A Bad Night in Toothville

Flo was smoking a cigarette in the dressing room bathroom reserved for performers at The Dentist’s Chair, the best (and only) queer bar in Toothville. She loved being Ms. Flo Ridya, drag queen extraordinaire. Flo didn’t have any of the problems that haunted John, her male persona. The string of broken relationships, the increasing waist size, the aching back, the sleep apnea, the dread that arrived in the moments when the bills came due, the feeling that at forty-two years old he should have accomplished more — all of it disappeared beneath a corset and ass pads and silicone tits and layers of thick foundation, blush, and eyeshadow. But not today.

As she hovered above the toilet, blowing smoke into the ceiling vent, she examined the cracked, yellow molar in her hand. It was a bad omen. Everyone knew that the baby teeth the hunters collected each night ought to be white. Pristine. Intact. The entire Toothville economy relied on the youthful vigor that thrummed through these teeth. Hunters distributed their gathered treasures at bars, restaurants, and shops. In turn, the teeth made their way to the pockets of laborers: the performers, the teachers, the street sweepers, the tattoo artists, the makers of clothes and cooking supplies and coffee. With each transaction, the tooth lost a little bit of vitality, and by the time the teeth reached the hands of the fairies who contributed nothing to society (namely, beggars and petty government officials), they crumbled into enamel dust.

Flo wasn’t cut out to be a hunter. She’d discovered that on her first solo trip, when she’d been chased by a rottweiler and barely escaped with her life, let alone a tooth. She considered herself lucky to have her drag gig at The Dentist’s Chair. She loved the art of transformation, the feeling of the crowd’s eyes on her as the lights shone down, the rush of adrenaline when the song finished and the crowd roared, and the free drinks that tops and bottoms alike showered her with post-performance. The hunters were always generous with their teeth when they crowded into the bar in the early morning hours, exhilarated from their clandestine trips to children’s bedrooms.

But this……she held the damaged tooth in the palm of her hand, taking a long drag of her cigarette. She had been counting the few teeth in her performer’s pouch when she found it. There weren’t many there: just two premolars, a canine, and an incisor. And this cracked, yellow molar. There had been talk, of course, of an increasing number of poor-quality teeth. Something about the sugar content in children’s diets these days. And the birth rate. Certainly, the number of quality teeth in circulation was declining. Still, it was the hunters’ responsibility to discard such teeth; to pass on a damaged tooth to another fairy was a massive faux pas, if not an act of outright malice. Not only was the tooth worthless, but it had bad energy. Tooth fairies (as the name implies) are enormously sensitive to the life force in teeth. Flo could feel the decay of the cracked, yellow molar, mocking her, amplifying the little voice in the back of her mind that sometimes made comments like: Aren’t you a little old for this? and Nobody books an aging queen forever.

Why? She wondered, staring at the tooth, rolling it between her forefinger and thumb, tracing the crack that ran through the middle of the crown. Why now?

The more she thought, the more anxious she felt. Everything had started to go wrong when Ginger Vitis entered the dressing room, before the show had even begun.

“Hey, girl,” Ginger had said. Her wig, cut into a smart red bob, was already laid; her face was painted to perfection; she was dressed in a red flapper dress with beads that danced as she strutted in her fiery stilettos, her wings glittering like rubies. She was the image of a hostess. Even in memory, Flo had to swallow her jealousy — she had been passed over for the job of hostess for a younger, prettier queen, and the knowledge of what could have been hers rankled.

Flo, still dressed in sweat pants and a black T-shirt, had been in the middle of applying eyelashes. Her blond, Dolly Parton wig sat on a Styrofoam mannequin head to her right, and her first performance dress, a bedazzled blue ballgown, was slung over the chair beside her. Her bald spot gleamed in the mirror lights as she made eye contact with Ginger.

“Hey, Ginger,” Flo had replied.

“Just letting you know, I’m bringing in some new girls tonight. I want to freshen things up, you know? Things are getting a little…routine around here.”

Yes — thinking back, Flo was sure of it. Ginger had definitely looked her up and down when she said it. Was it a read? Had she missed it?

