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spotlight would shine directly on her, throwing her crater-face into relief, and you knew she would win before it even began.
    Jeremy would appear from the other side of the club. Teetering on black maribou high-heel mules and wearing a leopard-print pajama set, she had big blonde curls that were all hers, no wig for this tawny beauty. She’d place a pink ribbon high in her hair, and she was as pretty as could be, considering she was about to get her ass kicked.
    They didn’t shake hands. There was no referee. It just started without warning. Jeremy waved to the crowd and Alan took off a spike heel and knocked her opponent down with it. Negligees were torn off, hair ribbons went flying, narrow limbs snapped through the air and slim bodies bounced off the ropes.
    The battle was a dizzying triumph for Alan, who preened on the mat in triumph, clutching a long lock of Jeremy’s real hair in her glamour-length Lee Press-On Nails, as Jeremy savored the agony of defeat, lying on a bed of shredded lingerie and fishnet.
    These exhibitions were horrific in their ferocity, catfights to the death, biting and scratching and kicking at carefully concealed balls, with the ripping off of the loser’s wig as the final act of humiliation. Since Jeremy didn’t need a wig, his real hair had to do. Drag queens are capable of great violence. They should be allowed to enter the WWF. RuPaul could take out Stone Cold Steve Austin in a heartbeat with a flutter of one false eyelash. Drag queens are strong because they have so much to fight against: homophobia, sexism, pinkeye.
    Jeremy’s makeup art was spectacular. He did beautiful paintings, delicate dioramas in nail polish, dreamy watercolors accomplished entirely with Aziza eye shadow. He also did performance art with his drag wrestling opponent.
    The last time I saw Jeremy and Alan perform was at the Castro Street Häagen-Dazs. They took over the ice cream counter for impromptu drag queen guerrilla theatre. Jeremy pulled his wiry body on top of the glass counter, then knocked off all the tasting spoons and the cone display. For the grand finale, he shoved a chocolate-dipped vanilla ice cream bar up his ass and then pulled it out and ate it.
    Confused patrons who had come in for their after-dinner treat and not for this—the only way to put it—spectacle, fled the premises, and the police were called. By the time they got there, everyone was gone. I wonder who called 911 and cried, “He’s shoving ice cream up his ass! Please hurry!”
    Jeremy died of AIDS a few years later, but Alan still carried on, studying Melanie Klein and alternately turning tricks as a dominatrix and selling pot from his apartment. He lived in the basement of an old Tenderloin building in an apartment with bloodred walls and the perpetual odor of baby powder, left over from the many bath parties he once had, sensual affairs where guests would fill and refill his claw foot bathtub, washing each other and screwing the night away. We’d smoke his seedy, headachy cheap trannie pot and get high and talk about how much we missed Jeremy.
    Forbes and Dante didn’t spend much time on Polk Street. They both had boyfriends and led fairly sedate lives, although they did have their draggy moments. One day, a messy brown Jackie O wig appeared behind the cash register, and everyone who worked that day took turns wearing it. First, Dante, who looked like a hip ’60s lesbian in it. Then Forbes, who looked like an unhappy secretary. Then me, like a little girl in drag.
    Forbes loved black men and Asian men, and he had two boyfriends, Black Gary and Chinese Gary. He also flirted a lot with my father, which I found hilarious. Forbes called him “Joe,” the name my father insisted all white people call him. “Oh, Joe,” Forbes would often say with a long sigh. “My Joe, those are some snappy pants!” he’d call after my father when he’d wear his ridiculously bright plaid trousers. My father ignored him all the time, just like