Chapter !!!^
In spite of all Honeycutt’s prodding to ‘hurry up’, the alien squad didn’t make it to the Liberty Diner until after 1:30.
First, there was the problem of getting all the visitors property attired. Brian’s wardrobe simply wasn’t up to the task of dressing aliens. Everything he had was far too tight on the hulking Dreebo and ridiculously loose on the more diminutive Justloq or Daph. Com’dant Dreebo kept trying to convince Em that they should just put their ‘uniforms’ back on, but neither Brian nor Emmett wanted that. Brian suggested that they just dress them in sweats and be done with it, but Emmett refused to be seen in public with them looking like that. So, in the end, it was decided that they’d have to make a stop at Torso for a complete wardrobe redo before anything else.
Brian, who was still half convinced this entire thing was either a bad trip or a nightmare, didn’t have the energy to argue with his pushy friend and just followed along, obediently handing over his credit card to pay for the aliens’ sartorial upgrade.
By the time they actually made it to the Diner it felt almost anti-climactic. Except for their oddly colored hair, the nattily-dressed aliens looked pretty ordinary. Even the hair wasn’t so far out of the ordinary in a place like Liberty Avenue to be honest. Plus, it was rather amusing to watch Emmett throwing himself at the big alien leader, pawing at the guy constantly, despite the fact that Brian was pretty sure he was straight. Or, at least what passed for straight in the alien world.
With Emmett busy trying to charm Big Red, Brian was relegated to squiring little Yellow and Blue around. The two smaller aliens both seemed quite enamored with their escort. In fact, Brian was having a tough time keeping them occupied long enough that they’d stop groping him inappropriately every chance they could. Justloq, especially, seemed intent on copping a feel every few feet, at least until Brian grabbed hold of the little one’s closest hand. That DID get a few odd looks from the passers by; nobody had ever seen Brian Kinney holding hands with a twink while walking down the street. Especially not with a young woman hanging onto his other arm and looking up at him adoringly. Can you say, ‘Out of Character’? Brian pretended he didn’t care and just ignored the looks and whispers that followed them down the street and into the Diner.
As they came through the entrance, the bell over the door rang out and all three of Brian’s guests immediately began to copy the noise, ringing like bells, over and over until the small Diner was filled with noise. At the same time, the aliens’ curiosity overcame them and they rushed off to touch and examine every single thing they could reach in the brightly colorful eatery. Daph began by picking up the salt and pepper shakers off the nearest table and shaking out the contents over the heads of the table’s occupants. Justloq grabbed a ketchup bottle and had squeezed out a large dollop onto the floor before Brian could take it away from him. After that he moved on to collecting all the silverware off the empty tables and, when he had accumulated a good quantity, the blue demon commenced artistically sticking the forks and knives into the wig of the nearest drag queen. Dreebo, meanwhile, had wandered over behind the counter and was poking at the food waiting under the heat lamp on the kitchen pass through. The only saving grace was that they’d come late enough that the lunch rush was long past and most of the customers still in the Diner were too amazed by the chaos they were watching to complain much.
It took both Brian and Emmett several minutes to corral their charges into the back booth.
“Sorry. Sorry,” Emmett was still repeating as he pulled Daph away from another booth where she had seated herself in one customer’s lap in order to reach the napkin dispenser, pulling out napkin after napkin and stuffing them all in her mouth. “Sorry. They’re not from around here. They’re from Finland . . .” Em explained, as if that explained anything.
“Sit down and don’t TOUCH anything!” Brian yelled, finally losing his temper when Justloq had tried to squirm out under the table in order to escape from where Brian had placed him in the corner of the booth.
“What the FUCK is going on out here?” Debbie Novotny demanded, coming out of the back just about the same time as the boys had finally got their guests under control.
“Sorry, Deb. Uh . . . Brian has some out of town guests and apparently they don’t have diners where they come from.” Emmett waved gamely from his side of the booth.
“Since when does Brian do guests? Foreign or domestic?” Deb asked, cracking her gum as she surveyed the technicolor-haired contingent who were still curiously picking up and examining everything on the table.
