1970s Rainbow Blues
by Kyle Ingrid Johnson
2022 Pride Contest Winner
The voice of Van Morrison scratches through the speakers singing about money the color of blue. My lover, Veronica, and I sit at the bar and watch Midnight easing her back up and down the pole in the middle of the stage. It’s late afternoon; the audience is slim.
Lighting up a cigarette like the woman in the song, Veronica moves her shoulders with the music but wonders aloud how Midnight can dance to such a beat.
She’s dancing to her own beat, I say. Making her own blue money.
The bar manager passes behind us and puts a hand on each of our shoulders. You girls, good? I wonder if he means in real life or in the amount of liquor in our glasses.
We tell him Midnight is our friend. His eyebrows raise. He looks from one of us to the other and invites us to his office for an audition so we can be like Midnight, too.
We laugh. Veronica has her own blue money. Films. She’s on everyone’s reel, in everyone’s bedroom, and in the throb of everyone’s lust. She’s a star. A blue star. She could write a book better than anything Van Morrison is singing about. The best part is that she loves me.
You look familiar, the bar manager says as he steps back and eyes her a bit more. She swallows her Rusty Nail, nods her head, and tells him he has probably seen her here and there. The theatre by the square. The cinema by the station. On celluloid that can be rented from the backroom of a shop.
The song goes on. The manager turns to me and nods his head toward the back. I shake my head. I look at Midnight and think about her paycheck, but I imagine mine is bigger. I am not as public as Veronica; I don’t want to see myself on a smoky screen in a tiny cinema that smells of men. But Veronica’s paycheck is bigger than mine. She’s a star. A blue star. And yes, she makes that blue money.
I look directly into the manager’s eyes and tell him no. I don’t need a job on his stage. He doesn’t know that I have my own stage, my own men. A short string of regulars. Five-minute guys. My own apartment. My own rules. Lots of privacy. Easy money. Blue money.
It’s all blue. Midnight’s cash. Veronica’s cash. My cash. All blue. I drink up my Brandy Alexander. The only part of our lives that is not blue is our love. Love is the color of warm plum.
Dusk. Men flow into the lounge. Midnight perks up, wraps herself around the silver pole and with great precision winks at the man closest to the stage. Veronica blows her a kiss with an uplifted hand. I stick out my tongue, try to make her laugh. I know she won’t. She’s in control.
The manager leaves us as lost propositions. We wave at the bartender to refill our drinks.
We give the bar manager the finger behind his back. Veronica’s foot moves from her barstool to the one where I am sitting, and I feel her leg start to entwine itself with mine. We are women. We are in charge of our own blue lives, making blue money and spending it. Because blue money singes fingers and disappears from pockets, it never lasts long. It must be spent. We spend ours. We celebrate our love and try not to think about tomorrow. We know our love will outlast our money.
Kyle Ingrid Johnson won First Place in Madville Publishing's recent Kirkus-starred anthology "Taboos & Transgressions." Her work can be seen in 13th Moon, Water ~ Stone, OPEN: A Journal of Arts & Letters, Welter, and in the Harvard Bookstore's travel anthology "Around the World." She won Honorable Mention in the Barry Lopez Creative Nonfiction Contest published in Cutthroat, and has another well-received piece in Madville's "Being Home" anthology as well as a story in the Quillkeepers Press LGBTQ anthology, "The Heart of Pride." Kyle Ingrid lives in Boston, MA and can be contacted at IsolaBlue@aol.com.