By now I’m usually up to an hour late, but there’s always time for a quick swig from the bottle in the freezer before heading out. I pace for a bit, maybe dance a little, trying to work out any stiffness in the costume, or predict any potential dislodgement disasters. Fluid movement is the final piece of the illusion. Many men have experimented with dressing up in women’s clothing, but no matter how successful with their look, a swaggering gait will shatter their efforts.
After hundreds of nights of lengthy and painful preparation, I’ve reached one solid conclusion. I would never, ever, ever want to be a woman. Aqua, on the other hand, has been sneaking up on me since childhood, demanding to be set loose.
The Tunnel used to be a garage for subway trains on the west side, but now its cavernous, labyrinthian rooms serve as a final destination for thousands of clubgoers each weekend. No one save the cleaning crew must really have a true grasp of its immense layout. With multiple entrances and exits, dozens of huge rooms open onto other large spaces, which in turn open onto yet others. Upstairs, downstairs, basement chambers, it’s almost impossible to even gauge how many stories are in the building.
Being inside is similar to being inside the mind of a drunk or drug-addled partyer. It’s a mirror facing a mirror, the space reflecting the flowing, amorphous, infinity-pushing thoughts of its patrons. One room thundering with dance music inhales and exhales its inhabitants into the next room, with a different DJ and décor and vibe. The Kenny Scharf Lounge, named after its designer, is covered floor to ceiling to walls with fake fur and glowing orbs. Sometimes it’s used as one of the VIP rooms, although there are three or four more that can be pressed into service if needed. The main dance floor remains industrial, looking much as it probably did when lines of train cars were parked there, except with racks of stage lighting and audio equipment lining the ceiling and walls. Off this room are four other small spaces with bars and DJs, and the same goes for upstairs and downstairs as well.
The frontal lobe of the operation is up a small set of stairs just inside the Twenty-seventh Street entrance. At the top of the stairs is an unmarked door that opens onto a suite of offices that look like any offices one would find in the wholesale district. Plain gray metal desks and filing cabinets line the walls with slightly hipper than average office workers sitting around adding things, handing out pay envelopes, and filing papers. This is where I head at the end of the night to pick up my couple hundred dollars cash.
But that’s a long way off. Four and a half hours, to be exact. Four and a half hours, twelve vodkas, three makeup reapplications, and two quarter-sized blisters on my feet away from home. Some nights fly by like Christmas morning, and others drag on like a family reunion. Tonight is the latter.
Jack, Ryan, and Grey have come with me to work tonight. It had been a long week at the ad agency, having just won a piece of the ABC News account, so Jack and I hadn’t seen much of each other all week. Hence this rare trip out together. He doesn’t go out much at night anymore, except for his calls, having had his fill of it when he moved to New York six years earlier. While attending grad school, he hung around with a group of performance artists who held their shows at dingy little East Village clubs. One of his favorite performances involved him lying down nude on a table while audience members were invited up to lick and attach postage stamps to him anywhere they wished. One of his artist friends was the person who initially steered him toward the escort business as a way of making extra cash.
Much of my busy work week had been spent at the ABC World News Tonight studios and offices. It had been Laura’s and my ingenious insight that ratings might be improved by giving the viewing public a glimpse at the exciting behind-the-scenes workings of Peter Jennings et al. So the two of us tried to be as inconspicuous as possible lurking around the area the journalists called “The Rim,” filming the reporters and editors with a handheld video camera.
Peter sits at a round table with his editors and previews stories as they come in from reporters around the globe, occasionally rewriting sections himself, typing away with two fingers at the computer stationed behind him. What was initially pretty fascinating quickly grew mundane, and we soon found ourselves trying to get shots of Peter Jennings picking his nose or topless as he changed shirts before going on air. I can safely say if we were trying to remedy viewers’ perception of a dry and boring newscast, they weren’t going to be that much more titillated by the lack of shenanigans going on behind the scenes.