“Since last night,” Em answered for Brian, who was still busy trying to get Justloq to stop putting all the little creamer cups in his mouth at the same time, “when he apparently picked up these three, somewhere between Babylon and the Baths, and woke up with them still in his bed this morning. They don’t seem to speak much English, but from what I understand, they think they’re staying with Brian until their ‘Fet Wit Lock’ is ready. Whatever that is.” Emmett wrapped his arm around Dreebo’s shoulders in an intimate gesture. “I, of course, in a show of hospitality, offered to help Brian entertain them.”
“Entertain them, huh?” Deb chuckled with a knowing wink. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Emmett just grinned and fluttered his eyelashes at Dreebo again.
“Enough, Justloq!” Brian ordered, slapping the back of the blue-haired alien’s head so that he was forced to spit out all his creamer cups. “If you don’t behave, there won’t be any zagnut for you, young man!”
“No zagnut? No, Brrrrryon. Zagnut Justloq very much now please! Please! Double the pleasure, double the fun!”
“Not if you don’t sit still and stop making me crazy!” Brian warned.
Justloq made a face that probably equated to an alien pout but at least he stopped touching everything on the table within reach.
“We don’t have zagnuts on the menu,” Deb cut in, “but the Pink Plate Special today is a ten inch polish sausage with cream corn nuts and gravy. We call it the ‘Dick of Death’. Will that do for you?”
“Dick?” Justloq repeated.
“aw0pe808 aevu,” Daph explained.
“Oh! Yes. Justloq wants very much now a ten inch pleasure appendage. And Brrryon to zagnut. Thank you very mostly.”
“And here I thought I was the one who always had dick on the brain,” Brian commented under his breath. “Give it a rest already, Justloq. At least until we finish lunch.”
Deb was laughing so hard by that point that she almost couldn’t finish taking their orders. Brian rolled his eyes at the woman and took the initiative, ordering three Pink Plate Specials for the foreigners and a turkey sandwich on wheat, hold the mayo, for himself. Em ordered a salad since he’d missed his Pilates class. Deb was still shaking her head at the odd newcomers as she shuffled off to put their order in. At which point, Brian gave up trying to control the situation and let the three aliens start in again on their paper napkin appetizers.
“So, Dreebo, tell me all about Finland. Are the guys there all as hot as you?” Emmett, ignoring the paper eating, tried again to engage the red-headed hunk.
Brian just sat back, chuckling quietly at the antics, and sipping at the iced tea that Deb had dropped off on the way to take another table’s order.
He didn’t have long to relax, though, because just then the bell over the door rang out again and all three aliens began their own ringing in response. Brian was still trying to shush them when the person who’d caused the ringing appeared next to their table; Michael was staring at them all as if he’d never seen three technicolor-haired ringing aliens having napkin appetizers before lunch with his best friend and roommate. It was all so absurd and improbable that Brian laughed so hard he snorted iced tea out his nose. If this was just a bad trip, it was at least an amusing one. Maybe, if he still remembered all of this when he woke up, he’d write a book about it? Like that guy, Kafka, who wrote about the time he’d done too much heroin and thought he’d turned into a human cockroach. Yeah, there might actually be some money in that, Brian thought.
“Brian? Is that you? What the hell is going on . . .” Michael finally found his words.
“Hey there, roomie!” Emmett exclaimed. “Come meet the gang from Finland. This is Dreebo,” Em emphasized his introduction by trailing his hand possessively over the hunky alien’s chest. “And the twink with the blue hair groping Brian is Justloq. Oh, and this is their fag hag, Daph; don’t you just love the saffron yellow hair? Guys, say hello to Michael.”
“Hell O to Mic El!”
“Helloto Mike Al!”
“Helm Ike El!”
“Uh . . . Hey . . . I guess,” Michael responded, still clearly unsure about these newcomers. “Where did you find them?”
“In bed with Brian when I went over there to roust him for Teddy this morning,” Em announced.
“All of them?” Michael asked, looking at the very feminine Daph with some confusion.
