MISS
DEMEANOR
“I’m Catwoman. Hear me roar.”
— Catwoman, from the movie Batman Returns, 1992
Miss Demeanor is the first to reply to Mr. Nice Guy’s email.
To: mr_niceguy
Subject: re: The Brat Signal™ is ON!!!!!!!!
Hey, Buddy,
A collective thirtieth-birthday gathering of the tribe this long weekend sounds like fun. I’ll be there for sure – but not until very late on Saturday night or early Sunday morning — I’ve got a running commitment on Saturday nights.
But maybe before we all get together, you and I could meet in person first. There is something I want to talk to you about — just you — and it’s probably best that we do it face to face, without any of the others around.
You name the date and I’ll pick the place.
Love,
Miss Demeanor
Mr. Nice Guy’s heart races.
Just me. Without any of the others around.
Face to face.
Love, Miss Demeanor
Love.
He emails back immediately and tells her that he’s available any night between now and the long weekend.
*
At first, Mr. Nice Guy wonders if he has the right place when Miss Demeanor’s typically sketchy directions bring him to an alley off the farthest alien reaches of Queen West. He descends the rusted iron stairs to the basement of the windowless building. The poster on the metal door reads:
This has to be the place. Miss Demeanor is into such offbeat stuff. It’s one of the reasons that she still fascinates Mr. Nice Guy; every moment with her is charged with adrenaline, sexuality, and the potential for disaster.
Smoke, pulsing purple light, and chest-compressing bass notes slam against Mr. Nice Guy as he pushes through the door.
A tall, slender man with anemic-white skin stands behind a lectern with a sticker-covered cash box on top. His thick black eyeshadow and wide-lapelled brown suit make him look like a bulimic Count Chocula. He says, “You sure you got the right place, cowboy?”
“Um, pretty sure, yeah,” says Mr. Nice Guy.
Count Chocula extends an open palm and says, “Then it’s a ten-dollar cover, Mr. Breeder.”
Mr. Breeder? Does he think he knows me from somewhere? Maybe I look like one of the regulars.
Mr. Nice Guy hands over two fives and finds a seat near the stage. He glances at his Super G Digital Athletic Chronometer. 11:11 p.m. Why do they have to start these things so late? he wonders. Normally, he would be in bed by now.
The atmosphere reminds him of the armpit-and-cheap-cigar-scented strip clubs that Psycho Superstar used to drag him into, but there is also something very different about this place. For one thing, everyone looks like they’re attending a Halloween party with prizes for the weirdest and most revealing costumes.
The woman sitting beside him is dressed in a black latex Wendy O. Williams catsuit, with her Betty-and-Veronica-sized silicone breasts rammed into a pair of transparent plastic cones. Her companion is completely naked, save for a pair of tight satin short shorts and red electrical tape Xs over the nipples of her tiny breasts.
With his orange T-shirt, Levi’s jeans, and wide-open mouth, Mr. Nice Guy stands out in this crowd like a nuclear detonation; he only knows about Wendy O. Williams because Miss Demeanor once gave a book report in English class about a volume called The Wild Women of Punk Rock. Or something like that.
I do NOT look like one of the regulars.
Both of the strange women frown at Mr. Nice Guy as if the world’s biggest zit has just burst in the centre of his forehead.
“Buy a magazine, dude!” the Wendy O. Williams clone barks in a husky voice.
“Or get a hooker!” Electrical-Tape-Nipples grunts.
“Sorry,” he says. He didn’t mean to stare.
Count Chocula strides out onto the elevated, half-circle stage, and brays, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Butches and Bitches, Pitchers and Catchers and Naughty Children of All Ages, PLEEEEEEeeeeeEEEASE put your HANDS TOGETHER, forRRR … PUSSY … PURRRrrrrRRRRR-FECTION!”
He steps aside, and the noise from the costumed crowd is thunderous as a woman in a cat outfit springs onto the stage on all fours. As she rises to her feet, spiralling like a ballerina to the throbbing music, Mr. Nice Guy realizes that she’s not dressed as a cat, but her naked body is painted like one. His penis extends into the right leg of his Levi’s.
Pussy Purr-fection has the sort of long, sinewy legs that Mr. Nice Guy has always admired, and the brown body paint and white leopard spots just accentuate her tapered thighs and angular calf muscles. A burlap tail swings back and forth from her hard round behind, and more cat-spots run along her spine and speckle her muscular back. Triangular cat ears are pinned into her long black hair.
When she spins around, Mr. Nice Guy’s eyes fixate on the large white spot painted over her pubic mound, then on the splotches of white over the nipples of her undulating breasts. It takes a moment for him to realize that the face behind the eyeliner-penciled cat whiskers is Miss Demeanor’s.
Despite his shock at seeing her onstage, her catlike stretching and clawing causes his shaft to grow even larger, to throb like the pulsing dance music that rattles the room.
She retreats behind the black curtains to wild cheering and applause.
Soon after Count Chocula has returned to announce the next act, Miss Demeanor appears beside Mr. Nice Guy’s table. He can see the goosebumps on her skin beneath the brown paint and white spots. Against the cool, smoky air, her whitewashed nipples stick out like .22 calibre bullets, the areolas wrinkled and contracted.
“Hey, buddy,” she says. “Thanks for coming.”
He glances down at the bulge in the right leg of his jeans. He didn’t come, but it was pretty close.
“I half-expected you to bolt before the show even started,” she says.
Don’t look shocked, he tells himself. Miss Demeanor loves to shock. Play it cool. Play it cool.
“Um, nice show, yeah,” says Mr. Nice Guy. “Um, the little ears and the tail are nice touches.”
“Thanks!” she says. “You should see the flapper outfit I wear for Nostalgia Nights. The hem stops three inches above Hello Kitty.”
Hello Kitty is Miss Demeanor’s nickname for her genitals. The first and only time that Mr. Nice Guy got a look at Hello Kitty, it was covered over by a triangle of thick, curly pubic hair. It was that one and only glimpse that established Mr. Nice Guy’s continuing preference for untrimmed pubes. Now Hello Kitty is as bald as a Mexican Hairless.
“Listen,” she says, wrinking her nose, causing her painted-on whiskers twitch, “It’s freezing in here. My nipples are about to freakin’ shatter.”
He would like to offer to warm them with his hands, but Mr. Nice Guy would never say something like that. That’s the sort of thing that Jake would do, not him. He just nods in an understanding way.
“I’m just going to pop into the back and change into my street clothes, okay? I won’t be long. Enjoy the show in the meantime.”
*
Mr.