On a balmy June evening during my first summer in New York City, I made my way across a crowded backyard party in the West Village. Our host, a gregarious art director named B.W. Honeycutt, had assembled a hodgepodge of hipsters to celebrate the solstice. As “Love Shack,” the new B52s song, blared over a loudspeaker I spotted her. She was fabulous in her big blonde hair and giant sequin platform shoes. She batted her fake eyelashes as she flirted with B.W. and a strapping young lad dressed in leather chaps and a white ribbed t-shirt. Towering over the rest of the party-goers, she was as easy to spot as an overgrown stalk of salvia in this garden of colorful characters. I fluttered toward her like a butterfly thirsty for nectar.
“Hi,” I said as I merged into the conversation cluster. Up close, her cascading Dusty Springfield-inspired wig, frosted lipstick, boobs popping out of her babydoll dress and long painted nails looked astonishingly similar to the woman I’d left behind in San Francisco.
“I just have to tell you,” I said a little wistfully, “You look just like my mother.”
B.W. gasped.
The leather man screamed.
The drag queen glared.
“Rude!” she shouted, before turning on her four-inch glitter heels and sashaying away.
“Welcome to New York, honey” B.W. said laughing.
“Welcome to my childhood, I said.
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