Beauty Queens (46 page)

“Here we go, ladies! Dance us out, Teen Dream-style — hey-up!” Shanti growls into the mic. Decked out in oversize sunglasses, a (yellow) sari over a Run-D.M.C. tee, and glitter sneakers, she stands in the makeshift DJ booth working the turntables. The yacht’s excellent sound system blasts the killer Hip-Hopera groove of
La-La Boheme’s
overture punctuated by the danceable mix of tabla and sitar from Beena’s “Mumbai Love Song.”

“Y’all ready to do this?” Shanti asks.

“Yeah!” the girls respond.

“I said, are y’all, like, totally ready to do this?”

“YEAH!” The girls are loud.

“Here we go, here we go, here we go.”

Expertly, Shanti mixes in Beena’s vocal. The pop star’s high voice soars over the steady beat. “Give it up for our wild girl and pirate queen, Miss Nebraska, Mary Lou Novak!”

Brandishing a cutlass and wearing her Miss Nebraska sash around her head, pirate-style, Mary Lou takes the runway in long, loping strides. Her arms move completely out of sync with her feet. She will make a formidable captain, but god bless her, she still cannot dance. Let us cast our eye to her future now:

“Ch-ch-check your faboosh against hers! Straight outta Rhode Island, it’s Petra West!”

Like some alien goddess, Petra shimmies down the runway in a mod, sequined mini festooned with palm-frond fringe. Her makeup — smoky eyes and nude lips — is fierce. At the end of the
runway, she punctuates her Fosse-esque pose with the sharp snap of an open fan.

The fan snaps closed again. With a toss of her head, Petra swivels on her heel and exits the runway.

Shanti punches in an old-school drum machine sample. The groove is thick. Juicy. “Let’s make some Illin’-noise for Sosie Simmons!” she calls.

Jennifer signals to Sosie that it’s her turn, and Miss Illinois, resplendent in an edgy tutu made from evening gown remnants and airplane seat foam, executes a perfect grand jeté into four revolutions, a blur of grace and grit. And then she stops, arms spread wide toward the silent, powerful clouds.

Sosie does a backward flip into the wings, where Jennifer slaps her five down low. Sosie puts her thumb to her chest and waves the other four fingers. Jennifer mimes it back. “I think you’re awesome, too.”

“Watch out! It’s the original Flint Avenger, Miss Michigan, Jennifer Huberman!”

“Oops. That’s my cue,” Jennifer says.

“Go Jennifer!” Sosie whoops as her BFF takes the stage.

Snapping her fingers from side to side, Jennifer skips down the runway in satin harem pants and a Wonder Woman T-shirt whose
hem she’s bedazzled with tiny shell fragments that catch the light and cast her in a pinkish glow. She reaches into a pocket and produces a golden lasso (all right, a thin, golden strip belt, but why quibble?), which she twirls above her head, disco-style, and quite frankly, she’s fucking fabulous. But what of her future?

Jennifer presses the backs of her wrists together like clinking bracelets. Shanti imitates the movement and they share a laugh. “Wonder Woman herself, Miss Michigan, Jennifer Huberman!” Shanti calls.

Jennifer duckwalks her way back, earning the laughter and applause of her friends. Spirits are high.

Adina dons a pair of sunglasses and grabs the mic. “I hope you came to get down, because Miss Ade’s in town! Ladies and gentlemen — the girl who puts the
rad
in COLO-RAD-O! Nicole!”

Nicole’s long legs take the runway in gazelle strides. Her hair is a beautiful black corona tied off with a bright orange scarf. Her purple dashiki is accessorized with a flower-and-frond necklace. She shadow-boxes the air with hard, swift uppercuts before coming to rest in a champion’s pose, arms stretched overhead.

“Check it,” she says, and purses her lips.

“You gonna moonwalk for us?” Shanti teases from the booth.

Nicole shoots her best friend the bird and everyone laughs. As she grooves her way back up the runway, Shanti’s hands swerve over the turntables, expertly blending dissimilar sounds that somehow, mixed together, make something new and hot.

