Ruby Zarsky. All photos: Lia Miller.
“I WENT TO GREAT LENGTHS to find the top-shelf transsexuals,” Ruby Zarsky announced to a crowd of adoring chasers and twinks in black mesh tops.
A few hours earlier, I’d arrived on time—I’m a Virgo with good-at-school syndrome. We waded through a thick mist of men only to wait for the doors to open a few minutes after eight. Of course my friend Frankie and I were the first to arrive. She wasn’t pleased I’d dragged her along so early. We took a few laps around the room and got a drink. We were at “All Dolled Up,” the all trans-girl pop-up strip club put on last Thursday by UNTER, Ruby, and Seva Granik.
“I think I’ve seen you before,” the bartender told Frankie. “Not here. At another UNTER party.” My friend turned to me as he made her a watery Aperol spritz. “I’ve never been to an UNTER party before,” she confessed. Of course, it’s a cardinal sin not to have gone to an UNTER party. If you haven’t, you can’t have an opinion on the faceless corporation, which hosts a series of semisecret queer raves in Brooklyn each month. I suppose every blonde trans girl is interchangeable. We’ve been mistaken for sisters, lovers, and each other—sometimes all in the same night.
For the first few hours of the night we were surrounded by “those cis girls and their non-transitioning friends,” as Frankie put it. The first group of trans girl strippers took the stage and we sat down to pay up. Two chairs down, a trans boy was being showered in attention. “The girls seem pretty heterosexual,” Frankie said. Soon enough a trans girl was making eye contact with me and I was no longer paying attention to the trans boy. I was throwing ones and getting overheated.
The night’s music choices were somewhat eclectic: System of a Down, Korn, Fall Out Boy, and Liz Phair were played alongside Cardi B, SOPHIE, and Lana Del Rey. Each set featured three girls dancing for nearly thirty minutes, clacking Pleasers and climbing poles with skill. Whenever a girl worked the crowd, a flurry of cash rose up above her, announcing where to direct your gaze. Projections of neon girls and obscure anime adorned the giant walls.
“We’re not talking about fucking pronouns or fucking bathrooms. We’re talking about what really matters. Protecting the dolls,” Ruby declared during one of her segues. Trans women are not allowed to strip in New York, she told the crowd. Something I thought to fact-check later but haven’t. I did find a Reddit thread about a trans girl trying to find a club with an out trans girl stripper, hoping to pick up the skill. It certainly sounds true that clubs wouldn’t hire trans women unless they were stealth. These grave moments punctured the atmosphere of the club for brief moments before the horniness resumed. “You can take pictures of us and jerk off to them later,” Ruby concluded.
A clique of twinks turned out to be some of the biggest spenders. Later in the night a cis woman fanned herself with money before giving it up to a dancer. The crowd was an odd cross section of people you may have fucked or seen on Instagram, straight male chasers, young lesbian trans girls, and the kind of straight couples you often see on Feeld looking for a trans woman to be their third. One goth boy was dragged around on a leash by his girlfriend. A bunch of trans guys sporting mullets walked around smiling in a daze. At one point a man in a ten-gallon hat covered in glimmering rhinestones showed up. “He looks like he came from Burning Man,” a friend of mine said during a smoke break.
Frankie disappeared into the night as my boyfriend and their friends arrived. We swiftly proceeded to run out of money. Kay Gabriel gave me a quick hug before eventually taking the stage with a rubber snake. I half expected her to perform a Cocteau Twins routine. I drank the Diet Coke my boyfriend smuggled in and watched a beautiful woman swing her braids as Paramore’s “Misery Business” thundered across the venue. Blue and red light on bare skin is even more beautiful in person than it is on film. Fashion LaBeija, one of the headliners, was almost always on the floor tipping the other dancers when she wasn’t dancing. This was the kind of trans solidarity the event seemed to promote. That and, of course, horniness.
My boyfriend handed me more ones after I ran out. I grabbed the stack and headed to the stage, where Fabiana Love was dancing. As I started to give her my ones, she got down and locked eyes with me as she stuck the bills to her collar bones. She pointed to just below her breasts and nodded at me to stick a dollar to her skin. I walked away in awe at the electric moment.
Around two in the morning, Amanda Lepore graced the stage to execute a slinky burlesque number. She was, of course, stunning. “She made me want to be trans,” Honey Pluton told me. But the girls who did three sets throughout the night stole the show. It is often easy to wonder who desires trans women. Not just politically, but sexually. Who wants to fuck us? Who wants to love us? Some patrons may have just been there for a show, but seeing people drool over the hottest trans women alive is the kind of praxis I can get behind.
— Grace Byron
Money bag.