1) the beginning of summer;
2) tourists and clubgoers from the surrounding cities were not around, since they were all most likely down at the shore (most native New Yorkers, by contrast, stay in New York during the summer);
3) all students have gone home (not exactly a bad thing).
Whatever the reason, Saturday night felt really weird. We were approached by a number of guys, but there was an definite negative vibe going on. The music was too acid, too repetitive. The people were either tripping or pretending to trip.
I wore a black Calvin Klein baby tee ("one size fits all" - this tee is tiny!) that displayed most of my upper body and a hint of my tummy. For three weeks, I went through 50 to 100 sit-ups per day to tone down my midsection and succeeded in losing the couple of inches I had gained over the past few months. Very few girls at five-foot-eight could sport a toned 27-inch waist! I was a little scared to slip on my size 30 black Guess stretch jeans because I feared they might be too loose, but they fit quite comfortably with room to spare. I filled my hips out with my own homemade hip padding underneath a pair of off-black Silken Mist pantyhose. Underneath the hips and pantyhose, a black Olga panty girdle held my babymaker in place and kept my crotch area looking smooth. My vital stats that night, including my Mirage boobs underneath a black lace bra, were a voluptuous but sleek 38C-27-39.
My fingernails and toenails were painted with Revlon's Copperglaze Bronze, a crystalline (frost or iridescent) nail polish that is like a shiny and pearly light brown. People who know me know that I hate frost colors, but this one is a very rare exception because it's a metallic color. I would easily recommend metallic frost colors, but not the more standard colors a la frost. Metallics are very futuristic-looking and very en vogue for the summer, so don't miss out on wearing them from now until mid-August! My fingernails were also a lot shorter than usual, since short natural-looking nails are the in thing right now. The polish on my toenails could easily be seen beneath the very sheer Silken Mist pantyhose. My toes poked out underneath my black open-toe three- and-a-half-inch Fleuvog platform shoes.
I wore my usual assortment of brown colors: Revlon Colorstay eyeliner in Black Brown, L'Oreal Pencil Perfect eyeliner in Cocoa, one shade of light brown eyeshadow over each eyelid with a shimmery white eyeshadow to accentuate the top part of each eyelid, Cover Girl Natural Lash mascara as a base coat for my lashes, two more coats of Great Lash Pro- Vitamin mascara in Very Black, L'Oreal Bronzer Soleil blush, Revlon Colorstay lipliner in Chocolates, and a beautiful new burgundy brown lipstick shade by Avon called Sienna.
I got Mary to style my Rene of Paris Tara straight-fall wig so that much of the hair on one side would fall and cover the left part of my face. We used Rene's newest hairspray for synthetic wigs, Protect holding spray, which smells quite fruity and is a pleasant change from their older stuff, which smells like plastic coconuts. The combination of my ginger brown hair, soft green eyes, and burgundy brown lipstick looked outrageous, fabulous... even orgasmic!
Two squirts of the pure Gaultier parfum under one armpit was enough to make me scream out an obscenity when I realized that the stuff was extremely powerful and would probably last well into the night. I squirted one more shot underneath my other armpit and then used a technique an ex-girlfriend of mine taught me back in college. It's called "layering your scent." You squirt a little bit of the powerful parfum stuff on, then you spray a light mist of eau de toilette over the parfumed areas, and then you finally spray a light mist of eau de toilette into the open air and walk into the scent, waiting for the scented mist to fall onto your body. Ahhhhh!!! This is one of the million dollar tips I was saving for a rainy day, so use it wisely, girlie girls!
I carried the cute little torso-shaped Gaultier quarter-ounce parfum bottle in my black LIZ purse for use later on in the night. To top the entire look off, I wore my only piece of jewelry, a silver and gold Anne Klein II bracelet watch. Rings and earrings would have been a bit too much for the clubs nowadays, since the trend is towards the minimal: minimal makeup, simple clothes, and minimal jewelry.
