The Turkey Wore Satin by J.J. Brass Page A

And,
secondly, it was the Mayfair women who voted on the best
performance. They always picked the most bumbling, fumbling, silly
performer: Uncle George, a Mayfair by marriage who always snagged
the role of Bette Midler. They probably just picked him so he
wouldn’t feel too humiliated.
    Marty wasn’t exactly in it to win it, but
surely he could count on one woman’s vote.
    “ My wife will definitely
pick me,” Marty said as Tyrone helped him with his headpiece: a
platinum blonde wig he and Kristen had braided and then wrapped
around a Styrofoam cone. “That still sounds weird, to me: my wife. My wife is going to vote for me in the Amazing Annual
Mayfair Family Drag Show.”
    Tyrone chuckled, but he was swiftly
interrupted by gravelly laughter from Marty’s father-in-law.
    “ Don’t count on it,” said
Jack, who’d already slipped into on a slinky black dress. “Kristin
always votes for her good old dad. Just because she’s got herself a first husband doesn’t mean she’s going to change her
loyalties.”
    “ Uhhh okay,” Marty
replied, trying desperately not to stare at the man’s shiny bald
head, not to mention the bulge down south. “I only figured, you
know, since we just got married a couple months ago, Kristin might
vote for me this year.”
    Jack laughed crassly. “Wait and see,
buddy-boy.”
    “ Leave the kid alone,”
said Uncle George, who looked more like a walrus than Bette Midler.
“It’s Marty’s first time in drag. Don’t you think he’s nervous
enough without you being a total ass?”
    “ It’s okay,” Marty said,
because he didn’t want to instigate a battle to the death between
the two brothers-in-law.
    Kristin’s father and uncle were already at
each other’s throats about some business deal gone bad. Jack was
some kind of corporate big-wig. Marty never had been exactly clear
on what the people in this family did for a living. Even Kristin’s
job mystified him. They all had corner offices and more vacation
time than workdays. That’s all Marty knew.
    Tension weighed nearly as heavily on the air
as the eyeliner Tyrone meticulously painted on his husband. Jonnie
hadn’t found his niche yet. He was trying out Liza this year. Some
guys, like Tyrone and Jack, were showmen—dressed as women, dressed
as men, didn’t matter. Other guys were quiet, observant. That was
Marty. He listened, he looked, and he could usually pull out the
undercurrent of any situation. He and Jonnie had that much in
common.
    “ Can I borrow your
blusher?” George asked Jack.
    Jack snapped, “No way. Get your own.”
    All at once, the tension burst and George
hollered, “You think you know it all? Well, you don’t know squat.
You lost half a million in that—”
    “ It wasn’t half a
million,” Jack cut in. “Nowhere near! And, hey, if you were a true
drag queen instead of just a drama queen, maybe Tyrone wouldn’t be
so jealous every time you win this goddamn thing.”
    Jonnie stepped up and said, “My husband has
every right to be jealous. He’s got the looks, he’s got the moves,
and he’s got legs. Why he hasn’t won yet, I’ll never
understand.”
    George totally ignored Jonnie’s plea, and
turned back to Jack. “I’m taking you to court over that deal. It
wasn’t legit and you know it. You’ve pissed off a lot of investors,
you self-righteous son of a bitch. First thing after the holiday,
I’m getting the ball rolling on a class action.”
    Jack flipped on his long black Cher wig,
then tossed his hair over both shoulders. Sucking in his cheeks, he
said, “Go on and try, Georgie-Boy. You got nothing on me.”
    Marty couldn’t stand the aggression. In his
full-on Vogue outfit, he snuck away from the guest suite
they were using as a dressing room. He couldn’t see anyone in the
hallway, thank goodness. All the women—Grandma Iris, Kristin and
her mother Angela, George’s wife Cynthia, plus Kristin’s cousins
Beth and Georgette—were downstairs munching on appetizers,