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It was as if a giant powder puff had descended from heaven and enveloped Lotus in a white glittery cloud of cocaine and sparkles. Frantic energy and cake makeup touched nearly everyone at last night's L magazine Nightlife Awards. Among the crowd, gender was a choice freely made. And sexuality was externalized in a way both alluring and confusing. Jeans, when they were worn, were tighter than a pair of control top pantyhose. Soon enough, a woman would withdraw a hardboiled egg from her vagina. Nikola Tamindzic, who won their award best nightlife photographer, was unfortunately there to capture what ensued. An extended gallery can be found here.

The least interesting part were the actual awards. First of all, if anyone had read L magazine, they would have known who won. Thankfully no one did, because surprises are fun.

Secondly, a lot of people were missing. Justine D couldn't make because she was in Tokyo "getting fabulous ideas to bring back to New York." Jason Ultra, voted best newcomer, couldn't make it because the L train wasn't running. The big winners were Studio B, that Greenpoint club, which won best dance floor, best venue-club, best light system and best sound system. The fact that June D., who produces events at Studio B, was a judge was kind of glossed over.

It was what happened between the award presentations that gripped me. Of the four interstitial performances we saw, two concerned themselves with representation of female sexuality, one with male heterosexuality and one with male homosexuality. The first one, by a woman named Miss Brooklyn, was a King Kong/Fay Ray schizophrenic striptease. Half her body was in a gorilla suit, the other half in a sequined white gown. The more savage part of her took the clothes off the better half until nothing except a pasty and g-string remained.

The second act was a woman in a chicken mask and feathers called, confusingly, something like "The Mermaid." She pulled a string of feathers from her panties, squatted down and did a chicken dance. Her breasts jiggled in a disconcerting way like schoolkids on a bus traveling over a potholed road. Her act culminated in a "laying an egg," by which I mean, extruding the hard-boiled egg that was in her vagina. Then she ate that egg.

The third act, of which we'll have video later today, featured a nice enough looking lady in a sequined tube top. After an awkwardly long time, a man in a cowboy hat approached her and touched her breasts. He simulated performing cunnilingus. He did a head stand. He dropped his underwear in her face. Issues at play here, I would say, include use of force and the male projection of his own desire of what a woman wants onto a woman. It seems that those are two very different things, at least in this case. He wore kneepads and sneakers.

The fourth act was by far the most participatory, at least for this reporter. It featured a man named Captain who also had a cowboy hat. I guess I was looking on with too focussed a male gaze because he pulled me up on stage. This I strongly did not want to do for a whole variety of reasons. But at a certain point, my refusal to budge became too awkward and I caved. That was a bad move.

He bade me stand facing away from him. He bent me over and to say that he rammed me in the ass is neither too strong a description or too vulgar. I closed my eyes and hoped it would all be over soon. Of a whole room full of gays, how had he picked me to go up on stage? Why did this kind of thing only happen here and not at concerts or games where the lucky chosen one gets a free Lexus or something? Why was my lot to get bent over and humped by a guy wearing a cowboy hat and a striped dress shirt? I headed to the bar for a post-faux-coital beer. Someone asked where that scared gay boy had gone. But I kept quiet.