Men who love women dressed as men 

It was all Linda’s idea. I got a Facebook invite to an event called “Women as Men,” and I thought, “I loved The Crying Game,” so why not?

Linda, as in Linda Castellon—Cuban chef extraordinaire and local expressionist painter—wrote, “Hello ladies, it’s time for us to put on our Man suits and show this town what it’s like to be a real man! Hahaha... Dress in your finest manly cloths (sock or banana required). We will be hitting SLO town all night so put those wing tips on. Any questions?”

So it’s Friday, May 18, and naturally I run, not walk, to McCarthy’s at 8 p.m., arriving with my fiancée Anna just in time to see Linda in her three-piece blue suit, crisp white shirt, red tie, and natty fedora.

Kiss is blaring out of the jukebox—“I wanna rock’n’roll all night, and party every day”—as Linda rushes up and kisses me on both cheeks like a Cuban.

“You want to dress like a man because we rule,” I say, but Linda’s having none of it.

“No, darling. We just let you think that,” she purrs.

Just then, Woman as Man No. 2 rolls in: Coco Herda, who looks like an extra from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy with her lime green shirt and striped ’70s tie … or maybe she looks more like John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Coco’s sporting bushy blond hair and an even bushier mustache and lambchop sideburns. She’s a Latina honey in her female alter ego, but she’s strangely unattractive as a blond-haired man. I’m feeling disturbed. Very disturbed.

Anna uses her iPhone to bring up a photo of Bolton, and the resemblance is uncanny!

Suddenly Vanessa Hanke and Jessica Schroeder saunter in replete in vacation shirts and mustaches, and the four dudettes gather for a dude group photo, in which Vanessa extends her tongue and gives me the rock sign like she’s David Lee Roth posing for a groupie from whose thigh he’s about to snort a long line of cocaine before ravishing her and kicking her out of his trailer. Vanessa’s chest hairs really look fetching! Is this how women see men? A bunch of machismo cheeseballs making hot sex eyes at the camera? Sheesh!

Finally another guy-gal rolls in, Kathleen Young, who’s got a little Fu Manchu action going. It’s starting to heat up in this joint. It’s really turning into a sausage factory in here … not!

Now Anna’s feeling left out since she dressed as, you know, a hot girl I’m going to marry in just more than three months, so I help her scrawl a mustache on her finger, which she holds up for all to see. Men rule!

No, seriously. We rule … as long as underneath it all we’re in touch with our inner woman. Right? Right? No. We don’t rule. Damn.

Glen Starkey takes a beating and keeps on bleating. Keep up with him via twitter at twitter.com/glenstarkey, friend him at facebook.com/glenstarkey or myspace.com/glenstarkey, or contact him at [email protected].