Money Shot

14.

Malloy pulled the SUV into the lot of a shabby North Hollywood mini-mall that contained a purified water retailer, a 98-cent store, a restaurant that offered “especialidades Oaxaqueños,” and a tiny barbershop. Malloy took a spot in front of the barber.

There was a Spanish sign above the door. The window featured a sinister, weirdly proportioned painting depicting a pair of floating scissors hovering behind the small, disembodied head of what looked like a child with a mustache.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked, running my fingers nervously through my hair. Malloy had made me cut off my long nails at his apartment and my newly blunt fingers felt foreign against my scalp. “You know, I’m about as far from a boy as you can get without being pregnant.”

“Sure I’m sure,” Malloy said, taking my arm. “Come on.”

“It’s closed,” I said, pointing to a hand-lettered sign that read CERRADO. “It’s a Sunday, isn’t everyone supposed to be at church?”

“I called ahead,” Malloy said. “He’s expecting us.”

Inside, the shop smelled like the air had been sealed in a jar since 1947. Cigarettes and pomade and Clubman shaving talc and that blue stuff the combs sit in to kill germs. The barber himself was an ancient brown gnome with a face like a dried apple and a shiny bald head. He wore an immaculate white short-sleeved guayabera and white shorts that showed off bandy little rooster legs with large knobby knees. I wondered briefly about the wisdom of trusting a bald barber, but Malloy seemed to think the guy was all right.

“Jarocho’s been cutting my hair for twenty years,” Malloy said, patting the barber’s stooped shoulder. “He’s solid.”

The barber grinned, flashing a set of dazzlingly fake white choppers and said something to Malloy in rapid-fire Spanish. Malloy replied and the two of them went back and forth for a few minutes. I had no idea what they were talking about. I studied a large faded travel poster for Veracruz, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. I noticed another even older guy snoring softly in a cheap kitchen chair in the far corner of the shop. He looked like a mummy, but he had a full, luxurious head of snow-white hair done up in a mile-high 50’s era pompadour that probably hadn’t changed since it was invented.

The barber leaned over and fingered my hair, shaking his head. I figured he was telling Malloy it was a shame to cut such pretty hair. Didn’t I know it.

“I told him you were hiding out from an abusive boyfriend,” Malloy told me. “He’ll take good care of you.”

I nodded, still unable to calm a chilly electric anxiety that wouldn’t leave me alone.

“I’m gonna hit the thrift store across the street and get you some clothes,” Malloy said, not waiting for an answer before he turned to leave.

I shook my head. After the initial surprise of the nice jeans, I was starting to get a little tired of having Malloy as my personal shopper.

The barber sat me down in one of two ancient red vinyl barber chairs, whipping a blue plastic cape around my shoulders with dramatic flair.

“You no worry,” he told me with a wink.

“Right,” I said.

Jarocho made with the scissors and when my thick dark tresses started falling to the scuffed green linoleum I had a moment of irrational panic. I wanted to call the whole thing off. Wasn’t I already ugly enough? But it was too late. The barber thumbed on a bulky old electric clipper that looked like something they’d use to shave dogs before neutering and started running it up the back of my head. Before I knew it I had a buzz cut identical to Malloy’s. All of the dyed chocolate-cherry curls were gone, leaving behind only a quarter inch of natural salt and pepper roots. I was horrified by how much gray I had.

Malloy returned then with two cheap plastic shopping bags. I was almost afraid to look inside.

I guess I had been hoping for some kind of classy, androgynous Marlene Dietrich sort of suit or something, but Malloy had other ideas.

The first bag contained several extra large t-shirts, including a Lakers shirt, and a pair of baggy men’s jeans. I hadn’t told Malloy that Lia had been wearing a Lakers shirt the last time I saw her and although this one was a different style, it made me feel a little weird. I decided I would wear one of the other ones.

“The big mistake people make when they do drag is going too far.” Malloy said. “Overcompensating. Too girly. Too macho. If you want to be believable, you have to keep it simple. Nothing for the eye to catch on.”

I wondered if Malloy had ever done drag. I tried to imagine some elaborate Ed Wood-style sting operation that would require him to go undercover in angora, but somehow I just couldn’t picture it. He handed me the other bag. It contained two large Ace bandages.

