'Swan Songs' is the first installment in the 'The Stardust Diaries' series.
The Stardust Diaries are unique - they're a soap opera, a drama, a comedy and a thoroughly entertaining and often moving love story.
The love of Tarn's life is his partner, Jonathan Lane, assistant manager in a jeweller's shop, aka Stardust Twinkles, transvestite and part time drag queen.
Life with Twinkles is many things, but quiet isn’t one of them. He’s beautiful, complex, impulsive, a diva, demanding, loving, bitchy, jealous, emotional and sometimes just plain naughty!
The hub of T & T's social life is The Pink Parrot Club, a haven for the transgender crowd. Here you’ll find Twink's best friend, Lulu, and his deadly rival, Natalie, the fiend in a frock. Meet the ballroom dancing medics, Teddy and Maurice, and Brian, the club owner, and a host of others including Rick the lascivious barman.
Follow the everyday trials, tribulations heartaches and joys of life with a man who has a unique aspect to his personality. An uplifting and tender book with some laugh out loud moments, as well as some tearful ones.
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29th December 2004:
Hello And Welcome To My Life
I’ve often talked about keeping a journal, but have done little about it until now. I’m no Samuel Pepys, let’s be clear on that, but I think I’ve got a tale or two to tell and a song worth singing about life with my partner Stardust Twinkles or to give him his proper birth name Jonathan Lane, and to that end this diary is dedicated. Twinkles isn’t the sort of person you can easily categorize. He’s a gay man with transvestite tendencies. He’s also a drag queen upon occasion and in his case a drama queen pretty much 24/7. If you’re insistent on a label then you could say he’s transgender or gender fluid depending on how you view these things. I suppose the best way to categorise him is actually not to try and categorise him. He simply is who he is and I love him to bits even when he’s driving me mad. I have to report he’s not always easy to live with.
My name, I may as well get it out of the way, is Tarn. Yep, unusual isn’t it? Scottish in origin I believe, and my surname is, wait for it, Swan…pause for sniggers to die down…yes I know tarn means lake, that’s me, Swan Lake. You can imagine the hilarity it caused at school registration sessions, mainly among the teachers I might add. My parents gave little thought to the fact the Christian name they both liked (in honour of a Scottish uncle on my mother’s side who reputedly has lots of money to leave when he finally shuffles off this mortal coil) didn’t team particularly well with the surname Swan. Of course my being homosexual, or gay, or queer, or whatever term you prefer to apply, adds to the hilarity some folk seem obliged to feel whenever I introduce myself. I’m well aware everyone in my office calls me Rudolf Nureyev behind my back. I don’t mind too much. I like to think it’s affectionately meant and they did come up with a cracking Christmas present for me this year, a pair of ballet tickets for a new production of the gay version of Swan Lake. Okay, as gifts go it’s slightly tongue in cheek, but all the same I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t told Twinkles yet. It’s no good telling him such things too far ahead of time. He just goes overboard with excitement.
At the best of times Twinkles, as he likes to be called, isn’t what you’d call a morning person and this morning, as soon became clear, wasn’t the best of times. Despite me yelling from the foot of the stairs that time was moving on and he was going to make us late for work he refused to shift his bum from bed. He resorted to retrieving one of his high heels from under the bed and chucking it across the floor fondly thinking it would fool me into thinking he was up and about. I resorted to threats yelling if he didn’t move his arse out of bed pronto there’d be tears before breakfast, and they wouldn’t be mine.
Ten minutes later he appeared in the kitchen wearing nothing but a sullen expression and a pair of fluffy, silver-pink high-heel mules. The ones I bought him for Christmas. He loves them. Twinkles and nudity are usually a favourite combination of mine, but it was a chilly morning and I did think he was risking getting a cold. I suggested he might like to put his dressing gown on. Cue action. Apparently, his favourite silk kimono with black feather trim was no longer in favour. It made him look fat. He wasn’t wearing it ever again. I gave an inward sigh. It was that time of year again. The festivities were all but over and people were weighing up the cost, both financially and in terms of over indulgence on rich festive foods. I told him he looked exactly the same as he had before Christmas, absolutely gorgeous and not to worry about a bitchy comment made by a recent arrival (and new rival) at The Pink Parrot Club the night before. (The Pink Parrot is the hub of our social life. It caters for the cross-dressing and gay fetish communities. The leather boys downstairs and transgender ladies upstairs) Despite my assurances he remained adamant. He’d gained weight. It wasn’t only his kimono that made him look fat either. It was everything.
I pointed out he’d have to find something to wear. He could hardly turn up at the jeweller’s shop he worked in wearing nothing but a pair of fluffy mules, no matter how pretty they were. He wasn’t going to frigging work. He hated the first frigging day back after frigging Christmas because it was always frigging mayhem with people returning the shit presents they’d been bought and demanding frigging refunds. I could just phone him in frigging sick because he was sick, absolutely sick of frigging work. I told him I’d do no such thing and was it really necessary for him to frig quite so much. As far as I was concerned he was going to work, end of discussion. Sometimes he needs someone to make decisions for him because he gets beyond making them for himself, sensible ones anyway.
Ushering him upstairs I began the thankless task of helping him find something to go with the grey suit that is obligatory attire for assistant managers.
Sitting on the bed, arms folded, legs crossed, he proceeded to turn his cute little nose up at everything I suggested. The pink shirt was too tight it made him look like a bloated marzipan pig (his words, not mine) The blue shirt was the wrong shade of blue it made his skin look dirty. The lavender shirt was just so out of fashion he’d have to be declared officially dead before even considering putting it on his body, his loathsome fat body, and incidentally, it was all my fault he’d gained weight in the first place. I should have stopped him eating so much chocolate over Christmas. After all I was supposed to be his Dominant and what kind of rotten Dom would allow his partner to get fat on chocolate? I said the type of Dom who didn’t know his partner was stuffing his greedy face with sweets from the giant tin of Quality Street he’d slyly stashed under his side of the bed without my knowledge. Huh, he curled his lip and said if I were a half decent Dom I’d have spotted that one straight away. I replied that unlike the fictitious domestic Doms he read about online I wasn’t psychic.
He continued to reject all clothing I offered. The lemon shirt was just yuck he’d seen more attractive shades of bile, it would make him look jaundiced and he wouldn’t even consider being seen dead in it. In fact it was too vile to even be cremated in and didn’t I know, ducky, that lemon was even more out of fashion than lavender. Was I trying to destroy his fashion reputation? Then why don’t you just wear a plain white shirt, I said reasonably, through gritted teeth. He flung a fit. WHITE, he screeched. I’m not wearing a white shirt. Do I look like a boring straight accountant? I don’t think so! As well as the fit, he flung the shirt and a copy of Hello Magazine before kicking his mules across the bedroom in one of his trademark, post Christmas, going back to work tantrums. One of them crashed into the wardrobe door leaving an ugly scratch.
I lost patience. He was being plain naughty. I wasn’t putting up with it. Hauling him up from the bed I gave his bare bottom a damn good smacking. He still wasn’t speaking to me when I dropped him off at work. I watched him flounce across the pavement looking very smart in his grey suit with white shirt and navy blue silk tie. The bright pink sequinned boots and pink boa he wore in lieu of a scarf looked a little incongruous, but a transvestite come drag queen’s nature will out even when they’re largely in ‘civvies.’ Uttering a prayer for him to be in a better mood when I picked him up, I set off for my own place of work.
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