The Tale of the Roller Skating Drag Queen...and other life lessons
"Ok Puss, your pain relief should be kicking in now. What? You want more? But you've already had double, greedy bitch!
Ok she's refusing to move until she can suck the thing dry… Just give it to her"
The paramedic with the killer smile telling me to go deeper with his whistle and suck the pain away was kind of kinky and hot….. but playing Dr / patient wasn’t how my night was supposed to go.
It all started so well.
I rolled in loud and sober announcing that I had to be careful because “ There’s no fucking way I’m going to end up in an emergency room dressed like this”…..I had boys of muscle and ginger by my side, the music was disco, my hair was huge, the crowd was dressed to play and my make up gun was set to “kids colouring book”. It doesn’t get much camper than a roller skating drag queen… until you fall over, fracture and dislocate your elbow and become sequin roadkill scraped off the ground and into the ER.
Hot.
Crawling off the roller floor on your knees, dodging skaters and hoping no one runs into you or knocks off your weave, wearing a confused expression for help that no one can recognise through your paint job, cradling your arm which felt odd, but not yet realising what you’ve done looks like it sounds…. a lone clown in the middle of a dodgem car track. They do say the best comedy does comes from tragedy.
I finally got to the edge of the disco floor, hauled myself up by the side rail and immediately saw the impossible that made me confident that something wasn’t right …the colour drain from the face of a ginger…..(bet you didn’t know that was even possible!)
He took me by the arm that wasn’t flailing about like the disembodied arm of barbie and rolled me out back, past the man with the broken wrist, and sat me down. I hadn’t actually realised or seen what I’d managed to do when my roller-skate sent me crashing to the disco floor…yet….but as I was helped to sit by the gingers and muscles treating a lady with the class she believes she has, I moved my arm….that’s when the sickening wave of pain finally hit.
I could feel myself turn that sickly grey green colour of shock setting in.. “thank fuck no one can see this under the 3 tins of dulux wash and wear on my face” I thought… actually the muscles, gingers and security watching over me were laughing, so I figured I must have said it.
They were also wincing and as I felt my elbow flailing around out of it’s joint i felt their voices fade into mumbles. As my hair and tits ( ok balloons) were removed to keep me from passing out, Xanadu started playing. Even in this state the irony of having an Olivia Newton-John song playing in this moment was not lost on me.
#fuckcancer I giggled, in some delirious twisted joke.
I don’t know how long it took for the hot paramedic to arrive, but it had been a long time since I had been as happy to blow anything as I was to deep throat what was waving around. ( his morphine whistle… you filthy fuckers)
Like a gentleman, he held out his hand and guided me to the ambulance. After what I’d just done to his whistle, we were both smiling.
Dressed only in my pink and silver sequin cheerleader gear, with no wig, no tits, no heels, my arm in a sling and still deep throating the green whistle, and my make up still mostly perfect… I was wheeled into the emergency room looking like pageant runoff. I’d outdone my hot mess self.
“Why is no one getting a picture of this?”
Nurses, Dr’s, x-rays, patients thinking their drugs were either really fucking good, or really fucking messing with them as I was wheeled past their beds, and more of the hot paramedic telling me to suck down on his ( morphine) whistle later, I was laid out on a table in the ER to be fixed, like a broken Barbie at the doll hospital.
“Come on babe, you can suck deeper than that, keep going.” he said with a smile and a wink. He was in on my seeing the whole situation as the ridiculous and laughable thing that it was.
As nurses stuck their hands down my leotard and attached monitors while chatting casually about my make up, how I was feeling and whether I had any allergies….I looked down to see my tattoos and chest hair poking through the sheer white leotard. For a moment I saw reality clearly… I was a 36 year old man in an emergency room, dressed as a disjointed cheerleader, wearing the whole Mac counter on my face… and I could'n’t even remember if anyone had come with me in the ambulance. I wondered where my pom poms were… I also wondered why things like my keys, wallet, and phone weren’t my first priority….
“Just keep laughing and for fucks sake keep your legs closed. No one deserves to see up your pleated sequin mini skirt to your kind of tucked silver-wear”…
Dignity was thin, but somehow still holding on…
Hesitating with an oxygen mask so I could be anaesthetised the Dr resetting my elbow smiled “I just don’t want to ruin your make up, it’s amazing”. As she put me under I offered to trade tips if she fixed me…. and then i woke up to a her looking at with a very concerned expression on her face.
“I’m really sorry” she said… *horrifying pause*
“While we were resetting your elbow I accidentally knocked off one of your eyelashes.”
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I’M IN AN ER AND YOU GIVE ME YOUR BEST “YOU”LL NEVER WALK AGAIN” FACE… OVER A FALLEN EYELASH… ( with all the glue I’d gotten in my eye putting it on in a hurry.. because, drag time….It probably wasn’t secured all that strongly anyway)
Apparently it takes a bit of force to stick a fractured elbow back in its socket without doing more damage, and she was very apologetic.
“Oh just pull the other one off babe. I don’t think I can be much more of a mess, and I don’t think I’ll be heading back out out after here” I said through my semi conscious morphine haze .
Feeling very Shirley MacLaine in Postcards from the Edge I was rolled into the ER’s overnight unit, looking exactly how a broken, scalped drag queen should look… and I wished I’d packed a turban… just for a little subtlety and drama.
Not the first life lesson of the night though.
As my drugs were kicking in nicely I realised I was lazing around the ER still looking like that cheerleader who always falls out of the locker room at 4am after her own game time with the team, and that’s not what I wanted to face when the buzz wore off. Perfect timing for my rolling ginger to roll in with clothes, bag, keys, phone, wallet… and even make up remover and plan for someone to pick me up when the hospital was ready… As he bounced back out to the night I was meant to be having, to the disappointment of the night nurses I headed to the bathroom to strip back my beat face…
Thankfully they were as complimentary about the bewildered, sore, little guy with the streaky face of badly removed make up that came out as they had been about what was left of the broken glitter-ball that was rolled in . Lucky for me, with one functioning arm and the other in a cast i needed someone to get up close and personal and button up my shorts.
As the morning rolled on, staff changed over and a spunky orderly appeared…making enough trips past my bed for his lack of subtlety and cheeky little smiles to be noticed.
#heygurlhey
Chest out, shoulders back, eyes not quite focussed, still sparkling with glitter and in a different type of sling, I smiled and put on my best injured homo charm. We made conversation, had some laughs, he bought me real food to replace the “lunch” the hospital was trying to pass of as edible, and it was a little bit of gay serendipity.
In true gay style, I couldn’t remember his name and we never saw each other again.
It may have been daylight, and I was told my ride was on their way, so you may think this story is over… but no, not yet. There was one last laugh in a night full of things you could only laugh at left….
and that’s when I saw my ex walk in, giggling and waving his car keys at me…asking if i’d been discharged and was ready to go home yet….
“of course it was you they called you to pick me up…”
Thank fuck we’re friends… and fuck the bitches who called him to pick me up without warning me..
A couple of days later as I was unpacking my make up bag, I found a note from one of the nurses in it
“The sights you see in the emergency dept lol
xx”
And that's the story of why drag queens shouldn’t roller skate and you should never take yourself too seriously.
A true story of why it’s important to never take yourself too seriously. It’s always better to get in first and be laughed with than at.
