My friends and I are in an on-again/off-again writing club where the rules are simple. Every two weeks you have to submit three short stories that it took you 20 minutes or less to write. These are the results.

In a white trash theme bar in Chelsea an effeminate man daintily eats tater tots from a small paper trough.  The bartender has bleached pig tails in twist ties and ANTHONY tattooed on the back of her neck in ALL CAPS, in the same elegant font the Treasury uses when they spell out a bill’s denomination in text.  There’s a pregnant mannequin in a muumuu and shower cap, cigarette in hand, sitting in a lawn chair atop a vintage pale green refrigerator.  Canned beer on special.

“So we hear you’re an actress,” the gay black men at the end of the bar ask Anthony in unison.  Then they both laugh and slap each other’s shoulders.

“I am,” she says smiling, proudly washing a pint glass.  She’s in an off-broadway play about, “ghosts coming back to life and explaining their stories to someone who’s wandered into the cemetery at night.”

“You’re one of the ghosts?”

“Yeah, but I’m an understudy for The Wanderer.  And she’s a notorious cokehead, so I should get some shows.”

The gay men are dancers–one was in Lion King for two weeks and is currently working angles and weighing options; the other dances atop speakers at a club in the meat-packing district.  Lion King had been the back half of a giraffe.  Speakers has to writhe shirtless in lamé hot shorts, dusted head to toe with glitter makeup.  He said, “Honey, I got glitter in my ass fo-EVA!”  The Lion King shrieked with laughter and pantomimed swooning off his stool.  Anthony laughed too, but you could see the uncertainty in her eyes, searching their faces for when she could stop faking it and give a good-natured sigh at the end as if to say, “Oh you gays!”

I don’t care who you are–straight, queen, bear or bi–when I got ten minutes to get a shot and smoke a one hitter in a phone booth before my movie starts, I just want you to shut the fuck up and let me order a drink.