It was a slow news week, and I started making deals with God that I would stop drinking so much if only He would conjure up a small tactical nuclear war somewhere in the world. I spent an inordinate amount of time reworking my fantasy about Anderson Cooper showing up in the ABC cafeteria and asking me if I wanted to come up to his office for a quick drink and blow job. I had gone in expecting wacky newsroom hijinks, since my entire experience of TV news comes from an unhealthy obsession with Mary Tyler Moore reruns. But instead I was stuck, day in and day out, with a bunch of behind-the-scenes old white guys trying to mug for our cameras.
The days’ only excitement for me came at six fifteen when Peter disappeared into his office to get made up for the broadcast. I would grow more and more nervous for him as the live six thirty start time approached, wanting to scream, “Come on, Pete! Get your groove on! My mom and dad are wrapping up dessert, flipping channels to ABC right now! Let’s hustle, buddy!”
But Peter always got into the studio just as millions of aging people were clearing away supper dishes and tuning in to see what news ol’ Pete had decided they needed to hear about tonight. Laura and I sat in the control room and watched the broadcast, joking with the technicians during the commercial breaks filled with ads for various liniments and nutritional supplements. By the end of the week, the news seemed anything but.
In the fluorescent-lit basement room that serves as a dressing area at Tunnel, I’m mixing a fresh batch of glittering gold lip gloss to replace the layers I had left behind on my last four vodka glasses.
“Here, hold this,” I say to Jack, handing him the gold pigment while I measure out the correct amount of gloss with the concentration of a biochemist.
“One of your eyelashes looks loose,” he says.
“Thanks. You haven’t had any calls yet?”
“I had one, but they didn’t want to pay enough. I’m having a good time here.”
I’m not sure if I believe him, but I’m glad he’s here with me anyway. It’s a big night at the club. Grace Jones is scheduled to give a small charity performance at three, and the club is packed. Personally, I’m not sure which is more charitable…someone giving Grace Jones a gig, or the audience having to stick around to witness it.
The dressing room is crowded with other drag queens and go-go boys. Some work for different promoters, and others, like me, work for the club itself. Getting a regular club gig is the best a drag queen can hope for. Very rarely do we have to actually perform; mostly we just get to show up week after week and act like we’re having the time of our lives. We’re like the professional laughers that TV shows hire for studio audiences.
“Are you ready to go back upstairs?” Jack asks. “Ryan and Grey are dancing.”
“I’ve just got to change my batteries and I’ll be up. I’ll meet you in the main room,” I say.
“What if I get a call?”
“Just tell any drag queen—they’ll let me know.”
Jack leaves and I start the intricate process of retrieving the tiny flashlights positioned in little pockets all over my costume that make it glow. I’m just drunk enough that my fingers have abandoned all pretense of dexterity.
“Need a hand?” It’s Carlos, a cute Puerto Rican go-go boy who has a little crush on me. He’s just finished smearing glittered body oil on himself, and he has that alluring sexy smirk that all guys whose brains aren’t wired to handle any sort of deep complexities in life have. Carlos is mostly straight, and during the day he works on his uncle’s construction crew in Lo
ng Island, but at night he works the gay clubs because they pay more than straight ones, and he gets much better tips. Plus, he likes going home with an occasional drag queen. Or two.
“Sure. I can’t get the one in back, right there,” I say, pointing to the light attached inside the waistband of my miniskirt. Carlos kneels down behind me and reaches up my skirt. All airs of modesty are disposed of in the dressing room. We’re all wizards here, and we’re all behind the curtain. Nothing to hide in Oz. He maneuvers in the fresh battery I hand him and stands up in front of me.
“One hand scratches your back, you wash mine,” he mangles in his heavy, incredibly sexy accent. He’s pointing at his G-stringed crotch. He’s in need of refluffing.
