Page 11 of Best Woman
Six days before my brother’s wedding, I load my bags into the back of Daytona’s cherry red SUV.
The trunk has barely any space left inside—it contains the industrial-grade fan she uses for hair-blowing purposes at her shows, a large trunk that serves as her makeup kit, a terrifying tangled ball of hair extensions, and no less than three large duffle bags stuffed with clothing erupting through the zippers in an orgiastic explosion of sequins and satin and spandex.
There’s also a single Timberland platform heel perched on top of an inflatable dolphin.
“Girl, are you living out of this car now?” I ask as I slide into the passenger seat.
“Your trunk looks like Hannah G’s greenroom.
” A few months before, River had managed to get us backstage at Saturday Night Live .
Hannah G loved rolling with a squad and we’d filled in a few times, though she never remembered the name of anyone except Daytona, who was unforgettable.
Her magnetism rivaled a pop star’s, and I’d felt just as starstruck around her in the early days of our acquaintance as I still felt anytime I saw River’s boss, awkward and tongue-tied, desperate to be liked.
Sometimes I still wasn’t sure if Daytona liked me, even when she went out of her way to do something nice like drive me to the airport, a truly thankless task. I couldn’t quite believe I’d managed to become friends with someone as fascinating and fabulous as her.
“I’m driving down to Atlanta after I drop you off,” Daytona says, turning off my street and heading toward LaGuardia. “I’ve got a few gigs there this weekend.”
My friend is kind of an underground legend, often leaving for weeks at a time to tour various queer enclaves around the country.
There’s something about the alchemic combination of her utter fierceness and ability to bring serious pathos to any song she performs—I’ve seen her bring the house down with at least three Maroon 5 songs—that hypnotizes an audience, creating an electric charge that burns right through you until you’re screaming her name and emptying your wallet for tip money.
We gossip a bit, talking about pretentious parties and precarious pairings as we drive over a cemetery on the BQE.
Daytona lights a joint and passes it over.
I usually prefer to pop an edible after I’ve made it through airport security, but one does not turn down Daytona’s weed.
She always brings the best shit back with her from her travels, and soon I’m feeling pleasantly stoned as we queue up a playlist and go full Lilith Fair, singing along to “Building a Mystery.”
As the next track starts up, 10,000 Maniacs’ cover of “Because the Night,” I’m feeling unwound enough to say, without stopping to think first: “I’m nervous.”
“You’ll be fine,” she says flippantly, taking a final huge drag before dropping the roach into a half-empty plastic water bottle.
Daytona doesn’t talk about her family much, but from what I gather, she wouldn’t be surprised to see them holding God Hates Fags signs and tiki torches at a white supremacist rally.
Family to her is something built rather than something inherent, and trust is earned, not given by default.
Not for the first time, I feel a swell of pride and gratitude that somehow, I’ve earned hers.
In our toxic little foursome, Kyle and I spend the most time together by ourselves, and tension has lingered between Daytona and me since I started transitioning.
I had a sneaking suspicion in those early days that she felt a bit as if I’d stepped on her shoe while walking behind her.
Being trans was her thing, mostly because she relished her position as the only girl in our group.
In the years since, we’ve sanded down the rough edges of relating to each other as women, but I’ve always been worried she resented me not just for moving in on her territory, but for doing it with relative ease. Or at least, ease with my relatives.
“I hope so,” I say, resting my head against the window and watching the sun filter through slowly turning autumn leaves on the cemetery trees. “I can’t seem to escape this feeling of impending doom.”
“You’re headed to Florida, the stubby little chode of America. It’s gonna fuck you, but you’re not gonna enjoy it.”
“You have such a way with words.”
I unlock my phone and begin a ritual I’ve taken to performing daily, sometimes hourly, almost like a compulsion: stalking Kim Cameron’s various social media profiles.
She’s fairly active but in a cool, detached, above-it kind of way.
Her latest Instagram story is a blurry still photo of a dark bar and the side of someone’s head.
I can’t decipher a single clue about where they are and who that person is, but I’m still full of jealousy that they’re with Kim.
I’ve got it bad.
“You’ve got it bad,” says Daytona, who has taken the red light as an opportunity to sneak a look at my phone—and into my head. “This girl must have grass-fed organic snatch.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“But you’d like to find out.”
She turns to look at me, but I can’t see her eyes through her huge tinted aviator sunglasses. “I don’t know, Jules. I think you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble and just hit on her like a normal person.”
I huff a snarky little laugh. “You don’t get it. Kim Cameron was a hardcore lesbian in high school. She used to run a little side hustle breaking in people’s Doc Martens for them.”
“That’s not a bad business idea.”
“When she came out, my cellphone was a Motorola Razr. And she knew me when I had acne and greasy hair and oh, was a boy ! I need every advantage I can get.”
“But don’t you feel like you’re taking advantage?” It’s not judgment in her voice, but something close to it.
“I won’t deny that it’s a moral gray area, but look, she was the one who assumed I was a damaged little transsexual who needed protection from the cruel world. I just…let her keep thinking that.”
“You’re the girl who cried TERF,” she says, and I can’t help but laugh. “I just wonder…”
“What?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know, babe. What happens when a wolf does show up to blow your house down?”
“You’re mixing metaphors. Fairy tales. Whatever.” But she has a point. I was so eager to let Kim believe my family was a minefield lying in wait to blow up the wedding, and it was easy because it hadn’t ever happened to me. There was no lingering trauma flashing red.
Which just proved Daytona wrong. Everything would work out. I’d make some sad eyes around my mother, woo my crush, and ace the ultimate test: passing for a girl Kim Cameron would date.