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M&M’s came showering out of Debbie’s ass with amazing speed, bouncing off the stage platform and ricocheting into the crowd. She started swaying her hips from side to side in order to strafe the entire breadth of the audience. It was pandemonium. People screaming, then gagging after a stray M&M bounced directly from Debbie’s ass into their mouth. And because she’d been delayed an hour the final few inches of M&M’s had melted together and fell in a big brown clump onto the center of the stage floor.
    Debbie calmly turned around to face the audience with a huge grin. She took a deep bow—extracting the tube in the process—and placed the red handle back onto it. Then she spun it around her finger and flung it out into the candy-coated shell-shocked audience.
    This is a drag queen that demands your respect.
    But tonight Li’l Debbie is more sedate. Neither of us has to perform. Just stand outside and let the “right” people in. Which is pretty much anyone who promises to send a drink out to us after they get inside.
    â€œHe’s gotta be pretty hung to make that much money,” Debbie says.
    â€œI don’t know. I haven’t seen it.”
    â€œYou’ve been dating a hooker for three weeks and you haven’t slept together? What’s that about? Short on cash?”
    â€œHe just doesn’t want to yet. Wants us to get to know each other better first.” Even as I say it I realize I sound like the naïve girl on an Afterschool Special .
    â€œHe’s a pricey whore, and you’re a cheap slut. End of story. Start fucking already,” she says glibly, fishing a stray wig hair off her thigh.
    Truth is, it does feel a little strange. At this moment he’s on a call at a midtown hotel wearing nothing but a leather harness while beating up some naked guy he’s never met. But when he stops by afterward to pick me up, we’ll go to his place and sleep in pajama bottoms and modestly close the bathroom door when we pee.
    â€œWell, like my mother always told me,” Debbie says, “it’s not the size that matters, it’s how much it costs an hour.”
    â€œWhat the fuck does that have to do with anything?” I say.
    â€œDid I say Ma made any sense, bitch?”
    It’s two thirty in the morning and the street is dead empty. It’s one of those summer nights in New York when the bricks and pavement have soaked up so many days of relentless sun and haze that the city doesn’t have a chance to cool down even in the middle of the night. If I stand next to the wall of the club I can feel the heat radiating off the building. I spray antiperspirant on my face underneath my foundation in the summer, but on nights like tonight it doesn’t help. There’s no such thing as a “natural look” drag queen. I’m sweaty and smeared and bored and not anywhere near drunk enough.
    Three Hells Angels turn the corner onto the street from Second Avenue and roar past the front of the club on the way to their own club. The noise as they pass is incredible. I wonder how anyone can stand to live on this street.
    â€œHey Papa!” Li’l Debbie yells at them, waving them over. They do a U-turn in the middle of the street and come back to us. I can’t help but think this might not be such a great idea.
    â€œHey girls,” the lead motorcyclist yells back. “Club busy tonight?”
    He’s smiling. As are his two friends. Over the years I’ve learned that there are two classes of people who get a big kick out of people who are different from themselves. The very rich, and those who are freaks in their own right.
    â€œTotally dead,” Debbie yells over the roaring bikes. “Have you come to save us?”
    â€œGet us some beer and we might do some thinking on it.”
    â€œNo problem, Papa, the fridge is full,” she yells back.
    Debbie ducks inside and the three Angels break out their