As it was quite cold that day, I wore my black leather jacket which
matched my black Fleuvogs. I would have thought more people would have
noticed me on the crowded trains to New York (after all, it was Memorial
Day weekend!), but nobody seemed to care. Even in the women's restroom
at Penn Station in New York, no one seemed to notice my six-foot tall
self. I did notice that a lot of girlie girls waiting in the restroom
were just as tall as me and they weren't even wearing heeled shoes!
We arrived at The Tunnel at 11:30pm and noticed hardly anyone in line. Three girls were begging the doorman to move the velvet rope to let them in, but the doorman pretended not to notice them. We got out of our cab, headed towards the doorman, and he moved the rope aside to let us in. We knew all too well that if you didn't look like a clubkid, you'd never get into a New York club. Doormen seem to show no interest in preppie college kids, well-dressed businessmen, nerds, or unkempt people. Some of these people do get in, but only after a large group of clubkids get in first. It all depends upon the club, of course, but I'm talking about clubs with the so-called "real parties." Showing some sign of gaiety always gets you into a club, though, so the fact that Mary and I always walk hand-in-hand easily gets us into the most- difficult-to-get-into clubs. That night, though, there was no challenge at all. Rats!
In fact, people were starting to filter in shortly after we walked in. Junior Vasquez was high atop the dance floor in an isolated booth spinning old Sinatra music which made Mary and I look at each other in puzzlement. We sat in a little psychedelic lounge area away from the main dance floor sipping our nine-dollar Alabama Slammers and vegging out at the main attraction which was a couple of tin foil mannequins suspended upside down from the ceiling behind a small windowed room. A strobe light was hitting the mannequins and casting odd shadows all over the immediate area. Two groups of clubgirls were sitting to the left and in front of us. The group opposite us walked away and were immediately replaced by two young foreign guys. They spoke Greek and looked over at us again and again. They looked like guidoes in their open-chested shirts, slacks, and slicked back hair.
We walked towards the dance floor area at about 12:30am. The room was silent and pitch black. There were no more lights. There were no more sounds or talking. There was no more Frank Sinatra. A lone violin string sound emanated from one speaker far off into the distance. An odd jubilee of warped-sounding percussion started abruptly on top of the string sound and repeated for a few minutes. People started filtering onto the dance floor in hordes during this time. The dance floor was starting to get filled and the only way I knew that this was so was from seeing the silhouettes of people in front of the red exit sign lights off at the end of the long dance floor.
The crowd was beginning to stir. People were beginning to talk. The string sound was fading as the odd warped-sounding percussion was slowly increasing in volume.
And suddenly... it hit.
That driving four-on-the-floor kick drum that Junior Vasquez is known for coupled with the acid hard house song he selected to play as the first song. A repetitive chant emanated from all of the surrounding speakers: "C'mon, let's dance!" which caused the crowd to go into a frenzy. Mary and I perched ourselves on top of a tall platform with a huge speaker behind it as we watched more people filter onto the dance floor. Lots of guys walked by and noticed me.
"Heyyy!!! Everybody keeps looking at you! Some gay-looking guy was smiling at you, too, as if he wanted you!"
It probably helped that I was smiling back at everyone who passed by me. Hee hee. I didn't care who smiled at me so long as they were cute!
We got off the speaker and headed to the center of the long dance floor. After a few moments, a number of guys, including the Greek guys we had seen in the other room, tried dancing alongside of us hoping we would turn to dance with them. I knew this technique all too well. I used to use it back in my guido days with great success. If a girl wanted to dance with you, she would turn to dance with you. If not, you had better move on to your next victim.
We kept ignoring these men as we wanted to concentrate solely on ourselves. Mary and I danced for about an hour before we left for the next club. We walked into the crowded street at 2:30am. A long line of taxicabs could be seen stretching around the block. A crowd had finally developed in front of the velvet rope. Lots of sad-looking faces were waiting behind the velvet rope, the faces of those I had described before: preppies, nerds, and nicely-suited businessmen. Mostly guys. Guys do have a harder time getting into clubs with a door policy. Do you see why I think being a clubgirl is so fabulous?
