Invisible Monsters Remix Read online

  To start with, there was music. An unseen hand pressed an offstage button, and a thumping bass beat shook that staid auditorium. The house lights dimmed. From loudspeakers, a voice shouted, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Pathological Society of London brings you the sexy . . . the sin-sational . . . the searing-hot, one-and-only . . . the Elephant Man!”

  In Lady Daisy’s revision Joseph Merrick made his entrance in a burst of blue smoke bomb, wearing a skintight California highway patrolman’s buff-color uniform. A brown stripe running down the outside of each thigh. Twenty-one, twenty-two years old. He’d wear a giant-sized pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses in perfect proportion to his huge Elephant Man head. His every seam was cleverly held together with Velcro; he’d wear nothing you couldn’t get off with a firm yank. He’d wear a banana hammock engineered for maximum flop. And boots. Sexy black leather boots.

  One nipple was pierced, pinned through with a polished policeman’s badge on his otherwise bare torso.

  No, when Joseph Merrick was presented to the Pathological Society of London in 1884 he didn’t need to dance—but he did. That was the fantasy of Daisy St. Patience. No working the brass pole, not for him, but Daisy imagined him wearing a black Chippendales bow tie. This Elephant Man augmented his tan with baby oil. Who’s to say what really went down? History tells us the Elephant Man didn’t sport sexy Speedo tan lines—those sexy runway lines that point the shortcut to some sexy Elephant Man groin, groin, groin. Rumor has it he didn’t shave his legs or wax his chest, not even while he was touring the European Continent. Again, history records that he was twenty-one, twenty-two years old. Who’s to say Joseph Merrick didn’t get his elephant ears pierced for some hot saddle plugs? A gold ring glinting in his sexy navel. Odds are excellent that he got his lopsided Elephant Man chest inked with a couple of tribal tats. In Daisy’s version, Joe Merrick wore the effects of his Proteus syndrome and neuro-fibromatosis like a hot-pink thong, bumping and grinding his G-stringed self to invade the personal space of those esteemed scientist voyeurs. No passive object for critical gaze, he rotated his deformed hips. Shimmying and finger-snapping. Flexing his washboard elephant abs. No cowering victim, he flexed his fibroid-distorted self and returned their aghast stares with his sexy Elephant Man smile. He grinned his bulbous Elephant Man face like he’d been growing his big forehead lump since he was a three-year-old kid in Leicestershire, pumping up his skull and practicing moves in front of a mirror for today’s command performance. His skeleton might’ve been tortured, but his capped teeth looked perfect, blazing white in the spotlight. Delivering it home, hot, to those whale-boned mamas. Bringing them the ol’ razzle-dazzle with his Elephant Man jazz hands, he did his smooth moonwalk. Working his mutilations with the arrogance of a Playgirl centerfold, Merrick executed perfect backflips. He did handstands and shook his junk in everyone’s cookie-cutter Victorian face. So close they could feel the heat coming off his Elephant Man thighs, he was just boom, boom, boom to the scorching mix of Donna Summer and Lady Gaga. Strutting the sexy curvature of his twisted spine, he pumped his bony cockeyed pelvis. Unmistakable. Sans apology. His every knotted muscle said: Here, this is what it is to be alive. His thrusting crotch said: Come and get it!

  Showing his audience no mercy, Merrick was all: Deal with it, bitches.

  He was sweating now, flaunting his Elephant Man nipples and his bushy Elephant Man armpit hair. He sidled up to rub his pheromone-drenched elephant skin, all Brillo Pad–wet, against folks seated along the aisle. Dry-humping the shoulders of elegant gents, he shook his elephant ass cheeks like two scoops of lizard ice cream.

  In Daisy’s version, barely legal Joe Merrick, almost-elephant-jailbait, he sold the audience his bad attitude self. Like a flaming banquet of all-you-can eat birth defects. Like a visitor from the planet of Worst-Case Scenario. He made those eminent Victorian ladies want nothing more than to be the mama of his Elephant Man babies. Outsider sexy, he made everyone present forget the tragedy they’d been sold about his Elephant Man life.

