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’50s was still dangerous. You had to walk a thin line.
    The homosexual man, Cory said, looked for a “mere iota of the mannerisms of the opposite sex, or to be more exact the mannerisms of the outcast group, in order to reassure himself that this is no trap, no folly that will lead to frustration or even worse.”
    Slang, too, could do the trick. When Cory was writing—and, presumably, cruising—the word “gay” was just starting to be used as a synonym for “homosexual.” To most people it still just meant “bright” or “fun.” When a man worked up the courage to drop a hint like You should come here more often; it’s a gay place! or This bar looks gay! , he subtly tipped his hand. If the man he said it to replied by saying something like Yes it does look gay , Cory explained, “the word has been uttered … From that moment on, there is no doubt as to the direction of the evening.”
    *   *   *
    The hope was that if you learned these scripts, you became freer to choose your role. Not only could you meet anyone, you also could be anyone. Going out let you imagine it, anyway. Who, gay, straight, or otherwise was not wearing some kind of costume?
    During the era of the speakeasy, “drag balls” became wildly popular among black gay men in New York City. The most famous one took place in Harlem, at a hall called Hamilton Lodge (full name: Hamilton Lodge No. 710 of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows). Starting in the early 1920s, Hamilton Lodge began throwing an annual party that quickly became a highlight of the Harlem social calendar. Its official title was the “Masquerade and Civic Ball.” By the late 1920s, however, it was widely known as the “Faggots Ball.” Every year it drew hundreds of drag queens and thousands of spectators.
    Like the Village and the Bowery, Harlem was a haven for homosexuals during Prohibition. Sure, African American leaders who preached the importance of “respectability” condemned the participants. But other authorities gave winking approval, and even encouragement. At the Hamilton Lodge Ball, every year, thousands of “queers” were openly applauded.
    â€œIt was fashionable,” the great poet Langston Hughes later wrote, “for the intelligentsia and the social leaders of both Harlem and the downtown area to occupy boxes at this ball and look down from above at the queerly assorted throng on the dancing floor.” Hughes was known to be a little queer himself. But ostensibly straight socialites from the Astor and Vanderbilt families attended, too. So did the actress Tallulah Bankhead.
    Large black newspapers like the Amsterdam News covered the Hamilton Ball. In 1931, the Baltimore Afro-American ran “Debutantes Bow at Local ‘Pansy’ Ball.” They described it as “coming out … into homosexual society.” Other papers picked it up. In 1932, the tabloid Broadway Brevities scandalized its readers with the headline “Fag Balls Exposed: 6,000 Crowd Huge Hall as Queer Men and Women Dance.” By that point, “pansy parades” were taking place at mainstream locations including Madison Square Garden and the Astor Hotel downtown.
    Adopting a drag persona was a good way for inverts to keep the lives they led “out” a secret from their families. In the 1930s, Mae West was the rage with queens. A man could introduce himself to people he met out at the Hamilton Lodge as Mae West or the “sepia Mae West” (meaning the nonwhite one), and even get quoted in the paper that way, and still return home unrecognized. He could go out and do what he wanted without endangering his “real” life.
    The real Mae West was all for it. In 1926, she wrote a play called The Drag , which featured dozens of gay singers and dancers. In preparation, she asked them questions about the apartments they lived in in Greenwich