Twilo and The Tunnel happen to be about two blocks away from each other (both are on West 27th Street), so going to both of these places in one night makes sense. We realized this when the cab driver thought we were nuts for wanting him to drive us two blocks. It probably isn't wise to walk the two blocks in your girlselves because of the number of crazies out at night in New York, but if you're in a group of three or more and you stick together, you're okay.
We got out of the cab and noticed two young clubkids waiting in line. They looked like little Josh Winks (he's a famous DJ from Philly) with their dreadlocked hair, potato sack-like smock shirts, baggy pants, and grungy shoes. They looked like they were standing and waiting for quite some time behind the velvet rope, the same rope that the doorman moved aside for us as we proceeded to go into the new club.
We immediately walked over to the stage area and noticed that the stage wasn't as long as it was in the past. The new club owners had chopped off the old stage and made lounge areas on each side of it. Also missing was the long catwalk that protruded from the center of the stage and into the crowd. However, there were still three raised platforms where hulking bodybuilder types were posing and slowly gyrating to the music. The look of most of these hulking clubgoers seemed to be nude above the waist with moderately tight gray stonewashed jeans and a red flannel shirt hanging out of a back pocket or between the butt cheeks. Oh, yes, a small baseball cap is optional but recommended. If you didn't have the body, you wore a black or white t-shirt. This, I gather, is called the "Chelsea look," made famous by the Chelsea gay boys in this district of Manhattan.
Three giant 20-foot-high paper mache nuclear reactors stood at three of the four corners of the large room. Red, white, and blue dots and laser beams were blinking all over the place. Someone on the Internet had complained about how "bright" the lights were in the club, but, as I recall, these lights were no brighter than when the place was The Sound Factory.
Onstage, a number of people who looked as if they had stepped off of some children's play were dancing back and forth in the center of the stage. One of them resembled a bright red and white masked pirate with lots of feathered trim and tassels. Another was a too-cute blonde wearing a forest green suede Robin Hood/Maid Marian corseted top cinching her soft alabaster body and forcing her little sub-A-cup boobs to point upwards towards her face. Her little nipples peeked out above her corset. She really did have a cute Madonna- or Anna Nicole Smith- like face, but her boobs were too tiny.
The smell of cigarette smoke permeated the air, along with the usual odor of pot, farts, and burnt plastic that New York gay club people seem to revel in.
An awesomely shaped light chocolate-skinned woman with very full hips wearing a striped tube top and blue black vinyl pants hugging those magnificent legs, hips, and butt was dancing with a smaller girl dressed in similar attire. Her lowcut top covered her moderate sized boobs and her long shiny black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. At first I thought she was a man, but after a few brief moments of gawking, I concluded that this girl was every inch female by her apparent image. I couldn't get her out of my mind! If she can turn me on, then she's got to be HOT!!!
A young baseball cap-donning clubkid moved in very strict robot-like ways while waving a green glow-in-the-dark rod in each hand. He looked very cool.
While we were people-watching, a fat little troll of a guy with a goatee and a baseball cap walked up to and confronted me.
"What?! Are you talking about me?!" he demanded.
As if!
I looked at him as if he were crazy and walked away from him. Mary followed close behind as I walked up to the bar to get some sodas. The troll then yelled out, "Hey! Where ya' goin'?!"
Away from him to be sure.
We sipped our four-dollar sodas and watched the cute guys walk by. Mary was drooling over the hulking bodies on the platforms. One of them had an especially chiseled midsection that I particularly liked and wouldn't mind having... on myself, that is. I would rather own a great body part than worship someone else's.