“Tiara! Tiara! Tiara!” the girls chant.

Tiara slides out on the runway in a purple tulle dress over black knee-high, lace-up boots. A garland of blue island flowers is pinned to her hair. She launches into a hard-popping krunk routine, her body like a weapon, before dropping straight down into a split.

“Whoa,” Petra says. “That Christian pole dancing really limbers you up.”

While we linger on Tiara’s giddy, triumphant face, let’s peek behind the corner at her future.

“Thank you, Miss Alabama!”

“Mississippi!” Tiara singsongs.

“Oh, Alabama — that’s me!” Brittani runs out onto the stage wearing a bikini and a metal cape made from salvaged plane parts. She turns to show off the cape and winks over her shoulder.

On her way back, Brittani passes the foursome of Miss New Mexico, Miss Ohio, Miss Arkansas, and Miss Montana. They high-kick in contagion with Rockette precision.

Miss Ohio gives her signature flirty, fingertips-only wave as the girls dance back.

Mary Lou motions to Adina to go next. Adina shakes her head, but she is overruled.

“Everybody takes a turn,” Mary Lou insists, and draws her out.

“Here comes trouble,” Shanti whispers into the mic.

“Trouble’s my middle name,” Adina fronts.

“I thought it was Painintheass,” Petra shouts.

“That’s my Hebrew name.”

“Slick!”

The girls cheer and clap. Adina shifts her straw fedora to a rakish angle. She wears biker shorts and a striped mini fashioned from their former rescue banner. She is a dancing advertisement for “It’s Miss Teen Dream, Bitches!” Snapping her fingers across her body and over her head, Adina marches down the runway, adding some arm
rolls and pivot turns for fun. She freezes in profile, one hand on the brim of her hat, lips pursed.

With a grin, Adina brandishes spirit fingers. “Sparkle Ponies! Lost Girls! Represent!” she shouts.

“OMG. I am, like, so embarrassed for you,” Shanti giggles into the mic.

As Adina struts off, Shanti adds bass. The turntables thump with a rhythm that cannot be denied. The earth shakes with it. Nicole leaps behind the booth and pushes Shanti toward the runway.

“DJ Shanti Singh, Miss California!” she shouts over the music.

It starts with the fingers, but soon Shanti’s entire body tells a story. Traditional Indian dance movements give way to hip-hop and jazz. She makes it up as she goes along; it’s her story to tell.

Hands pressed together, Shanti takes her final bow, and now all the girls rush the stage. It is a delightful chaos of bodies. High-kicking. Hip shaking. Arm locking. Everyone contributing something. Mary Lou misses a step and the girls teeter near the edge, shrieking, but they manage to right themselves, and then they are laughing once more, leaning into one another in affection as much as support, a great chain of girl.

Shanti gives the signal. “One …”

“Two …” Nicole seconds.

“Three!” Adina says.

As one, they leap, laughing, and that is where we leave them — mouths open, arms spread wide, fingers splayed to take in the whole world, bodies flying high in defiance of gravity, as if they will never fall.

It takes a village to take a beauty queen book all the way to final runway. Therefore, I’d like to pay tribute to the many fine people who have helped to make this book possible. Whether or not the following wish to be acknowledged now that they have read same is another matter.

A huge thanks to my editor and uber-mensch,
¹
David Levithan, who, years ago, said, “A plane full of beauty queens crashes on a deserted island. And … GO!” David, some say your methods are madness; I say “genius.” And, unlike most, I say it without irony. Clearly, you were the inspiration for Sinjin St. Sinjin. That much cannot be denied. Well, you and your lawyers can always try. I got you, babe — thank heavens.

Likewise, I must thank AnnMarie Anderson, who said, even before David, “A plane full of beauty queens crashes on a deserted island!” Apparently, this phrase is said quite a bit at Scholastic, like some sort of art house reenactment of
The Manchurian Candidate.
I’m grateful for you, AnnMarie — and not just because you’re named after the seminal TV goddess of my youth.
²

A tip of the hat and a Valium smoothie to Elizabeth Parisi, who spent time that could have been used practicing her talent portion on designing (and redesigning … and redesigning …) the cover for
Beauty Queens.
Oh, wait — that IS her talent portion, and clearly, she’s going to take home the gold. Thanks, Elizabeth.

