Glitter in the Boys' Room

I forgot all about writing about our visit to the drag show last week! It was my good friend Kiki's (the bearer of soup and other good things) birthday, and I wanted to do something special for her. So we took her to Lips, the local transvestite dinner theater. What a hoot! Although not for the prudish--as the emcee so sagely offered, "There's a church just across the street; you can drop your family off there before the show." Way too many jokes about so-and-so being a dark-chocolate-with-nuts number. Or Tootie, the emcee, who is part Hawaiian, referring to him(her)self as a "wahine with a weenie!" I actually like that one, kind of has a lilting poetry to it, doncha think? And then there was Ms. Tootie's affectionate habit of calling the audience bitches at regular 40-second intervals. The audience was about 90 percent female, which led our table into a thoughtful discussion of why that is so. We couldn't come up with any good answers, but wondered afresh about the irrefutable attraction between straight women and gay men. Someone made the point that there is also no male equivalent to drag shows: no men watching women parade around in guys' clothes, or men watching lesbians pretending to be men lip-synching to Abba songs...

At any rate, it was quite entertaining. Although we still can't quite figure out how these guys so effectively hide their, um, packages! Seriously, a few of them were wearing very tight pants that showed everything (or lack thereof) and there wasn't even a hint of a bulge. We were discussing this a few days later I said that, well, you know, that's pretty malleable flesh we're talking about. Kiki's husband piped in that it's only "malleable up to a POINT." I used to know a few guys who were into cross-dressing, so I know a few hints about how to produce cleavage on a male chest (lots of tape!), but I don't remember if anyone ever told me how to successfully smoosh your genitalia into apparent invisibility. Anybody have any pointers?

The show itself was a combination of stand-up comedy and lip-synching routines, where the performers typically left the stage to wander around the audience and gyrate on customers' laps and in their faces. I have to say, the few straight men in attendance were very good sports. Just be warned, if you go there for your birthday, or any other special occasion, and they KNOW about it (we allowed Kiki to remain shrouded in anonymity--she's not an attention hog like me), they will haul you up on stage and possibly even make fun of you. They will definitely call you a bitch. But you get a crown and a free dessert! And I’m not going to tell you what they make you do when you blow out the candle...

One of the numerous highlights of the evening, apart from the sexy Asian guy that really looked like a pretty girl until you got close to him, was when Kiki’s husband came back from the restroom. He was laughing as he told us that the men’s room floor is littered with feathers, glitter, and sequins. The women’s bathroom was quite bare. The night's only detraction, I suppose, was that one of the singers had rather prominent biceps, which really clashed with her halter top and spangly skirt. At least her makeup covered up her stubble.