Drag Queens and Transvestite

There were no private showers, except rooms on the 2nd floor at Sloane House. Showers and restrooms were in the hallway. This caused lots of problems: Sloane House had to change shower curtains in the men’s room almost every other week. Someone slashed the curtain right in the middle, making a cigarette box sized, 90 degree cut. So while you were taking a shower, someone could see your private part without you seeing him. It was creepy. We never caught the people who did this.

Freshly coming of the boat (my friends at the Y used to joke about me until I figure out what it meant), I had no idea what homosexual was. When I was in college, my English teacher from Virginia told us of her observation when she first arrived at our campus: she could not get used to girls holding hands and locking arms while walking together. She said this behavior was considered quite homosexual in United States. We were not sure what she meant at the time because we simply didn’t know the word “homosexual” meant. We were English students and were considered in the fore front in trends and fashion and all. So it was not hard to imagine what entire China was like on the subject of “homosexual”. I sure paid the price for being ignorant.

One day I was doing my laundry in the basement. There were two young black students there, a male and a female. It was sort of a slow day in the laundry room. I usually had to wait in line for hours because there were not enough laundry machines for the residents. Through conversation, I knew they both just came from Detroit to attend a school in NY. I offered my help and gave them some pointers as where they could go for NY adventures and where to get food at affordable price. After 3 hours laundry, we became friends. They came to Club34 later that night. I had lots of sympathy to young kids who just came to New York City. I knew how tough it was and how helpful it was to have someone give them some help. I told them they could come to me anytime they needed help. They both were very appreciative. After I closed the club, it was 1:30 in the morning. I was exhausted and ready to crush. When I opened my door I noticed there was a note on the floor. I opened unfold the note and started reading it. My hands were shaking while I was reading it. It was a full page love letter from the guy I met earlier in the laundry room! I was mortified and panic, not knowing what to do. I had this fear in me and just wanted to get out of my room. For some reason I was afraid he would come to my room at any moment. Gina was not in her room. I ran to Liz’s room. I told her the whole thing and showed her the letter. Liz had never seen me scared like this. I stayed in her room for about an hour. After Liz calmed me down a bit, I went back to my room and didn’t sleep that whole night. Nobody knocked on my door that night.

The guy came by the club the next evening. I said hi politely and did not look at his direction after that. He must have sensed he made a fool of himself and stood up and left. I never saw him again.

Dawn’s next door neighbor was a tall gentleman from New Zealand. He was 6.0’ tall, in his 30’s. He was one of residents at Sloane House who I considered a gentleman. He was soft spoken and very respectful. He was a student from New School. One day, after tired of listening Dawn’s complaining about her trouble finding "a few good men", I told her she should hook up with her neighbor. “He seems a great guy.” I said to her. I was hoping she do find someone so she would not have to bother me all the time. She gave this Are-You-Kidding-Me look, and paused for a second, to see if I was indeed humoring her. After realizing I was nothing but serious, she gave me this Get-Our-Of-Town look and said: “He is a good guy alright, but he likes guys.” “What are you talking about?” I asked her, couldn't believe what I was hearing and looked at her to see if she was making this up. Right away, she leaned her head towards me, looked around the room and lowered her voice: “You think I am wild, he has more actions than I do. He has guys in his room every night. He is like a man whore.” I was speechless, totally in shock and disblief.

One day I was working at the front-desk, a group of gorgeous, well-dressed, voluptuous ladies came to me for directions to second floor lunge. Admiring these beautiful women passing by, I turned my head to Bobby, singling him to pay attention to these ladies. He was standing there, staring at me (surprisingly!), with a look on his face as if to see how long I would continue with my admiration. The moment the ladies were out of the sight by the stairs to the second floor, he burst out loud with a laugh and started banging the counter. I did not know what was so amusing. The more I looked perplexed, the harder he laughed. “What’s so funny?” I asked him. “Peter, you need to change your glasses. They aren’t no girls. They are men! Didn’t you see the big Adam’s apple under their chin?” Chin was not my focus, I thought to myself. He told me these girls were drag queens. The Latino transvestites of New York City rented our lounge for their annual convention. There were about a hundred of them, all dressed beautifully. I knew Bobby would never lie about something like this to me. I felt like a stupid donkey. But I was so curious about the whole thing and I wanted to check it out myself. So I went to the second floor, peeked through inside the conference room through the door. And I still couldn’t believe they were men. They all had heavy make-up and a beautiful pair of boobs. They sure fooled me.

