Mr. Marilyn Monroe at The Boneyard

I am a lipstick lesbian trapped inside of a man's body. I love women or more accurately put, I am obsessed with female energy, its power and its beauty. At times, I see women as a much better creation than man especially when contemplating our unbalanced and failing male-oriented dominator culture. I understand that both men and women have the energies of both sexes within each of themselves and men especially, are selling themselves short when focusing only on their "macho" side. Come on guys. We've all fantasized about the power we could have and the shit we could get away with if we could shapeshift into a woman for just one day. It has nothing to do with being gay or straight necessarily. Dennis Rodman, the former basketball star who publically enjoys wearing womens' clothing, I think would agree. It's about energy, power, and freedom. I mean, why the fuck not exercise all of our options. Chics don't have sole ownership of these abilities. "Only girls wear pink and boys wear blue", my grandma used to say. But grandma, life's too short and my soul don't give a shit!

So, where's the perfect balance? I believe it rests in the idea of androgyny and I'm speaking more so in attiude and magical abilities than in genitalia. A perfect hybrid of the sexes, diminishing the weaknesses of and expounding on the powers of each. I have re-occurring dreams of a magnificent flying, silvery translucent alien being having a feminine yet pronounced facial bone structure, white eyes, long medusa-like silver dreads, a thin but incredibly hard and defined musculature, large glistening breasts, a small waist, round ass, and a giant silver cock. The perfect being. It also has a vagina and relies on no one, not even for breeding because it could impregnate itself, able to create another one of perfect balance. It would be empowered by and only dependent upon the energy of starlight and the cosmos! Now, before further elaborating on my justification to wear a dress once a year, I must go back to where the initial event began.

The ritual originated a couple of weeks prior to the Halloween of 1989. I was in Minneapolis at the time, living across the street from the Hubert H, Humphrey/ Lakewood Cemetery. It was an extremely large and well-groomed cemetery and included an awesome assortment of highly detailed tombstones, pylons, statues, extravagant mausoleums, and old creaky trees set in a very pocketed and lush hilly landscape. A place one could easily get lost in and, speaking for myself, a place where things are not always what they appear to be. I was about 8 or 9 months into my new "job" at the time and had just dropped out of college.....again. My "job" consisted of gettin' naked and shakin' my booty. I was a stripper. I took it up as a part-time gig to pay for school but as soon as I got a taste of the money, sex, and freedom that came with it, I was gone, brother!

I started off doing private parties, strip-o-grams, and bachelorettes, and eventually included performing in nightclubs after I dumped school. I remember being skinny, uncoordinated, and inebriated when I first started but sick of being broke, lonely, and feeling ugly, I had no choice but to adapt at an unprecedented pace. Properly driven by my insecurities, I pumped mad iron, tanned daily, obsessively groomed every aspect of my body, learned some dance steps and sobered up enough to compete at a formidable level. After a few months into the start of my new to be 10 year career, Lee, one of the few liberal friends of mine (one of my few friends at all), decided to take me into a gay bar (the Gay 90's) as somewhat of a joke and also out of curiosity. The first thing I saw were the male dancers. The second thing I saw were their attire which upon closer inspection wasn't attire at all but grass skirts of money; singles, 5's, 10's, and 20's wrapped into their thongs and g-strings.

"You should see if you could get a job here," Lee said, smiling but serious.

I replied in a monotone voice, eyes unmoving, fixated on one of the dancers grass skirts-o-cash, " I don't know. Do I have to be gay or tell them I'm bi or something?"

"Ask one of the dancers."

I approached one of the not so gay looking performers (whatever that means) and asked about the position. He was a big knucklehead, stage named "Bullet", and he told me that he was straight. He then pointed at the man I needed to talk to for an audition. Needless to say, I tried it out a few nights later and was offered a job in which I started the next weekend. One month prior to dancing there almost buck-naked, I remember driving by another gay bar with some other friends of mine, yelling, "Fags. Fuckin fags!!" out the car window. Karma works in mysterious ways.

One day, about 6 months or so into the gig, I was dancing on stage and honed in on a beautiful female creature. She was so hot, sexy and interesting looking that it fucked up my dance routine and she knew it. She stood about 6'0 ft. in heels, and had medium length blond hair with an incredibly unique and exquisitely defined face. She had an energy of elegant naughtiness about her as she leaned against the stage looking like a sexier and taller version of Marilyn Monroe. She was waiting for me to talk to her upon finishing my set but I became too shy. I amazed myself. How the fuck can I be naked in front of hundreds of people per week and not get myself to talk to someone I find seriously attractive. I've messed around with dozens, if not hundreds of girls in my life but when I run into those few who I'm really impressed by, I tend to seize up.