Standing on the toilet, Flo winced as she mentally replayed her response: “Sounds good!” Why didn’t I say: ‘What’s wrong with routine? The crowd loves mine.’ Or, maybe, ‘Not all of us need to switch things up every night — especially when what we do works.”

But then she’d seen one of the new girls, Ms. Hallie Tosis, open the evening by flying onto the bar and performing a series of impressive back-handstands along the counter that ended with a backflip off the bar-top into a split. The crowd, screaming in joy and awe, had showered her in teeth. Their response to Flo’s performance of “Vampire” by Olivia Rodrigo (a slow, heart-wrenching ballad in which Flo fluttered firmly on stage) had been lackluster in comparison.

On break, Flo had watched jealously as Hallie (who had been perfectly friendly and probably was a very nice fairy) counted the teeth in her bulging pouch. That was when Flo had discovered the cracked, yellow molar in her own pouch, and she had fled to the bathroom.

Flo’s wings ached as she continued to hover above the toilet, inhaling the cigarette down to the filter. Worrying about aging was supposed to be a John problem, not a problem for Ms. Flo Ridya, drag queen extraordinaire. She continued to examine the tooth. The logical part of her brain told her to let it go, to flush it down the toilet and get on with the show. But (and maybe it was just the negative energy from the tooth in her hand), that voice was still there, wondering: What did it mean? Was it a message from the audience, telling her that her routine was broken? Was Saint Apollonia telling her to give up, to allow herself to decay? Was she cracking under the pressure of keeping up with the ‘fresh blood’ that Ginger had brought in?

There was pounding on the bathroom door. She ignored it. The pounding got louder.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

“Flo! I know that’s you in there. Hurry the fuck up.”

“Shut up, George! Can’t a fairy take a shit in peace?” Flo yelled back. She savored the last drag of her cigarette, then dropped both the burning butt and the cracked molar into the water, stepped daintily down, and flushed with the toe of her stiletto. She turned to the sink and let the water run, examining herself in the mirror.

She fluffed her Dolly Parton wig, big and blond and beautiful. Despite having flushed the molar away, all she could see were signs of age. Her ice-blue wings, fluttering behind her, were nearly translucent. Her graying stubble trying to hide beneath layers of foundation. Her smile, ever so slightly yellow in the mirror’s reflection.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

“LET’S GO, FLO!” George’s voice — and banging — was inescapable.

She turned off the faucet, sighed, wheeled about, and whipped the door open.

George was a muscled, red-winged fairy with a hairy chest wearing a red jockstrap and a leather harness. He folded his bulging arms when he saw her. The tattoo on his chest — a molar stamped with ‘MOM’ in bold red letters — bounced with his right pec.

“You’re up next,” he scowled. “Dentina just finished. And I know you weren’t untucking to take a shit, John. I’m not an idiot. I can smell the cigarette.”

Flo rolled her eyes. “Why are you always on my ass, George? The last time someone was this interested, they forked over two molars and a canine for a 30-second lap dance.” She twirled to the side, and the feathers at the bottom of her blue, rhinestoned mini dress rippled at hip-height. Then she bent at the waist, flipping her hair and dragging her hands up her fishnet-covered legs and over the round curve of her plumply padded ass as she returned to an upright position. “What do you have to offer?” she finished, holding out a hand.

“Like I’d go for an old queen like you, Flo.” George snorted. “Your pubes are as gray as my grandad’s.”

“Don’t worry, George.” Flo retorted. “I know you prefer Ginger, but I assure you: experience is an asset. Besides, you wouldn’t know what to do with all this ass.” She leaned in close to his ear. “I know for a fact that Ginger’s a top.” Before he could respond, she unfurled her wings and flitted past him, into the mirrored dressing room filled with spare wigs and second dresses and scattered makeup brushes and eyeshadow pallets and half-finished vodka sodas, down the stairs and out the door labeled “performers only,” into a large room packed with fairies of all wing colors and sizes.

On stage, Ms. Ginger Vitis, her red wig piled dramatically on her head and her red velvet ballgown sweeping the floor, announced to the crowd: “And your next performer, all the way from…the dressing room, it’s… Ms. Flo Ridya!”