Later that night, Bobby told me this story: a few years ago, there was a tall, handsom looking Turkish student living on the 5th floor at Sloane House. He was a playboy and got all the girls all the time. One night he spotted a girl at Club34 and at the end of the night, she was in his room. When he reached his hand into the girl’s pants, to his great surprise, the girl was a man. Much like the movie of The Crying Game, except the guy, Bobby told me, was a mess afterwards. He saw him in the street a few months after that incident. The big, tall handsome Turkish student was no longer the same person. He told Bobby he was so ashamed of himself that he couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t bear the thought that he almost had sex with a guy. It was a no-no in his culture back in Turkey.

Gradually I learned if a person dressed too lady-like and walked too girly in Sloane House, most likely it was a he, not a she. In America, women were losing their feminine side (due to woman’s right movement?). The flip side was that they were more confident, independent and assertive than girls back home, especially when it came to sex. It was quite different from where I came from, where a girl walked like a girl and a man walked like man, well, for the most part. What surprised me was the amount of cross-dressing people living in Sloane House. It didn’t bother me. They were the friendliest people you could ever meet, except for one.

Thief of Sloane House

I lived on the 7th floor, facing west side, a corner room that was much roomier. Normal room was 6 x 10; my room was 7 x 12. It was considered a luxury room on the floor. It used to be the room for the student who had call girls before. When he moved out, I asked for that room right away and Sloane House let me have it.

One night I was woken up by the light on my eyes. It came from the hallway through my door. My door was opened. I was very suspicious since I clearly remembered I left the door chain on before I slept. I sensed someone had broken into my room while I was sleeping. I took the knife from under my pillow and walked out of the door in my pajamas. I saw a guy with a bag in his hand, entering Sonya’s room. I usually knew who Sonya was dating, but I didn’t recognize him. As I approached to Sonya’s room, Gina came out of the elevator. I asked her to keep an eye on Sonya’s door and I pickup the house phone calling front desk. By the time the night shift staff answered the phone, Gina signaled to me that a guy came out of Sonya’s room. I pulled out my knife and asked him what he was doing in Sonya’s room. He dropped the bag in his hand and started running downstairs through the fire exit. I ran after him, with a knife in my one hand and holding my pajamas with the other. I lost him as I came down to the second floor. Gina and Sonya came to the 2nd floor a few minutes later. They were more afraid that I got hurt. Sonya said she was in the shower when all these happened. The guy must have waited until Sonya started shampooing and just took the room key without Sonya noticing it. Since the key had the room number on it, it was easy to find the room. Cases like this had happened before, but it usually involved tourists.

Tish was on duty that night. Tish was promoted to new security chief after Big John retired. I told him the guy was still in the building. Tish wanted to search the entire building and asked me to help him since I was the only person who could identify the thief. Gina and Sonya tried to persuad me not to do it but I was on fire and fearless at that moment. I felt I was being violated and had this urge for revenge. It was always dangerous when man reaches that point, a point of losing reasoning and commen sense and on the verge of being violent. Tish grabbed his gun and I pickup a baseball bat. Two of us started searching from the roof.

We searched every bathroom and door way on each floor. As we came to the 6th floor, it was almost 4:00 in the morning. Suddenly we heard a female screaming from the floor below us. We rushed to downstairs. The scream came from the 4th floor. We found the student in the lady’s room. She was shaken up with a terrifying look on her face. She told us while she was about to take a shower, a man came out of one of the 3 shower curtains and ran away. Tish and I ran out of the building, tried to find him. He got away.

Two weeks after this incident, I spotted him in the lobby, standing not too far from the check point. I quietly phoned security guard, asking him not to alert the guy and pretend to be a routine, casual check for his room key. I knew he was standing by the check point, waiting for the right moment to sneak in the building. But surprisingly, he pulled his room key from his pocket and showed it to the security. I couldn't believe it when the security guard told the thief had a room key. Right away I called my manager and explained the situation to him. The manager checked his name in the computer. His name on the ID did not match any names in our computer. So the mangger asked him to surrender his room key. The thief had this what's-going-on look on his face, pretended to be clueless. In the mean time. The security guard and I went to his room on the 14th floor. The room was full of stolen goods. There were hundreds of item, piles of walkmans and all kinds of clothing. I found my walkman and a pair of pants. I took back my walkman but throw away the pants. We did not have the authority to arrest him and management did not want to bother with it. So we had to let him go. I was wondering how in the world he got a room in the building. Each day the computer genereted a occupancy report. If certain unoccupied rooms had no keys, our engineer would changed the lock the same day, to prevent things like this. A quick thought came to my mind that there may have been a mole inside Sloane House, working with this thief. But I got rid of this thought quickly. It was not my responsibility and besides, there were enough things in life that I had to deal with at the time.

