Dear Dr. Know,

I'm tired of going with the flow. I want to make a fashion statement at graduation. Gear me up, Dr. K.

--Vanilla Val

Dear Vanilla,

Dr. Know goes ga-ga for Commencement exercises. When else do we see professors and administrators dressed in flaming pink gowns? Well, good question, actually. So Dr. Know e-mailed her pal Harry Lewis (an important Harvard dean). But Dean Lewis insisted, "in my line of work at least I don't don red silk with big skirts much."

Dr. K. detected a hint of disappointment in Lewis's message. He wrote that he "enjoys" playing dress-up once a year. But is once enough? Dr. Know started to fantasize about Dean Lewis as a closeted fashionista when he started gabbing passionately about his academic threads. When he told Dr. K about his 100 percent silk gown, she almost wet her panties with delight! She started dreaming about a queeny deany. He described his "true, pure silk academic gown" so deliciously, almost as if he knew Dr. K's mantra when it comes to these things--"academia-as-erotica." And then, Dean Lewis started talking dirty! He took our conversation where the sun don't shine, saying, "I wouldn't recommend going naked underneath, as the gown closures aren't really designed on that assumption." Oooh, oooh, Dr. K could hardly take all this teasing. Her face got flushed.

Dr. K's thoughts briefly wandered to ManRay, a gender-bending nightclub in Central Square--only a short walk from Lewis's office in University Hall. There, dress-up parades happen every Friday night. Style-maven Lewis probably doesn't realize it but the club offers a discount at the door for wearing "pleather, latex, pvc, drag, extreme fetish attire or eerie erotic wear." Dr. Know suspects that if the dean's regalia doesn't pass for eerie erotic it will definitely fall under drag. The club is located at 21 Brookline St.