THE IN-BETWEEN TIME
The night is brighter on the other side, Percy Ortiz thought to himself as each morning he walks toward the glow of his own sunrise.
Wide awake with nervous energy, Percy makes his way through the dark toward the bright light of the still jumping nightlife of Rehoboth Beach. The center of town at 2 a.m. looks like a sunrise layered with the foghorn thump of bass beats entwined under a rooster crow melody remixed and enhanced by neon strobes beckoning Percy to work. The inanimate sirens' song called him to warm the bakery's ovens in anticipation of the Sunday morning paper, pastry and cappuccino crowd. It was Rehoboth Beach after all. No mere ordinary coffee will do for the vacationers. Which is exactly what Percy's summer job will be, just a vacation from his home, if he can't find a reason for his boss to extend his job's expiration date. While most of the town was alive and in the throes of a pulsing night, Percy was watching his dream die. Neither Percy nor the crowd were willing to end either their Saturday night revelry and his future fancies, until the morning sun breaks the dark off at the intersection of dawning beach and boardwalk stretch. And a new dawn demands decisions, not dreams.
Percy, Queen of the Desserts, as he called himself, kept the package of guava paste in his pocket, fearing his sweaty nerves would taint the flavor if he held it in his palm. Percy was excited to demonstrate to his boss the Ortiz family recipe for guava pastries. The Bake Shoppe's breakfast case, filled with Cherry Danish, British Scones and French Chocolate Croissants, could use a bit of Latino flavor. The package of pasta de guayaba smacked loosely in the cargo shorts pocket against Percy's knee as he walked in the night salt air.
The job was Percy's chance to start the life he dreamed about. Percy loved his Abuela y sus hermanos, but it was too much. He had imagined the job for the summer in a studio apartment, owned by the Bake Shoppe, with two other employees as his chance for a college-like experience. It would be days on the sand and nights on the beach scene, with work just blocks away, just like the beach and bars. It was Percy's path to a life of openness he had been seeking.
However the roommates were worse than if Percy had stayed at the one bedroom apartment with his stifling yet loving family. Now Percy was in a studio apartment with two messy guys whom he had envisioned as his starter friends to go out with, until they started to “go out” with each other or rather stay at home with each other. The roommates were becoming closer friends with each other and there was simply less space for Percy.
Three gay guys can still make a mess like any three men. In a cramped studio, the clutter of wet towels, dirty boxers and unknown products of goop on porcelain sinks, toilets and tub ledges set Percy's nerves on edge. This was not a reprieve from his home life but a far worse concentrated distillation of su casa familia. Percy really needed to prove his worth beyond summer counter clerk to innovative integral apprentice worth training further.
In most summer season towns, jobs always need more warm bodies working more hours and the Bake Shoppe was no different. It got Percy out of the studio. It also left little time for Percy to expand his life into the mold of his dreams. If Percy could prove his value at the oven with a new product to sell, he could start to carve out his own niche. Percy, Queen of the Desserts, could move out from behind the groggy breakfast rut, currently unnoticed by the coffee zombies.
Percy would walk a few blocks out of the way to journey past his wish fulfillment destination, his living breathing vision board. A night life that wasn't simply the walk to a day job mixing flour, but a job mixing it up in the bars. The journey past the Purple Parrot lined in vibrant flowers was to remind himself what he was on track toward: a way out of the currently lateral move from abuelita's apartment to Rehoboth studio and dud day job. Percy ventured this path out of his way to mentally interject himself into the dwindling crowd mingling in the sand at the Purple Parrot Bier Garden.
Percy passed by the night crowd of the Purple Parrot each morning. The bustle of over dressed drag queens and under dressed men. All in glorious rapture as the music pounded into the Sunday hours, spilling over from the Saturday night lights glinting off the sheaths of sequined dresses. He longed to be a part of the surge of bodies that seemed to snake through the alley and railroad floor plan of the bar space. Never standing still the crowd circles the floor for optimal view and to be seen positioning. The constant push and pull makes stopping an unwise option.