“Use one of those bandages to bind your chest,” Malloy told me. “And wrap the other loosely around your waist.”

“Around my waist?” I asked. “What for?”

“You’ve got a very small waist,” he told me. “You need to bulk it up and make it closer to the size of your hips and chest. Make your shape less feminine.” He looked down at my feet. “Your sneakers are fine.”

I ducked into the closet-sized john, skinned out of my tank top and bra, and went to work battening down the twins. It was uncomfortable and I started sweating right away. I wrapped the other bandage around my waist until I wound up with a sort of dumpy sausage shape from the armpits to the hips.

Was it possible to make me feel less attractive? I knew being attractive was a liability on the lam but I missed it like a dry drunk misses that warm, happy Saturday night buzz. I was so used to the appreciative glances of men that I felt lost without that constant validation. I hardly knew who I was anymore.

When I was dressed, I came out of the tiny bathroom and glanced in the wall of mirrors at the boy I had become.

It almost worked. The hair was perfect, the silhouette unobtrusive beneath the loose clothing. The double shiner helped, too, and so did the broken nose. The big problem was my eyebrows.

I normally go through a good amount of monthly suffering in the ongoing war against my hairy Mediterranean genes. In addition to lip waxing (to keep me from sporting a mustache like Nonna Vincenza) and bikini waxing (I get the Playboy, not the Brazilian, since I know you’re wondering), I also regularly wax my heavy eyebrows into slender, delicate arches. Very femme and very not-a-boy.

“I could try filling my eyebrows in thicker with an eye pencil,” I said.

Malloy looked at my reflection in the mirror and shrugged.

“I’ll just tell people you’re gay,” he said. “That you’re my nephew who just moved out to L.A. and got bashed by a bunch of douchebags right in front of his apartment. I’ll tell ’em I promised my sister I’d let you stay with me until they catch the guys who did it. That you’re scared to be alone so I let you tag along.”

Jarocho said something in Spanish to Malloy that got them both laughing.

“What?” I asked, feeling irritable and annoyed and left out.

“He says he would go gay for you,” Malloy said.

I rolled my eyes.

“Great,” I said.

Jarocho flashed his dentures and gave me two thumbs up.

The next order of business was to translate the note. Malloy gave me a wad of cash and then checked in with Didi by phone while I ducked into a nearby beauty supply store for some cheap non-prescription color contacts to disguise my black coffee eyes.

On impulse, I also bought a bleaching kit for my hair. Just because I was a boy didn’t mean I had to put up with gray hair. I figured bleached blond would be about as far from my normal look as I could get and would be still reasonably believable for a gay guy my age.

Born actress that I was, I started imagining details about my new character. I figured I used to be a hot little twink ten years ago, but now I was getting older and thicker in the middle. My boyfriend of five years had just dumped me so I was overcompensating with the blond hair. I did a drag show on the weekends using the name Ivana Mandalay, which would explain the girly eyebrows. Of course, coming up with a believable real name was a little harder. I didn’t want anything too butch, too silly, or over the top. I needed something generic and easy to remember.

“Daniel,” I told Malloy when I got back in the car. “That’s my new name.”

Daniel was the name of the first guy who ever put his finger inside me. Danny Zawadski. He was big and blond, and stuttered when he was nervous. I think he’s married now and owns a restaurant in the old neighborhood. Not a drag queen by any stretch of the imagination.

“Daniel?” Malloy said, looking me up and down. “That works.” He looked down at the bag in my lap. “What else did you buy?”

“Bleach,” I said. “I figured I should have blond hair to go with my new blue eyes.”

“Right,” Malloy said.

I wondered if he was pissed at me for improvising. I don’t know why, but I got a peculiar thrill from being off Malloy’s script. I was really counting on him way too much. It felt good to make decisions for myself.

“Didi said that Romanian broad is on a shoot today,” Malloy said. “But that we can meet her on the set at three when they break for lunch. In the meantime, we can go back to my place. You can do your hair and get those contacts in.”

I wondered how many more different people I would need to be before I could be me again.