Chapter 16
Lets Fly Away, Lets Fly, Lets Fly Away
Hello dear readers, it’s me, Butchi De Rose.
I am still taking on the writing portion of this website until that lazy Madame Regina decides when she wants to come back!
Smile Reggie dear, I’m only kidding!
This week I want to talk about Johnnie Buonangeli. My dear sweet, lovable, and very gay friend Johnnie! He and I have been friends from the time we were both little boys. We’re still friends to this day. Of course, only one of us is still a boy!
It was Johnnie who got me the job at Rigger’s. He never told his brother Louie about my real identity. It didn’t matter since everything worked out so well for everyone involved. Louie got an entertainer who brought in the crowds and I got paid to do what I loved doing!
I remember a conversation Johnnie and I once had. It was after closing time at Rigger’s and we were having cocktails at the bar. After a couple of rounds I said to him, “So sweetie tell me something, where do you think we came from?”
Johnnie looked at me for a second and said, “Uh I don’t know love…Stanktown?”
I laughed at him and said, “No silly, I mean people like us…you know…gays and lesbians and trannies!”
“Oh --oh –oh!” He said as he tipped his glass toward me in a toast, “Yes, of course, people like us!” He then stood up and straightened his tie and said, “Well darling let me tell you where we came from.” Johnnie took a few steps back from the bar and assumed a stance like a professor about to give a lecture.
“You see my dear, it started a long time ago on our home planet of Lavenderia! Yes sweetie it’s true, --we are from another world! Anyway, Lavenderia was a beautiful place. We had art and music and a wonderful culture. Everyone was free to be who he or she wanted to be without anyone saying it was wrong or illegal or anything!”
After draining the last bit of his drink, he stopped the lecture and went behind the bar to mix another batch of martinis. When he finished mixing the ingredients he poured some of it into my glass first and said, “Neat and clean for the neat lady!” Then, he scooped three olives from the jar and dropped them into his glass. He then poured a splash of olive juice and said, “And dirty and nasty for the dirty and nasty gentleman!” We clicked glasses and Johnnie said, “Long live the queens!”
He then started the lecture again. “Now on Lavenderia everything, in everyday life, was just like an opera or a musical. Like if you watched the news on TV, they would sing the happy news and have a chorus line of cute male dancers in the background. But if it were tragic news, they would darken the set and have the news readers put on costumes and present it as if it were the finale of Romeo and Juliet!”
When he said the part about Romeo and Juliet I just shook my head and said, “My goodness Johnnie where are you coming up with this crap?”
Johnnie just smiled and held up his hands, “Wait a minute Butchi, it gets better! You see we were all happy and living in harmony, you and me and all the gay men and the lesbians and even the trannies. Oh and hey, all the trannies…they were fashion models…all of them!”
“Oooh I like that!” I remember telling him.
Then he went on, “But one day, an evil warlord from a planet called Gorgo invaded Lavenderia. This warlord, his name was Ogrog Von Gorgo, came and imprisoned all of us. This Gorgo was real brutal looking, and not in an interesting way either! He was just plain ugly! I think if you translated his name to our language it came out to be, The man with a head like marble!”
??????????????
“Oh goodness,” I said, “not another Marblehead!”
“Yeah,” Johnnie said, “another Marblehead!” See after he captured all of us, he put us on one of our big lavender space ships and sent us off into exile! We had to fly away from our beautiful lavender planet and leave our beautiful lavender galaxy forever!”
“Now you’re going to tell me we all wound up coming here, right?” I said to Johnnie.
“That’s right!” Johnnie said, “Then after we came here, this Ogrog got all his people to settle on Lavenderia. But what happened soon after was that everyone was unhappy because there was no music and color and design and art and nothing…it was no fun. It was just drab and boring! And it was all because we weren’t there anymore!”
I laughed when he said that, “Well I can believe that part!” I told him.
Johnnie took a sip of his martini and went on, “And because it was so boring and lifeless, the whole Gorgo society began to tear apart! You see, people really want the light and the fun and the music and the color and the magic that all of us bring to the world!”
Everybody Out
Johnnie then sat down next to me and took my hand, “You see sweetie,” he said, “no matter what people think about us…no matter how much they might hate people who are like us, they still do enjoy all the good things we bring to the world! I’m sure that most of them don’t believe we bring anything good to the world, but we do, we really do!”
As silly as Johnnie’s story was, and I must admit he was a little tipsy when he told it to me, I do agree with him. We do bring much to this world and it would be an awfully dull place if people like us -- gays, lesbians, and transgenders weren’t around.
Think about it dear readers, you know it’s true!