At The Paris Gay
Pride 2
by Albert Russo
Someone behind us whispered:
“Dragadoons! Just look at these degenerates.
The next thing you know, they'll want to convert
us all. Fagga-maggots!”
At that very moment my
uncle turned around and, flushing like an
overripe blood orange, gave them hell, in a tone
I had never heard him use: “What the fuck
are you doing here? Getting an eyeful, to see how
we do it, huh? Wanna have a try at it, huh? Wanna
join us? Bunch of petit-bourgeois hypocrits.
Goddam gay bashers, scram!”
It was frightening, Unky
Berky's eyes seemed to be leaping out of their
rockets, like they wanted to punch them straight
in the face, then they sprang back between his
lids with a loud bong. I almost got a heart
attack and for a while my left temple was
completely numb, as if an electric wire had
zipped through it. My uncle had never, ever
spoken this way, even when he got maddest at
Parisian car drivers whom he compared to cavemen
and called them four-wheeled nuts and bolts.
The nerd and his missus
Unky Berky had so insulted remained flabbyghosted
and nonpussied for a couple of minutes. He
sported a monster shnozel crisscrossed with veins
that looked like disgusting worms ready to jump
into your nostrils, yuck... she was dressed in
her Sunday worst, wearing a large pink straw hat
she probably thought elegant and transparent
gloves, in spite of the heat. The perspiration
had drawn rivulets along her wrinkled forehead
and flabby cheeks, which were so heavely powdered
she looked like a fat and sick old geisha. They
had a hard time pulling away from the crowd on
account that people were flocking around us to
see who was creating such a ruckus.
Then suddenly the old
geisha yelled: “Ouch, a S.O.B. just pinched
my buttocks!” And everybody started giggling,
essept for Unky Berky whose eyes were still full
of mist (not mystery, you ninny!), due to
emotional overheating.
Once they succeeded in
getting out of the parade, the old geisha
bellowed in our direction: “Let's get out of
here, Emile, they're so depraved! And did you see
that little slut? What is France coming to? This
country needs someone like Le Pen to clean the
smut and the corruption, I'm telling you.”
They decamped as people
were booing them. In the meantime, however, I
started feeling sick. I had put on my prettiest
dress, the peach-colored one with frills,
accompanied by the lovely plaited Mexican belt my
mom gave me for Christmas and that expensive pair
of glossy white and brown mocassins bought a
couple of years ago, which I only wear on special
occasions. True, I used some of my mother's
lipstick, but it was so light in shade you could
hardly see it, and I did paint my nails with
mauve varnish, that was the only extravaganza I
allowed myself here. Yet, she called me a little
slut. Little slut, me a slut!
From the GOSH ZAPINETTE! series (15 episodes in
all)
30/8/21 Excerpted from Zapinette in Gay Paree, by
Albert Russo.
|