A few weeks later he was caught again by a French tourist on the 5th floor. The French tourist came back from shower, wondering where his key was. His door was shut so he stood by his door, waiting for security guard to open his door. Suddenly he saw a guy came out of his room. Surprised at first, he then saw this guy had his belongings in his hand. Right away he realized he was robbed. The French tourist knew "Kong Fu" so he nailed the guy easily. The security guard and the French tourist took him to the police station on 35th Street. The security chief asked me to go to the police station to help identifying the guy. For whatever the reason the police said they had to release him within 24 hours if not found guilty. I was furious. Back home if things like that happened, the guy would have no chance of getting away. He would be "taken care of" very well in the hands of policemen. Police back home were always on the victim’s side. This was not the case here, the land of the law where a person was presumed innocent- even he got caught right handed. I still have a tough time to understand this logic.

Nothing I could do to change the mind of the world’s finest. I was frustrated.

Realizing he could get away easily, he came back a few more times. One day I was passing the cafeteria that connected to back doorway, I saw him running to the back door. I sensed he just stole something from Sloane House so I started chasing him. The back door was on 33rd Street side. He made a left turn after getting the door open. The back door was locked from outside. People could not open the door from outside but it was very easy to open it from inside. It was our "underground railroad". My friends often used this door to "smug" a person from outside. He ran toward 8th, and made another left turn at the parking lot between 33rd and 34th street. He seemed surprise to see me right behind him and fearing of being caught by me. Well, he knew I was about to choke him at the police station and I guessed he was kind of scared. So he threw something on the ground in the parking lot. I was no match for him no matter how fast I ran and nobody on the street even bother to stop the guy. So I stopped and picked up the stuff he left on the ground. It was a stack of traveler checks. I took them back to the front desk and asked a casher to check if the person on the check was Sloane House resident. Just as we were checking on the computer, a female student came to the front desk and told us frantically that someone had just broke into her room and stole her checks. I showed her the check I just recovered. She was very happy to get her checks back but didn't bother to ask how I got them.

My room got robbed 5 more times. Only then I finally realized how this theif broke into my room: my room was a corner room, slightly bigger than the rest of the rooms on the floor. But right next to my 9th Avenue-view window it was the hallway window. The distance of the two windows was about a foot and half. Although it was dangerous, it was possible a person could climb into my window from the hallway window. There was no other way he could break in my room. He could get killed if he slipped. Having seen the thief up close myself in police station, I knew he could easily do it, if noone else could. I decided to do some preventative work: I placed a bottle behind my window curtain, so it was not visible from outside. But if the thief attempted to climb in to my room from the hallway window, he would knock down the bottle and I would be waken up before he got in my room. Hopefully he was still in between my window and the wall. I would run to the window and shut it right away, smashed his two hands on the edge of my window and he fell off the building, all the way on the ground, from the 7th floor. There was no he would survive the fall. I would just say "woop, poor guy! He slipped and fall. I wonder what he was doing.", if any one asked. I can't help it. He took all my possesions. One time he even cleaned my piggie bank. Lucky for him, he didn't get caught and my fantasy was just a fantasy after all.

Death and Drugs

Because of the varieties of people living in Sloane House, there were many crimes. I had been a victim numerous times. Big John was the security chief when I started. He was in his late 60’, a retired New York City policeman. There were not many expressions on his face. But he was a kind man. Every morning he would say hello to me with his deep but clear Irish accent. With 3 grand kids, he was about to retire again, he told me. But one evening, around 7:00pm, I got a bad news: Big John was in a serious condition at St. Vincent Hospital. He was stabbed while he was making his daily routine checking in the basement. I couldn’t believe it. There were only a few days left before his second retirement and he was so much looking forward to that day and now this. I didn’t know where the hospital was so I took a cab to St. Vincent Hospital. When he saw me, his face lit up. He didn’t expect I would be there. It was heart breaking to see him lying in a hospital bed with the bandage on him. He almost died of the stab wounds. Big John recovered slowly. He came to Sloane House say goodbye to us when he was able to walk. He finally retired from his job. How safe could it be when your security chief almost got killed? That was the situation at Sloane House.