  Elephant Joe. The Elephant Dude. He worked that Bloomsbury crowd for all the pound notes they could tuck into his G-string. He lap-danced the blushing bachelorettes until they spilled their Long Island iced teas, intentionally, just to hide the overly excited wet soaking through their hoop skirts. The telephone had barely been invented, but already people were trying to slip Joseph Merrick their unlisted numbers.

  No, the way Daisy told the story, he didn’t just stand there like an object for physicians to stare at. Nobody screamed. Nobody wept quietly into their handkerchiefs, or barfed.

  People whistled and stomped. They swooned. People chanted, in unison, “Elephant MAN . . . elephant MAN . . . elephant MAN!”

  That was what happened when Joseph Merrick was presented at Pathological Society of London in 1884. According to Daisy St. Patience, he had thick, flowing, shoulder-length blond hair.

  And if that’s not exactly how it actually happened, says Daisy . . . well, that’s the way it should’ve.

  Now, Please, Jump to Chapter Thirty-six

  y dress I carry my ass around Evie’s wedding in is tighter than skintight. It’s what you’d call bone-tight. It’s that knockoff print of the Shroud of Turin, most of it brown and white, draped and cut so the shiny red buttons all button through the stigmata. Then I’m wearing yards and yards of black silk gloves bunched up on my arms. My heels are nosebleed-high. I wrap Brandy’s half mile of black tulle studded with sparkle up around my scar tissue, over the shining cherry pie where my face used to be, wrapped tight, until only my eyes are out. It’s a look that’s bleak and morbid. The feeling is we’ve got a little out of control.

  It takes more effort to hate Evie than it used to. My whole life is moving farther away from any reason to hate her. It’s moving far away from reason itself. It takes a cup of coffee and a Dexedrine capsule to feel even vaguely pissed about anything.

  Brandy, she wears the knockoff Bob Mackie suit with the little peplum skirt and the big, I don’t know, and the thin, narrow I couldn’t care less. She wears a hat, since it’s a wedding, after all. Got some shoes on her feet made from the skin of some animal. Accessorized including jewelry, you know, stones dug out of the earth, polished and cut to reflect light, set in alloys of gold and copper, atomic weight, melted and beat with hammers, all of it so labor-intensive. Meaning, all of Brandy Alexander.

  Ellis, he wears a double-breasted, whatever, a suit, a single vent in the back, black. He looks the way you’d imagine yourself dead in a casket if you’re a guy, not a problem for me, since Ellis has outlived his role in my life.

  Ellis’s strutting around now that he’s proved he can seduce something in every category. Not that knobbing Mr. Parker makes him King of Fag Town, but now he’s got Evie under his belt, and maybe enough time’s gone by Ellis can go back on duty, get his old beat back in Washington Park.

  So we take the gold-engraved wedding invitation that I stole, Brandy and Ellis each take a Percodan, and we go to Evie’s wedding reception moment.

  Jump to eleven o’clock ante meridiem at the baronial West Hills manor house of crazy Evie Cottrell, gun-happy Evie, newly united Mrs. Evelyn Cottrell Skinner, as if I could care at this point. And. This is oh so dazzling. Evie, she could be the wedding cake, in tier on tier of sashes and flowers rising around her big hoop skirt, up and up to her cinched waist, then her big Texas breasts popped out the top of a strapless bodice. There’s so much of her to decorate, the same as Christmas at a shopping mall. Silk flowers are bunched at one side of her waist. Silk flowers over both ears anchor a veil thrown back over her blond on blond sprayed-up hair. In that hoop skirt and those pushed-up Texas grapefruits, the girl walks around riding her own parade float.

  Full of champagne and Percodan interactions, Brandy is looking at me.

  And I’m amazed I never saw it before, how Evie was a man. A big blonde, the same as she is here, but with one of those ugly wrinkled, you know, scrotums.

  Ellis is hiding from Evie, trying to s
cope out if her new husband has yet another notch in his special contract vice operative résumé. Ellis, how this story looks from his point of view is he’s still major sport bait winning proof he can bust any man after the long fight. Everybody here thinks the whole story is about them. Definitely that goes for everybody in the world.

  Oh, and this is gone way beyond sorry, Mom. Sorry, God. At this point, I’m not sorry for anything. Or anybody.

  No, really, everybody here’s just itching to be cremated.

