Jayna walked up to me and we gave each other an air-kiss; I was getting good at the drag queen game now. She remarked about how good I looked; my outfit consisted of a black silk, short-sleeved, ribbed mock turtleneck, black cotton skort with a silver zipper up front, sheer off- black stockings, and black patent four-inch sandal platforms. I unzipped my skort just a little to reveal more of my smooth, 100% natural feminine-looking thighs.
I loved how the cool summer breeze and indoor air conditioning were
blowing against my almost bare legs. My bronze-painted toenails
peeked out beneath the foot of each sandal platform. My eye and cheek
makeup was a mixture of bronze colors and my lipstick was a burgundy
with a touch of gold frost from my eyeshadow collection. Definitely a
hint of drag queen. I'd say I looked pretty damn hot with all of the
comments I got as I walked into The 24th Ward.
Jayna wore a shiny black leather jacket over a plain black scoop-necked t-shirt, a black-and-white checkered skirt, opaque black stockings, and platforms higher than mine. We were now about the same height. Around Jayna's neck was a round yellow container of bubbles with a happy face on it, a kind of mocking sneer that matched her own smile perfectly. Jayna's curly black hair was wrapped in a headband and most of it was sprouted above the headband as usual.
We were talking small talk, but were interrupted by a most hilarious vision.
A hunky Latino in blue overalls.
It was funny because I had never seen a Latino wear blue overalls before, at least not like the way he wore them. He was buck naked underneath the overalls and one of his two overall straps was dangling. The remaining strap was all that was holding up everything. The Latino hunk had curly black hair, a muscular, tanned body, and a pleasant smile - complete with dimples. I could tell that Jayna wanted him. She immediately wrapped her arm around this guy as if she knew him. At first, I thought she did.
"Hi, hon!" she said to the Latino as he approached the bar to order a drink. He gave me the eye and a quick smile. I'm not kidding.
The Latino introduced himself to us as Luis. Jayna introduced herself to him. Luis and Jayna hugged and Jayna was lifted off the ground a little. He then turned his attention towards me. He moved a bit away from Jayna, grabbed my hand, and kissed the back of it. He then kissed my cheek and, whispering in my ear, asked me what my name was. Jayna walked away. I was still laughing to myself at the fact that Luis was wearing blue overalls and, funnier still, was his nasally voice, but he was still beefcake, a big commodity in a club like this.
"There will be many jealous men tonight," I thought to myself. Hee hee.
He walked away with his drink and said he had to find his sister.
It was 12:30am. Time to start walking around. I passed by a trio of drag queens, ones I had seen at the pageants and balls before.
"Look! It's the banjee queen!" one of them screamed, pointing at me. I swear I heard that voice before. Could it have been the one who had wished me an ill fate after I beat her at the Henri David female impersonation pageant last year? The queen wore a tight black vinyl body-hugging dress with a clear vinyl sun dress over it. She wore a big curly brown-hair wig and lots of makeup to mask her aging face. The queen looked gaudy and flamboyant and played it up. This instantly caught the attention of a nearby youth who started making conversation with her. Jayna was a few steps away from them. I don't think she liked the trio of drag queens, either.
Does the guy appear to be by himself? [yes, +2] [no, -1]
Do you appear to be by yourself? [yes, +2] [no, -4]
If the guy is in a group, does he appear to be single? [yes, +2]
[no, -1]
If you are in a group, do you appear to be single? [yes, +2] [no, -4]
Is the guy in shape, as in muscular and athletic-looking? [yes, +1] [no,
+0]
Are you in shape, as in slender and toned? [yes, +2] [no, -4]
Does he look like a snob? [yes, +1] [no, +0] [don't know, +0]
Do you look like a snob or a bitch? [yes, -4] [no, +2] [don't know, +0]
Do you have a beautiful feminine face, as judged by the majority of
people who have met you? [yes, +2] [no, -2] [don't know, -1]
Are you dressed like a club girl? [yes, +1] [no, -1] [don't know, -1]
Score a +0 if the question does not apply to you. These questions apply more for initial, rather than repeat, encounters, so if you keep getting hit on by the same guy again and again, don't apply these questions to that plebeian bug and get the hell out of that club! By the way, I call the above survey the Approach Scale.