Backstage, in an attempt to gain "cool" points with my fellow performers, I bragged about how "the hot blond chic wearing the fur coat and leather was checkin my shit out!" They all busted out into laughter. Then Bullet, the clever veteran player in meathead's clothing, explained to me that the "hot chic" was definitely a man or at least used to be. I felt by the way he was talking that he was telling me the truth but I still refused to believe it. Good god! I was too shy to talk to a dude! Embarrassed, I quickly bagged my collection of neon dance clothes and accessories, threw on my "after the show" stud outfit, collected my base pay, and headed for the city bus back to my studio apartment.

It was one of the few nights I went home from a gig without pussy or at least a phone number but I didn't care. I was out of the smoky, loud club and was headed to my cozy pigsty. I opened the bus window to get a good refreshing blast of the cool Midwest autumn air. Goddamn I love the Fall, I thought. Its smell. Its mood. Everything. Staring out the window, with one hand on the sill and the other clutching a wad of cash in my pocket, I admired and inadvertantly meditated upon the movement created by the wind on the colorful trees. I closed my eyes and smiled as a gust of wind blew into my face. It was one of those occasional 30-second feelings we all get once in a while in our lives where everything is blissfully and harmoniously perfect.

When I opened my eyes, superimposed over the trees outside was a reflection on the window from the other side of the bus of a tall, blond, female figure. Holy fuck! It was her! Him! Her! Let's just call her Mr. Marilyn Monroe--Mr. Marilyn "staring at me and smiling" Monroe! Damn, he was a hot looking chic. The fact that she used to be a guy and that it would be taboo or "wrong" for me to pursue the situation made me want her even more. My embarrassment at the club wasn't really stemmed from the fact that I was attracted to a chic-formerly-a-dude. It was more related to the pressure of others' judgments but those judgments were not on the bus right now.

"Hi."

"Uh, Hi." I answered like I did in 6th grade when a girl I had a crush on finally said hello to me. Mr. Marilyn's voice was somewhat deep yet still very feminine.

"You're a really good performer. I liked you better than any of the other guys up there."

"Thanks." I bet you say that to all the strippers you meet on the bus after a gig, I thought to myself, feeling awkward with the compliment.

"You're not gay, are you?"

"Not yet," I said as I blatantly gawked at her tits astonished by how real they looked.

"They're real,"

"Huh!"

"They're not implants. They're hormone tits. You take hormones and tits grow."

"No shit?! Do they make any that can make my dick grow bigger? One can never have a big enough cock in this business." I was actually half serious with this inquiry. Goddamn was I naive back then!

Sitting across from me on the other side of the middle-walking aisle, she pivoted in her seat, spread her legs, and flipped out her tits. They were perfect and came with perfect pink rosy big nipples as well. Her eyes glanced down and she smiled with gratification when she spotted that I had hard-on.

"Well, big boy, this is my stop. It was nice meeting you unless, of course, you think I should stay on the bus."

"I think you should stay on the bus. I only live a few blocks down, across from the cemetery."

She smiled and seemed to like that idea so after getting off the bus and getting untwined out of the bus driver's shit-eating grin, I suggested we take a walk in the cemetery. Mr. Marilyn Monroe, dressed in a fur coat, leather skirt, garter belt and high-heeled boots that came up passed her knees, strutting through the boneyard in the wee hours of the night, was smiling and fearless.

Her legs were long and she walked like a proud horse. The fact that she was/used to be a male only added to her aesthetics. I admired her. I wondered what it would be like to be her. What a unique creature to be. Mr. Marilyn wasn't a "drag queen" or a "cross-dresser" or some hairy guy in womens' clothing. Hell, I didn't even know if she had a dick or not. Mr. Marylin was an incredible hybrid and I would guess androgynous at birth. When I looked at her face in the bright lights of the bus, I noticed very little make-up. She also had a powerful no-bullshit aura to her that was a rare thing to find, especially in the scene that I was in. I was intrigued and infatuated by the whole idea. I was also pissed off at myself for letting people get to me in my youth. I mean, I'm sure Mr. Marilyn got a hell of a lot more shit thrown her way for being the way she was yet she was the epitome of freedom and confidence. I wished I were her.

We wandered into the middle of the cemetery and I was as good as lost. We both stopped at the same time to look up at an extraordinary statue of Mother Mary. It had to be at least 15 to 20 feet tall. Its hands were together in prayer and she was looking straight down at us. The word "judgment" came into my head. A man made idea, I thought, never used by nature or any of its other creatures.

