Pointing at my voice recorder, she whispers, “I can’t be on tape. She’s standing wigless in a skimpy dress, shuffling through her locker, and won’t look me in the eye. I’m first introduced to Karen - nervous, small, balding, with a close-cropped horseshoe of hair and a deep, husky voice. The periphery is lined with lockers and stacks of luggage members pay a fee to keep their wardrobes here and can come and go as they please. There are two sofas and a television in the living room, a shelf for unwanted clothing, and a bulletin board with announcements and resources. In the entry hall of this low-ceiling garden apartment, there’s a stack of pigeonholes for passing along communications and sometimes love notes to other members. There are two rules: no photography and never reveal your male name. Since the late 1990s, the New York–based group Crossdressers International, or CDI, has maintained an apartment here.įor its roughly 30 key-holding members, the CDI headquarters serves as a support group and a locker room. The tableau is like a mote of Old New York dust suspended in the neon beams reaching west from nearby Times Square. Behind Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal lies a grimy, litter-strewn block of brownstones where a half dozen bums have camped outside an abandoned storefront.