good bones (or, an exercise in letting go) [1300 wds]
genre: literary/dramedy
[cw: surgery talk, body image, colorism, fatphobia, depression, negative self-talk, emotional neglect, strained relationships]
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Mark ‘Mookie’ Simon, age 30, will break his first bones under the care of Doctor Armand in Tijuana, Mexico. He will have four osteotomies of the jaw over six months while Dodie plays caregiver (yes, paid). Dodie’s unbothered because it’s not skin bleaching or a black market butt lift or something else equally heinous, but also Very Bothered Enough to give Mookie another rendition of Why You Wanna Play With Your Face So Bad from the driver’s seat as they head to Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.
And yet again, Mookie tells her, We don’t all have good bones.
Dodie’s a good enough friend that she'll accept a half-story as long as she can monitor him. Mookie’s grateful. He’s still figuring out how to give her the whole truth.
The PR reason is that he wants a competitive edge. Mookie is better known as Hennesse Williams, fast-growing queen of the Atlanta drag scene, and he wants to expand his horizons. He considered the staple practices: the buzzcuts for better wig placement, the spanx for a smoother look in skirts. What was wrong with something more permanent? He still can’t find an answer. Even little old ladies get chin lifts, tattooed brows. Gertrude can save at the Clinique counter and Mookie can save time contouring to look like he’s got a Disney Tarzan jaw.
The true reason is a bit more involved.
It goes back decades.
The Weight had been the monkey on Mookie’s back (and belly, and hips, and arms, and everywhere) since birth. The Simons of Southern Georgia, USA were always markedly svelte; Mookie was nothing like them. Sure, he had the same twang and hazel eyes and tawny skin, but his facial features stretched wide, his frame and family bones buried deep under fat. It didn’t take long for him to figure out that whatever gene made the Simons energetic, ambitious, and burn off soul food like nothing had skipped him over. His childhood was spent in the solace of the N64 while Dorothy had the nerve to start singing and the gall to be good at it.
[DOROTHY ANNE enters stage center. She is twelve years old. The stage is the Apollo, the Ole Opry, the hearts of most Simons and the world over. MOOKIE is her younger brother. He is eight years old. MOOKIE exits stage left and becomes a glass child.]
[MOOKIE wonders if there is such a thing as a glass parent. He lives with his folks yet he knows nothing about them.]
It had been many years of being grudgingly taken on tour when a blessing came to him in the form of vaudeville. (One can’t repeatedly visit New York without falling into its oldest theatre traditions.) Vaudeville became drag. Drag begot a creativity and athleticism he’d never known was possible for someone like him. Newly seventeen and now those bones that'd bent under the weight of himself and his sadness were suddenly carrying Mookie through a new chapter. Gave strength to Hennessee, a larger-than-life character who was so very cathartic to become. Strength on his own small stages, performing for people of all ages who loved him. Strength in the streets to evade the people who sought to hurt him for finding himself. The biggest blessing: meeting Miss Dodie James.
[DODIE JAMES enters stage right. She is eighteen. She is a copper-skinned snark machine, a super-fan, and is more than happy to be Mookie’s right hand woman.]
But Dorothy was twenty and Nashville wanted her for good, so her managers Mookie’s glass parents went with and sent him to stay with a half-dead great-aunt in ATL. He kept contact with Dodie, grew a name for himself in Georgia, kept his sights set on a forever home in New York one day.
It was a letter from Dorothy that changed everything.
Mookie was blindsided. Her crooning and cowboy fringe had been so separate from his glitter and cocktail pantomime for so long. Read a few words with shaking hands, thought, You have everything. You don’t need me, too. Changed his address and his name and now he’s changing his face.
He’ll finally move to New York. If another Simon ever sees him again, their eyes will slide past him just as they’ve always done.
(He knows in his bones this is how it’s meant to be.)
The Tijuana condo has two bedrooms but Dodie’s bunking with him. Just for now - now that she knows everything.
It’s the night before the first surgery.
It starts with this, Dodie says from her side of the bed. Then you nip and tuck, nip and tuck till you’re the Black Ken Doll From Hell. What happens when we both die and they gotta identify you?
Mookie closes his eyes. They don’t know me for my smile. They can check my teeth.
+++
[The stage is MOOKIE’S SKULL – pitch black, pain-free room. The buzz of a BONE SAW reverberates. MANDIBLE floor shudders and breaks under pressure.]
Recovery is this:
-A wired jaw
-Dodie doing all the talking in Tijuana (Mookie S.O.B.S., which means he Spares Others from his Broken Spanish)
-Dodie tending his wounds
-Endless milkshakes and purees and Peridex mouthwash
-Extended time to shop floor show ideas
By night he falls asleep sweating under fans with 'novelas in one ear and a Bronx accent in the other (Dodie never moved into her own room).
When he gets onstage as Hennessee again he’ll have much to answer for. He deliberately kept the reason for his leave vague but he knows someone will put two and two together before he returns to American soil. (Queued media posts can only tide fans over for so long.) With this liquid diet he’s lightening up so much, too, and so having a snatched face and waist will make Hennessee the talk of Midtown. It’s all enough material for several shows over and Mookie’s pushing his pen overtime in this condo. (His jaw aches with the urge to practice aloud more than anything. Properly, not the ventriloquist dummy murmuring he can do through the wire right now.) He has way too many puns about mental gymnastics.
[He, MOOKIE SIMON, grown-ass glass child, is she, HENNESSEE WILLIAMS, drag superstar and legendary gaywright of the 21st century. She is in Baja California with ten journals and a dry erase board and she’s not afraid to use them.]
The page on the bed between two friends comprises the scribblings of madmen. Mookie can’t tell where his ideas end and Dodie’s begin. He writes ‘Operation MB’, gives her room to work. Quickly gives her a metal grin – she’s just drawn Brain Surgery Cavity Sam instead of Full Body Cavity Sam.
Isolation got us on the same wavelength, Mookie writes.
Dodie shakes her head. We were already there.
And that’s another thing to contend with: he's not sure when Dodie crossed over from best bud to collaborator – but he's not complaining. Who better to create with than someone who's supported him from jump? Something about her vagabond nature made her latch on. Over the years he’s learned about her foster upbringing. How it'd hardened her in some ways, softened her in others. She doesn’t talk about her birth folks much like Mookie doesn't mention his family. Yet the whole of her has always seemed so transcendent. Mookie's trauma is written on his face when he's not on stage, and he's sure his friendship with her is predicated on her being the only one who can handle it. Maybe that's phrenology, that messy old way of thinking things are so set in bones. Maybe emotions are a bit malleable, like cartilage. Maybe Dodie just sees a person; a being made of ever-moving parts.
[The stage is MOOKIE’S SKULL. It’s newly renovated but it’s still not all that pretty. DODIE is strangely at home here.]