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Men aren't supposed to be pretty, but I am. In my possession are a half dozen brands of shampoo and conditioners, countless hair care products, and more than one package of nose pore exfoliating strips. I use Dove soap. I moisturize. As of last week I use eyeliner, and I'm starting to like it.

I speak, of course, of Diva night, that glorious gender-bender that, like Christmas, comes but once a year and, also like Christmas, features far too many fat men wearing red, and far too many young ones sitting on laps. Naturally, the main difference between the two holidays lies in the pornography; at Diva night the porn room is in the far left corner of the gym and is cordoned off with thin barriers of green cloth. Santa puts his porn room right near the entrance, separating it from the masses with festive red velvet and furry white trim. Also, Christmas is less gay than Diva. Slightly.

I wasn't even going to go. I didn't have a ticket. I wasn't wearing the slightest hint of mascara. My face was utterly devoid of sparkles. All that would change. Soon.

Ok, so I was going to go. I was supposed to buy a ticket. I was supposed to slightly hint at mascara and sparkles. As with many things in life, I dropped the ball. Which, ironically, is precisely what a friend of mine did. He wore a thong. [insert rimshot here]

So I was ticket-less. I had no ticket, but since all my friends did, and since otherwise I'd just sit in my room and write my column like a dork, I figured I'd help them in their preparations. It was fun, it really was. There's something new and exciting about men dressing like women, and women dressing like - well, for the most part - more-naked-than-usual women. Thinking it over, it's not really new because we do it every year, but it is by all means exciting. And how!

Seeing all my friends violate social norms and having such a great time made me want to join in, too. As the guy clad in fashion jeans and sweater, I didn't really fit in with the rest of my naked buds. They kept asking me to take pictures while they posed outrageously. Attempts to look serious and sultry punctuated by fits of hysterical laughter and a quick "Ok, ok, seriously, ok, go." More laughter. This was unbearable. So much fun. So much naked. I wanted to be a part of the Festus transvestus. I wanted to trade my jeans for a little black dress. I wanted to go to Diva.

Also, I was really drunk. Really. I went for a slinky halter top; a third date dress. It felt comfortable to be in drag, it felt good to be on the other side of the camera. I had arrived, but honey, I had to do something about that face. I'm a winter, did you know? Blue eye shadow, blue on the lips. A little lipstick, not too much, I'm not a whore or anything. Most of all, sparkles. Sparkles, sparkles, sparkles. Sparkles galore did I wear, sparkles, sparkles everywhere. So much so that it was painful to look directly into my face, and anytime I was remotely near a light source people had to make those pinhole eyeglasses they use to watch the solar eclipse. I was hot. I had arrived.

Not literally, of course, we were still getting dressed and admiring our smooth transvestite transitions. I watched my y chromosome fade away.

We started the long walk across campus in a pack, huddled together for warmth. Whoever invented dresses failed to consider their insulating properties. They have none. Zip. Zilch. They don't do it. As we walked, I could feel body heat being pulled from my skin upwards into the cold October night, and I was never so glad to see the harsh sodium lights of the sports center than at that moment. Little did I know.

The sodium lights shone on my competition; if I'd wanted to go to Diva, I wasn't alone. Massive globs of lines dribbled from the Diva entrance in two lengthy, crowded, and pushy segments. One was for ticket-holders, the other for the fools who didn't buy in advance. It was cold. I waited five minutes. It was still cold. Diva is a night when an entire generation dismisses the invention of pants, and God smites them for that with the bitterest, coldest, most unbearable weather of the season. Thanks to my garb, I was quite literally freezing my clangers off.

I won't lie; there was lots of grab-ass in the line. Lots of it. I talked with my neighbors, I read all the product labels on the vending machines, and I snuck glances at the more naked of my line-mates. After all this, it was still cold. After what seemed like hours I finally got in. I checked my watch. It had been hours.

For all the buildup, Diva itself didn't really hold my interest. Don't get me wrong, of course I would have felt lonely and miserable if I wasn't there, but all the same it wasn't as spectacular as I'd hoped. Diva was just like every high school dance I ever attended. Except for the porn. And the nudity. And all the guys who grabbed my ass.

It was all fun for a while; I made a game of guessing peoples' gender, but lost interest after I started looking at shoes. Men and women are infinitely different when it comes to footwear. Women can coordinate. They have a rough idea of what shoes go with which dress, and which colors clash. Men are stupid. I saw a friend of mine in a fabulous red dress with a dynamite make up job, glossy nails, the works, and white running shoes with a yellow stripe. One of them was untied. Honestly.

We didn't really hang around too long after that. It was late, and we were drunk. One of my prosthetic sock boobs was sorely out of balance. It was time to go home.

I'm glad I went; I found out I look really good in eyeliner, and I think I'll wear it more often. Most of my makeup wouldn't wash off, so I spent the next two days shiny and eye-lined: a Ziggy Stardust incarnate. In the immortal words of David Bowie himself, "Hey, everybody, look at me, I'm so cool. I'm David Bowie." Well put, Mr. Bowie. Well put indeed.