrote “Love of My Life,” did you mean for it to reach across space and time in a platonic way or a real-deal, break-your-heart, throw-you-up-against-a-wall type of way?

“You sure you got enough room?” Isaiah asks. “You kind of look like you’re dying.”

“I’m fine,” August croaks, sliding her phone back into her pocket. If she absolutely has to have feelings, she can at least do it in private.

They unload Isaiah’s car and carry everything up six flights and into August’s bedroom, and Isaiah blows them both a kiss on his way out. Wes sits next to August on her deflating air mattress, each wiggling their asses to force the air out.

“So…” August says.

“Don’t.”

“I’m just … curious. I don’t get it. You like him. He likes you.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Is it, though? Like, my crush lives on the subway. You have it so much easier.”

Wes grunts, abruptly getting to his feet, and the sudden lack of counterbalance sends August’s ass thumping onto the floor.

“I’d disappoint him,” he says, maintaining stubborn eye contact as he dusts his jeans off. “He doesn’t deserve to be disappointed.”

Wes leaves her on the floor. She guesses she kind of deserved that.

Later, when she’s managed to assemble the cheap bedframe she ordered and tuck the sheets onto her new bed, she opens her texts.

What’s the story behind the song?

Jane texts back a minute later. She addresses and signs it the way she usually does. August is so used to it that her eyes have started skipping right over the introduction and sign off.

I don’t remember much. I listened to it in an apartment I had when I was 20. I used to think it was one of the most romantic songs I ever heard.

Really? The lyrics are kind of depressing.

No, you gotta listen to the bridge. It’s all about loving someone so much you can’t stand the idea of losing them, even if it hurts, that all the hard stuff is worth it if you can get through together.

August pulls it up, lets it spin past the first two verses, into the line: You will remember, when this is blown over …

Okay, she types, thinking of Wes and how determined he is not to let Isaiah hand him his heart, of Myla holding Niko’s hand as he talks to things she can’t see, of her mom and a whole life spent searching, of herself, of Jane, of hours on the train—all the things they put themselves through for love. Okay, I get it.

8

 

   new york > brooklyn > community > missed connections

 

* * *

 

Posted June 8, 1999

Girl with leather jacket on Q train at 14th Street-Union Square (Manhattan)

Dear Beautiful Stranger, you’ll probably never see this, but I had to try. I only saw you for about thirty seconds, but I can’t forget them. I was standing on the platform waiting for the Q on Friday morning when it pulled up and you were standing there. You looked at me, and I looked at you. You smiled, and I smiled. Then the doors closed. I was so busy looking at you, I forgot to get on the train. I had to wait ten minutes for another one and was late for work. I was wearing a purple dress and platform Skechers. I think I’m in love with you.

Isaiah opens the door wearing a top hat, leather leggings, and a violently ugly button-down.

“You look like a member of Toto,” Wes says.

“And what better day than this holy Sunday to bless the rains down in Africa,” he says, waving them into his apartment with a flourish.

The inside of Isaiah’s place feels like him: a sleek leather sectional, stuffed and meticulously organized bookshelves, splashes of color in rugs and paintings and a silk robe slung over the back of a kitchen chair. Tasteful, stylish, well-organized, with a spare bedroom full of drag tucked beside the kitchen. His polished walnut dining table is decorated with dozens of Jesus figurines dressed in homemade drag, and the faint sounds of the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack underscore the sloshing of the punch he’s making at the counter.

So this is the event announced via handwritten flyer shoved under their door: Isaiah’s annual drag family Easter brunch.

“Loving the sacrilege,” Niko says, unloading a pan of vegetarian pasteles. He picks up one of the figurines, which is wrapped in a bedazzled sock. “White Jesus looks great in puce.”

August hauls her contribution—an aluminum dish full of Billy’s biscuits—over the threshold and contemplates if she’s the reason these two households are finally merging. It’s technically the first time the gang has been invited to the brunch, unless you count last year when the party spilled into the hall and Myla ended up getting a lap dance from a Bronx queen on her way to the mailbox. But last week, August rode the Popeyes service elevator with Isaiah and made a point to mention Wes’s sulking fit after his sister Instagrammed a Wes-less Passover seder.

“Are we the first ones?” August asks.

Isaiah shoots her a look over his shoulder. “You ever met a punctual drag queen? Why do you think we’re having brunch at seven o’clock at night?”

“Point,” she says. “Wes made scones.”

“It’s nothing special,” Wes grumbles as he shoulders past her to the kitchen.

“Tell him what kind.”

There’s a heavy pause in which she can practically hear Wes’s teeth grinding.

“Orange cardamom with a maple chai drizzle,” he bites out with all the fury in his tiny body.

“Oh shit, that’s what my sister’s bringing,” Isaiah says.

Wes looks stricken. “Really?”

“No, dumbass, she’s gonna show up with a bunch of Doritos and a ziplock bag of weed like she always does,” Isaiah says with a happy laugh, and Wes turns delightfully pink.

“Praise it and blaze it,” Myla comments, flopping onto the couch.

When the first members of Isaiah’s drag family start to show—Sara Tonin in dewy daytime drag and a handful of twenty-somethings with flashy manicures and thick-framed glasses to hide their shaved-off brows—the music cranks up and the lights crank down. August is quickly realizing that it’s only a brunch in the absolute loosest definition of the word: there is brunch food, yes, and Isaiah introduces her to a Montreal queen hot off a touring gig with a fistful of cash and a Nalgene full of mimosas. But, mostly, it’s a party.