“Teeth”, by Lady Gaga, began to play. The song was a crowd favorite, and Flo leaned into it. Each time Lady Gaga sang “Show me your teeth,” she pointed at a new fairy (keeping an eye out for the ones whose pockets and pouches were still bulging with teeth) and stuck her hand out demandingly until they dropped a canine or a molar or an incisor into her hand, which Flo subtly tucked into the pouch on her hip. She strutted up to a purple-winged, tattooed fairy with a buzzed head and Doc Martins, mouthing “I love to fix ‘em”, then turned to face the crowd, grinding against the fairy’s crotch before bending over and slapping her padded ass in encouragement as Lady Gaga sang “Take a bite of my bad girl meat.” The crowd screamed with laughter.

Emboldened, Flo thought about Hallie Tosis and her backflip-split combo. She couldn’t do a backflip, but even an old queen had a few tricks…

As the final chorus of “show me your teeth” resounded throughout the bar, Flo circled the ring of fairies surrounding her, pointing, strutting, until Lady Gaga sang: “Show me your teeth” (one giant leap, aided by her fluttering wings, toward the center), “teeth” (a second giant leap), “teeth.” As the final word rang out, Flo lept high into the air and landed in a front split. She felt her right hamstring tear with a searing pop.

The crowd went nuts. Teeth flew. Flo, blinking back tears, smiled. She was captivating. She was radiant. She was royally fucked. She had to get up. She rolled onto her side and attempted to push up from the floor. A wave of red-hot pain swept over her. She was going to puke. She swallowed it.

And then Ginger was there, dragging her up, steadying her subtly.

“You crazy old bitch, why did you do that?” Ginger whispered in her ear as they made their way back to the stage. Flo mostly used her wings, keeping the weight off her right leg. She tried to limp in as sexy a way as possible.

And then, to the crowd: “There she is, folks! Ms. Flo Ridya! And, as I think she just proved, she can ride ya like no other! Flo, do you drop it low like that for all the boys?”

Flo’s response was automatic: “Only the ones who show me their teeth!” The crowd laughed, the same way they laughed every time she had used the line before. She stared out at the crowd of glittering wings and sweaty shirtless twinks and harness-wearing muscle daddies and boot-wielding dominatrixes. The crowd’s eyes held her. She felt their attention, and she felt worthy of it.

But, she reflected, her hamstring throbbing painfully, this moment did not feel any more special than every other night she had performed. The crowd loved her. They had always loved her. The split, and all of the anxiety of aging that inspired it, had not brought her anything more than a few extra teeth, which George was gathering up from the floor.

“George, show some respect for your elders and give Ms. Flo Ridya a hand off stage!” Ginger commanded. The crowd cheered. George hopped up on stage and flexed, also to cheers. A couple fairies threw teeth at him. They bounced off his abs and fell to the floor. He turned around as he stooped to pick them up, waggling his muscular, jock-strapped ass in the direction of the crowd. More cheers.

He offered an arm to Flo, who took it, and, together, they floated off stage into the crowd, winding their way through a maze of bodies, accepting accolades and additional teeth. After a few agonizing minutes, George deposited her in a seat at to the bar.

“Two vodka sodas,” he ordered, sliding a canine across the bar to pay for both of them. He sat next to her as Ginger began to call up volunteers for a twerking competition.

“That looked like it hurt,” he said.

“Yah, I was just sort of…inspired. In the moment, you know,” she replied.

“Think you’ll be able to perform tomorrow?” he asked.

She winced. “Probably not.”

He pulled out the fistful of teeth he had collected for her and slid them across the bar towards her. “There’s enough there to pay for a good healer,” he said. He was right, but it definitely wouldn’t be enough for a healer and John’s rent, which was two days past due.

“Thanks, George,” she said. There was nothing else to say. Everything was complicated. Satisfaction bled into embarrassment. John would regret this in the morning. But there were still a few hours left to be Ms. Flo Ridya, drag queen extraordinaire. She held one of the white, perfectly shaped molars in her hand, feeling the warmth of its life energy flow into her body. It didn’t even come close to the feeling she’d had on stage.

Their drinks arrived, and Mike, the bartender, leaned over. “That was some crazy shit, Flo,” he said. “The crowd loved it, though.”

“Thanks, Mike,” she replied.

“Next round’s on me,” he winked. “And Flo?”

“Yah?”

“Next time, stretch.”