Erica Orloff - Diary Of A Blues Goddess

Dominique is also fearless—though not about spiders or scary movies or any one of a dozen things she’s ordinarily terrified by. Still, she was a he—Damon—in high school. After we graduated, Damon told his father, a retired captain in the army, that he was gay. When his dad promptly threw him out of the house, he came to live with Nan and me, heartbroken, with a black eye, but grateful our door was open. Three years later, he was Dominique, and the beautiful voice he had raised to the rafters in his gospel choir was now used to belt out show tunes and disco hits onstage. His father has refused to see him all these years, yet Dominique will not change who she is, not even for her family. She volunteers at an AIDS crisis center, and instead of beads, she hurls silver-foiled packages of condoms at Mardi Gras. She’s vocal and in-your-face sometimes. And she tells everyone she’s not gay—but queer. And proud of it.

Maggie finished combing my hair, and the three of us went out on the side porch so we could sweep up my hair cuttings when we were done.

I continued, “But you should have seen this girl he was with. She had cheekbones to die for and perfect hair. Shampoo-commercial perfect. You know, like the one with the blonde who’s acting like she’s having an orgasm while she’s getting shampooed by young, hunky men.”

“I love that commercial,” Dominique cooed.

Maggie began snipping. “He obviously hasn’t forgotten you, so go for it. What’s the worst that could happen? A bad date. Big deal. You’ve had plenty of those.”

“Amen.” Dominique chimed in.

I looked up at Maggie, hearing the metal snip-snip of the scissors clicking away. “Remember…I want a trim—not lopsided hair.”

“What about a bob? A sort of European, angular thing?”

“If you cut my hair in a bob, I’ll look like a troll doll. I like it longer, and I like to go with my natural curls. For God’s sake, you’ve been cutting my hair for four years now. You know what I want.”

This was true—after much trial and bad-hair error. Dominique and I were Maggie’s guinea pigs. This fact itself was a mark of our friendship, because long before she was cutting her own hair lopsided and dyeing it raspberry, she was doing all kinds of things to ours. I’ve had bobs and pixie cuts, punky spikes and Madonna-like platinum. Dominique has had fades that make Grace Jones’s hair look conservative. She once even ended up bald thanks to a chemical straightening process gone awry.

“So…you’re finally going out with the love of your life.” Dominique clapped her hands.

“He’s not the love of my life.” I shot her a glance.

“Then the lust of your life,” Maggie offered as she bent over and cut angled pieces near my face.

“Well—” Dominique put her manicured hands on her hips “—I say go for it.”

“I’m not even positive I’m going.”

Maggie picked up a pair of clippers from her “house call” bag of scissors and combs. “If you don’t go I’m buzz-cutting you right now.”

“Georgia’s-gonna-get-some,” Dominique singsonged, waggling her hips. “A little sucking. A little fucking.”

“Why is it queens don’t know the meaning of the word understated?” In Dominique’s case, I’d settle for mildly dignified.

“I’m going to ignore Her Royal Bitchiness. Maggie, you should have seen the stare-downs between them.” Dominique twirled. A pair of tourists walked by, and she waved at them and struck a pose, daring them to take her picture, which they obligingly did.

“Seize the moment,” Maggie said, moving around to my left side and trimming away.

Dominique leaned over and grabbed her own rear end. “Seize some ass, honey. Some tight little ass.”

I shook my head; she was on a roll. There was no stopping her.

“Stop moving!” Maggie shouted at me. She finished my cut and we went back inside so she could blow out my hair. When she was finished, it looked shiny, straight and perfect. Of course, with my luck it would rain the minute I stepped out the door.

Next up was Dominique, with bleach across her eyebrows. She looks beautiful in platinum hair. When I see how striking she is, I just know occasionally the heavens screw up and send a girl down in a boy’s body.

Jack came into the kitchen, stretching, bare-chested, in a pair of plaid-flannel pajama bottoms.

“Hello, ladies.”

“Hey, Jack.” Maggie smiled. For a chance to be near him, she joins us at gigs every opportunity she gets. We tell the management she’s our manager. Maggie has partied with morticians, the national gathering of Kappa Alpha Phi fraternity, the New Orleans Fire Department (when, despite her love for Jack, she went home with a sexy captain who was Mr. November in a firemen calendar), orthodontists, the navy (when, again, despite her love for Jack, she went upstairs with a sailor who looked a lot like Tom Cruise) and the gathering of a Scottish Highland clan—who partied with us afterward and made us all drink single-malt scotch until we were sick.

“Mags.” Jack smiled back. “I love Georgie’s hair. You did a great job. Georgie, you look very sexy.”

“As opposed to my usual appearance?” I was getting tired of my band thinking I was little more than sequins and pantyhose.

“Give me a break. You always look hot, but this cut shows off your eyes, and how exotic-looking you are. Don’t tell me all this is for that guy last night.”

“Casanova Jones?” Dominique crossed her arms, waiting for the bleach Maggie applied to her eyebrows to work. “So tell us how he looked, Jack.”

“Nothing great. Not as beautiful as Georgia.”

“Get off it, Jack,” I muttered.

“I’m not. He just looked like any average on-the-make guy. In a penguin suit.”

“I’m not listening to this. I’ve got to go. I have a date.”

“Not with that guy, I hope.” Jack’s brotherly protective side took over.

“A certain piano player. Ta-ta, gang,” I said, brushing my shirt. “I’m off to get depressed or drunk enough to sing the blues.”

“Tell Red I said hi.” Dominique waved.

“I will.” I left the house and headed down the street. Whatever weather Cammie’s father had paid for the previous day was gone. New Orleans humidity hung as thick as Spanish moss. I tried to soak in the Crescent City’s native moodiness. If I was ever to become a blues goddess, it had to happen here, in the city I called home.

R ed Watson is the blues. We found each other a couple of years ago when I kept returning to Mississippi Mudslide to hear him play the piano and sing. He won’t tell me how old he is—well, he does, but the number often changes—but I would say he is pushing eighty.

When I first heard him play, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu, as if all my life I’d had a tune in my head I hadn’t been able to quite remember, to give voice to. And then I heard his song, and it was as if it was already a part of me. As if the blues were in my blood. As if the song was mine.

I had finally grown the nerve to ask him to teach me the blues, to work with me. I’d been listening to jazz since I was born. Before that even, in my mother’s womb. But Red wasn’t interested. Not only wasn’t he interested, he brushed me off like a buzzing fly. So Tony, the band’s sometime-bass player and my partner in scouting out jazz music, and I went back to the Mudslide again and again. And again. We were tireless. Tony and I had always stayed through the last set to talk to Red, no matter how late it got.

“Now, you two here again?” Red had asked us.

Tony had just smiled and lifted his beer in salute.

“The Irishman and the lady.” Red sat down at our table. It was almost three in the morning.