Billy Wilder’s 1959 SOME LIKE IT HOT was a funny movie about two Depression-era musicians hiding from the Chicago Mob in an all-women band working in Florida. My family saw the hit film the next summer at the South Shore Drive-In outside Boston. All the children wore pajamas in our Ford station wagon. We all laughed at the confusion of men thinking men were women. I didn’t think much about men dressing as women, until several years later my next-door neighbor asked me in his basement, “Who you think is prettier? Jack Lemmon or Tony Curtis? In that movie.”
“Neither.” I answered, although I thought Tony Curtis more feminine.
In 1964, men in dresses weren’t meant to be pretty to twelve-year-old boys on Boston’s South Shore. Men were men and women were women, except for Milt Berle. The comedian wore dresses all the time for laughs. Men were men and women were women, except for Milt Berle. The comedian wore dresses all the time for laughs. He was never pretty.
“Yeah, but if you had to make a choice, who would you pick?” Chuckie Manzi was my new best friend. We were good Catholic boys.I thought this was a weird question.
“I pick Marilyn.” The blonde actress was the logical choice. Everyone in America loved her. Male and female.
“Marilyn’s a dead woman. You wouldn’t want to make love to a dead woman, so if you were on a deserted island with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, who would be your wife?”
“I would kill myself before marrying either of them.”
“I am not talking about marrying them.”
I knew what he was talking about. I didn’t want to hear about it.
The Catholic Church condemned men dressing as woman an abomination, however the priests wore long black cassocks. They looked like dresses to me. As an altar boy, I also wore in a cassock and surplice. We all knew what’s evil lurked beneath the priests’ robes. Accordingly, I kept my distance from the predatory black robes.
“I know.” I had heard boys say that term at my school, Our Lady of the Foothill. school. A classmate had explained the term originated from England, where strange men wore women’s dresses with long hems dragging on the floor. He hadn’t explained how he had learned that knowledge.
At Sunday morality lectures, the priests warned of strange men with hatred greater than communism. I possessed several sets of clothing; jeans and a teeshirt, snow clothing, summer gear, school uniform, and an altar boy surplice and cassock. My mother so wanted me to answer a calling to the Church.
“Some of them are supposed to be pretty.”
“Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are not pretty.”
“You’re no fun.” Chuckie gave up on getting an answer he liked.
A year later, I entered over his house and caught who I thought was his sister, Addy, upstairs in lingerie. I was in love with my ex-babysitter, but it was Chuckie in a wig. He said, “I just wanted to feel what it was like.”
“Right.”
We remained friends throughout the 1960s. The two of us attended the same Catholic boys' school. I had stopped serving as an altar boy. When Ray Davies sang on The Kinks’ hit song LOLA, “She walked like a woman and talked like a man.” Chuckie asked, “You ever see a man walk like a woman and talk like a man?”
“Once at the Greyhound Bus Station. I had bought Levi's jeans at Walker’s Jeans on Boylston Street and was walking to South Station.”
“Through the Combat Zone?”
Strip bars, gay clubs, porno parlors, and prostitution had a place there. Boston’s adult entertainment district was the antithesis of the suburbs. Boys my age were banned from entry into these sin palaces.
“Yeah, I was looking for something at Jack’s Joke Shop and outside the Hillbilly Ranch. A man in a dress was fighting a sailor. He hadn’t paid her.” The Hillbilly Ranch was next to the bus station. Anyone could drink in the country-western bar and anyone did. The beers were fifty cents. Drinks a dollar.
"For sex."
"I guess so."
“Who won?”
“The drag queen. They’re tough, because they have to be tough. You still try on Addy’s lingerie.”
“No, I outgrew them.” His comment sounded more like he was speaking about his waist and not the act.
“You could always try on your mother’s panties.”
“Fuck off.” Chuckie dropped this Oedipal subject forever.
After high school, we grew apart.
I attended a Catholic university on the outskirts of Boston and drove a taxi to pay for an apartment near the campus. My last fares of the night were from the Combat Zone; mostly go-go dancers, drunks, and a few drag queens from the Other Side. The trannies were good tippers. Several were more attractive than the strippers from the Two O’Clock Lounge.
The drag queens often trafficked straight tricks to the cheap hotels in the South End. Neither passenger spoke en route. Groping was their only communication. After dropping them off for a night of wicked sex in a cheap hotel room. I couldn’t help, but sing Lou Reed’s WALK ON THE WILD SIDE.
“In the back room she was everyone’s darling.”
In 1971 I didn’t know what a back room was. My gay friend, Bruce, from the 1270, taught me all the sex lingo at the 1270, where I danced with men and fag hags. Sometimes more. A move to New York in 1976 opened my eyes, because sexual frontiers were blurred in a city where people answered their desires with a constant yes.