  Jump to upstairs. In the master bedroom, Evie’s trousseau is laid out ready to be packed. I brought my own matches this time, and I light the hand-torn edge of the gold-engraved invitation, and I carry the invitation from the bedspread to the trousseau to the curtains. It’s the sweetest of moments when the fire takes control, and you’re no longer responsible for anything.

  I take a big bottle of Chanel No. 5 from Evie’s bathroom and a big bottle of Joy and a big bottle of White Shoulders, and I slosh the smell of a million parade float flowers all over the bedroom.

  The fire, Evie’s wedding inferno, finds the trail of flowers in alcohol and chases me out into the hallway. That’s what I love about fire, how it would kill me as quick as anybody else. How it can’t know I’m its mother. It’s so beautiful and powerful and beyond feeling anything for anybody, that’s what I love about fire.

  You can’t stop any of this. You can’t control. The fire in Evie’s clothes is just more and more every second, and now the plot moves along without you pushing.

  And I descend. Step-pause-step. The invisible showgirl. For once, what’s happening is what I want. Even better than I expected. Nobody’s noticed.

  Our world is speeding straight ahead into the future. Flowers and stuffed mushrooms, wedding guests and string quartet, we’re all going there together on the planet Brandy Alexander. In the front hall, there’s the Princess Princess thinking she’s still in control.

  The feeling is of supreme and ultimate control over all. Jump to the day we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter. Jump to the day another house will stand here and the people living there won’t know we ever happened.

  “Where did you go?” Brandy says.

  The immediate future, I would tell her.

  Now, Please, Jump to Chapter Twenty-three

  “y life,” Brandy says. “I’m dying, and I’m supposed to see my whole life.”

  Nobody’s dying here. Give me denial.

  Evie’s shot her wad, dropped the rifle, and gone outside.

  The police and paramedics are on their way, and the rest of the wedding guests are outside fighting over the wedding gifts, who gave what and who now has the right to take it back. All of it good messy fun.

  Blood is pretty much all over Brandy Alexander, and she says, “I want to see my life.”

  From some back room, Ellis says, “You have the right to remain silent.”

  Jump to me, I let go from holding Brandy’s hand, my hand warm red with blood-borne pathogens, I write on the burning wallpaper.

  Your Name Is Shane McFarland.

  You Were Born Twenty-Four Years Ago.

  You Have A Sister, One Year Younger.

  The fire’s already eating my top line.

  You Got Gonorrhea From A Special Contract Vice Operative And Your Family Threw You Out.

  You Met Three Drag Queens Who Paid You To Start A Sex Change Because You Couldn’t Think Of Anything You Wanted Less.

  The fire’s already eating my second line.

  You Met Me.

  I Am Your Sister, Shannon McFarland.

  Me writing the truth in blood just minutes ahead of the fire eating it.

  You Loved Me Because Even If You Didn’t Recognize Me, You Knew I Was Your Sister. On Some Level, You Knew Right Away So You Loved Me.

  We traveled all over the West and grew up together again.

  I’ve hated you for as long as I can remember.

  And You Are Not Going To Die.

  I could’ve saved you.

  And you are not going to die.

  The fire and my writing are now neck-and-neck.

  Jump to Brandy half-bled on the floor, most of her blood wiped up by me to write with, Brandy squints to read as the fire eats our whole family history, line by line. The line And You Are Not Going To Die is almost at the floor, right in Brandy’s face.

  “Honey,” Brandy says, “Shannon, sweetness, I knew all that. It was Miss Evie’s doing. She told me about you being in the hospital. About your accident.”

  Such a hand model I am already. And such a rube.

  “Now,” Brandy says. “Tell me everything.”

  I write: I’ve Been Feeding Ellis Island Female Hormones For The Past Eight Months.

  And Brandy laughs blood. “Me too!” she says.

  How can I not laugh?

  “Now,” Brandy says, “quick, before I die, what else?”

  I write: Everybody Just Loved You More After The Hairspray Accident.

  And:

  And I Did Not Make That Hairspray Can Explode.

  Brandy says, “I know. I did it. I was so miserable being a normal average child. I wanted something to save me. I wanted the opposite of a miracle.”

  From some other room, Ellis says, “Anything you say can and may be used against you in a court of law.” And on the baseboard, I write:

  The Truth Is I Shot Myself In The Face.