While the guys who get picked to work as go-go dancers unfailingly have some sort of genetic predisposition toward genital elephantiasis, they all still augment their gifts with the act of fluffing before they go onstage. This involves the manual stimulation, either by themselves or a nearby volunteer, of their cocks into a semi-turgid state. Once the desired girth is reached—and no extra since New York State law prohibits the display of full-on hard-ons—a rubber band is slipped around the base of their penis and behind their balls like a cock ring. The extra blood that has flowed into their dick is thus trapped there, ensuring an impressive bulge in their G-string—and more numerous tips.
“Okay, Carlos,” I sigh, as if being asked to take out the trash. “But only because you’re so cute.”
I sit down in front of him and with one hand I pull down the front of his G-string and with the other I grasp his cock and softly start stroking it.
“No,” Carlos says. “With your mouth.”
I’m about to point out to him the intricate perfection of the lipstick I just reapplied when he grabs my hair and pulls my face toward his crotch.
It’s Sophie’s choice. My wig or my lipstick. Since I have no extra hairspray in my bag, I dive headfirst onto his dick with the resignation of a child being forced to eat his vegetables before dessert. Not that it’s a wholly unpleasant affair. Plenty of people in this club would say I have one of the best views in Manhattan at the moment.
While working on the task at mouth, I glance from side to side wondering if any of the dozen or so other people in the room are taking any notice. Of course they’re not, and I find myself a little disappointed. Am I not being sexy enough? I return to the job with renewed determination. I even let out a moan or two, as if I were in an open audition for a low-budget porn movie.
My redoubled efforts seem to pay off. The drag queens around me start to cheer me on, and I smile as widely as I can considering the situation, and give a beauty queen style wave to my newfound audience. With one free hand I grab my makeup brush and pretend to reapply my blush without breaking rhythm on Carlos. The room explodes with laughter, including Carlos, while I continue to touch up my entire face—eye shadow, powder, lip liner—all the while bobbing up and down on his dick. By the time I pick up my compact mirror and pretend to fluff up the bangs on my wig most of the room is doubled over in tears. The fish are sloshing around in a contented rhythm, everyone is having a great time, and Carlos is inflating at an alarming rate.
And then it happens. My right eyelash gets irretrievably enmeshed in Carlos’s pubic hair. The lash had been coming off all night, so after Jack noticed it, I applied three times the amount of glue to it as I normally do. Now the combination of drying glue and tangled pubic hair has my face more or less permanently attached to Carlos’s crotch. Something’s gotta give, either my eyelid or a chunk of his pubes. I want to scream in laughter with everyone else, but having my mouth full, I’m reduced to a combination of chortling and gagging, which sets everybody off even more.
Ginny Tonic comes to my rescue with a bottle of spirit gum solvent, which winds up stinging my eyes so badly my tears streak my mascara down to my chin. But perhaps the saddest thing is that the entire ordeal was for naught. By the time my face is unimpaled from Carlos’s cock, he’s laughing so hard he’s completely lost the stiffness I’d sacrificed so much for. I send him over to the corner to start over solo.
Back upstairs I start searching for Jack. For ordinary mortals, trying to find someone in a busy club is like trying to find a needle in a haystack at night during a lightning storm. The pulsing strobes illuminate the crowd just long enough to pick out a body part or two. Sound travels out of one’s mouth mere inches before it gets knocked apart by a sonic bass beat. But to drag queens, this is our daylight. It’s like high noon on a clear day.
I see Jack by the champagne bar and sneak up behind him.
I reach around and stick my hands in his front pockets. He spins around and tries to kiss me.
“I wouldn’t,” I shout, “you have no idea where this mouth has been.”
“Do you want some water?” he asks.
“Only if it came out of a fermented potato,” I reply.
“You’re not still drinking.”
“I have to. I wouldn’t want all these drink tickets to grow up with self-esteem issues.”
“Just pace yourself. You’ve still got three hours to go,” he says.
He’s right, of course. But this is no place for temperance. Ryan and Grey come up beside us, both sweaty from dancing.
“What do you guys want?” I ask them, holding up three drink tickets and, before they can answer, add “and get me a vodka while you’re at it.”