I got up onstage and danced for about an hour before I got tired and my Fleuvogs started killing my feet. It was an exhilarating feeling to see so many people in the crowd looking and smiling at me. I smiled back at many of them. A lot of them have probably seen me before. Dancing was not a problem as the music was turned up so preposterously high that the kick drum beats caused your throat to vibrate and your chest to thump back and forth on its own. Mary didn't like that feeling as it gave her a headache, but I thought the feeling was fabulous! Definitely not a place to go to if you have heart trouble or asthma. That coupled with the psychedelic lights and it was no wonder why so many people looked like they were tripping on hallucinogenic drugs!
As we sat by one corner of the stage, a young Englishman who had been dancing behind us for a while approached Mary from behind and asked her, "Hi! So who are you going home with tonight?" Mary answered by pointing to me. He quickly left the stage and disappeared into the crowd. That puzzled us.
We stepped off the stage, too, and got ourselves some orange juice and free fruit from one of the bars.
We ran into Jayna and Siana, our two drag clubkid friends from Philly. It was kind of uncanny seeing them in the same place as us at the same time, but remember what I said a while back: the world, especially the club world, is not so big after all. Jayna was wearing a retro black and orange jacket with a white skirt. Siana was wearing an outrageous turquoise blue sequined jacket that sparkled so much under the bright lights that it blinded me.
A short blonde with a pageboy haircut walked by. He had a slight, muscular build, almost female bodybuilder-like, and wore a beautiful black off-the-shoulder evening gown with a very lowcut backside.
A short while later, the same Englishman who had hit on Mary before approached me at the bar. I'm not sure if he noticed Mary next to me. The guy mumbled something. I think it could have been the same question he had asked Mary, but I wasn't sure.
"Having fun?" he then asked.
I nodded and grinned at him.
"You look absolutely beautiful," he said whispering in my ear. He started feeling and stroking my waist and back, gently pinching what little fat I had around my waist. He was getting too close to me.
"Thank you," I said. He most likely thought we were a pair of lesbians. He then mumbled something to me and I looked at him as if to say "Get lost!" He quickly scooted off again and disappeared into the crowd.
We turned our attention towards an over six-foot tall blonde drag queen flinging free t-shirts and baseball caps into the crowd. Something about m&m's candy on each shirt. The blonde had a very stern, chiseled, ugly face and wore a silver and black vinyl outfit and silver lipstick and eyeshadow. She was accompanied by a Black drag queen friend who wore a white baby tee with the word "GIRL" emblazoned across it, a short black vinyl skirt, black stockings, black Fleuvogs, and a little clubkid knapsack that resembled a short fat Crayola crayon.
We sat in the lounge area for about an hour waiting for 5:00am to roll around. Two young clubkids moved the standup ashtrays in the lounge area aside and began dancing with a flashlight. A young Hispanic woman dropped her baggy pants to reveal a black micro miniskirt. She walked onto the stage area and perched herself on top of a ledge and began straddling a large pole as if it were some phallic symbol. I remarked to Mary that this woman was probably a homebody mother of three by day and a temptress by night. Hee hee.
Oh, yeah, as we were waiting in the lounge area, guess who approached us again with the same come-on line? Yep. Our old pal the drunken Englishman making yet a third attempt. I wouldn't be surprised if he thought that he had met three different pairs of girls each time he approached us. He mumbled something to me again and I again gave him a "Get lost!" look. The weirdo disappeared again.
We left the club just after 5:00am to catch the 5:30am train back to Trenton. The sun had already come up and we each grabbed a free copy of H/X Magazine (a cool club magazine for gays and lesbians in New York City) from the doormen at Twilo. Apparently, the area surrounding the club had been cleaned up since the last time we were there. The hookers were gone. The long lines of cars and jeeps were gone. Only a long line of taxicabs remained. I slipped on a pair of sunglasses. We took a cab back to Penn Station.
As we got out of the cab and walked towards the train station, we passed by a group of three middle-aged poverty-stricken people standing next to the escalator by the station entrance. They were not beggars. They seemed more like people just hanging out.
"CK! Heyyy, CK, ba--by!" said the unkempt Black woman in a tattered white t-shirt and navy blue handkerchief wrapped around her bunned hair.
