A Fag for Her Fifties

A Fag for Her Fifties

A Fabulous Fairy Tale

B MacGregor

Published by AnyWho Editions at Smashwords

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Copyright © 2013 by Brian Magruder

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Chief Printing Co. Corp.

AnyWho Editions

PO Box 1240, Richmond, VA 23218

Visit our Web site at http://www.anywhoeditions.com

First edition: September 30, 2013

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN No. 978-1-3010243-4-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013950924

This book is available in print at most online retailers and from our website.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1: Once Upon a Time

Chapter 2: A Fag for Her Fifties

Chapter 3: Oh, Dorothy...

Chapter 4: Indulging a Peter

Chapter 5: 7 Has Always Been My Lucky Number

Chapter 6: Whitewashed

Chapter 7: Giddy on Up

Chapter 8: Warning! Glass Slippers Tend to Shatter When Walking

Chapter 9: Only His Nose Grows

Chapter 10: Beasting the Beauty Right Out of Her

Chapter 11: Shitty, Shitty Bang Bang

Chapter 12: Who's Alice? And What Does She Have to do With My Missing Hookah?

Chapter 13: Super Fag-Alicious, With a Hearty Expodotious on the Side

Chapter 14: 1 - 1 Mr. Cuddle Bottom

Chapter 15: A Fish's Tale

Chapter 16: Death Comes to the Meadows

Chapter 17: My Most Precious

Chapter 18: I Wanna Be Like You

Chapter 19: Booty Call

Chapter 20: Silly Old Bear

Chapter 21: A Fag for Her Fifties

From B MacGregor

Dedication

To all the wonderful Fags in my life, you taught me how to be the best Fag I could B.

And to my sister who told me, Say more about that.

Thank you!

Preface

What makes a good bedtime story?

What words comfort like milk and warm chocolate chip cookies? What type of plot tucks you safely into a feather bed? What sentences coddle you with a feeling of safety like a quilted down comforter? Tell me, what paragraphs weave together all the right words and phrases to welcome you like the softness of a silken pillow? Who are the characters that kiss you good night? When you dream, what magical, fairy tale ending can inspire dreams of hope and promise?

What makes a good bedtime story?

When all is dark and lonely, cold and unforgiving, when no one listens, that’s when you need a bedtime story. It’s the only tale that lends courage to sleep through the night, and inspires us to wake the next morning.

A bedtime story comforts the loneliest of souls, and gives rise to beautiful dreams. A good one defends against any nightmare—like the crushing realism of growing older without ever knowing true joy. Its magic can make us believe in ourselves. Just like a prince and a princess in a Fag-Tabulous pretend world filled with velvet stars and glittering moons, pink unicorns with hard muscular bodies in a garden filled with gold lamé roses and sequin green ferns. At least that’s the way I feel about my bedtime stories.

To me, a good bedtime story is like a good drag queen; one-third fantasy, one-third adventure, one-third comedy, and one hundred percent about love. Unlike a good drag queen, the tale should focus on someone else. That’s the problem with drag queens – their spotlights tend to be a very small ones.

A good bedtime story is about another person. Sometimes that can be a very hard thing for us Fags to remember. A powerful fairy tale always needs a lovable character—a courageous one, inspiring us to dream about all the fluffy and wonderfully brilliant things in our lives. This is the true hero in the story that all life spins around.

What of the storyteller? Well, they should be well versed at choreographing others to dream big. They enable readers to reach for those velvety stars and glittering moons. A good writer tames the purple unicorn pony inside all of us—the one with bulging biceps, a taut stomach, and a nice round ass. A gifted artist builds a unique garden unlike any other. It’s a refuge for fairies, complete with gold lamé roses and sequin green ferns. Sometimes, when you least expect it, a very good story is about the deep-seeded love between the person narrating and the person listening, despite how sad the tale may be.