If a guy scores +10 or above, he will most likely approach you. If he scores a +8 or a +9, there is a good chance he will approach you. This is only a preliminary assessment. Do not take it as law. In fact, use the survey for fun. Ten questions cannot even begin to address the social dynamics involved in social interaction, even in the primitive domain of nightclubs. Cultural differences in your area may dictate whether someone is more likely to approach you. On the whole, if you are perceived as a desirable person in a club, no matter how you are dressed, you will be approached.
The black guys rated +6 according to my Approach Scale. They weren't going to approach me. Oh, well.
Suddenly, I felt a tap on my backside. I turned to look at a young mesomorphic blonde guy in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. He looked like a surfer dude. I turned to look at him and he started dancing beside me. I gave him a big smile, he continued dancing, and he kept looking at me. I continued looking at him, he finally stopped, looked frustrated, and walked away. Maybe he thought I was a snob. Maybe he wanted me to reciprocate his moves immediately. I didn't mean to look disinterested or like I was poking fun of him. I'm sure he knew I was a transvestite, since we were in a gay club.
This guy rated +9 according to my Approach Scale. He may have backed off because I looked like a snob, which would have deducted 4 points from his score, but now we open up a whole new can of worms and a new scoring system must be introduced for "reactions after the approach." I'll get into all of that in a new book I'm authoring and have been slowly researching for the past nine years.
Some guys really don't know how to approach someone they want to dance with. They do silly things like dance in front of you or next to you. They may approach you from every which way but the correct way: in front of you. Some of them come up with really stupid "feed lines." Others will simply grab you and march you over to the dance floor. If the guy is big enough, muscular enough, and cute enough to make other people envious of me - hell - who am I to reject the guy? However, it would be nice to talk to a guy a little before dancing with him, just so he can show you you're not just a piece of cute meat to him.
Siana was accompanied by an entourage of thin, muscular men. She wore a very smart, clubby ivory pantsuit. She looked a lot more "real" than in the past when she and Jayna looked more like retro clubkid twins. Siana walked arm in arm with one of the men. One particularly tall young blonde in a tight black sleeveless top broke away from the entourage and approached me, smiling, and opening his arms for a hug.
"Oh, honey! You look absolutely gorgeous!" he said, enveloping me in
his long arms, and kissing me squarely on the cheek.
"Thank you," I replied, smiling and blushing at the same time.
Siana and her boyfriend walked up to me and said the same. We air- kissed, exchanged hellos, and talked for a little bit. The entourage had to find Jayna and hurry off to New York, a two-hour drive from Philadelphia. Maybe one night I'll join them. As the five walked away, I smiled to myself, drink in hand, listening to the increasing commotion, but not focusing on anything.
Out of the shadows he came. He walked up to me and teetered up to whisper in my ear. He said hi. I turned to look.
Oh, God. It was Jack, the asswipe I met at Woody's a month ago. Last time, he scored a +11 on my Approach Scale.
I was much taller than him now that I had my platforms on. He was a disgusting little troll of a man wearing the same thing he wore the last time I saw him.
"So, do you want to dance or are you too hot?" he asked.
"I'm too hot," I replied.
Jack walked away mumbling.
I saw the game Jack played.
"I'm too hot "
Heh heh. He got me to admit it. It was one of those double-edged sword questions. "Would you like to dance with pathetic little me or do you think you're too good for me?" was more like the question he was trying to ask me.
