A man with a strange face is seen through the glass.

PART FOUR: A tale as old as time. The beauty was a beast

By Randall Jobe

I’ll call the drag queen in this piece “Homo Siedel†for reasons that will become apparent. Homo was a beauty, a popular club emcee best known for her “put down†humor. She could rip you a new asshole and stuff a cabbage up it. She made Joan Rivers look like an Ingalls offspring straight from their little prairie house. To call Homo “potty mouth†was a compliment. She was a sewer spouting swill and she made no apologies.

Around the same time that Homo was at her height of popularity, I was hosting an amateur strip show on Mondays — the absolute worst night of the week. Yet I somehow managed to build a decent following that would drag themselves out at 11 p.m. on a school night. Of course, the cheap drinks and the cute-enough boys willing to strip to their underwear for the chance at a half-decent cash prize might have boosted attendance.

The pee-pee parade was presented on a stage that consisted of two wobbly platforms that, surprisingly, held up my ample ass. But then again, they had been tested to their limits by several drag queens that outweighed most barges in the ship channel. (Here I am tempted to name names, but suffice it say you can take her black or with cream and sugar. Love you, girl!)

My brand of humor was similar to Homo’s, but I don’t think I ever managed her level of chewing the bystanders’ faces off and spitting chunks of them back at them (though that might create some debate.) I did often get the audible gasps along with laughter and some outright screaming.

To call Homo vicious was to call Hitler “naughty.†I did not see her act very often and I can’t remember if I actually enjoyed her, but my guess would be that I winced and laughed along with the crowd as some poor straight girl was reduced to tears. What I could not have known was that behind the comedy was a dark mask of mammoth proportions.

At an after-party for a huge annual charity function with everyone sporting tuxedos and ball gowns, I was having a cocktail when Homo approached and struck up a conversation. Dressed in a gorgeous sparkling evening gown with lavish rhinestone chandeliers dangling from her ears, she was a bit tipsy. I was on my first beverage so all that would transpire was crystal clear to me. She began to compliment my onstage humor saying she had seen me several times. She suddenly announced, “You know, we do pretty much the same thing. The only difference is that when I read them, I really mean it. You are joking, but I really hate them.â€

As abruptly as she had appeared, she was gone. I felt a chill up my spine and I physically shuddered. Soon enough I would understand why. I turned to the bar and ordered a double vodka, neat.

I heard the sordid story in bits and pieces, each tidbit more horrific than the next. It seems that at the very time Homo stood speaking to me in her up-do and designer shoes, she had already murdered a young girl, whom she had, in her male personae “knocked up.†Word was that she professed her love to the mom-to-be and was unceremoniously rejected. In a fit of rage, Homo beat the poor girl to death and dumped her body. It would be discovered wrapped in a blanket and weighed down with cinder blocks in a lake outside of Houston, not far from Homo’s parents’ home where she would be found hiding in a laundry basket.

Homo was sentenced to prison and to my knowledge sits there still some 25-plus years later. I heard rumors that she actually did well behind bars. After all, she was a young, not-so-bad looking male. I would assume she became somebody’s bitch, which could offer some level of protection. Every few years I hear there is a release pending, but nothing ever comes of it. The thing that haunts me almost as much as the horrible loss of an innocent girl, is that, for weeks after an act of brutal murder, Homo could carry on doing shows and attending events without batting an oversized eyelash. I hope behind the carefree act there was a tortured conscience. I also hope that we were not so much alike as she believed. I do know that the odds that we will share the same fate are nil. First, I would have to get a girl pregnant. I’m good.

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