Some people have mantras; I have a coda. I can find a way to end most sentences logically with “and get me a vodka while you’re at it.” If my last name wasn’t already hyphenated, I’d consider legally adding that phrase to it. “Kilmer-Purcell-And-Get-Me-Another-One-While-You’re-At-It.”
The night has turned around successfully for me. By the time I’m halfway through with this seventh drink, I’m reaching the zone. Time starts slipping, and I have a hard time remembering the evening as one long narrative. It’s breaking up into little moments with little or no connective tissue. One moment I’m with Jack, Grey, and Ryan at the bar, and the next I’m giving a lapdance to a guy in a wheelchair who I think has cerebral palsy. When one moment grows dull, there’s a better one in the room next door. Standing in line in the unisex bathroom I spot Andy Dick. Minor celebrities always welcome the company of drag queens. It gives them the added sparkle that they haven’t quite earned themselves. Suddenly the thought occurs to me that there would be nothing funnier than to be able to say that I touched Andy Dick’s dick, so I take him into a stall and do just that.
I flit from room to room, corner to corner, dancing on top of speakers and throwing candy from balcony railings. Each segment of the evening is a succinct little capsule of uninhibited fun, fueled by vodka and the fact that there is no actual progression of time anymore. Word has spread through the club that Grace Jones won’t show up for a while yet, which surprises no one and only exacerbates the tide of gossip about her massive drug problems.
When I reach this point, even the conscientious eleven-year-old Episcopal altar boy in me shuts the fuck up and starts to have a good time.
Eva Corvetta and I are doing a mock lesbian sex show on a speaker when Tony, a go-go boy wearing only a towel, comes by to tell me that Jack got a call and had to leave. The go-go boy towel dance usually comes about two-thirds of the way into the evening. They each mount a speaker and dance while dangling a skimpy white gym towel in front of their dicks. Male dancers can’t legally show their genitals, but this segment at least gives the audience the illusion of the possibility of getting a peek. Eva and I pull Tony up onto our speaker to dance with us. We take turns lifting the corner of his towel and peering underneath, acting out theatrical reactions of amazement for the crowd. Being a drag queen in a loud club requires much the same dramatic skills as those of a silent movie actress.
Soon we’re sandwiching him between the two of us, rubbing and grinding, of course always mindful of protecting our costumes and makeup. With him safely hidden between the two of us, we pull his towel off compl
etely and take turns spinning it over our heads.
Okay, it’s safe to say that nobody dons a pair of metallic opera gloves to open a stubborn jar of pickles. They’re slippery. And this is why, completely unintentionally, while I was spinning Tony’s towel over my head, it accidentally slipped through my fingers and flew out into the crowd.
There was very little chance that anyone in the crowd was going to find it in his or her heart to return it.
This is how Eva and I wind up ten feet above the dance floor with a hot naked man sandwiched between the two of us and about four hundred drunk, high, and horny gay men between him and the nearest dressing room. I could go to a thousand wars and never see the look of fear in any man’s eyes like there was in Tony’s. The dance floor surges toward our speaker, cheering in anticipation. Eva and I do the only thing two compassionate drag queens could do at a moment like this.
We jump down off the speaker and leave Tony standing by himself.
With drag queens, the audience is always right.
12
I double-check the address that Jack had written on the scrap of paper and head up the brownstone stairs, being careful not to catch my heels on the long white fake fur cape dragging behind me.
I left the club early to make it to this party. Jack told me to try to be there by three a.m., and it’s now three twenty-four, according to my cell phone.
Apartment 4A. I hit the buzzer.
“Griffin,” the intercom crackles.
“Chinese delivery,” I shout into the box as I’d been instructed. The door buzzes, and I go in.
It’s trashier than I’d imagined. The hallway is carpeted in a threadbare mauve rug, and the walls are painted the same glossy putty color as most mid-priced rental buildings across the city. The stairs are covered in brown linoleum tile, chipped and peeling in the corners. The staircase tilts away from the wall as they do in all buildings over fifty or so years old.