Words by Terryl

Randy

To the untrained eye there wasn’t much difference between the two Randys. He changed identity from Country Randy to Town Randy and back again as easily and frequently as most people change their socks. Country Randy was my neighbor and one of several shady Real Estate developers in the area. Country Randy was an up-in-your-face-Christian who would be the first to tell you all about how devoted he was to his wife, Ernestine. They lived in a house at the main entrance to the subdivision on what was arguably the only resort-ish piece of property in the whole development—the one featured on the brochure. I rented the tumble-down hovel next door.

Town Randy owned The Embers restaurant and was an even oilier version of Country Randy, although he sported the same dyed- and blow-dried orange pompadour hair and wore the same yellow polyester pants. Town Randy would have told you that he and his ‘fine dining’ restaurant were fierce competition for the one I managed at the base of Wolf Creek Pass, but the two were hardly in the same league.

What interest the Mafiosi might have had in the tiny burg of Pagosa Springs in the early 80s—population 1,500—I wouldn’t know, but I never entered the Embers without somehow expecting to see a man in a dark suit with the bulge of a gun behind his lapel lurking in a dark corner. The whiff that greeted me at the entrance to the Embers carried hints of tainted food, cheap whiskey, cigar, and filthy carpet. The booths were upholstered with maroon Naugahyde® to match the dark red crushed velvet wallpaper with black fleur-de-lis. The amber faux cut-glass light fixtures cast lurid yellow light that barely penetrated the gloom. I shuddered to think of the shady deals and tawdry affairs conducted in those dark, dank corner booths.

The Embers was his night time empire and Town Randy ruled it with an iron fist. He treated his employees like slaves, got slobbering drunk every night, and felt free to be handsy with the waitresses. All I ever had to do when I had a vacant position at the Inn was go to the Embers for a drink. I wouldn’t have eaten there if I were starving. I would drop a subtle hint on my cocktail waitress, mentioning my vacancy in any department, and would find applications on my desk the next day, sometimes within hours. Randy could never seem to figure out why all his good help eventually came to work at the Inn.

Town Randy was a serial adulterer, like so many patriarchal men, and thought his riches made him god’s gift. The riches must have meant something to Randy’s wife Ernestine. She was a sweet, kind, smart woman and I could never begin to understand why she stayed with him.

Denny

The thing about being in service is you get tired of it even when your customers are nice, which sometimes they aren’t. After a long week of waiting tables, we loved to go out to eat on our nights off. We wanted to be served, and were nice customers who tipped extremely well. Likewise, often enough the first thing I did after my bartending shift ended was plop myself down on a barstool and have someone else somewhere else serve me drinks. There were two dive bars frequented by the locals in Pagosa Springs. Tourists who might have wandered into either met a cool reception and didn’t stay long. For the Country-Western crowd, it was the Pagosa Bar. For us hippy rock and roll skiers, it was the Adobe, affectionately known as the Mud Pub where Denny, he of the soulful eyes and gentle hands, tended bar. We spent many hours across our respective bars from one another—his grungy one and my shiny one—with our hearts beating fast.

I loved to run my fingers through Denny’s long, dark hair. He had green eyes, a full, neat beard, and the soul of a poet. His deep, soft voice touched me somewhere around the solar plexus before it ever reached my ears. He was calm, the perfect counterpoint to my awkward, frenetic energy. Being around him was like settling down in the grass on the banks of a still pool.

Halloween that year fell on a Sunday, but the party and dance at the Mud Pub would be Saturday night as always. The week before, Denny asked me if he could borrow a dress.

“You going in drag?”

“Yeah, will you help me?”

“Absolutely!” I enthused, “You can borrow any of my girly stuff you want!”

“I want to do it all on Saturday. Can you take the day off?”

“Do it all? Well you know I can’t take a Saturday night off altogether. But there are certain advantages—rarely—to being the one who writes the schedule. I’ll have to work dinner at least but I’ll take a wait shift so I can help you during the day and get off early that night.”

“Okay, that should do. Gayle is covering for me. I told her I had to go out of town this weekend. The cover story will be that I’m your cousin visiting from Albuquerque.”

“Cover story?” This was going to be more than just another bearded man wearing a woman’s dress for Halloween. “Okay, sweet thing, you lie and I’ll swear to it.”

