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loving men who look like men.
    “My own theory is that female impersonators let us show our creativity and our need to walk on the wild side. We go for the outrageous.”
    Ralph certainly did. Dating the Jolly Green Giantess was as outrageous as you can get.
    “You won’t hear it from the Chamber of Commerce, but St. Louis is a center for female impersonators. It’s estimated we have some two hundred fifty in the area.” And now, thanks to the King Louie, we had a whole lot more.
    Impersonators may look cheap, but they aren’t. “It costs thousands of dollars to get up on that stage,” Ralph lectured. “The twelve finalists spent a total of a hundred thousand dollars for their dresses. Some losers wind up with colossal debts. Many bet the rent and the utility money and don’t even place.”
    “Then why are they doing this?”
    “Often it’s a way out of the ghetto or the trailer park,” said Ralph. “Many of them are poor boys who have pretty faces and not much else. If they win, or even place, they get a ticket to the gay club circuit. They can make two hundred fifty dollars a night at a cabaret and three hundred to five hundred dollars in tips. It’s more money than those boys have ever seen in their life.”
    “Do they put it away for their old age in securities and real estate, like smart call girls?”
    “Most of them don’t have an old age,” said Ralph.
    He pulled out his Miss American Gender Bender Pageant program and showed me the back pages. They were loaded with tributes to drag queens who’d died of AIDS. In their photos, the dead queens shimmered and simpered, and looked pitifully young. Their epitaphs were short and sad. “Beautiful Bettina, 1993 AGBP Runner-Up. 1975–1995. We love you.”
    I flipped through the fat five-dollar program and found a happier section. It proved a beauty queen is a beauty queen, regardless of sex. These gushed just like female contestants and wrote girlish congratulations to their competition in the program. Last year’s title holder, a glamorous brunette named Sweet Cherry Whine, wrote this: “To the contestants—remember to be the best that you can be. While only one of you will wear the Gender Bender crown, you are all unique!” I couldn’t agree more.
    That’s when Jimbo showed up, looking weirdly normal in jeans and a baseball jacket. He was wide-eyed with disbelief.
    “We can get you backstage, Jimbo, but you have to stick with me,” I said.
    “I wouldn’t think of wandering off,” he said, clutching his cameras like a lifeline.
    Ralph led us through the stage doors, where the medieval theme made way for makeshift modern. The backstage dressing area was a long room with scuffed unpainted plasterboard walls and rolling racks of costumes. Wigs perched on stands like small animals. The drag queens put on makeup at long folding tables or pouredthemselves into their dresses in front of portable mirrors.
    “To look beautiful, female impersonators suffer even more than real women,” said Ralph.
    I wasn’t sure I agreed, but I was willing to listen to his arguments.
    “Some have silicone implants or take hormones. Others go through worse tortures. They may wear six pairs of panty hose to keep their hip and rear pads in place.”
    I was impressed. One pair of panty hose is often beyond me.
    He pointed to one impersonator struggling to zip up a blue sequin gown while he stuffed his lush foam tush back down in his sheer blue panty hose. I hoped he wouldn’t have to use the john in a hurry.
    “Should I refer to them as she or he?” I whispered to Ralph.
    “It’s polite to call an impersonator she when she is in costume,” he said—a bit of etiquette I haven’t seen yet in “Miss Manners.”
    We walked through thick clouds of hair spray and heavy perfume. Feathers floated in the air, lost sequins sparkled on the chairs and floors, and there were cries of “Has anyone seen my eyelash curler?” and “Who the fuck unplugged my curling