I handed him four mug-like shots of myself. "Why do you need these?" I asked. So they can identify the body? I wondered.

"Go put them with your application behind the bar."

I obeyed.

IT WAS A FRIDAY NIGHT, so no one really had the time or cared to show me how to be a cocktail waitress. A hunched-over waitress Janie took me under her wing and called me "Baby." I felt the name fit snugly. I didn't know they used "Baby" just like "Honey" and "Sunshine" for any girl, just as they used "Tiger" for the tough girls and "Kitten" for the playful and easily tamed. Janie set me loose soon, and I began to learn the drinks slowly--Tom Collins, Singapore Sling, and Hurricane. The beer foamed up in the glasses. When I wasn't serving I stood by the big cast-iron door hustling people in next to big Bill. The air was steamy and I could hear the music from the nearby nightclubs relentlessly competing and clashing in the street. A barker swung open the door to the club across the street exposing a stage full of "girls" wearing paste-ons and G-strings. A plastic leg with a red high heel poked out of an upstairs window. It was all pretty joyous. I smiled to the outside travellers walking slow as a happy herd through the furnace of the late New Orleans air.

"Come on in."

"How many you got there, sir?"

"No cover charge."

"Two drinks, ma'am, $5.20 per person."

Big Bill would look at me through his dark glasses and wink (or was it a twitch) and smile (or was it a leer), and say to whomever happened to be sitting on the wooden stool next to his, "What a smile. God, she looks mischievous! Look at those pretty lips." I thought of Red Riding Hood--the better to do what with? I got attention, kisses on the hand, compliments. One of the waitresses came up to me.

"Don't let that Lou be kissin' on you. I see him kissin' on your hand. If you lets him do that, he be kissin' on your cheek and on your mouth. He don't know where to stop. Besides he a funky dude."

"Funky?"

"I mean musty," she pouted. Another waiter piped in, "He smell like what he been out with the night before." I understood, naturally. But he thought it went right over my head, and made a gesture with his hand like an airplane taking off in front of my eyes and skimming my brow as it flew over my head. He thought I didn't understand and he wanted to teach me. He pointed out that most of the people at the bar were queens or prostitutes. So I looked at all those elegant women with dresses slit high up the slim leg and cut low down the smooth chest, and asked whether our barmaid Mickie was a man.

Bob nodded.

I felt at home with that, for she had broad shoulders and a deep voice. But really, just as Bob said, she was a woman in a man's body. She didn't belong there.

"Is Cookie a man too?" I asked, supposing I knew the answer.

"No...not anymore. She had an operation."

"Oh," I paused. I was getting comfortable with that fact too--a changeover. Yet, I had trouble sorting things out every time Mickie shimmied her shoulders at a man. Let's see--she is gay, so you expect her to flirt and lean on the bar with other women since she's a wom--oops. She's a man, she's a man, she's a gay man, so she flirts with the men at the bar. But she looks like a woman flirting with a man, for she is more a woman than she is a man. And a "woman" naturally tosses her head of hair, winks, and speaks in a low, sexy voice to a "man." Everything looks fine. Like adding two negative numbers and coming up with a positive one, it is confusing but it all makes sense.

BY 5 A.M. the last blues set was over and the place was getting empty. Only the most convincing queens and a few prostitutes sipping orange juice remained: a room full of "women" and "girls." Soon even they disappeared to some unknown corner. Big Bill and Mickie sat at the bar counting money and empty bottles. As I wiped the bar down, a two inch cockroach crawled over it. I started to kill it, but Bill stopped me. "Leave it alone. They watch the place when we're gone."