Now then…come punch a pillow. Snuggle up. Wrap your grandmother’s blanket around your hot and tired self. Have your milk? How are the cookies? Fag-Cellent! Are you ready to hear a story?

I’m a Fag. Welcome to my bedtime story about a person who inspired me… once upon a time.

Chapter 1: Once Upon a Time

Do you remember the wonderful bedtime stories from your childhood? Do you have a favorite—or were you like me, and all of them were your favorites? Did your mother or father read you the stories? Did you see them in the theater? Listen to them on the phonograph? Perhaps you watched them on video, DVD, or downloaded them directly from the Web. It doesn’t really matter how you heard or watched. It’s more important that they were meaningful to you in some way. A piece of nostalgia comes with each bedtime story. And, there’s something wonderfully comforting about the words Once upon a time.

What does a gay man wear to jail?

Well, if he’s a young man in his 20s with a great body… then anything he wants. However, what if he’s a Fag-Tabulous gay man in his fifties? Well then, there’s my dilemma. To make matters worse, what if it’s a very special visit to the dearest and loveliest person in the whole wide world? Then what to wear becomes even more perplexing.

So what does a gay man wear to visit his best friend in prison?

I could wear a three-piece tailored suit from Italy with a black starched shirt and a blistering black and white plaid tie. Plaid. I’d probably be confused with her lawyer. Thankfully, I don’t own such a tie.

I could try to make her laugh by wearing a maple-colored wig, teased and dressed in toilet tissue rollers and some frumpy morning glory-colored housecoat over shiny black pumps to match a vinyl handbag with a gold clasp. Obviously, and sadly, I’ve given this idea quite a bit of thought.

The cross-dressing thing would be funny. I’m certain she would love the notion, giggling impetuously like a school girl; however, it might be a tad bit over the top, and silly enough to create some unwanted friction between the warden and me. That’s something I definitely don’t want. Friction—legal friction that is. I can’t afford it. I don’t want to risk the weekly visits. I need them. I need my best friend and she needs me. I know she does, especially now.

I’ll wear some tan dungarees and a long sleeved, tight t-shirt that shows off my big daddy muscular arms. Perhaps if I arch my back just right, constantly inflating my shoulders, I could get by with a V-neck—a shirt that erroneously suggests I still have a tight and muscular body. I’ve learned it’s all about posture when privileged to reach fifty years of age in this Fag-Tastically orgasmic world. Posture is every fifty-year-old’s best friend.

Maybe butch, brown leather boots… I hate covering my feet and I hate to be barefoot. There’s no winning with me. I think that’s why I developed my overly optimistic, yet caustic and biting attitude. If I can’t win with myself, then I’ll always be a loser. A good loser tries to make the best of it. However, an experienced loser can truthfully critique the glorious winners around us in the most venomous way possible, thus the caustic and biting attitude. It makes me feel better.

I may be seething, I may be poisonous, but I still have manners. My mother told me, If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all… unless you have an audience. Because, quite frankly, if you have an audience, then it’s okay to say unpleasant things about other people as long as one person thinks it’s funny. That’s where the best friend comes in. She’s been my audience for the past year. Only one year, but the most wonderful year of my life—number one out of fifty.

How many fans do you need? I learned I just need one. One really good fan. One. That’s it. That’s all.

I guess that’s why famous people struggle with relationships. They don’t marry their biggest fan—their best friend. Of course, for a Fag, marrying their best friend isn’t exactly feasible when they’re the wrong sex. The sex department is always the problem. The good news? Having someone in my life to cheer and root for me is significantly more important than sex. Hard to believe, but sufficiently true.

Yeah, comfortable and supportive boots that match my pants. There you go, a dusty blue t-shirt, grey hair, green eyes, designer bifocals—all present and accounted for. I look good for fifty. Until… I put on my oversized, black, inner tube parka. Iowa is such an unforgiving place with its bitter cold.

