54 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | FINAL WORD
Qsaltlake.com | ISSUE 311 | May, 2020
the perils of petunia pap smear
A tale of when Hell froze over BY PETUNIA PAP SMEAR
The road
to being in heat is fraught with danger
and excitement. It was a dark and stormy night, in mid-February. The wind outside Chateau Pap Smear was howling loudly, just like a drag queen that just got her wig back from the salon with a really bad style. Despite the stormy weather outside, I felt safely ensconced in my steadfast recliner, heavily re-enforced to accommodate my buttockus maximus, while watching Keeping Up Appearances on TV and taking copious notes as to how Hyacinth Bucket organized her outdoors indoors luxury barbecue with finger buffet. Any queen worth her sequins should be prepared at all times to host such an elegant affair at a moment’s notice. The driving snow was swirling past the window more fiercely than the tornado in The Wizard of Oz. Like Dorothy, I would periodically glance out the window, keeping a discreet watch out for the Wicked Witch of the W#@, I mean Cherri Bombb. As the evening wore on, I began to feel a little chilly. I thought to myself, “Self, (and I knew it was me because I was the only one home) you’re just feeling frosty because of the sound of the wind outside, it’s all in your head.” So, I grabbed a fleecelined rainbow sequin blanket and drew it up above my breasticles and clipped it to my pearl necklace to hold it in place,
7pm, most third Fridays First Baptist Church, 777 S 1300 E fb.me/matronsofmayhem
just like I do with the bib I use when I’m at a buffet. There, comfy and cozy as ever. When the show was finished I went to bed, dreaming of my hero Hyacinth and planning my own elegant gathering. A couple of hours later, I was having the most wonderful dream about lying naked on top of a bear-skin rug in an icy igloo with the hunkiest Eskimo imaginable, towering over me with arms outstretched and lips pursed. I lay shivering in anxious anticipation, frustrated because the hunk couldn’t devise a way to get past my breasticles to kiss me as I so richly deserved. Just then, I woke up, shivering for real. Damn, the bedroom was as cold as an igloo. My teeth were in fact chattering. My thighs had goosebumps the size of my breasticles. I began to feel around in the dark to see if my blankets had fallen off. No, the bedding was still in place. The air in the room felt positively arctic. Turning on the light, I could see my breath. I got up to check the furnace thermostat and it was set at 72 degrees, but the temperature read a chilly 47 degrees. I went downstairs to check the furnace, and it was running, running, running, but the flame never would light. Oh no! What good is being a flaming queen when you can’t be in heat? Well, it’s the middle of the night, in a blizzard and the furnace has conked out. I did what any flaming queen would have done, I went to the kitchen and turned on the oven to generate some heat. I placed a chair in front of the stove, and I sat there, blankly staring at the oven window as if I was watching TV. After a while, the warmth of the stove began to radiate past my breasticles, and I ceased shivering. In the morning, the repairman said it would be 4 days before they could come to my rescue. In order to survive, I just left the oven on for the entire four days and nights. Since the oven was already on, I felt the need to bake cookies, cakes, bread, casseroles, chicken, and all manner of calorie-rich baked goods, so as not to feel like I was wasting gas. So, in other words, just
another typical day in my kitchen. The repairman said that my furnace was, indeed, as ancient as my girdle, and needed to be replaced. Prior to the installation, I thought it was necessary for me to move a huge rack of dresses and wigs that were stored in the furnace room, lest the workmen discover my industrial-strength braziers, or worse yet soil my delicate wardrobe. It took me five hours of hard labor and three doses of Advil before I was able to remove all signs of drag from the furnace room. Potential embarrassment averted. And so, it came to pass, that the next day, two installer guys, who fortunately for me, were both just as gorgeous as the Eskimo of my dreams, came to do me. I mean, to help me get in heat. I mean, to work on my ducts. It was all I could do to stay out of their way as I watched their biceps bulge as they lifted and their buns ripple as they bent over to work on my ducts. There is, indeed, a God! Just as they were preparing to finish the job, the installer guy whom I thought was the most handsome, casually asked me, “So, which of you guys is the one that does drag?” How did he know? I thought I had been so careful in hiding the evidence. Then I remembered, I have a sign above the basement stairs that reads, “The Queen Reigns Here.” This story leaves us with several important questions: 1. Should I develop a line of breasticles with heating elements for such occasions? 2. Should I name them Flaming Queen Furnacesticles? 3. Should the motto be, “This Queen is in Heat?” 4. Would fur-lined underwear show a panty line under my caftan? 5. Did I leave the oven on to heat the house, or just as an excuse to bake cakes to help maintain my aisle-blocking physique? 6. Should I have opened a restaurant and named it the Hefty Heifer? These and other eternal questions will be answered in future chapters of The Perils of Petunia Pap Smear. Q