  There’s no more room to write, no more blood to write with, and nothing left to say, and Brandy says, “You shot your own face off?”

  I nod.

  “That,” says Brandy, “that, I didn’t know.”

  Now, Please, Jump to Chapter Twenty-two

  ump back to the La Paloma emergency room. The intravenous morphine. The tiny operating-room manicure scissors cut Brandy’s suit off. My brother’s unhappy penis there blue and cold for the whole world to see. The police photos, and Sister Katherine screaming, “Take your pictures! Take your pictures now! He’s still losing blood!”

  Jump to surgery. Jump to post-op. Jump to me taking Sister Katherine aside, little Sister Katherine hugging me so hard around the knees I almost buckle to the floor. She looks at me, both of us stained with the blood, and I ask her in writing:

  please.

  do this one special thing for me. please. if you really want to make me happy.

  Jump to Evie installed talk-show–style under the hot track lights, downtown at Brumbach’s, chatting with her mother and Manus and her new husband about how she met Brandy years before all of us, in some transgender support group. About how everybody needs a big disaster every now and then.

  Jump to someday down the road soon when Manus will get his breasts.

  Jump to me kneeling beside my brother’s hospital bed. Shane’s skin, you don’t know where the faded blue hospital gown ends and Shane begins, he’s so pale. This is my brother, thin and pale with Shane’s thin arms and pigeon chest. The flat auburn hair across his forehead, this is who I remember growing up with. Put together out of sticks and bird bones. The Shane I’d forgotten. The Shane from before the hairspray accident. I don’t know why I forgot, but Shane had always looked so miserable.

  Jump to our folks at home at night, showing home movies against the side of their white house. The windows from twenty years ago lined up perfect with the windows now. The grass lined up with the grass. The ghosts of Shane and me as toddlers running around, happy with each other.

  Jump to the Rhea sisters crowded around the hospital bed. Hairnets pulled on over their wigs. Surgical masks on their faces. They’re wearing those faded green scrub suits, the Rheas have those Duchess of Windsor costume jewelry brooches pinned on their scrubs: leopards shimmering with diamond and topaz spots. Hummingbirds with pavé emerald bodies.

  Me, I just want Shane to be happy. I’m tired of being me, hateful me.

  Give me release.

  I’m tired of this world of appearances. Pigs that only look fat. Families that look happy.

 
Give me deliverance.

  From what only looks like generosity. What only looks like love.

  Flash.

  I don’t want to be me anymore. I want to be happy, and I want Brandy Alexander back. Here’s my first real dead end in my life. There’s nowhere to go, not the way I am right now, the person I am. Here’s my first real beginning.

  As Shane sleeps, the Rhea sisters all crowd around, decorating him with little gifts. They’re misting Shane with L’Air du Temps as if he were a Boston fern.

  New earrings. A new Hermès scarf around his head.

  Cosmetics are spread in perfect rows on a surgical tray that hovers next to the bed, and Sofonda says, “Moisturizer!” and holds her hand out, palm up.

  “Moisturizer,” Kitty Litter says, and slaps the tube into Sofonda’s palm.

  Sofonda puts her hand out and says, “Concealer!”

  And Vivienne slaps another tube into her palm and says, “Concealer.”

  Shane, I know you can’t hear, but that’s okay, since I can’t talk.

  With short, light strokes, Sofonda uses a little sponge to spread concealer on the dark bags under Shane’s eyes. Vivienne pins a diamond stickpin on Shane’s hospital gown.

  Miss Rona saved your life, Shane. The book in your jacket pocket, it slowed the bullet enough that only your boobs exploded. It’s just a flesh wound, flesh and silicone.

  Florists come in with sprays of irises and roses and stock.

  Your silicone broke, Shane. The bullet popped your silicone so they had to take it out. Now you can have any sized breasts you want. The Rheas have said so.

  “Foundation!” Sofonda says, blending the foundation into Shane’s hairline.

  She says, “Eyebrow pencil!” with sweat beading on her forehead.

  Kitty hands over the pencil, saying, “Eyebrow pencil.”

  “Blot me!” Sofonda says.

  And Vivienne blots her forehead with a sponge.

  Sofonda says, “Eyeliner! Stat!”