I look familiar, stylishly familiar. Everything is familiar when you turn fifty, even the first trip to the prison. It’s a long and tedious drive to the Correctional Institute for Women. It takes approximately an hour and a half from the delightfully claustrophobic small town of Perfection, Iowa.

The only positive thing about the drive is the casino off the interstate. I love casinos. I think they were designed by and for gay men. Think about it. Bright, flashy lights, colorful themes, big open spaces with magnificent chandeliers, and adorably cute, bobbly machines that call out, asking you to insert money into their well-lit, exposed holes and pull their handles.

Slot machines are like really good accessories. A one-armed bandit provides light in a dark and desolate corner of life, and a bank of them can provide hope. They make you feel attractive and hopeful, all at the same time. Well, at least you don’t care how unattractive you look in front of the machine. Maybe I should care, thus, the posture lesson.

I’ll stop at the casino on the way home, after an allotted one hour visit with my best friend. It will be my little indulgence for the week. Ever since I gave up smoking and vodka, I have very few vices left—and they’re not going anywhere soon. Well, at least, I hope they don’t leave me!

I only wish my best friend could go with me. Somehow the smiles on the slot machines don’t seem that bright or cheery without her. I understand the whole punishment thing. It’s torture—completely, reverently, and sincerely. Reducing our valuable time to a mere one hour visit once a week is inhumane by its very nature.

Prison is the worst form of punishment I can envision. Locked doors, well-armed guards, an x-ray machine, tedious boredom staring at a monitor day after day, competing with self-absorbed companions, the worst food imaginable—to me, most of it sounds like living at an airport terminal. Most of it, that is, except one thing—the real horror of a prison—the isolation. So every Sunday afternoon for the next 25 years, it will be a long, tedious, and familiar drive to the prison to conquer the worst punishment of all.

The parking lot at the correctional institute is full. It’s reassuring in some way. People need a physical connection with each other. In this day and age of cell phones, e-mails, text messages, tweets, and every other shallow form of communication possible, it’s comforting to know people still need the intimacy that comes from directly associating with each other. The full parking lot confirms the need for a Sunday visit. All of us need to connect with our center—wherever and whomever it may be.

I’ve heard yawning is the way we sync with each other on a subconscious level. Whenever we see someone yawn we have the tendency to stretch our mouths, breath, and release our internal pressure. It’s an instinctual way to connect. It proves we need to be with each other, ideally with someone very special. That’s why I need to see my best friend’s face once a week. I need to be connected to her, despite everything else in the world that labels her a criminal. I have to be in sync with her. To me, she’s not a criminal. Not really.

I park in a far away spot, in a well-lit open area. It is a prison after all. Although I implicitly trust my best friend, the rest of the people in the prison are criminals. Ergo, the people visiting them are not above suspicion. All of these visitors either: A) love a criminal; B) bred a criminal; or, C) are soliciting a criminal. I’m in the A category if you haven’t noticed. However, I’m not that far away from being a criminal myself. I could commit a crime, and have on more than one occasion, depending on the state. After all, I’m pretty sure I drove through Utah to get to Iowa.

Laws are so arbitrary. Being a Fag doesn’t make me an evil person. It shouldn’t make me a criminal—regardless of the state. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not that innocent. I could easily be a criminal for other reasons. Like I said earlier, I have a caustic and biting attitude. Although I’m not a mean person, I think I would do anything for my best friend, short of becoming straight.

The funny thing is that I don’t know why I need to protect my turn of the century Dodge Ram. It’s a real piece of work, adorned in rusted-out silver paint with balding tires. I guess I want to protect my possessions, despite how feeble they may be. I don’t have many left. Those I do have, I want to protect. Like Charity. That’s my best friend’s name. It’s not her real name, but it’s better than the name her mother gave her. Plus, I like to name people after their strongest virtue. It’s easier to remember a person’s virtue than their real name after the third martini.

