Mr. PINK

“Mr. PINK”

ETTA KIT

You know, even if the Statue of Liberty was painted pink, you’d still recognize it.So, when I spotted Miss Etta Kit standing on the corner in her shabby pink satin suit, even after 25 years, there was no question, I was looking at my drag queen maven.

South Beach, Miami -1997

The drag clubs on the strip were bouncing and Etta was the queen. Me? I was a pasty faced runaway, working as a bus boy at The Golden Palm. I met Etta on my first day at the club. Julio, the bartender reamed me out for not filling up the ice bins. He ended his rant by saying…”and don’t forget again- Mr. shit for brains.”

I didn’t know Etta had watched the whole thing. Julio left and Miss Etta, six feet tall, wearing a skin tight pink satin gown, sashayed over to me. He was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and was looking right at me.

“Tyler Hunny.,” She leaned down, “don’t listen to dumb people. Julio isn’t the first one who’ll try and tear you down and he won’t be the last. You just keep on keepin’ on and pretty soon you’ll be smarter than he’ll ever be.”

Every night, for the last song in her set Miss Etta, standing in a pool of light, cozied up to the mic and slick as butter, slid into her rendition of “At Last.” Back in the dressing room she’ d take off the towering wig, hand it to me to put on the mannequin head, then she’d collapse onto her pink velvet chaise.

One night she said. “Tyler, Hunny, when are you going to start your real life?”

I didn’t know what to say. I was a runaway runt living in the basement of the hotel next door. In exchange for that, I took out the garbage and kept the sidewalk swept. I was eating okay because the cooks in the kitchen saved leftovers for me. Life there was way better than foster care.

“Tyler, Hunny, listen to me. You gotta’ get your high school diploma and then see what you want to do with the rest of your life. It never occurred to me that I might have a future but Etta made me think, so I signed up for daytime GED classes. When I got my diploma, Miss Etta asked me again. “Hunny, now what are you going to do?”

I was almost too embarrassed to tell her what I’d been thinking.

“Well, I kind of was thinking I’d like to be a writer.” She didn’t laugh.

“Okay, Hunny, write something up and we’ll see how it goes.”

I spent the next two weeks working on a story about a kid who runs away from a reform school and ends up in a Florida drag club. It was after her last set, Miss Etta was lounging on her pink velvet chaise, sipping champagne.

“Miss Etta?”

“What is it Hunny?”

“Uh, I got a story for you.”

“Well Hunny, go ahead and read it to me

I guess it was ok because she had tears in her eyes when she said, “Hunny, you can write.”

Miami 2001

For the next three years, Miss Etta was the toast of Drag World Miami .With her gentle prodding and the extra money she left out on her dresser for me, I was able to get my GED and start taking classes at Miami–Dade junior college. The first class I took was creative writing. My professor for that class was Doctor Paula Sizer. The first assignment she gave us was; Write a story about the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.

Well that wasn’t hard. The dumbest thing I ever did was tell my eight grade gym teacher what my father was doing to me. First, I made him promise he wouldn’t tell anybody. Talk about dumb. Bad enough if I’d been a girl but the whole dad/homo thing could was way too much.

Next thing I knew cops turned up at the house and my father was arrested. My mother, well, what can I say, fancied herself as Mrs. My Piss Smells Like Perfume. I was sent away to a “Special School.” I lasted two months before they discovered I’d been stealing books from the school library. Okay I didn’t sign’em out, but geez.

Apparently when they called Mrs. My Piss is Perfume, she didn’t want me back home. That night I grabbed my backpack, filled it up with my stolen books, snuck my roommate’s monthly allowance out of her desk drawer and hopped a bus to Florida.

Miami Beach was the last stop on the route. I wandered around for a few days before I saw that the alley door out behind the Beach Hotel was open. Long story short, I snuck into the store room and made a nest behind a massive bank of shelves which is where Andy the custodian found me the next morning.

“Hey kid.” I woke up to see a big guy covered with tats standing over me.

“What the Hell you doin’ here?”

I started to cry. I had no words.. He stood over me just staring, then turned and left. I sat in my ratty nest weeping.

“Hey kid.”

I looked up. The guy was standing over me .He was holding out a donut and a bottle of OJ. “Take this. I gotta go do some stuff but I’ll be back.”

Long story short, my tattooed savior was Andy , the hotel handy man/bar bouncer. He let me stay in the storeroom, and bought me a mattress to sleep on. He never said much but one day he said, “ I had ‘a kid once.” He got me a job a job next door as a bus boy at The Golden Palm, a drag club.

South Beach, Miami 2022

An August afternoon: dead quiet, no tourists, no breeze, 96 degrees, 98 % humidity. I was about to cross Ocean Avenue, when I saw Miss Etta standing on the sidewalk across the street.She was wearing a shabby pink satin suit and standing next to a shopping cart piled with junk.

Even from that distance I saw what 20 years had stolen from her. No longer a towering six footer, she was wearing ratty black sneakers and her bodacious tatas had disappeared. I crossed the street.

“Miss Etta?” She looked at me with fear in her eyes.

“It’s me- Tyler, from The Golden Palm.” She was struggling to place me. Then I saw a glimmer of recognition.

“Oh my God, Tyler, Hunny.” She dropped her cane and hugged me so hard I could feel the fragile bones beneath her jacket.

I didn’t know what brought Miss Etta back into my life. But I knew that if hadn’t been for her I wouldn’t be the author of nine best sellers. I told her, if she wanted, she could come stay with me in my beach front home -forever.