[New] the perils of petunia pap smear The tale of Ice, Ice Baby

BY PETUNIA PAP SMEAR

road to Mandalay is fraught with danger and excitement.

The

Last week, I looked at the weather forecast — slushy rain, snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. My breasticles tend to get brittle and crack in the cold. My beehive hair gets all soggy and droops when it gets wet. And my sequined shoes are not well-suited to icy slick pavement. When I slip and fall, the U.S. Geological Survey usually registers it as about a 7.3 quake on the Richter scale. My bones began to ache just thinking about it. So, I decided it was time for this old queen to follow the examples of my sisters, the pink flamingos, and travel south for a brief respite.

Vegas seemed like an eminently doable post-Christmas escape for a desperate queen on a budget. So, I prepared to load up Queertanic, my beloved land yacht, with the barest of essentials.

On the twelfth day after Christmas, my true love told to me: load twelve caftans a flowing, eleven wigs in buckets, ten pairs of breasticles, nine shoes for dancing, eight fans for fanning, seven batteries charging, six bedazzled purses, five golden earrings… four bags of glitter, three pairs of glasses, two sequined capes, and your scooter so that you won’t have to walk.

(Be honest, could you read that without humming the Twelve Days of Christmas?)

After much white-knuckle driving through blizzardy conditions, we arrived in Vegas. God bless the snow tires! We stayed at Mandalay Bay. I needed all my queenly intuition to navigate the intricate and convoluted maze to enter the self-parking terrace. I began to unload the car to travel the quarter-mile distance from the parking terrace to our hotel room. Firstly, I unloaded my electric mobility scooter, Queertanic’s Mini-Me, aka Queerteeny.

I used a bungee cord to attach the handle of my exceedingly large rolling suitcase (have you ever seen a queen with a small case?) behind Queerteeny such that it resembled the little choo- choo that could. Since we were in Mandalay, I felt like the railroad from the Bridge on the River Kwai. And I set off. I was so proud of my ingenuity.

We proceeded to drive through the parking terrace. Several onlookers applauded my resourcefulness as I drove past them, giving a suitable queenly wave. All was well until we reached the elevator. The little choo-choo that could, couldn’t fit into the elevator. Damn! So, I had to stop and uncouple the suitcase and schlep everything separately into the elevator, then re-couple everything again once we reached the casino floor. Then rinse and repeat when we got to the elevator to our room. So much for that “brilliant” idea.

After we got settled in our room, we decided to go see the Titanic Exhibit at the Luxor Casino, so we headed to the tram that connects the casinos. Queerteeny, when not encumbered with a caboose, is capable of speeds up to eighteen miles per hour. I gave into temptation and opened the throttle and sped through some of the more wideopen areas of the casino floor, performing a delicate slalom maneuver narrowly missing a few tourists. When he caught up, Mr. Pap Smear quietly admonished me that it was probably dangerous and most likely illegal for yours truly to be “bowling for tourists.” Consequently, I slowed down and rode Queerteeny onto the tram to go next door to the Luxor.

As we entered the great atrium of the Luxor pyramid, it suddenly became apparent that I had a here-to-fore unforeseen problem. Queerteeny, just like Queertanic, is pre-programmed to search out any and all buffets. It took all of my strength and willpower to steer her past the buffet and towards the Titanic exhibit. I’m sure, to the casual observer, I might have appeared to be a drunken driver. Once again, the long-suffering Mr. Pap Smear warned me about bowling for tourists.

As we entered the Titanic exhibit, it took all of my queenly skills to drive

Queerteeny slowly through the different rooms of the exhibit without accidentally running into any of the priceless displays. The different artifacts were amazing to see, and the audio story was very moving.

In the final room, there was a large section of the hull of the ship and a huge iceberg with a cold breeze blowing off it. The temperature was set to be very chilly so as to help the observer to feel how it may have been the same as the temperature on April 15, 1912, in the North Atlantic. Just as the audio recording gave a sound of the iceberg scraping the ship, I inadvertently bumped Queerteeny into a wall, and as the ship began to go down, Queetreeny’s left rear tire went flat.

Just like Titanic, Queerteeny went down! I was slightly comforted by the women-and-children-first directive. But then I felt conflicted that the captain, or queen in this case, should go down with the ship. Realizing that the Carpathia would not be rescuing me, I questioned how to get the injured Queerteeny back to our hotel. I improvised by leaning the majority of my weight, mostly breasticles, opposite the flat tire and limped ever so slowly back to Mandalay Bay on two wheels. This story leaves us with several important questions: 1. Do I need to get a license to be a railroad brakeman to couple and uncouple Queerteeny? 2. Should I apply for a patent for the new game, bowling for tourists? 3. Should I assign different point values for each category of person I knock over, such as grandmas and snotty kids? 4. How many extra points for hitting a Mormon Bishop? 5. Could this slalom driving count as training for the winter Olympics? 6. Would a drag queen be allowed with the women and children in the lifeboat?

These and other eternal questions will be answered in future chapters of The Perils of Petunia Pap Smear