It’s a hidden talent of mine to know people’s virtues—their real virtues, not the ones they profess. I possess the innate ability to read past a person’s selfish, protective layers and see their inner feelings and gifts, the ones hidden away with all their other fragile self-concepts. In the case of Charity, her generous nature was in a dusty corner right next to her vulnerability, her loneliness, and her sexuality. Her wonderful gift of charity was among all of the other lost attributes on her emotional toy shelf, including a purple velvet unicorn that lost his horn a long time ago, looking more like a pony these days. I’m the one who brought it all to the surface. It’s what a Fag does best for his biggest fan. Dusts off hopes and wishes, then plays with them… like a discarded toy, a ragged purple pony, or an old See N’ Say.

Charity looks like her name sounds. She has a strong northern European face. It’s old world and ethnic—interesting. She may look Polish, but she’s definitely Swedish. Believe me, only someone who has studied her face every day for the past year could tell the difference. She has a large Nordic nose. It’s the type of nose that could sniff out pickled herring and sauerkraut from a long highway away. She has big blue eyes, innocent like a vast Viking sea. They’re bright and deep, frankly I don’t know how she does it. I’ve never seen blue eyes like hers before.

Her large scarred lips are cracked from a lifetime of bitter Iowa winters. Personally, I think her lips are nicely mutilated and misshapen. It frames her broken smile well. Her chin is large and so is her forehead. She has an opera singer’s square body—sturdy with broad shoulders—needed to carry the heavy load of her life. The type of body that could make an Irish man blush and a French man jealous. Fine, frail, strawberry blond hair without a speck of gray lines her porous and ruddy face. It’s okay—makes her appear like she’s always blushing. It’s the face I look forward to seeing every Sunday afternoon during her fifties.

I walk into the prison and anticipate the routine. I debate about signing my name as Ruth Buzzi on all triplicate forms. I crack a lame joke during the pat down. I think one day, I’ll bring a bottle of lube to be x-rayed just for the fun of it. I don’t wear any metal that will set off the security system—no bling-bling allowed. No presents. A gift would get stolen or make her roommates pout with jealousy. So, instead I’ll just give her my flamboyant and shiny words during our structured visits.

At the reception desk, I ask for Beulah Mae Osguard. That’s Charity’s real name. See why I changed it? Seriously. It’s an old world name and sounds like someone walking on broken glass in Puritan times. I guess it could be the perfect name for a fan though, loyal and traditional, strong and persevering, stout. Unfortunately, the name just doesn’t sound attractive, and Beulah Mae is attractive. She’s beautiful inside and out. Her inner beauty comes through and keeps giving, despite all of her obstacles, the first of which is her name. That’s why I call her Charity.

A guard escorts me from the reception lounge down a long hallway into a partitioned station. My best friend sits behind a glass wall. For the love of God, why do they insist on safety orange jumpsuits? I guess it’s another form of punishment. Oddly, it looks good on Charity. Because when she smiles, everything looks brighter and cheerful. She can make the entire world day-glow orange when she smiles.

I pick up the phone. We hug through the receiver. Our hug is a sigh—one long and uncompromising sigh. During that hug, I suddenly realize a week seems so long. It goes so fast, but it seems so damn long.

Then I start… talking. I tell her a story about us. From start to finish on how we first met. It’s why I’ll visit every Sunday afternoon for the next 1,247 Sundays of her prison sentence. It’s okay. There are a finite amount before we can finally hug without a phone between us—a better proposition than never.

Charity’s a lazy talker. She prefers for me to get right to the story. Whatever I want to tell her, but she prefers bedtime stories—loves a fabulous fairy tale. Keep in mind, it’s told by an overly optimistic, yet caustic story teller.

