Manhattan Transfer

Homecoming regrets on the last leg of the Round The World In Drag journey. I'm sure Jo shed a tear for me in my confusion,- Hi, Jo! It all still rolls along, here in NY. Another mad night out. We’ve been (the royal “we”) to the Taxi Club, The Piano Bar, 7969, The QM, and here in N.Y. it’s the Edelweiss. The mayor is always closing it down, but if it’s open you’ve got to go. The “Edelweiss Dance Club – Open 7 Nights A Week” – which hides a multitude of sins. I went there by cab last night, it’s on 11th Avenue which is West Side Manhattan which I’m beginning to think is the seedy side of town but what do I know? Obviously I’m still stuck with the old clothes but the long black slit dress hasn’t had an outing here so that has to do with the Long Blonde and, God Bless her, some new make-up from Jane who gets it from the magazine where she works. It’s good to get out of the hot hotel. The Edelweiss is on an ordinary corner by a gas-station. The girl on the door takes $15 dollars off you which is steep but you know, or should know, that the regulars pay for the right to “work” the place. Likewise the bar-prices. $5 for a Coke, from the front bar. I need something non-alcoholic on this hot night. It all feels quite empty, in the front and at the back where the other bar is, but then it’s a big bare room with a few chairs and tables with little flowers on them. Some girls are in, mainly black or latino, and a few men. The girls are sitting round talking, mainly at the bar, and the men, they just seem to wander. I sit down at one of the tables with my Coke. Very soon, Michael comes and sits with me, close. “You’re sexy”, - he likes my glitter eye-shadow, my earrings. He’s wearing specs, a bit geeky, a Brooklyn guy. Down-stairs is where they go “to rub up against each other” and he wants to take me there. He’d really like us to go there. He works for a telephone agency which covers offices in Manhattan, and has fixed to be off work for an hour. Some-one’s covering for him. I finish my drink and we go down the stairs. It’s not dark down there but there are lots of corners like a back-room in a gay sauna or club. A few wooden chairs, a room with a pool table, another bar, a sort of cage-thing, girls standing round, men sitting, old and fat mainly but a few younger ones. Michael and I find a corner, he covers me, gets his dick out, we kiss, I wipe the lipstick off his face, and I give him a hand-job. One of the girls, passing, says, “Do it!” He’d really like to go to my hotel, but I say it wouldn’t suit. He’d love to stick it up my rear. Here? I don’t think so. He pulls away, has to get back to work. I give him my card, not because I think he’ll contact me but to remind him I was here, who I was, - like a dog weeing on a lamp-post, Jo? Am I mad? I see him off upstairs. I sit down again, look around. There are more girls now, and they all look like call-girls. They mean to, of course. Peroxide-mean. Most of them look TS. Gotta pay the operations. I need the bathroom by this time. And I think it’s downstairs. So I go down again and when I reach the bottom of the stairs, - “Would you like to play with my cock?” “O.K.”– it’s one of the younger ones, in a suit and tie, very preppy, we move into the nearest alcove. This time I cover him and it’s out in a flash, he must have had a lot of practice. I grab it, work it, then he takes over for a bit. “Talk dirty to me,” “Don’t come on my dress!” And, between us, he comes, not on my dress, - and goes. Hey, but….oh, never mind. I ask a girl where the bathroom is. She says “I don’t speak English”. In English. This is all very strange. Then she points to the sign, - it’s upstairs. In the bathroom two girls are talking street-talk, the sort you think they only talk on television. Another girl comes in, and there’s a strong smell of dope. Everybody’s madly washing their hands. I look in the mirror – I have no lips. All gone. Whoops, - sort that out. And out in the bar it all goes on to a sound-track of pumped-up Latin House. I don’t want another drink so I take a tour of downstairs, maybe to see if I dreamt it, but there they are, girls and men, wandering, grinding, probably all the things I thought you took back to hotels to do. And then I thought, “I should be charging for this!” And the moment I thought it, nothing happened. I was suddenly invisible. Not a dick on offer. What sort of kharma is that? So I left. To go elsewhere. This time to Spa, which is a big club on East 13th Street. (I hope the taxi-drivers of New York remember me in their wills) Another of Jane’s friends, Lee, who’s managed lots of famous clubs and bands, said to go there. I’m on a mission, but I don’t know what, which is a very strange state to be in. There’s a queue and a doorman, and I’m not on any lists, but I get in free. Freaks Go In Free! Control Yourself, girl! I’m not working, I’m here to be free! Take it easy! It’s a busy dance-club, very chic, modern, like a health club with water streaming down glass walls, and a white dance-room like a shower-room, rails, carpets in the foyer, and the toilets like a school changing-room. There are lots of odd people around, big-city odd. Loved-up gays, couples, a boy in Nubian gear, a boy wearing mirrors and chains with one mirror in the “third eye”, lots of groovy hip kids with shirts tied up in all the wrong places and flower-power caps, a little devil, girls with strange make-up, Latino boys, black dudes, a full dance-floor in the main room, the music sort-of mixed, hot and crowded. I check my purse, - with cigarettes costing $8 I’ve got enough for one drink and the cab home. Oh, well. I get a beer. I wander around, past banquettes squeezed with college boys. In the dance-room it’s all a bit messy with spilt drinks but hipper and I get into a groove, taking and having my picture taken. And then in come the trannies to be photographed on the podium, Demonstration Queens in white-face with pink hair wearing lacy things with capes and big shoes. Even the photographer is exotic. I work the camera-space too, waving my beer in the air. The odd people are all Eastern, Beautiful People loving Beautiful People, photographable people. I share two pictures – one with little Armando, in big specs and a jacket with an open shirt, really camp, and one with a butch punk – and strut my stuff for a video. And I dance a lot, to the dreamy dance-room sounds. Around me are a trancey girl – she’s probably TS – a Hawaiian boy – I tell him how beautiful he is, that Polynesian look! – a mediaeval guy prancing with a goateed drag, - Ummmn?! – and a TS dancing with Armando. Then I go to the main room and dance on the podium, it all feels like an aquarium, a nice feeling. All this on one drink? I’m sort-of loved-up. In the toilets I meet a girl who’s on the phone to her feller at home – he wouldn’t come along and is giving her a hard time. The Lady Mandy counsels her. “Wipe it clean, then deal with it tomorrow”, and she smiles and goes out to dance. At 3.30 I go home by cab – it’s been a bit empty for a while. One dollar left for a night out, a Beautiful People Night out, a working-girls night out. A dollar. Jo, I know you wouldn’t say this, but people are going to be saying Why didn’t you work it? Go for the cash? You’re short of money and there’s all those men out there just itching to part with it. Jo, I know, I know. But I didn’t come away to sell my body, I said that to you before I left, didn’t I? The moment they pay you, you’re not free. And I’m looking for my Special Man, aren’t I? He’s there somewhere and I know I’ve been most of the way round the world and not found him, or found him then left him behind, but I can get men back home. What I want is adoration and love, not automatic sex. So what was I doing in Edelweiss? Oh, I don’t know any more. I just know I’m coming home and I don’t want to. Not quite tears on the pillow, but near enough. Tragically, Mandy