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like men I had ever seen before. There was Dante, who was thin as a rail, as he was a vegan, another thing I did not understand. He wore huge, dangling earrings on his shaved head, but dressed in just a T-shirt and jeans so it was hard to tell if he was dressed up or down, a woman or a man. I was terrified of him at first, even though his voice was soft as a mouse and he had the shiest smile.
    Then, there was Forbes, tall and thin and British, with a sprawling, lavishly detailed Japanese tattoo that covered his entire body. He was funny and bitchy and conservative and sweet all at the same time. Dante, Forbes, and I did not know what to make of each other. They knew nothing of little girls. I didn’t get their tattooed arms or earrings.
    Oddly enough, my father was the bridge to understanding. “You should talk to them. They know lots about everything. It is so interesting. They are so bright. Forbes is so funny. You will see. Ask them about books.”
    I didn’t want to. I just wanted to read Dear Abby: The Collected Letters every day. It embarrassed me, leaving the store with it tucked under my arm, Forbes eyeing it with curiosity. I knew I needed some kind of literary makeover. Dante gave me Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land . Forbes gave me a French book on autopsy, with the grossest pictures I had ever seen. I was on my way.
    John Waters’ Shock Value came next. I was obsessed with Divine, who I thought was kind of pretty. I had no idea she was a man, even though the book showed her out of drag with a buzz cut and a polo shirt. I thought maybe she was just getting her hair cut short like my aunts did (“So I can just wash and go”). I was looking at the book and I asked Forbes about Divine.
    “Well, Petal, first of all. He’s a man.”
    It was like the Birds and the Bees and the Butterflies.
    I asked, “Why does he dress as a woman?”
    “Because he wants to.”
    “But why?”
    Forbes sighed. “Some do it to be funny. They aren’t that cute or whatever, feel somewhat lacking, so they get attention that way. Some just like the way it looks. Some do it because they love women. Some because they hate women. They’re all different. It’s such a bother really. I couldn’t imagine putting all those things on, makeup and binding up your naughty bits. You can see them do shows sometimes. It can be very entertaining. There are clever ones and pretty ones, ones so good you can’t even tell they’re men and ones so bad you’re glad that they are because no woman should have to look like that.”
    It was becoming so clear—the boys buying makeup at Walgreen’s and the overly made-up “women” I would see spilling out of the bars on Polk Street when we’d close the bookstore at night. I would crane my neck out of the back window of my parents’ station wagon while we were stopped at a red light, trying to catch a glimpse of the goings-on at Kimo’s, the hot nightclub on Pine.
    Kimo’s was famous for drag beauty pageants like the “Empress of San Francisco,” where aging queens would adorn themselves with feathers and false eyelashes and duke it out for the sublime glory of the imperial crown.
    The drag queens of my youth were as distant and aloof as the popular girls at my high school. Unattainable and admired, these beacons of femininity taught me about desire from afar. There were two drag queens who worked at the bookstore a few years later. Alan, an anorexic psychology student with horrendous skin, and Jeremy, a tiny blonde who would later gain fame as an artist, painting exquisite objets d’arts entirely out of makeup. They were the main contenders in the Drag Wrestling matches held at the bar called the End Up.
    There would be an actual ring in the middle of the club, and the champion, often Alan dressed in a black baby-doll sheer nightie and stiletto heels, would weave her way through the crowd. Her glossy black wig was dark as night and you could tell she had blood in her sights. The