New York- The stick-up-their-butts rich folks might be off to the Hamptons, but way down on Rectum-I mean Rector-Street, the trannies, fatties, and fetishists were in such full force two Saturday nights ago that JERRY SPRINGER must have been on hiatus. See, there was a “big girl” party at some not-quite-large-enough spot down there-LINDSAY LOHAN would have been served as a bread stick-and about six and a half inches away, at the lounge-restaurant Romi, ALLANAH STARR was premiering a weekly transsexual frisson called Gurlesque Burlesque. As a result, the straight male chubby chasers and the chicks-with-you-know fans spent the whole night out-kinking each other on this one tiny strip of salvation by the river.
Gurlesque’s doorperson KENNY KENNY was sporting an advanced KYLIE MINOGUE-as-Emma Peel look and cracking, “There’ll be no hooking outside. All the hooking will be inside, and I get a commission.” He was kidding-no commission.
“Are you here for the transsexual party?” he’d ask the solitary men in pencil-thin mustaches circling the club like scared rodents. Weirdly enough, none of them will ever come right in-they have to traipse around the block a few times and get up the nerve to finally enter, like teens descending on their first dirty-magazine purchase. Kenny explained it to me: “When your whole world is straight but you go to sleep thinking about sucking dick and getting fucked, you push it down, but it comes up again. ‘How do I tell my mother?’ Guilt and fear feed off each other and voilà , you’ve got men like these.”
Well, they seemed nice-and they were only there to catch a burlesque show, after all (and to mix with some fatties who had either wandered in by mistake or who happened to be trannies too). Besides, they were kind enough to wait outside on command because Allanah had called ahead that she wanted some kind of crowd when she arrived. (It was truly heartrending to see nervous nellies who’d finally gotten the balls to go in having to wait in full view on the sidewalk for 20 minutes.) Eventually, Allanah’s limo pulled up, but then it dramatically circled the block-the evening’s running motif-as Kenny murmured, “Is that a tranny move or what?” At last she emerged, all vavoomy, along with the cooing AMANDA LEPORE, who cut the pink ribbon as someone yelled a transsexual’s favorite expression, “Snip it!” By the way, one of the place’s specialties during restaurant hours happens to be “sliced meats.” Maybe just stick to the salads.