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In offering something for everyone, New York City instantly becomes anyone's niche.
There are barbershops for children and shoe stores for petites; there are shrinks for cats and dogs and specialty shops for witches and warlocks; there are hangouts for Caribbean cab drivers and restaurants that cater to Israeli secret agents; there are groups for overeaters, over-workers and liars. And there is a store that sells only five items of Venetian glass for the table.
But this only partially explains Miss Vera's Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls.
The life of Veronica Vera provides more insight.
She is a 40-ish former porn star with thick raven hair and enormous breasts. She spent her girlhood in New Jersey where she excelled as an English major at a local college, she says. Later, she crossed the Hudson River to pursue a publishing career and along the way got into the sex industry. Robert Mapplethorpe once photographed her in an erotic pose. Annie Sprinkle, performance artist and porn queen, is a close friend.
"Ironically, repression laid a foundation for my exhibitionism," Miss Vera declares in one of many articles she has written about her sex life. "I have carried this concept further to evolve a theory of sexual evolution-the idea that no practice is kinky, bizarre or perverse. In terms of each individual's development and experience, everything makes absolute sense."
And so, in this context, does Miss Vera's school in the heart of this great metropolis.
But really, if there were a reality, it lay in students' testimony.
"I needed to learn makeup," says "Patricia," a six-footer with a deep voice who takes a class once a month at Miss Vera's. "The lessons are fun."
With a curriculum that covers everything from Personal Maid Training to High-Heel Walking, this school for cross-dressers has attracted almost 200 students in two years, says Miss Vera, the founder, headmistress and primary salesman for the academy.
Students find the school through ads in magazines like Transvestian; they request brochures and then come in for 2...