“Yep. ALL of them.” Em giggled. “I take it, judging by the mammoth hangover Brian had this morning, that he had a pretty wild time after he left Babylon last night.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Honeycutt,” Brian confirmed, still sipping his iced tea with amusement.
“What are they doing in Pittsburgh,” Michael questioned, looking askance at Justloq, who’d managed to get hold of the ketchup and mustard bottles again and was squirting them across the table into Dreebo’s open mouth.
“I think they were here for a Con or something,” Em answered, pulling a wad of napkins out of Dreebo’s hand before the alien could ingest them, and using them to wipe away a splatter of mustard that had misfired and landed on his wrist.
“But, ComiCon isn’t until next month.”
“Uh, yeah, not THAT kind of Con,” Em corrected his friend without meeting Michael’s eye. “Anyhoo. You’re welcome to join us, Sweetie, if you can squish in somewhere.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll just sit over here at the counter,” Michael said, backing slowly away from the puddle of iced tea that had leaked out of the dam of sugar packet sand bags Daph had created to hold back the liquid she was siphoning out of Brian’s drink using his purloined straw.
“Probably a good call,” Brian agreed as he intercepted Justloq’s next mouthful of napkins in order to sop up the tea that was about to drip into his lap.
“Hey, Honey,” Deb greeted her offspring as soon as she returned from dropping off an order at table #3. “How are you holding up, Baby?”
“I’ve been better,” Michael mumbled dejectedly.
Brian kicked Emmett under the table to get his attention and then tilted his head in Michael’s direction with a questioning look.
Em shrugged and quietly explained, “he was on the phone with Dr. Dave when I left this morning. I think they were talking about the arrangements to ship all Michael’s stuff back here to Pittsburgh.”
“Ah! That would explain it,” Brian surmised with a sour shake of his head.
“Helm Ike El not shiny happy people?” Justloq asked Brian, pointing to where the man was slumped on his stool.
“I’m afraid not,” Brian confirmed. “I did try to warn him. But he just kept babbling on about how wonderful David was and accusing me of being jealous because he’d finally found ‘Mr. Right’.”
“Mr. Right?” Justloq asked for clarification.
“Yeah, Mr. Right; you know, the guy you dream of meeting ever since you were a little boy. The one you’d go anyplace with, or do anything for, just so you could be ‘together’. And he feels the same way about you because you’re so ‘right’ for each other,” Brian elucidated, speaking with an air of mocking disdain. “But, in reality, you’re just kidding yourself because you’re a pathetic loser who can’t get beyond the heteronormative indoctrination you were fed as a kid.”
“No Mr. Right for Helm Ike El?”
“There’s no such thing, kid,” Brian concluded. “It’s all a delusion. There’s only Mr. Right Now.”
“Hush, you! Don’t be filling the kid’s head with your pessimism, Brian,” Emmett rushed to correct Brian’s disinformation. “Don’t you listen to him, Justloq. There’s a Mr. Right out there somewhere for everyone. Even for the likes of the Big Bad Brian Kinney. Provided he lets himself be found.”
“Fuck off, Honeycutt,” Brian retorted with all the eloquence of a middle schooler while tossing the tea infused napkin wad at his friend’s face.
Luckily for Em, Dreebo expertly deflected the wad of sopping paper with his knife, sending the dripping mess flying clear across the room, directly at the back of Michael’s head. Brian bit back his laughter before an angry Michael could turn around. And, fortuitously for all, Deb arrived just then with a tray full of Pink Plate Specials for the hungry aliens, blocking Michael’s view of the table. By the time Deb had offloaded her tray, the angriest little Novotny had already left so he could go home and change his now drenched shirt.
*VSOPDIFU z’dsj;copl DPGFHDTH*
“Oh goody! We’re not too late,” Emmett exclaimed as he hustled his merry band of revelers towards a table in the back of Woody’s. “Today’s the Blond of the Month Contest and I just love ogling all those gorgeous hotties.”
“Blond of the Month?” Dreebo parroted.