I frequented the West Street bars with queer friends from the ballet. They told the fag hags about my doubts about being a homo. These models, air hostesses, and strippers thought they might cure me. They succeeded, because I was mostly straight.
One night at the Anvil, I waited for my friends to complete their voyage to Sodom. No women were allowed in the bar. I was surprised when an attractive slender brunette sat next to me. She could have graced a fashion runway in her pink tube top and hot pants. A long lacquered nail touched my shoulder.
”Can you buy me a drink?”
Her faux falsetto betrayed why the bouncer had permitted her into the Anvil. I ignored her request.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, just thinking of an old song.”
“Let me guess.” She rolled her eyes. “LOLA.”
“Yes.”
“Too bad it wasn’t a song you want to dance to like Diana Ross’ LOVE HANGOVER.”
“Why?” The ex-Supreme singer had scored a big hit with that dance song in the gay discos.
“Because I’m a good dancer.” She wiggled her shoulders like a Times Square go-go girl
“I bet you are.” I signaled the bartender for two drinks. Both gin and tonic. “My name’s Dove. How you like to go in the back room with me? You can do anything you want.”
“No thanks.”
“Why? Don't you want me? You will do anything. Anything." Her lips pouted with disappointment. Anything covered a lot of territory for Dove.
“You’re every man’s dream, if I were that type of man.”
“No one who comes here is 100% straight. That’s why I sat here. The queers have no time for me. I’m safe in here.”
Transvestites had it tough in the straight world. Men beat them to prove their masculinity. The queens fought back and created a legend by fighting off the NYPD at the 1969 Stonewall Riots. I had a lisp and a stutter as a young boy. My hometown friends hated anyone different and even more so now, since our side had won the Sexual Revolution. My mother and father knew nothing about my baby brother. He also dressed in my mother's dresses.
“My name is Dove.”
She kissed my cheek, Her perfume Chanel. She sipped her gin and tonic.
“I thought you came over to hustle me for a drink.” “Fresh.” She slapped my hand. “I have my own money.” She flashed a thick roll of twenties.
“I’m kept by a very important person.” “Who’s your VIP?”
“A US senator from Dixie.”
“Which one?”
“If I told you, he’d have to kill you. I accompanied him to Jimmy Carter’s inaugural ball. Every man there stumbled over their shoes to worship my high heels, especially those wicked Christian Republicans. They love nothing more than sin with girls like me.”
“I bet they do.”
After that comment, the two of us conversed about politics, love, and sex. I wasn’t in a hurry for my friends to finish in the back room. I ordered more drinks. My friends were lost in the Anvil’s snake pit.
An hour later I waved for the bill.
“Where you going?”
“Home.” I lived in a SRO room on 11th Street and 5th. A good address. A sunken bed, linoleum floor, and a shared hallway bathroom. Not very clean.
“So I guess this means you’re going alone?”
“Sorry. I have to work in the morning.” It was a lie. I had run out of
money. I had no work.
I kissed Dove goodnight.
“Don’t be sorry; one night you and I will get it together.”
“Never,” I answered too fast to be telling the truth.
“I’m patient.”
She stood up to twitch a hip as a calling card for that future date in
Never-Neverland.
Dove was not only patient. She was persistent. I refused her at the Mudd Club, Studio 54, CBGBs, Hurrahs, Xenon, Club 82, the Kiev, and Dave’s Luncheonette.
“One night you and me.”
“Never.”
And I thought never was forever, then on Halloween in 1980 I attended a black-tie Paloma Picasso party honoring the NY Ballet at Danceteria on 37th Street. The illegal nightclub was packed with Upper East Side slummers. After an hour of Moët champagne, I retrieved my leather jacket from the coat check.
While waiting in line, a young ballet boy stumbled into me. His clumsiness came not from too many drinks. A brutish six-footer shook the dancer by his tuxedo lapels. The stitching of the ballet boy’s evening suit gave way. I slashed my arm down on his aggressor’s wrists to break the bully’s grasp. The gay boy pirouetted gracefully into the crowd.
“Why you do that?” the thug demanded with eyes blurred red with Dexies.
“Because I didn’t feel like being bumped, while you beat up on a fag.”
“And what are you going to do about it?” His hands clenched into fists. Boys from Boston didn’t back down. I lashed a right to his mouth. The punch staggered him. He spit a tooth in my chest. I had a fight on my hands and not a good one. I threw lefts and rights faster than his counters. My heavy opponent weathered the blows without any sign of damage and backed me up to the wall.
I was in trouble, then two bouncers abruptly stopped the brawl.
I had worked the clubs. They knew me and threw the Jersey boy out of Dacneteria. None of us liked Bridge and Tunnel, even though I came from New England. I had never been a New Yorker. There were no tunnels on the highways from Boston to Manhattan.
Two ballerinas praised my standing up against this gay basher and invited me to an Upper East Side party. I exited Danceteria with the two dancers in tow. Their hero. On the sidewalk I raised my hand to wave down a passing taxi. It never reached the air. Something struck the base of my skull.