We went shopping in my closet and jewelry box on Thursday. I was no fashion maven. I had a fair selection of skirts and blouses for waiting tables, and a few dresses. The rest of it was jeans, flannel shirts, and ski gear. He was drawn to the shimmery, dark teal, calf-length dress with a slit up the side my dad had given me for our opera nights in Santa Fe.

“Yes it is gorgeous, love, and about as girly as they come, but it’s also clingy and fits far too close. You’ll, ah, have bulges where girls aren’t supposed to if you’re really going to try to pass. That dress also demands black silk stockings and the black heels. It’s full-on evening wear that won’t be at home in the Mud Pub, even on Halloween. Besides, it’s artificial fiber. Not many things in nature shimmer like that and like Roseann Roseannadanna says ‘You sweat in that you gonna smell like N’Joisey.’”

A man after my own heart in so many ways, Denny would have nothing to do with panty hose or high-heeled shoes and chose instead a cotton dress in a cheerful African print my grandmother had brought back for me from one of her adventures. Denny’s dress had a full knee-length skirt with a wide belt and a short sleeved black bolero jacket that disguised his manly shoulders pretty well. A slip, a bra stuffed with silk scarves, a small embroidered shoulder bag, a dainty necklace and bracelet, and a pair of my three-dollar, flat, black Chinese shoes and the outfit was as complete as we were going to get it. His hands were too big to wear any of my rings and we had laughed many times that my feet were bigger than his. Fortunately, the Chinese Mary Janes had decent buckles so he could cinch them up.

After the open-to-close shift I worked on Friday to make up for being such a slacker Saturday, I came downvalley to close the Mud Pub with him. We spent what little was left of the night in his tiny apartment upstairs and got up early Saturday. We had a lot to do. He didn’t leave the apartment at all that day. I made all the supply runs.

First we shaved him. Well, most of him. It was an incredibly sensuous experience. We spent hours in the shower with a bright light, multiple cans of shaving cream, and a pack of fresh blades. Face, chest, neck, back, legs, arms. We slathered him all over with lotion afterwards because shaving is harsh, especially the first time. He sat down in front of me with a towel around his shoulders and, with classical music on the stereo, I permed his hair and died it strawberry blonde. I cut as best I could to approximate the short, layered look women were wearing those days. I’m no hairdresser, but it was a passible do. We took a break for lunch and then started on the detail work. Plucking eyebrows and doing nails. By late in the afternoon we were ready for makeup and clothes, with which we were exceedingly careful.

“Stop flinching, dammit! Now we’ve got mascara in your eye shadow again.”

“I can’t help it. Nobody’s ever poked at my eye with anything that sharp and goopy before. Mascara sucks.”

“Yeah, tell me.”

A little muted lipstick, a dab of perfume, the dainty bracelet, and we were done. By the time I had to leave for my dinner shift, the transformation was so complete, and so stunning, I was not sure if I should kiss him—her—goodbye.

I told him this. He gave me a long, passionate kiss and, in a silky, sultry, feminine voice I didn’t recognize said, “Call me Adele, honey.”

Adele

I rushed downvalley to the Mud Pub as soon as I could get free of the Inn. It had been a busy Saturday dinner shift. My coworkers knew I was antsy to get out of there without knowing why. Michele took the last two tables and kindly shouldered a good deal of my breakdown work. She didn’t mind making a few extra tips and I had broken down for her many times. It was almost ten by the time I got to the bar. The band was taking a break as I walked in. Adele’s falsetto carried across the crowded barroom as soon as I crossed the threshold.

“Darling!!” she sang, “At last!”

Adele was standing in a crowd of handsome young men—and Randy—like a juicy flower surrounded by bees. She was a Presence. The crowd parted in front of her as she swept toward me with her entourage in tow. She embraced me with a whiff of perfume and slapped me playfully on the shoulder.

“You never told me how marvelous these mountain men of yours are, you naughty girl, you! You’ve been holding out on me and I will never forgive you.” She looked around appreciatively at her court. “Boys, you all know my cousin, T, don’t you? From the ski area and the Inn at the Pass?” Heads bobbed. Adele made a dismissive gesture and said “I forgive you of course, love. But you’re just getting off work. Here, let me buy you a drink.”

As she reached for her—my—purse, several male hands reached out to stop her, the voices of their smitten owners begging for the privilege. I ended up with four drinks. Adele never touched her wallet. Randy slithered around the feet of these better men like a snake. I thanked them, but none of them so much as made eye contact with me. All glittering eyes were on Adele, I was mere background noise. I chatted inanely with Adele’s admirers for a few minutes. Randy and I exchanged the customary pleasantries of restaurant managers, asking how busy our respective Saturday nights had been. No, he didn’t know how many dinners the Embers had done, he’d been here all night.