“Yep. Every month there’s this contest where the crowd picks the hottest blond on Liberty Avenue and he gets to have his picture put up there, over the bar.” Em pointed to the neon-framed photo over the top of the bar picturing the previous month’s blond bimbo selection. “The winner gets free drinks for the whole month and can pretty much have whoever he wants, so it’s pretty well attended most months. I particularly liked Mr. February; damn that boy was dreamy.”
“Well, you alway did like ‘em big and stupid, Honeycutt,” Brian commented dismissively.
“That’s not true. I just don’t discriminate against the more intellectually challenged members of our community,” Emmett countered. “Although, I do like my men large and in charge, if you know what I mean. Right, Dreebo, Baby?” To make his point he very obviously squeezed the red-haired alien’s bulging biceps. “As long as the rest of a guy is well-sized, the size of the organ in his head is the last thing I’m concerned with.”
Just then the speakers situated above their table blared out the announcement that the contest was about to begin. “Okay, boys and boys! Who wants to play our game this afternoon? If you're blond and beautiful and ready to have some big-assed fun, then you’re invited to come up here on the stage and join our little competition. Remember, here at Woody’s, blonds really DO have more fun!”
“I do blond!” Daph squealed and jumped up from her seat.
“Oh, hang on there, Honey,” Em grabbed her arm as she tried to run past. “Aside from the fact that you’re pretty obviously not a natural blond, dear, I’m afraid you don’t have the right equipment to win this competition.”
“What equipment? I can get . . .” Daph asserted.
“Sorry, Sweetie. But, unless you have a dick hidden somewhere down there that I haven’t seen yet, I’m afraid you won’t make it past the underwear competition,” Em commiserated.
“Dick of Death from sausage eatery?” Justloq suggested, unhelpfully.
Brian laughed, thinking to himself of Daph trying to strut around the stage with a ten inch polish sausage in her panties. “It has to be permanently attached, I’m afraid,” he explained to his little blue companion.
“I do dick!” Daph declared, to the confusion of her human listeners.
Then, without any warning, the alien stuck one forefinger into her left ear and plugged her nose with the fingers of her other hand, puffing up her cheeks as if she was trying to unplug her ears or something. After half a minute or so of this the humans sitting around the table were shocked to observe that the petite female’s form began to morph and change. Not only did her face start to appear more masculine, but the alien’s entire body began to get bigger and take on a more male appearance. By the time Daph was done with her little magic trick, she’d grown to more than six feet tall and all her female characteristics were completely gone. Looking down at the crotch of the slacks that were all of a sudden stretched tightly across her/his/its groin, it looked like Daph did indeed ‘do’ dick now too. If he didn’t know better, Brian would have thought he was looking at a really hot looking Black man with bleached blond hair and a rather impressive package.
“What . . . How . . . Did I just see what I thought I saw?” Emmett sputtered.
“Don’t ask me. I’m on drugs, remember?” was Brian’s only comment.
“But, I’m not . . . Am I?” Em seemed uncertain of that fact after watching Daph turn herself into a boy.
“Daph is ;i;p8arhwf,” Justloq explained with a shrug. But, when neither of the humans seemed to understand his screech, he translated. “She is from different place. They are form changers there.” When he noticed his audience still looked confused he added. “Like movie. Hulk. ‘Puny human’. No?” Dreebo added a short screech and Justloq nodded. “Yes. Shape-shifters. That is right word, yes?”
“Uh . . . I . . . I guess,” Emmett seemed to be too confounded to comment further as they all turned to watch Daph skipping up the aisle to the stage with the rest of the Blond of The Month hopefuls.
Meanwhile, Brian was leaning back in his chair and laughing so hard he was at risk of tipping over. Because, of course his really bad trip would include shape-shifting alien karaoke. Or, maybe, this truly was a nightmare after all. He really couldn’t think of any other explanation.
As soon as the six or seven hopeful blonds - and Daph - were assembled on the little stage next to the opulent drag queen MC, the announcer began the festivities by giving all the contestants mics so they could jointly warble along to the karaoke version of ‘Cuz I’m A Blond’ by the inestimable Julie Brown.