Hard.
I toppled into the gutter and pulled my arms over my head. A second blow booted my ego past my superego into an emerald green id pulsating with lightning. This was not a good sign. Finally, a voice asked with a Jersey accent, “Have you had enough?”
“Yes.”
I sat up on the curb with difficulty. Blood streaming from my forehead. A handsome young man stood between me and my assailant. The thug strode away the victor. I rose to my feet, shaken to the core. My eyes were still rimmed by the emerald flashes.
“Are you all right?” asked the young photographer on the scene.
I had seen him around. His name was Marcus.
“I think so.” My teeth were intact and my nose unbroken.
“He might have killed you if I hadn’t pulled him off.” Marcus was
clearly horrified by the damage to my face. He pointed to the bat in my assailant’s hand.
“I owe you one.” I glanced in a car mirror. Blood drooled from a dozen cuts and bruises blossomed on my skull. I picked up a napkin from my gutter and wiped my face clean.
I took a taxi home and stayed in bed for a few days.
Every second of my convalescence I plotted my revenge. An attack from behind. New York was a city of millions, but the nightlife in 1979 consisted of maybe 3000 people. I counted on running into the thug again and carried a slender stiletto to exact my payback.
Two weeks later, a transvestite trapeze bar opened in Times Square. Dove’s lover was part-owner. She sat at the bar. She was more beautiful than ever. She signaled the bartender for drinks. A Virginia Slim glowed between her fingers.
“I heard about you saving that gay boy at Danceteria. You’re my hero.”
“Heroes don’t get the shit beaten out of them.” My swollen facial bones had returned to their original positions. The scars had healed and the bruises a lighter yellow.
“Well, you’re a hero to me. I’d love to show you how much.” The
black Chanel dress revealed the best features of her Mia Farrow figure.
“Thanks, but I’m not really in a romantic mood.”
“I could change that in a second.”
Her hand caressed my thigh. Dove opened a Pond’s Cream jar packed with shiny pink Bolivian flake. A rarity in the clubs. Cocaine was everyone’s weakness in the clubs. No was never no on blow.
“You, me, and an ounce of blow. How can you say no?”
“Not tonight.” I rose off the stool.
“What's wrong?” She was an expert judge of men's moods.
“That guy who beat me up just walked past us.” He had checked out Dove. Most men and women do. Not a flicker of recognition upon seeing my face. My hand sought the knife in my pocket. The handle was as cold as the blood in my veins. The thug had his back to me. I had envisioned this opportunity for weeks.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Dove pushed me back down and puffed on her cigarette. “But girls like me learn early how to protect ourselves and our friends. I’ll take care of this.”
“This is something I have to do for myself.”
“No, you don’t. Believe me, it’ll be better this way.”
She read the murder in my eyes.
“This better be good.”
“Silly man, this will be better than bad.”
Dove stole through the crowd like a sleek serpent sneaking through high grass to its prey. She sucked on the slender Virginia Slim. The ember on the tip burned a lava red. Dove winked at me and tapped the thug on the shoulder. He turned around and she stuck the cigarette in his eye. Screaming, he dropped to his knees. Hands over his eye.
Dove returned to the bar.
“Will you go home with me now?”
“How can I refuse?”
At my room, we snorted blow, then necked and petted and groped without intercourse. The cocaine was too strong. I wished it hadn’t been. In the morning Dove left my apartment, whispering that my erectile dysfunction was our little secret.
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you, super-hero.” Dove was a starlet of discretion.
Her bar lasted a half-year. Dove sold out her interest to the owners of Danceteria. Over the next months, Dove began to dress like a Park Avenue divorcee with nova blonde hair. One day she told me that she was moving south.
“To Palm Beach.”
“Big money country.”
She shrugged a shoulder cloaked by Dior.
“The Senator isn’t running for re-election. He wants to make me an honest woman.”
“An operation?”
“Perish the thought.”
“Good luck.” Beauty was a powerful card to play with the rich.
“Thanks, but I was born lucky.” She smiled, knowing the odds weren’t in her favor, but they never are for girls like her.
And now every time I hear WALK ON THE WILD SIDE I think about
Dove. She was everyone’s darling in the right mood and beat out Tony Curtis as my # 1 choice on a deserted island, although I couldn’t have foreseen that option in 1964.
Not even in my wettest dreams.
THE END
Dove vanished into the 90s. I saw her once in this century. I think of her often. She was very beautiful, funny, and tough. I liked that in her, because that meant I didn't have to be me.
Marcus and I remained friendly into the new century
Both born in 1952 like Duncan Hannah and Jorge Socarras
Marcus and I lived around the world
He in India and Portugal
Me in Thailand and France
He passed in 2022
He is still here in my mind
So is Dove
Forever and a day___
THE END
