HER NAME WAS LOLA
HER NAME WAS LOLA
On their wedding anniversary, Simon and David decided to take a break from parenting duties for dinner and a show.
Serenity had stopped at the Border world Bernadette where the medics did not have any clinics to run. The city of Lourdes was big enough to have an entertainment district covering several blocks and with restaurants ranging from classical Cantonese to down and dirty American diner. They actually considered a joint called Mom's, until David quoted his father. "Never eat at a place called Mom's: never gamble with a man named Doc."
Laughing, they chose a European resto-bar specializing in pork based dishes: porchetta, toad-in-the-hole, jerk kebabs, barbecue, schnitzels, keilbasa, bangers, weisswurst, roasts and dozens of bacon dishes. They ordered from the tasting menu and foundered under more meat in one meal than they normally ate in a week.
They staggered out into the brightly lit street, more drunk on food than on the lagers they had imbibed with their meal.
'I don't want to go home yet, baobei,' Simon said. 'But I can't take a play, I'd be asleep before the first act ended.'
'There must be other things to see,' his husband responded. He found a news screen showing advertisements for local events and grabbed some captures of potentials. 'There's an art gallery around the corner holding an open vernissage.' Simon yawned. 'There's a comedy club… too far to walk….Here's a dance club.'
"Too lazy, tonight,' Simon nuzzled Davy's cheek. 'I want to be entertained and maybe have a few more beers.'
'Oh here's a good one, a cabaret. Lola. And I think it will be just the sort of thing we never see.'
The cool night air had refreshed the men and they enjoyed the two block stroll to Lola. The display walls outside the club ran through captures, still and moving, 2D and 3D, with a few tasteful holograms thrown in.
Simon grinned. It was obvious that Lola was a drag club.
They entered and while David made a quick stop in the washroom, Simon arranged for a central table and a bottle of shimmerwine. 'Sealed.' he warned the waiter, who looked affronted.
'Lola would not have it any other way. Will you be alone? '
'My husband will be joining me in a moment.'
'A special occasion?'
Simon smiled politely but did not respond.
David arrived just as the waiter returned with the wine in an icebath. Service included a platter of small fruits that could be crushed with small forks and added to the wine.
'Sihnon style,' noted Simon. David, from an agricultural Rim world, admired his man's sophistication.
Quiet music played and the tables quickly filled with couples and groups, chatting and laughing. A bachelorette party entered and looked to sit near the stage, but the staff charmed them into a balcony with a holo screen that gave them an excellent view but damped their cheerfully loud conversation.
The lights dimmed. There was a self-lit programme on the table naming the acts. David pointed out to Simon that there was actually a Lola, apparently a singer who was the star of the show. She would be appearing after a cross-talk act, in about twenty minutes.
The opening was a mini-spectacular, with a chorus of about eight dancers, all drag queens, supplemented with a light show and Balinese style puppets. The puppetry was done with verve and artistry. Simon could not remember seeing anything as good in his admittedly limited experience on Osiris or even during visits to Sihnohn. The cross-talkers were drag kings, whose rapid patter switched between Chinese and English with some truly breathtaking puns. The act was risque without being obscene, a hard act to pull off as one of the comedians was doing a striptease during the act, ending up naked but for a very bouncy dildo that shot sparks as he ran out through the audience. Simon, blushing, was very glad he couldn't hear the reaction of the hen party.
But now it was Lola. The music slowed to a tango pace. A recent pop hit from Sihnon, but paced slow and sexy. The chorus, reduced to only four slim platinum wigged youngsters, had changed into white sequinned evening gowns slit from ankle to waist with tinkling chains holding the skirts together for modesty … and illusion.
Lola herself rose from below the stage in a cloud of sparkling fog. She was tall, over 195 cm, and there could be no mistaking her for cisfemale. The bosom on her broad chest was certainly prosthetic, and she had the shoulders of an athlete. Her skin was mahogany and her eyes were large and brown and sad with all the troubles of the world as she sang … lost love, lost time, lost friends… then the beat sped up and the song segued into a power ballad of triumph over such losses. At the final chorus, Lola spun and stripping off her red sequin skirt revealed a pair of thigh high scarlet boots, laced and buckled, diamante and snakeskin, that would make any dominatrix sub.
She sang about footwear, an ancient song about leaving a lover, a comic song just as old about refusing adventure because her shoes would not allow, and a new song from the Chinese Republic, about a girl too dainty to wear protective boots that Lola made into a statement about gender politics.
The choristers danced first in their evening gowns then in less and less until by the end of Lola's act they were wearing only scarlet leather pouches and sparkly bodypaint, having moved from quite plausible female appearance to decidedly male.
Lola was talking to the audience. She greeted the bachelorette party, making double entendre remarks to the bride, whose replies were quite single entendre. The silencing device returned with a discreet movement of Lola's hand. She stepped off the stage and kissed an old man whose invalid chair had been moved to the stage. Evidently they were old friends. She threw back the long curls of her wig and allowed a party of salarymen to kiss the sequined nails of her hands.
Then she turned to Simon and David, 'A special occasion, I think? An anniversary?, ' she smiled with an honest pleasure at the blushes of the two men. 'What are your names, darlings?'
'David Chen,' said David, 'And Simon Tam.'
Lola was suddenly still. Then she trilled, 'Aw, bless. Many more happy years before you, darlings.' And stepped back up to the stage leaving behind a scent of orchids and vanilla.
She sang one more song, in Chinese, about the importance of taking responsibility for one's own actions and never submitting to the will of others. Then the full chorus reappeared and Lola left the stage while the drag queens sped through a funny dance with the larger members in feminine sparkles and Lola's four boys in their red pouches, which ended with the pouches being tossed into the audience while the handsome boys posed naked.
The house lights went up and the men discussed the show, mostly which of the boys they thought was sexiest once out of drag, and everything else. Talk was making them randy and although Simon was usually very reserved in public, their hands and legs were active below the tablecloth.
David was whispering some imaginative ways to celebrate once home, when the waiter arrived with another bottle of shimmerwine.
'Thank you, but we didn't order this,' protested Simon.
'There's a card,' said the waiter. 'It's a gift.'
Simon took the card.
'Once I did not have a name, only a job to do. Now I have a name and I take responsibility for those actions. I am sorry. I do not expect forgiveness. Lola.'
Simon turned the card over in his hands. The message was only on one side.
Some think The Operative, like Book, took up a religious calling. But there are alternatives.
watch?v=Mwk75Fek3qs
The two old songs would be These Boots Were Made For Walking and In These Shoes? The others are imaginary.