Fifteen percent of this gratitude is owed to my agent/husband, Barry Goldblatt, who said, “You’re writing
what?”
It’s sweet that after so many years of close partnership, you still have the capacity to be surprised and frightened by the things I say, dear. This Bud’s
³
for you. No, really, you look like you need it.

Big smooches to Jennifer Hubert Swan and Cindy Dobrez for the Michigan lore. Your pride in your home state is duly noted. And a warm thanks to Deb Shapiro for supplying state facts on her native New Hampshire. We should all live free or die, though I’d prefer the former to the latter.

As the recently incarcerated Ladybird Hope says, “We can’t wear the winner’s crown if we don’t have north stars to guide our ships through the slings and arrows of life’s pageant.” She said that in her book
Mixed Metaphors for the Modern World,
which is available in the prison gift shop.
⁴
So I thank
my
beloved north stars: Jo “Rhinestone Cowgirl” Knowles, Sara “Spray Tan-tastic” Ryan, Robin “Princess Hair” Wasserman, Holly “Circle Turn-a-licious” Black, Justine “Mock Me and Die” Larbalestier, Maureen “Flaming Baton Babe” Johnson, Susanna “Locked, Loaded, and Lovely” Schrobsdorff, and Barry “Studmuffin” Lyga for their critical acumen, writerly support, and all-around awesomeness. You are all winners to me.

Thanks to Mitali Perkins and Simranjit Dhillon for their much-appreciated insights into Indian culture and for answering many follow-up emails and phone calls. Thanks also to Emily Harris for sharing her experiences as an African-American woman in the pageant system and for enlightening me about African-American hair care. Ladies, may all your ponies be Sparkle Ponies.

Much gratitude is due to Andrew Coate and Ginevra Pfohl for their incredible generosity in sharing their experiences as transgendered individuals. Thanks so much — I’m lucky just to know you.

A big old fair-trade coffee gift basket goes to Beth Fleisher for the yacht and sailing help as well as to boat carpenter Gina Pickton of the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, for explaining big ships. Any mistakes, egregious errors, or just plain things made up are entirely the fault of the author.

Further thanks are due to Josh Goldblatt for the comic book info and for indulging me in the mapping out of various endgame scenarios over dessert. You’re right that “the villain should have a secret lair in the volcano. That’s, like, the number-one secret villain hideout.” Truer words were ne’er spoken, kiddo.

Further further (but not, say, as far as New Jersey, where the traffic becomes an issue) thanks are due to Carmit Birnbaum, Cassandra Clare, Brenda Cowan, Emily Lauer, Cheryl Levine, Josh Lewis, E. Lockhart, Joe Monti, Tricia Ready, Pia Wahlsten, Melissa Walker, and the participants of Camp Barry for listening to various degrees of rambling over the past year. I promise not to bother you again until the next book.

A big thanks to Nancy C. Bray, aka “Mom,” for making
The Miss America Pageant
required watching for so many years. Over the years, I’ve learned to separate the unsettling messages about femininity from the fabulously over-the-top camp. It was fun, wasn’t it?

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the debt due to the following: William Golding’s
Lord of the Flies,
Naomi Klein’s
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,
Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness, The Pirates of Penzance
by Gilbert & Sullivan,
and the works of Ian Fleming, more specifically, the James Bond movies, to which I have an almost unhealthy attachment. In fact, there are still moments in which I expect to find an Aston Martin
⁵
waiting out front just before I head off to meet some guy named Felix who is never the same Felix.

Finally, thanks to the readers. You make this the best job in the world.

It’s my fervent hope that I haven’t forgotten anyone, but if I have, I’d be happy to make amends with cupcakes and coffee, and then I’d place a tiara upon your head while singing, “It’s a Whole New World of Pretty.” If this scenario does not sufficiently frighten you into silence, you are tougher than Taylor Rene Krystal Hawkins.