The truth is I talk to her to keep her distracted from the confines of a restrictive prison cell. She’s tough enough to survive six days a week. She’s used to being confined, wrapped tightly in a dull and boring life—her closet. But every Sunday afternoon we get our chance to sit across from one another and fondly remember how she came out. I get one shot each week to carry her to a magical and whimsical place—a destination back in time to the favorite year in our rather mediocre, yet stunning lives. We share memories about the pageantry, frills, hopes, dancing, lessons and our dreams. We reminisce about all the events we shared during the most wonderful year of my life—the same events that brought her out of her closet and landed Beulah Mae Osguard in prison. Such a pity.

My stories always start the same way… Once upon a time…

Chapter 2: A Fag for Her Fifties

Once upon a time there was a little fluffy puppy that was emotionally and physically abandoned, severely abused. His twin brother died before he could be rescued and taken to the local animal shelter. Luckily, the beautiful blond dog with a chocolate muzzle lived and waited to be adopted by a Fag and to become the most precious dog in the entire world. He had soft fur and long tufts of hair between his toes and behind his ears—completely and utterly adorable.

One day, a talented and devoted writer, who just happened to be a Fag, visited the animal shelter and adopted the blond puppy. It was love at first sight. A cock of his head with a twist of a partially floppy ear, not to mention his fluffy demeanor, convinced the writer to be forever endeared by the skinny puppy, who aspired to become the most overweight and spoiled dog in the universe.

The author was immediately inspired. He gradually wrapped his entire world around the puppy, which slowly became a dog—as all puppies tend to do. Over the years the dedicated writer produced a series of delightful children’s books about the spoiled, overweight dog who liked to wear pink feather boas and a diamond tiara. His name is Mr. Cuddle Bottom. A name that became famous—all because the writer said so.

It would come to pass, that a wicked publishing empire decided to steal the bedtime stories about the charming dog from the author. Because the big, nasty, selfish, greedy corporation had powerful, magical, and plaid lawyers, they were successful in robbing Mr. Cuddle Bottom of his identity. They stole the entire universe of the author, leaving him without the magical pretend place he created for his very special pooch. It left the storyteller broke and broken-hearted. Now the desperate writer would have to find some other soul to praise and devote his craft to.

Once upon a time, he did…

Why, hello Beulah Mae. I nod at her from behind the glass partition. Miss Beulah Mae Osguard. Miss Charity. Miss Thang. I use my gay dialect, hoping it immediately brightens her spirits, hoping it brings her closer to home… to me.

What took you so long? She asks, completely unaware how seriously society is taking strides to protect all of us from her.

This prison of yours has a lot of problems. The worst of which is an overabundance of bureaucratic concern regarding visitors. It took me a week to get my name on the guest list. I rarely throw my name around, but I lucked out. One of the security guards, Mike Wasbauten, has a thing for Mr. Cuddle Bottom stories. Well, not Mike per se, but his daughter, who has a problem sleeping at night. She’s in love with my fairy tale dog. So I threw his name around and, voilá, got behind the velvet rope in an expedited manner. It only took two signed autographs and the promise of a personal photo opportunity.

Charity giggles. She has this wonderful tendency to laugh at everything I say. See? It’s why she’s my biggest fan. Everyone loves to laugh. It’s the only thing that keeps us going. No matter what skills we have, or lack of talents we possess, giggling is the one thing people always do correctly. There’s no such thing as a wrong laugh. In fact, it’s the potential for laughter—and an orgasm, that forces me to get my sagging, tired self out of bed in the morning, brush my teeth, comb my hair, practice perfect posture, and pretend to live a life without her.

I love the fact that you’re here now, B. Charity calls me B. It’s a nickname that has stuck since the first book by B MacGregor—The Fabulous Fairy Tales of Mr. Cuddle Bottom.

So? Prison! I scoff.

Yeah… She shrugs, not exactly excited by a scoff that depicts the obvious.

So then… yeah… prison. I know, I can be repetitious. At times, I can be so lame as to merely point out the obvious. Sometimes, I don’t even know why I bother.

"Yes… it’s a