Yep. It had to be a nightmare because this was definitely one of the campiest songs Brian had ever been subjected to.
Nevertheless, the contestants did their best to belt out the words. Daph, too, although she didn’t know the words or the melody, was congenitally incapable of following the beat, and wasn’t really able to read along on the screen as fast as the others, so she was not only half a verse behind, but also she really, REALLY couldn’t sing . . .
Nightmare! One hundred percent nightmare. Not even Brian’s worst trip could possibly be this bad.
🎶Because I'm a blond, I don't have to think,
I talk like a baby and I never pay for drinks.
Don't have to worry about getting a man,
if I keep this blond and I keep this tan.
Cuz I'm a blond!
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Cuz I'm a blond!
Yeah yeah yeah!
I see people working and it just makes me giggle,
Cuz I don't have to work, I just have to wiggle.
Cuz I'm a blond B-L-O-N-D.
Cuz I'm a blond - don't you wish you were me?
I never learned to read and I never learned to cook.
Why should I bother when I look like I look?
I know lots of people are smarter than me,
but I have this philosophy, "So what?"
Cuz I'm a blond, yeah yeah yeah!
I see boys without dates, and I feel so sorry for ‘em
cuz whenever I'm around, all the men ignore 'em!
Cuz I'm a blond.
Nyah nyah nyah!
Cuz I'm a blond.
Nyah nyah nyah!
They say to make it, you need talent and ambition,
well, I got a tv show, and this was my audition;
Umm . . . okay . . . what was it? . . . ummm don't tell me . . . Oh, yeah, okay "Duck, Magnum, duck!"
Cuz I'm a blond!
Yeah yeah yeah!
Cuz I'm a blond!
Yeah yeah yeah!
I took an IQ test and I flunked it of course.
I can't spell VW, but I got a Porsche.
Cuz I'm a blond. B-L-O-N-E
Cuz I'm a blond. Don't you wish you were me?
(spoken)
I just want to say that being chosen as this month's Mr. April is, like, a compliment I'll remember for as long as I can.
Right now I'm a freshman in my fourth year at Pitt but my goal is to become a veterinarian, cuz I love children.
Cuz I'm a blond,
yeah yeah yeah!
Cuz we’re all blonds,
yeah yeah yeah!
Boys think I'm snotty, and maybe it's true,
With my hair and body, you would be too!
Cuz I'm a blond, B-L-O . . . I don't know!
Cuz I'm a blond,
yeah yeah yeah!
Cuz I'm a blond,
yeah yeah yeah!🎶
“CUZA M BA LOND, EAH, EAH, EAH! M BA LOND EAH, EAH EAH . . .” Daph continued caterwauling along long after the others had finished. And the music had stopped. And the MC had waved to the stage hand to turn off her mic . . .
“Well, now . . . Wasn’t that special?” The MC grimaced to the stunned audience. “How about a nice round of applause for these guys.” There was a smattering of clapping but mostly the patrons were either laughing or just silently staring at the way Daph was bowing and strutting around on the stage like she’d just killed it. “Okay, moving on now . . . How about we get to know this month’s contestants a little better?’
One by one the announcer called the contestants forward where she asked them a few questions about themselves, always throwing in a joke wherever she could, and then invited them to perform their best strip tease down to their briefs. This was always the audience's favorite part. The cat calls, cheering, and whistles were almost deafening. But then again, who didn’t like a strip show, right? Plus, it was always fun to see if the package that was revealed matched the stats that each guy gave before they stripped. Brian was in a position to know with quite a bit of certainty that several of this month's blonds were exaggerating in that department, but you’d never know it from the way they’d stuffed their jockey shorts.
The MC had left Daph for last, but she didn’t seem to mind, squealing with glee and trotting up to stand next to the announcer the second he waved at her. “And, last but not least, our very own bleached black beauty! Let’s hear it for Frank Ocean!” Everyone laughed, except for Daph, who looked around as if trying to find the person who’d been introduced in her stead. “That’s you, Honey. It’s a joke,” the MC explained in an exaggerated stage whisper. “Now, why don’t you tell your fans a little bit about yourself.”