The problem: wrong roommates, wrong job, wrong hours. Percy's “dream job, studio and buddies to wingman with” had hit a roadblock that is commonly referred to as reality. Percy had not prepared a Plan B. He had hoped to be seen and go out in his fantasy night world. Deep in his dark on the sidewalk along Wilmington Avenue, Percy's eyes surrendered to the heart light radiating like moonlight over the Purple Parrot Bier Garden fence. Everything that was flash and sparkle in the stage light lost its luster in the streetlight lamppost overhead. He was kept on the wrong side of the fence and in the dark.
There in the bar crowd of feathers and glimmer, with a freedom rainbow of dreaded hair, and a posture that drew your eye line to her eye liner, the vision begged to be watched. It was not the usual more is more de rigueur so often seen on the beach regulars and tourists alike. Don't get my description wrong, there was color aplenty but it was far more mod go-go than over the top oh-no. Meadow Rose had been performing her kittish kitten style for a decade now. Altering and perfecting herself and creating her own amalgamation of vamp and scamp. Nothing about her was born this way except who she was inside. The very part Percy was trying to uncover now of himself, who he was and where he belonged.
Matthew Ross came to town before he ever was Meadow Rose. An only child from a single parent home. Matthew Ross had been a bank teller and his Dad was so proud. Matthew also started to be introduced to the night on the beach ever so gradually. From weeknight happy hours around the piano at Rigby's to weekend shows at the Purple Parrot, Matthew had amassed a group of bar friends that had become a chosen family, complete with trivia game nights at the Frogg Pond. Then Matthew's first Rehoboth Beach season culminated in a Sea Witch group costume of wicked witches from Sleeping Booty to Cruella Bonneville.
His next season the bank had sponsored a Bras for a Cause entry with Matthew as the model. Another year presented another Sea Witch Halloween costume. This time Matthew had been giving it a bit more thought, before his group even decided on a theme. He was more into it than he'd like to admit at first. But Matthew had an undeniable talent and a welcoming personality, that was understated yet hypnotic, that shown bright through a sea of daring one night only drag.
Soon with the loss of his eyebrows (now shaved off) and his baby hair line shaved back (to better slip on lace front wigs), Matthew also lost the desire for and comfort at his bank job. The company was good and accepting but Matthew was beyond it now. The stares of people in the day light are not the adoration Meadow Rose elicits at night. There was no reason any longer for Meadow to live inside the confines of the occasional special events.
The daytime was a long forgotten world, one that Meadow had waved goodbye to, but now watched pass before her eyes embodied in that young baker boy. How far life had traveled since those days when Matthew had first ventured down Rehoboth Avenue after work. But it was his life no more.
Meadow Rose saw the Latino kid and remembered how difficult it had been as a black youth to break into the gay scene. As a drag queen performing it was almost an asset. A strength because of the black divas gays loved so much. Matthew Ross, now Meadow Rose, a public persona; it was her life no more.
Matthew walked into the Bake Shoppe's warm hue, no longer Glamazon, now Glam-Be-Gone, wearing a floppy knit cap, socked full of dreads, with a few spilling down and rose tinted sunglasses to hide his brow-less mug. Matthew orders the new pastelitos de guayaba and Percy looks on expectantly. While Meadow is locked inside, stripped of her fabulous facade, screaming to be recognized, searching for the look of admiration she saw on the baker boy's face hours earlier. But Percy doesn't realize who is in front of him. Percy can't see beyond his own ambition to crawl out of this box behind the pastry display counter into the night life. Reality introduces itself into their misperceived fantasy of each other's worlds. Two key chain lights passing in the predawn darkness haze.
Meadow upon looking at Percy thinks to himself “I can't even pass in day light anymore for myself”. Brow-less, plucked and tweezed beyond manly to softer. “Could Matthew even get a day job again?” Meadow says to herself in the third person. And Percy a newbie wanted to be a part of something so bad, to belong like he never felt he did in his narrow hometown that he stayed stuck in his head so much, he lost sight of what and who was right in front on his face.
The day is darker on the other side, Meadow opined to himself as Matthew leaves unrecognized.