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I catch movement out of the corner of my eye, but it’s a couple on a date and not Diego. Someone tries to sit next to me and I bashfully explain I’m holding the seat for a friend. They don’t seem to mind, but the tiny interaction sets my heart racing. I sure hope I’m holding the seat for a friend. Otherwise, I’ll look like a fool sitting here by myself next to an empty seat. I check my phone yet again. Still nothing. And there’s only a few minutes until the show is supposed to start.
“Come on, Diego. Please,” I mutter under my breath.
Restless, I go to the bar, show my red X, and ask for a soda. Optimistically, I ask for two sodas. The bartender doesn’t bother charging me for them.
I’m carrying them back to my seat when I see him.
Diego stands at the back of the room where the performance will take place. His head swivels, and he shifts from foot to foot, his nerves apparent.
I can’t stop a smile from breaking across my face. I hurry toward him before he can flee or disappear or turn out to be some kind of overly hopeful hallucination on my part.
“Hey,” I say.
He startles when he spots me beside him. I hold up a plastic cup full of soda.
“Want a drink?”
“You shouldn’t be drinking,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “It’s soda.” I hold up my hand,displaying the big red X the bouncer placed there to mark me as under twenty-one.
Diego finally accepts a cup, and I lead him to the seats I snagged, moving my jacket aside so we can sit. It turns out we’re just in time. We barely settle on the chairs before the lights go down and an excited murmur ripples through the crowd.
The emcee all but leaps onto the stage. She’s literally sparkling in her sequin bathing suit. Thigh high boots climb up her legs. Her wig is teased up so tall it nearly hits the stage lights as she jumps around hyping us up for the show. Then the queen tells us to get ready for the first performance, and I almost splash soda on myself from squeezing my plastic cup so hard.
Music blares. The lights flash and swirl as a drag queen struts across the stage lip syncing to “Baby One More Time.” At one point, the queen drops into a split, her tiny school girl skirt riding up around her hips, and the whole crowd goes nuts and throws bills at the stage. I crumple up a dollar of my own and toss it at the stage for the queen to collect at the end of her performance.
In the brief breath of quiet between performances, I chance a look at Diego. He’s fixated on the stage, his fear receding behind a wave of pure awe and delight. I have to bite my lip to keep from smiling too much at that, but fortunately the lights soon shift as the next queen bursts onto the stage.
We get all the hits over the next hour or so. “Bitch Better Have My Money,” “Dancing Queen,” Cher, Madonna, you name it. There’s even a performance of “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” by a drag king who’s devastatingly handsome in full cowboy getup, complete with a ten-gallon hat. He struts down the center row, like many of the queens did, then locks onto me and Diego and sprawls over our laps for a dramatic moment. I shove dollar bills at him and he struts off, but Diego is wide-eyed next to me, and it’s all I can do not to laugh. Despite his field of study, it’s painfully obvious how far out of his comfort zone he is, yet he’s soaking it all up, taking it in with joyful earnestness.
The show wraps up after a couple more performances. Everyone throws whatever cash they have at the stage. Diego digs awkwardly through his wallet, but all he has is a twenty.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “Just remember to get some ones for next time.”
The mention of a next time puts the tension right back into his shoulders and face, and I almost regret suggesting it. But he clearly had fun, and nothing weird happened. We sat and watched a show. What’s so awful about that?
We have to vacate our seats and head to the other side of the bar so the crew can clear out the area for the dance floor. The night is just getting started, and as long as I play it cool I can probably hang around and dance.
The other half of the bar is just a literal bar. It’s crowded with most of the show’s attendees hanging around, but I don’t mind. I lead Diego to a corner where we can toss our empty sodas and escape the worst of the crush vying for the bartender’s attention.
“So, how’d you like it?” I say. I have to yell above the din, but Diego and I stand so close that I know he can hear me. I also know he’s nervous about our proximity, like when I stepped around his desk the other day. I, however, am not. I like being so close I have to look up at him, so close we can’t help accidentally bumping into each other. It gives me an opportunity to appreciate all the warm shades of brown in his eyes, from amber to chestnut to umber.
“It was interesting,” Diego says.
“Just interesting? Come on. I know you’ve never seen something like that.”
“Not in person, certainly.”
“It’s so much better than a textbook,” I say. “The music. The looks. The makeup.”
His head must be spinning. Diego just saw all of his studying in action in a way he’s never witnessed before. From what he’s admitted about his hometown, it definitely didn’t have anything close to the performance he saw tonight.
“How are you not freaking out right now?” I say. “That was so good.”
“How do you know I’m not freaking out?” he mutters.
Even with the noise of the bar around us, I catch it and laugh. “Okay, fine. But you’re freaking out so quietly. Come on, tell me what you really thought.”
