ON STAGE WITH
GLAMOUR GIRLS WHO ARE GUYS

In New York, drag is often more about entertainment than sex.

Think Bette Midler ballads and swing music. Big hair.
Karyoke in the high maintenance style of kabuki theater.

Drag queen entertainers in this city vary by neighborhood. In the West Village, she-men look more like men. Think skirts and hairy chests.

East Village drag is about glamour, and Upper West Side drag involves impersonations of women, usually stars.

Drag is big business. Ivana Trump has her birthday party at Lucky Cheng's, the famous East Village club, every year. Mick Jagger sings off-the-cuff here, and Ted Danson and Jack Nickolson have been known to drop by. Like most other things in this town, cross-dressing for a living is very competitive.

There are about 25 drag queens who work at Lucky Cheng's, and the jobs, when they open up, are by invite only. "We have the most beautiful girls," says Winona Juggs, a cross-dresser who has worked at Lucky Cheng's for five years. "We have a standard, a look. We don't do like those 14th Street prostitutes."

Fashion is fundamental. Cross-dressers often have things custom made. Lucky Cheng's has its own couturier, a costume designer, Johnny Moi. Chanel, Joyce Leslie and Daffy's are all popular brands with the performers.

Cocktail just had his first custom outfit made. It is a black and silver robe with crystals, and cost $400.

Founded by a husband and wife team eight years ago, Lucky Cheng's also has a location in South Beach, Miami.

"They have a couple of drag queens down there but it hasn't been very successful," says Richard, 49, a pharmacist and regular patron of Lucky Cheng's who asked that his last name not be used. "New York has its issues about a lot of things, but it's probably the place where you can be most honest about these things."

PHOTO: A crossdresser at Lips performs for the crowd.

To protect their identity, some drag queens get copyrights on their names and looks. When Anita Cocktail first began performing, she spent days thinking up a catchy stage name with friends in the business. Stars like Cocktail, who's real name is John, are paid upwards of $150 a song, for 10 to 12-song sets. Many travel around the world for gigs.

To handle engagements and money, Cocktail uses A-Plus, a New-York based agency that represents drag queens and freak-show performers with piercings or other gimmicks.

"I've threatened to take people to court when they try to steal it," Cocktail says of his stage name. "It's my living. I perform."

Getting ready for a performance can take anywhere from 20 minutes to more than three hours. "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap," Cocktail says.

A native of Columbus, Ohio, and the son of a Lutheran minister, Cocktail says his parents, especially his mother, have been very supportive. He says he's like the daughter his mother never had.

"I was always going over to play dress-up with Nancy as a kid instead of going out to play softball," says Cocktail, who won the 1993 Ms. Fresh Face drag contest in New York. In Columbus, it's an amateur "club-kid" sort of drag, he explains, but the New York scene is much more about glamour.

When dressed, all drag queens take pride in their ability to keep their masculinity under wraps. Most want to be referred to as she and take great offense if masculine pronouns are used in reference to them.

"When I'm working, I'll hear somebody say, 'He said this,'" Cocktail says. "I say 'Excuse me, SHE said. Do I look like a man?' Dress is gender."

Drag queens will often deliberately use unisex e-mail addresses that double for their two identities.

"It's a stage; it's a performance," Cocktail says. Shaving is the worst part of the job, Juggs says. The creative freedom of entertaining is the best part, Juggs and Cocktail agree.

"We try to get them out of the back seat of the car and their own little world into another. Not everbody is exactly the same," Cocktail says.

Much of the crowd at Lucky Cheng's is bridge and tunnel tourists -- people from outside the city who take the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan for entertainment on the weekends. Many of the female tourists come for bachelorette parties. "They leave giving us hugs," Cocktail says.

Some who come are gay men looking to meet.

To other men in the gay and bisexual community, cross-dressing is seen as demeaning and offensive.

Some men hate it, but come with friends anyway. "I don't like she-men," says Justin Felton, 21, who is bisexual. "I feel a touch uncomfortable, although they don't do anything to make you feel uncomfortable. It looks bad though, it stigmatizes the gay community."

Drag queens have incredibly complicated personal lives. Cross-dressing in New York City is a "pandora's box of complicated personalities and sexualities," says Richard, 49, who came out in the '60s in Washington, D.C., as part of the first wave of the gay liberation movement in the United States.

"A lot of gay men wouldn't go out with them. They hate them," Richard explains. "They don't like queeny, effeminate men. I always feel that they are a very colorful part of our community, but they are very complicated," Richard says.

"If I'd go out to meet a boy, I'd lie to them about what I do," says Juggs, now married to a gay man who also cross-dresses for a living. Juggs removes his makeup and accessories before he approaches his spouse. His spouse will do the same before greeting him.

"A gay man doesn't want to date a man dressed like a woman," Richard explains. "Straight men don't want a woman with a penis." In Cocktail's case, "she made the decision to grow her hair long," Richard says of Cocktail. "It sort of became an issue of Anita taking over John."

"I think that's one of the hardest parts about being a drag queen. Dating," says Juggs.

Most people who come to Lucky Cheng's just want to hang out and let loose.
Jill Carlin, 24, is a regular.

"I find drag queens to be the most real people," Carlin gushes. "They'll talk to you about anything. They're in touch with themselves. I'm not a sexual deviant. I have a boyfriend. But I feel I could talk to them about anything."