The band came back from break with the theme song of ski towns throughout the West—Eric Clapton’s Cocaine. ‘If you got bad news, you want to kick them blues, Cocaine.’ Thumpa thumpa thumpa. Adele and I and her court were swept out onto the dance floor with everyone else in the bar. It was a sweaty, throbbing, ten-minute communal auditory orgasm and Adele made the best of it. Her arms were in the air in ecstasy as she gyrated in the center of the tight circle of her admirers.

I declined further dancing partners after that and settled back at the bar to nurse my drinks and watch Adele at play. She came to me for a little girl talk between sets, but while the band was playing she was the perfect virgin-whore on the dance floor, that unattainable feminine ideal so sought after by patriarchal men. She blushed as she taunted, demurred as she flirted. She smiled chastely and then threw her head back with her mouth open and licked her lips seductively. She teased them closer and then slapped them away. She batted her eyelashes and looked at them with shyness in those big, dark green eyes. She caressed them with feather-light fingers. She swayed seductively and then crossed her arms in front of herself as if embarrassed by her passion. They were beside themselves.

But it wasn’t merely Adele’s sensual nature that captivated all who orbited her, she was having fun, and was genuinely delighted in everyone she met. Her adventuresome spirit sparkled through every conversation. If she told a hard rock miner she thought setting charges underground must be both exhilarating and scary, she meant it. She laughed easily and openly. Adele listened intently. Every human being who has ever spoken to another human being has hoped they might be listened to that carefully. Adele had read broadly and could find something in common with everyone to discuss. She gushed about the quaint little town and its thoroughly charming denizens. She was sincere in her curiosity. All of these were attributes she shared with Denny—attributes that might have given her away had the transition in appearance not been so dramatic. Gayle eventually saw through the disguise—it was her job to stay sober and pay attention—but winked at me conspiratorially and kept it to herself.

As the band’s last set wore on, competition between Adele’s men began in earnest. Who would take this spectacular woman home with them tonight? Elbowing the last guy out of the way to get the next dance with her got more and more aggressive. I saw Randy in the fray more than once, whining and groveling. Adele crinkled her nose and turned away from him every time to face another. It was wonderfully confusing and tantalizing for me, too. I could hardly wait to get her home and get that dress off of her.

The last set ended at last and the lights came up. Gayle hollered last call in that harsh light that’s always somehow a surprise at party’s end. Everyone in the place was aware of Adele and the dynamic around her. Spectators were as curious about who would take her home as her suitors. The customary gabble of the two a.m. drunks was unnaturally hushed and tense with expectation. Town Randy, never particularly gifted with good timing, stepped forward into the stillness and whispered something in Adele’s ear.

Adele vanished in an instant and those green eyes were all Denny again. The entourage and I were not the only ones to notice the return of my mischievous lover. Gasps of recognition flitted around the crowded, sweaty barroom. Denny leveled a piercing gaze at Randy and, in his own smooth baritone, said “Now Randy, you don’t really want to pay *that *much, do you, for this?” and lifted his skirt.

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Terryl Warnock is an eccentric with a happy heart who lives on the outskirts of town with her cat. She is known as an essayist, proof reader, editor, maker of soap, and proud pagan. A lifetime student, she has pursued science, religion, and sustainable communities. This, plus life experience from the local community service to ski instructor, from forest service worker to DMV supervisor, from hospitality to business owner gives her a broad view on the world.

Terryl is the author of:
The Miracle du jour, ISBN-10: 0989469859, ISBN-13 ‏: ‎ 978-0-9894698-5-2

AJ Brown, in a past life, was an embedded systems engineer (digital design engineer). He worked on new product designs from hard disk controllers, communication protocols, and link encryptors to battery monitors for electric cars.

A few years ago he surrendered his spot on the freeway to someone else. Now he is more interested in sailing, building out his live-in bus for travel, and supporting the idea of full-circle food: the propagation, growth, harvest, storage, preparation, and preservation of healthy sustenance. He is a strong supporter of Free/Libre Open Source Software[F/LOSS] and is willing to help most anyone in their quest to use it.

Together, we are MoonLit Press where words and images matter.