Just a few months after I started working behind the Hospitality Center, one morning, a group of tourists angrily cornered a Jamaican guy. It was a big scene so I went over to investigate. It turned out this Jamaican dude pretended to be a student at Columbia University and befriended some tourists. All of them happened to be Europeans whom I could not say were street smart people. After a few drinks, he would say he needed a favor from everyone. He owed some tuition to the University and his family was wiring it to him. But the school would kick him out if he didn’t have the money by next day. He needed to borrow some money so he would remain in school and he promised he would pay them in two days when the wired money arrived. Otherwise he would be out of school. His story was so convincing, everyone opened their wallet to help him out of sympathy. Little did they know this dude disappeared in next few days. Believing these tourists would be gone then, he re emerged. But to his surprise, they were still here and wanted their money back…

Realizing there was no way out, he just sat there, lowering his head to avoid any eye contact with the angry crowd. The tourists asked me to call the police and I did. Ten minutes later, two policemen came and they questioned both the lending party and the borrowing party. Half an hour later, they came to the conclusion that they had to let the guy go. I was very shocked at their decision. How could they let the criminal get away? He cheated people out of their money! He should be locked up until he re-paid the money back. The police patiently explained to everyone including me that the lending party was a willing partner in this transaction. The guy did not force them to lend the money to him. He did not commit any crime here. The way they explained it to me demonstrated their knowledge about the law and they executed it flawlessly, at least in this incident.

One night, around 11:45pm, I was getting myself ready to close my shift. I heard some sirens and ambulance right in front of the entrance door. I tried to run out and a police blocked the door from outside to make sure medical staff and the ambulance complete their work. I went back to the front desk and wanted to know what happened. Ten minutes later, a policeman came in and told the manager and I that a man had jumped out of the window and landed on the ground in front of the building. The victim’s head hit the flag pole before his body reached the ground, killing him instantly. He showed me the picture ID of the dead man. I recognized the man: I had just checked him in at around 10:00pm for a room on the 14th floor. He was a young man, in his 30s with a nice jacket. It shook me up. I sat there quietly for about half an hour, wondering what had happened that he had to kill himself.

The 4th floor was designated for students who did not belong to schools like SVA or Parsons who had a long term contract with Sloane House Y. Dawn and Lily both lived on this floor. Some of my other friends lived on that floor as well so I came to this floor often. The odor on this floor was a bit strong to me in the begining, but gradually I got to know that a certain section of this floor was a drug zone. Each night there were some activities going on. One evening, after dinner, I went to the 4th floor, visiting Dawn. Her room door was open. Her boy friend, the art student was in her room. He usually was a quiet guy. But that evening he was erratic. He uncharacteristically laughed hysterically all the time and making unfriendly comments on just anyone walking by the door. I asked Dawn what was going on. She told me he just smoked marijuana. I didn’t know marijuana had such effect on people. I couldn't help but shaking my head wondering if my fellow countrymen like this during the Opium War a century and half ago. For this very reson, Chinese (well, most of us) would stay away from drugs. We knew the consequence of being addicted to drugs.

When I was in college back in China, our campus was on the outskirt of the city, next to a farm land. A few farmers lived in a farm house right by the entrance of our college. One day our new English teacher, a lady from Wisconsin walking with us after a class in the afternoon, suddenly stopped with her jaw wide opened, as if she just discovered a new continent. She was looking at cannabis sativa growing by one farmer’s fence. We didn’t know what the excitement was about. She pulled out her camera and started asking us to take pictures for her standing next to the plants. She said growing marijuana in America was illegal. We didn’t understand the fuss. I told her when I was a kid, my buddies and I usually played hide-and- seek in cannabis sativa field, and using the seed as baits to catch birds. Farmers were not happy about it and they would chase us out of the field. They used the plant to make ropes in the fall. I had seen farmers harvesting the plants and left them in the pond for days before they peel the skin off for rope making. But I had never heard or seen anyone smoking it.

Big John never told us what exactly happened to him the night he was stabbed in the basement, but it was rumored that he was stabbed for busting a drug transaction there. Because of this, I didn’t like these people. I tried to stay away from them as much as possible and they did the same.

One spring morning-it was raining outside. I got to the shower room down the hallway, just about to get ready for the day. I heard some noises coming from the court yard side of the building. I stuck my head out of the window to find out what was going on. I saw a few more heads sticking out of the window. Without my glasses, everything was a blur. I could not see anything. I asked a guy from other side of the building what was going on. Recognizing I was the staff of Sloane House, he pointed his finger at something in the courtyard, telling me there was a woman lying on top of the second floor roof, facing down half naked. “Looks, she is dead!” he shouted to me. Right away I yelled out loud asking people to call police. Realizing I might have to face police and my manager about the incident, I thought I might as well just finish my shower. I finished my shower quickly and ran down stairs front desk. I was told the police already left with the body. I never heard anything about this case afterwards. Nobody even bother to ask me about it at all. Sloane House did not want to make it a big deal for obvious reasons.

