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cigarettes. She comes back with bottles for them and double vodkas for us. We prop the door open so we can hear the music and start our own little block party, just the five of us. Two of them are from Queens, and one is down from New Hampshire. They show us their tattoos and pictures of their girlfriends. I show them my fish and share the secrets of “tucking” with them. Several beers and vodkas later and we’re having a much better time than anyone inside the club.
    Suddenly Johnny, the leader, stands up on his bike and brings his weight back down on the starter. The explosion of sound echoes down the street. He pats the seat behind him.
    â€œHop on, Blondie,” he yells at me.
    His friend starts his bike and gestures to Debbie. Neither one of us hesitate anywhere near as long as we should. I swing a seven-inch heel over the seat and settle down behind Johnny. Debbie, with considerably more effort, maneuvers her three hundred pounds onto the bike behind. With my arms around his leather waist, Johnny takes off toward Third Avenue.
    The avenue is much busier, especially as we reach St. Mark’s Place. I love the East Village. It should be the mandatory first home of everyone who moves to New York. We pass groups of runaway teens, half of them kicked out of their homes because they were too much trouble for their families. The other half ran away from their middle-class suburban homes intent on becoming too much trouble for their families. I spot Quentin Crisp in a lavender suit with matching hat and scarf trying to cross Lafayette.
    Johnny is going faster now, trying to catch every green light. People stop and stare at our little group as we fly by. I’d like to think I fit in as a biker chick girlfriend. L’il Debbie, however, in her super plus–size Catholic School–girl outfit probably draws considerably more attention. I have to hold one hand on top of my head to keep my wigs from flying off, and it occurs to me that I’m not wearing a helmet.
    For a second, the advanced class sixth grade hall monitor in me starts to panic. This is something I could get in big trouble for. This sort of behavior is sure to disappoint someone. My parents, my old teachers. I picture Mrs. Zariff, my fifth grade teacher, suddenly waking up with a start in her floral print bed knowing that somewhere, one of her teacher’s pets is flagrantly “crossing the line.” I picture my sixth grade Good Citizen Citation spontaneously bursting into flames in my old desk drawer at my parents’ house. I picture my obituary in the Oconomowoc Enterprise, informing everyone that the brain responsible for their former debate team hero was splattered (but held loosely together by a blond wig) across Astor Place in New York City. I see teachers, priests, my parents’ friends all whispering among themselves that they knew, they always knew, that I was too perfect not to have some fatal flaw. That they knew it was an act all along.
    I let my eyes go blurry, finally giving in to the vodka. The streetlights and neon store signs register as streaks on my comprehension. This recklessness is just the kind of behavior expected from someone who suddenly surprises his parents with an uncharacteristic string of “unsatisfactory” marks on his third grade report card…the same year that he was bursting into tears inexplicably in the middle of the night. And nobody realized it was because his best friend, Greg Bransen, was moving two towns away. Nobody recognized that he had a crush on Greg, which he couldn’t understand because there were no other boys who loved each other like he loved Greg in the whole wide world.
    Being mutilated in a motorcycle crash is precisely the fate that good people would expect to befall a boy who moves to New York City and wears women’s clothes and is developing a drinking problem and is falling in love with a guy who gets paid to have sex with other guys.
    â€œShut