The excited alien immediately grabbed the mic and held it up, far too close to her mouth, so that all of the words came out garbled and almost incomprehensible. “I are Daph. Human. From Finland! I do dick!”
“Don’t we all, honey, don’t we all!” The announcer laughed along with all of the guys in the audience. “And what in the world brought you all the way to little old Pittsburgh from far away Finland?”
“Mining,” Daph declared. “But not with human slaves or microchip zombie brains or anal probing. Just asteroid rocks.” Queen Sheba, slightly stunned by that response, was about to take back the mic and ask her next question but Daph remembered something and pulled it back. “Also, we don’t want your fat orange president. No, very much icky, thank you.” The grimace of distaste she made, as if she was about to lose her lunch, got almost as many laughs as her words.
“Yeah, well, we don’t really want him either,” the MC agreed. “In fact, we’d probably pay Finland to take him off our hands for us.”
Daph shook her head violently and the crowd roared even louder with laughter.
“Okay, well, we’re certainly glad you came to visit. Tell me one more thing, though, what’s your favorite thing you’ve seen here in our fair city?”
Daph didn’t even have to think, she immediately answered, “Hot, Wet, and Wild Twinks, Number 18.” That earned her an even bigger cheer, if that was possible. And she added with an earnest nod, “very much please pleasure appendages in zagnut. Now. Please. Yes?”
But Queen Sheba was laughing too hard by that point to bother answering and just waved to the stage guy to turn on the strip tease music. Daph, after watching all the others, clearly knew what was supposed to happen next. So, with all the bump and grind she could muster, she began to strip off her clothing. What she lacked in finesse, she certainly made up for in the big reveal. And what a reveal it was, too. That shape-shifting she’d done had been really effective. The bulge in her thong was excessively bulgey.
Enough so that the MC came over and had to ask, “is that thing real, Babydoll?”
Whereupon Daph pulled out the waistband of the underwear she was sporting so that Sheba could have a peek inside. “I get equipment. Attached and everything! Ten inch dick of death, right?’
“Oh, yeah! That’s what I call real! REAL BIG, that is. Whoa, boyfriend. You better be careful with that or you’re gonna poke someone’s eye out!”
The rest of the competition, including the dance off and the subsequent voting by the audience, was unnecessary after that. The crowd easily forgave Daph’s poor karaoke performance. All they cared about was the way she swung that prodigious package around. They seemed practically mesmerized by the thing. When it came time to vote, the winner was clear. Daph was Woody’s Blond of the Month without question. And as soon as she was crowned and photographed, she was practically mobbed by the waiting patrons who were all more than eager to get to know the Finnish Blond better. Much, much better.
“Should we stop her or . . .” Brian asked, looking slightly worried. “She’s not going to revert to type or anything, right? Cuz, I think we’d have a mob on our hands if she turned back into Cinderella in the middle of the ball.”
“Why Daph get ball and not Justloq?” Brian’s blue companion asked, sounding put out. “You said zagnut and pleasure appendage very much long time! We go pleasure dancing room now please, Brrrryon!”
Brian looked over to the makeshift dance floor in front of the stage where a throng of horny men were orgy dancing around Daph. Then he looked across the table to where Em was practically salivating as Dreebo snaked his extra-long alien tongue out to snatch the cherry from the bottom of the tall Collins glass he’d been sipping his cosmo out of. It seemed like the queers on Liberty Avenue were just fine with the crazy he’d unleashed on them. And, since nobody was complaining about the aliens in their midst, Brian didn’t see any reason to rock the boat. Nightmare or bad trip or whatever, everyone looked like they were having a good time, so why shouldn’t he be enjoying himself too?
“By all means, Blue,” he responded agreeably, holding out his hand to let Justloq pull him to his feet. “Let’s get the zagnut pleasure appendage dancing started.”
*VSOPDIFU z’dsj;copl DPGFHDTH*