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We met at a Queen tribute night. I was trying to get a job and keep clean for drug tests. I’d been eating a lot of mushrooms because they don’t show up on the tests and I need constant variety in my life.
I walked three miles to this dinky auditorium. Trees danced and swayed and leaned over me. The sidewalk nearly swallowed me whole, but I made it alive.
When I arrived, I found out I was wrong. There was no band, just a guy who looked like Freddy Mercury playing Queen covers on the piano. The rest of the group was missing or lost.
There was only one other person in the auditorium. I was tripping so hard, I sat down right next to her and leaned over and said: “Where’s everyone else?”
“It’s just you and me.”
“No I mean Queen.”
On stage fake Freddie Mercury was singing Mustapha. He hit all the highs. The song is pretty much all highs. Fake Freddie wore white-washed jeans and a sleeveless shirt that exposed his hard biceps and thick shoulders. His mustache glistened. Smoke billowed on stage. Lasers bounced off his sculpted muscles. At one point he did this totally erotic hip dancing jangly thing. It was hot. Her and I both enjoyed it.
After the show, we made out on top of her Camry. Then we made out inside her Camry. We did some other stuff too, but that’s between her and me. When we were done doing what we were doing, we smoked a cigarette and watched the big trees across the street. The branches danced in the air for what seemed like hours and it was nice.
Eventually I looked away from the trees and saw Fake Freddie exiting the auditorium. He had two beautiful women on either side of him. They walked right passed us in the car.
“We’ll that ruins my entire night,” she said.
“Why?”
“It’s not authentic. Freddie Mercury was gay.”
“He was?”
“Gay as Christmas.”
“But that guy hit all the highs,” I defended. “Look at his mustache.”
“It’s not authentic.”
“I hear you.” But I didn’t understand her. Because I was tripping balls.
She told me I should go. I got out of the car and walked home. I didn’t get her number, I didn’t get her name.
About a month later I got a job at the piss test center. They didn’t drug test me for it. The irony of my life kills me sometimes, but I’m still alive. One day after lunch, guess who walks in.
She said she needed to pass a drug test to work at the auditorium and could I help her out. I told her that could get me fired and I really needed this job. She pulled some sweaty fives from her bra and tossed them on the counter.
“Okay,” I said. “Follow me.”
I led her to the employee bathroom and while I was working up a stream I thought I caught her sneaking a peek at my privates.
“It costs extra to see it,” I said.
“I’ve seen it already,” she said. “It’s nothing special.”
Then Queen came on the radio above us. Real (dead) Freddie Mercury was singing “Under Pressure”—that song that Vanilla Ice stole.
And I don’t know why, but I started dancing. I couldn’t help myself. Suddenly I was doing that erotic hip jiggly thing that I saw Fake Freddie Mercury doing that one night. And she seemed to really dig it because soon her and I were making out right there in the employee bathroom of the piss test center.
And I asked her if this was authentic enough for her and she said it was. And when were finished she said “Thanks for the piss.”
“No problem,” I said and lit a cigarette and smoked it right there in the employee bathroom of the piss test center listening to the rest of the song. Letting Freddie Mercury wash over me.
Kevin Sterne is the author of All Must Go (House of Vlad) as well as the chapbooks From Your Jerry (No Rest Press) and I've Done Worse (Long Day Press). He lives in Chicago and loves running and trees. Read more at kevinsternewrites.com