She was talking to me and referring to my Calvin Klein baby tee.
"Girl, you got it goin' on! Black leather jacket! Ooh, baby! Lookit the way she fills them jeans!" she remarked to her admiring friends.
I smiled at all of them, hoping they wouldn't start following us into the train station (such unfortunate situations have happened before). When we got to the bottom of the escalator and halfway down the hallway full of stores, some open at this odd hour, we heard the woman's voice one last time.
"See ya', CK! Catch ya' later!"
Quite a few people were at the station at 5:15am. Most of them were getting in line for the 5:30am train to Trenton. We passed by dozens of people of all ages and races and nobody gave me an odd or unusual second stare even though I was dressed a little funky clubby. We got on the train and dozed off for a while.
We stood up to get in line for the exit aisle off the train to catch the next train to Philly. A tall, large Black man wearing sunglasses and a blue sportsjacket and carrying a gym bag walked by us and then turned to look at me. He probably smelled my Gaultier mixed with sweat. Had he heard me talking to Mary as he walked by? We left the train a few people behind him and walked up to our next train. As we walked up the platform, the man slowed down so that he was walking alongside me, leaned over, and whispered, "Hi. How ya' doin'?" I turned to look at him, smiled behind my sunglasses, and moved ahead faster. He slowed down to leave the platform area as we moved onward.
On the train back to Philadelphia, I checked my makeup and fixed my haggard look by blotting my face with a deli napkin (which is better than using tissue, since tissue can leave dust on your face; deli napkins have texture and don't leave dust), wiping away the mascara runs under my eyes, and renewing my blush.
We got home and went to bed at 9:00am, slept for four hours, and headed to Mary's salon a couple of hours later where Mary had to work for three hours for a client's wedding. I sat there in the salon vegging out and writing this adventure. What a long weekend... and it's only just begun!
Women want all five of their senses to be excited when they go to a salon. I call it The Salon Experience. Women care about smells, like when a certain hairspray or shampoo smells nice. A flowery smell is appealing to some whereas a fruity smell is appealing to others. Women care about sights; they like hairstyles that are simple but sophisticated. Women especially like hairstyles that are easy to care for and manage.
Women care about sounds, that is, the conversations they have with their stylists. Conversations can ease the client and make the client feel better about herself. This requires the stylist to be a good listener and know when to say certain things to make The Salon Experience more positive.
Women care about touch, the texture of nice hair that is not too stiff. Finally, women care about tastes, too. Many of the more expensive salons serve food and wine to their clients and have the occasional butlered hor d'oerve parties.
More observations like this to follow in future columns.
One of the 30-something high society clients Mary worked on for a wedding that Sunday night was trying to decide what the newest color lipstick to wear was. There were three clients in the salon and two of them agreed that brick would be a good color to wear, especially with the first client's burgundy-colored hair. When the other two women left the salon, the first client knew better: she said brown. Mary suggested a reddish brown color and the client thought for a moment and came up with a burgundy brown color.
"Maybe something like... Sienna..." she said.
My eyes lit up and I so desperately wanted to blurt out the fact that I had worn that lip color only hours before in New York, but I kept my mouth shut because this woman would have had a heart attack if she knew I was a drag queen. Besides, I knew about Sienna two weeks earlier when I had purchased it from an Avon catalog. If you can't get Sienna, try Berry Brown from Cover Girl.
A really cool novelty t-shirt I've seen recently is the "Smellies" t- shirt. These have a scratch-n-sniff logo emblazoned across the bust of the shirt that is supposed to last dozens upon dozens of washes. Can you imagine going to a club and having some guy come up to you and scratch and sniff your boobs? Funny and tacky, no? I think these t- shirts are cool anyway, especially the one that says "Wild Cherry." I was the first kid on my block to wear one of those Hypercolor t-shirts just before they were an in thing one summer many moons ago, so I know my fads! Get a "Smellies" t-shirt before it's too late!
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