At that moment, seeing all that he had done to me so far, I had no problem thinking I was too good for him. You don't grab a girl's goodies the first time you meet her! (Not even for a ten dollar bill, which I would've gladly accepted and ran off with.) Jack broke the Golden Rule of Drag Queen Etiquette when he grabbed me there and he shall not be forgiven! Be on the lookout for creeps like this.
I walked to the other end of the club away from where Jack was. He moved back into the shadows again looking around for other potential victims.
I stood beside a platform that Luis, the hunky Latino in the blue overalls, was dancing on top of. A little Asian guy and a thin muscular guy were competing for time next to Luis.
Luis looked down and saw me looking at him. He smiled, bent down, and asked me to join him up there. +11 on my Approach Scale, 'nuff said.
I said no. I told him that I wanted to dance in the middle of the dance floor.
"Okay," he said, smiling. He jumped off the platform immediately and walked with me hand in hand.
We passed by the blonde surfer dude I had "rejected" earlier. He sulked as he saw me and blurted something aloud as I passed by him, "Urgh, she'll dance with him, but not with me!"
Luis and I got onto the dance floor, moved towards the center of it, and quickly got into the music.
There was no stopping Luis' butt-grinding. He preferred being behind me most of the time and feeling me up while avoiding my crotch area completely. He also liked it when I was right behind him doing some butt-grinding of my own and we even did some chest to stomach grinding with our legs interlocking, too. I kept my hands mostly on his back and sides and allowed his hands to roam my body a bit more freely. He was touching hip padding on my sides anyway. It was probably a turnoff feeling foam padding where real hips should be, so Luis concentrated mostly on my midsection, butt, upper arms, and thighs after that. These parts of my body are slender and toned, just like a woman's.
"Oh, yeah, baby!" I heard him say again and again, our hands interlocking, as he twirled me around frontways to back and then frontways again. There was no shortage of smiles on my part.
We stopped dancing after about ten songs. Luis had to find his sister. He led me by the hand to where his sister, Amia, was and introduced me to her. Amia was a woman with particularly "big" features and as soon as I sat down beside her, she began talking about her life. I think she could relate to me because I was in girl mode.
"Oh, God!" I thought. "Let me out of here!"
Luis had to leave the club temporarily to get some more money. That meant I had to sit with Amia for a while. She continued blabbing and blabbing. She revealed that she was 27 and her husband, who had left her for another woman in Puerto Rico, was 52. She had a son with this man, but fled to the United States to get away from her past. Another soap opera.
A Billie Dee Williams-type walked up to the bar beside us and ordered his drinks. He looked at me and smiled.
"You're very beautiful," he said to me as he diverted my attention away from the blabbing Amia.
"Thank you," I said to him, smiling.
He looked at me and Amia.
"You two make a nice couple!" he remarked.
Amia looked shocked and confused.
"What?! Does he think I'm a man, too?!" she said, panicking. "Or maybe he thinks we're lesbians! Oh, my God!"
Well, Amia was not a small girl, so it wouldn't be too hard for a stranger to think that she was a man. In fact, if we were a couple, she'd probably look more like the dominant one.
She started blabbing an obscenity in Spanish. I knew this because I learned "street Spanish" growing up in Brooklyn, New York.
That was my cue to leave! I looked at my watch and told her it was time for me to go. She looked at me as if she wanted me to stay, but I couldn't sit there torturing myself any longer. Maybe someday I'll see and dance with Luis again, but hopefully he won't be with his sister the next time.
The previous week, Mary and I were at The Palmer Social Club, a multi-level afterhours club "for members only." The ominous bouncers behind the velvet rope blocking the front entrance suggested exclusivity, but, quite truthfully, anyone who could pay the $35 membership fee could get in. I suppose if you were a total geek, you couldn't get in, otherwise the rope moved aside for anyone with the cash. The crowd was okay; most were dressed like clubby people. The atmosphere was varied depending upon what floor you were on, a real bonus for a multi- level club. The dance floor was reasonably large and the sound system was incredible, almost window-shattering. The place just needed more drag queens like me!
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