Kate Who Dwarfed Me Intellectually

If you like to be entertained with a few laughs, you would like to hang out with Kate. Things came out of her mouth that would make you spit your beer out of your mouth. She was funny and you never knew what she would say next. It could be anything. If you like attention, you would like to hang out with Kate as well. She was a magnet for stares coming from the street, or anywhere she went. When we walked along the streets in the city, everyone would turn their heads. She was an intelligent, humorous and foul-mouthed girl from Belgium. She was a fascinating girl and if you think she sounds like the most perfect girl on the planet, you are right. The only thing was she was 1 foot tall and her head was half the size of her body. As she could not stand up, she rode around in a battery-powered wheelchair. Like everybody else in this world, I did not know how to react when I first saw her. But soon we became good friends.

Kate came to Sloane House YMCA with the same exchange program as I did. She came to New York City a few years earlier. In the beginning, ICYE staff placed her under Carla’s care. Carla was one of ICYE’s early exchangees to Sweden. (She became my host when I arrived in New York) Other ICYE exchangees would stay with their host family. Exchangees in New York City like me would stay at Sloane House for an obvious reason: nobody from IYCE’s hosting network in New York City had enough living space to offer for exchangees. Carla lived in a small studio apartment on 25th Street between 9th and 10th and the building had no handicapped facility. So it was not an easy thing for Kate to get around. Carla had to carry her out of her wheelchair whenever Kate needed to be in and out of the building. Kate had to rely on Carla and others to get around the city and since she loved the city very much, she wanted to go out a bit more. But she hated people who patronized her. She hated people who show any sympathy towards her. She believed they pitied her. So there might have been some misundersanding between Carla and Kate after a while. ICYE program staff had to find her a place that better fitted her. Sloane House YMCA was a perfect situation. Kate lived at Sloane House and worked as the Hospitality Center staff. She liked her situation so much so she decided to come back to Sloane House every summer to work at Hospitality Center and enjoyed the city at the same time. Before I met Kate, Carla warned me about what to do and what not to do in regards to Kate. The message was: Kate disliked people in general.

Carla was half right. Kate liked men. She liked to flirt and enjoyed the attentions from men, especially the good looking ones.

One evening, Tii invited her staff to her apartment at Lower Eastside. We took a bus across town from 34th Street to 1st Avenue and walked to Tii’s apartment. It was a long walk but walking in Manhattan was a treat. when we got there, I did not what to expect at Tii’s party. But Tii was one of the kinds. She just knew how to make a new comer feel comfortable. We all had a good time that night. On our way back I found something strange about Kate’s behavior. She was mad as hell, cursing all over the place and she sure had great commend of English curse words. I had never seen anyone could curse in English and Dutch so effortlessly. I soon found out from others that it was Kate who introduced her friend Jeff, another fellow ICYE exchangee from Switzerland to Tii. Jeff quickly fell in love with Tii and they got married soon after. Kate felt Tii betrayed her friendship and stole the love of her life. Any rational person would think differently, but Kate was not always rational when it came to man.

Kate and I usually took a walk together along the 9th avenue and enjoyed a few laughs together at Empire Dinner on 10th Avenue. We would be voluntary commentators on people passing by the dinner. She would flirt with the waiters there and giving hard times to the waitresses. She had this devilish mentality towards women and I felt her hostility came from her realization that no woman in the world was as half smart as she was but she could not enjoy man physically as they could. Somehow you just knew Kate was balancing herself psychologically. Usually at the end of the conversation, she would always say the waiter was gay. I couldn’t tell.

Kate hardly talked about herself and her family. But occasionally, after a few good laughs and a few sip of beer, little by little, she told me her hardship while growing up. Her father was not a loving dad, to say the least, because of Kate’s physical condition. She was regarded more like a burden to the family. So she became more and more independent, mentally and physically. I sensed the psychological wounds never healed. She did not want people to remind her of her physical situation because it painfully reminded her of reality and her unpleasant childhood. She wanted to be treated just like any other person. That was how I treated her and that was the reason we became good friends and it was a privilege of knowing Kate and be close to her.

Like every European, she loved New York City but despised the rest of America. She believed Americans were condescending and ignorant. Right or wrong, I learned to appreciate America because of her. She would tell me there was no place on earth that she would rather stay than in New York City. Because New York City was the most exciting city in the world and the attentions she got were mostly positive ones than negative ones she received from other places. It was a convenient metropolitan city for physically challenged people like her. She could go any places as she pleased. One year she visited New York City again. After a night-out, we went to Port Authority to wait for the bus. She stayed with her friend who lived in Hackensack. I was amazed that a NJ transit bus came to the terminal to pick her up. A whole, empty bus just for her, in the middle of the night! What a great country! What a privilege to live in this country. How could you not love America?