"She was hardly a virgin, you know," Mr. Marilyn announced while at the same time pushing me to sit down on a rectangular slabbed tombstone. She got on her knees, unzipped my pants, took out my cock, looked up at me and said, " Jesus was born from a mother who got fucked just like the rest of our mothers." Immediately following this closing statement, she deepthroated me. She was a cocksucking ninja! Her technique along with Mother Mary's piercing eyes made it "wrong" enough for me to cum and it must have been really wrong because I did so in under a minute. I tried to warn Mr. Marilyn that I was close but she didn't care nor did she miss a beat as I unloaded amongst our non-living friends. She looked up at me under the moonlight and smiled. I didn't feel the guilt I normally do after having an orgasm with a stranger. I felt kick ass and didn't give a shit if what I did was immoral or weird or gay or not. For some reason I raised my hands and screamed out loud, "Fuck you!" to the dead audience around us. Whatever that feeling of death was that surrounded us in the cemetery, I felt the opposite of. We layed together on top of the large tombstone and just stared at the stars in comfortable silence, neither feeling any pressure or need to converse. For the first time in a long time, I didn't feel ugly. I was at ease--a boneyard, a transexual, and a nut later. Lordie Lord.

"Well, it's time for me to go, baby." She began to walk away.

"Wait up, I'll walk you home," I said, running to catch up with her. She said where she was going was at the other entrance of the cemetery, opposite the entrance near my apartment. I felt she wanted to walk alone so I didn't ask any more questions. We kissed, she looked me serious in the eye, said goodbye, smiled, and strutted away once again like a proud horse, weaving in and out of headstones and finally blending into the darkness of the unlit cemetery. It was my first and only meeting with Mr. Marilyn Monroe.

Epilogue: One year later, near the anniversary of my cemetery-o-she-male-love extravaganza, I was back in the club, not to dance but to recruit dancers for my new entertainment agency. A girl approached me (a girl-girl) and said, "Hey. Are you that dancer that was with my friend in the cemetery a year ago?" I remember that Marilyn was with a friend the night we met but I couldn't remember what she looked like. I guess this was her. Because of the girl's serious look on her face, I hesitated with my answer at first, but then told her that I was, in fact, the guy who was with her friend.

"Whatever happened to her? " I said, not only out of politeness but also out of a strong curiosity.

"You didn't hear about it? It was in the newspaper."

"No! What??"

"A couple of weeks after you were with her, she shot and killed her boyfriend, then killed herself as well."

"Holy fuck! Why!" I yelled.

"Her and her boyfriend found out they had aids and rather than go through the misery, they planned a date to end it and they actually did it. It wasn't murder. It was more like euthanasia, you know. She knew she had aids before you met her. She told me she didn't do anything with you to put you at risk."

"Damn! I mean, I'm fine. I've been checked. I'm not worried about that. I just can't believe it." I was more in disbelief about how incredibly calm and confident Mr. Marilyn was, knowing that in a matter of days after our short meeting, he would have to kill his boyfriend and himself.

I left the club. I couldn't deal with being there and doing business at that moment. I got in my new car and drove back to my same pad across from the boneyard, taking the same street in which I rode the bus with Mr. Marilyn a year before. Everything was uncommonly quiet and still. Driving at an almost numb slow pace, I cracked the window to get some air. The smell of Fall was back again and more beautiful than ever. I admired and meditated upon the movement created by the wind on the colorful trees. I closed my eyes and smiled as a gust of wind blew into my face. Ahh! My 30 seconds of bliss. Superimposed over the trees outside was a reflection on the car window of a sleek, translucent and silver-skinned, beautiful androgynous angel. Smiling and fearless, she lay naked in the sky, at least 15 to 20 feet tall, feeding off the energy of the stars and basking in the infinite scintillating luster of the cosmos.

* In tribute to Mr. Marilyn Monroe, every Halloween starting in 1990, I have dressed in drag (accept where one year I painted myself silver and another year where I was a purple Crayola crayon). I try to duplicate her look but being of a muscular build, I don't give her near the justice she deserves. It's the thought that counts. It was a short meeting but it will be a long memory. Thank you Mr. Marilyn for the beautiful vibe that I needed at the time and the glimpse of shameless freedom and light that someday I will be strong enough to bask in as well. See you then.

Love, Adam Applegate

(Minneapolis, Fall, 1989) . . . . . aa

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