Another night at The Palace, which brings my thoughts back to deviants. I was brought up in a very conservative household; my grandmother, Sarah Jane Gallagher, was the imposing matriach and President of the Rhode Island chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. My childhood was one of dress shoes and dancing school, but the moment I found the escape hatch I jumped. My grandmother was appalled by some of the new friends I found in the seedy bars of Providence, where I went to school. They were exciting to me; they wore eyeliner and dyed their hair. Once I dyed mine a color named Violent Violet and nearly got sent to military school in Newport. I never was allowed to wear sneakers as a child, but when I did learn how to make my own decisions they were platform sneakers. My mother, ever the rebel, introduced me to the first gay person in my life, Richard Chamberlain; she coyly said afterwards to her young, fascinated son, "You know his hands are smooth as silk. And he likes men." Perhaps it was from that point on that I surrounded myself with deviants. I was always fascinated by souls who did not care about convention; I followed the likes of Mona the Providence drag queen who embraced my innocent being and took me once on a spree that entailed her taking an axe out of her pocke book and chopping up someone's car in the lot of a a gay bar. I eventually bought a huge apartment on Benefit Street in Providence and maintained a sort of Salon of the Sordid. I was always laughing, as was everyone else. When I moved to New York, it all took the form of something much more focused, but still so fun. That's another story. All in all, my favorite people are those who don't fit in; they have always seemed to be the most real and understandable. My sister, du Barry (Peter lBarry of the Barrys of Newport) has always remained aghast of my tastes, but I love her anyway. There is nothing more plausible to me than a boy in a dress who is comfortable in it. One of my first infatuations was with a boy (now a famous jewery designer) who spent his entire first year at the Rhode Island School of Design in historical drag. Ricky, with whom I am STILL good friends after all these years, eventually had to be moved to the girls' dorm, although it wasn't a historical girls' dorm. I would walk around The East Side with him dressed in a perfect reproduction of Queen Victoria's 16th birthday gown; the pictures I took are still astounding. Now I'm here in Miami still embracing the unusual. I love deviants; they are not deviant to me.