MARTY

The success of my roller skating number was like daggers into Terry’s empty void where a heart would lie. No matter how many shots of liquor he threw back the sound of MY applause echoed in his head. He was determine to rid the bar of me and the more he tried the more I succeeded.
Mind you I knew none of this and only found out years later. At the time, I was just doing what I was told. All I wanted was for Rodger to have his shows and I was hoping John would just whisk me off my feet and take me away from all this craziness. John was still a shadow in my life. I wanted him to be the star of my life, but he was shy or not interested. The more I tried to get to know him the further away he went. His signs confused me. I would go to the opposite side of the bar as to not bother him and he would find a reason to come over by me. Then I would say hi to him and he would brush me off and walk away. I was a mess.
One of the people responsible for my success on stage was the bar sound and light designer, Joel. Joel worked for a recording studio and would examine and give me notes on my performances. “You’re prepping your jokes” “The audience expected that move” “Great job!” I always looked forward to his notes. He really knew when I was walking through a number and when I was really working it. He would prepare songs for me on record albums and place skips in songs and mix numbers. My week started with Hank and Joel discussing my number and how to make it funny, a fitting with MARTY DE GAYBAR because Hank wanted me to wear only his dresses. Hank wanted Terry to do my make-up- I put my foot down on that one…Terry had told me how the jealous queens would grind glass into eye shadow and make eyes bleed. I still went to Rodgers and he did my make-up. We laughed and had dinner. I could see it was hurting him making me up and then me saying good-bye. Hank was not budging and Rodger refused to apologize. I eventually had Casper do my make-up at the bar. It was so uncomfortable and such a pain. I hated people touching my face with make-up and made no secrets.
Alton kept his distance from the shows. He was down to waitering two nights a week and trying to get out of that. Everyone wanted to work at the bar, but once you did and saw the ugliness of people you just wanted to run! Mind you I was still a hand stamper on week-ends, I really didn’t have a bar job yet.
We were coming into my first bar Halloween! OMG! What a trip that was. Every guy was dressed as a girl. It was so funny. I was the guest judge and I thought everyone deserved to win. This was before Hank got involved with Halloween. Eventually Hank had decided he wanted a theme night Halloween for the staff. The first theme Halloween was the Wizard of OZ. I was Glinda, the good witch. Marty amazed me with the outfit. He started wrapping me in white netting-10 yards! And had a crown made out of a bleach bottle. I was not impressed. Glinda was wide dress and bubbly. Well, Marty took 10 helium balloons and put them under the netting. The balloons lifted the netting and gave me the “Glinda lift”. Marty never ceased to amaze me.Granted I was walking around with balloons up my ass. but I looked good in the pics.
Marty was about to have his time at the bar be put to an end…Peter, Oe’s boyfriend had moved in with him and was jealous that Marty was getting attention, or was it Oe that didn’t like the fact that Peter noticed Marty-either way Hank was planning a trip to Florida and Oe had a shit eating grin on his face.He knew someone was getting fired, but who and why. Terry shared a few shots with Oe in the corner. Marty had refused to make dresses for Terry being Terry never had any money...
Till tomorrow, be kind.