new york > brooklyn > community > missed connections
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Posted June 8, 1999
Girl with leather jacket on Q train at 14th Street-Union Square (Manhattan)
Dear Beautiful Stranger, you’ll probably never see this, but I had to try. I only saw you for about thirty seconds, but I can’t forget them. I was standing on the platform waiting for the Q on Friday morning when it pulled up and you were standing there. You looked at me, and I looked at you. You smiled, and I smiled. Then the doors closed. I was so busy looking at you, I forgot to get on the train. I had to wait ten minutes for another one and was late for work. I was wearing a purple dress and platform Skechers. I think I’m in love with you.
Isaiah opens the door wearing a top hat, leather leggings, and a violently ugly button-down.
“You look like a member of Toto,” Wes says.
“And what better day than this holy Sunday to bless the rains down in Africa,” he says, waving them into his apartment with a flourish.
The inside of Isaiah’s place feels like him: a sleek leather sectional, stuffed and meticulously organized bookshelves, splashes of color in rugs and paintings and a silk robe slung over the back of a kitchen chair. Tasteful, stylish, well-organized, with a spare bedroom full of drag tucked beside the kitchen. His polished walnut dining table is decorated with dozens of Jesus figurines dressed in homemade drag, and the faint sounds of the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack underscore the sloshing of the punch he’s making at the counter.
So this is the event announced via handwritten flyer shoved under their door: Isaiah’s annual drag family Easter brunch.
“Loving the sacrilege,” Niko says, unloading a pan of vegetarian pasteles. He picks up one of the figurines, which is wrapped in a bedazzled sock. “White Jesus looks great in puce.”
August hauls her contribution—an aluminum dish full of Billy’s biscuits—over the threshold and contemplates if she’s the reason these two households are finally merging. It’s technically the first time the gang has been invited to the brunch, unless you count last year when the party spilled into the hall and Myla ended up getting a lap dance from a Bronx queen on her way to the mailbox. But last week, August rode the Popeyes service elevator with Isaiah and made a point to mention Wes’s sulking fit after his sister Instagrammed a Wes-less Passover seder.
“Are we the first ones?” August asks.
Isaiah shoots her a look over his shoulder. “You ever met a punctual drag queen? Why do you think we’re having brunch at seven o’clock at night?”
“Point,” she says. “Wes made scones.”
“It’s nothing special,” Wes grumbles as he shoulders past her to the kitchen.
“Tell him what kind.”
There’s a heavy pause in which she can practically hear Wes’s teeth grinding.
“Orange cardamom with a maple chai drizzle,” he bites out with all the fury in his tiny body.
“Oh shit, that’s what my sister’s bringing,” Isaiah says.
Wes looks stricken. “Really?”
“No, dumbass, she’s gonna show up with a bunch of Doritos and a ziplock bag of weed like she always does,” Isaiah says with a happy laugh, and Wes turns delightfully pink.
“Praise it and blaze it,” Myla comments, flopping onto the couch.
When the first members of Isaiah’s drag family start to show—Sara Tonin in dewy daytime drag and a handful of twenty-somethings with flashy manicures and thick-framed glasses to hide their shaved-off brows—the music cranks up and the lights crank down. August is quickly realizing that it’s only a brunch in the absolute loosest definition of the word: there is brunch food, yes, and Isaiah introduces her to a Montreal queen hot off a touring gig with a fistful of cash and a Nalgene full of mimosas. But, mostly, it’s a party.
Apartment 6F isn’t the the only group outside of Isaiah’s drag family to warrant an invitation. There’s the morning shift guy from the bodega, the owner of one of the jerk chicken joints, stoners from the park. There’s Isaiah’s sister, fresh off the train from Philly with purple box braids down to her waist and a Wawa bag over her shoulder. Every employee from the Popeyes downstairs ends up there the second they’ve clocked out, passing around boxes of spicy dark. August recognizes the guy who always lets them on the service elevator, still wearing a nametag that says GREGORY, half the letters rubbed off so it reads REG RY.