(During the past two years, I have occasionally mentioned in this column that I am working on a novel. Now that it is near completion, I would like to introduce you to one of its key characters, chanteuse Dusty Rose. You will also meet Diana Delight, the social director of the Sawdust Mills Campground & Wilder Life Preserve—an unpredictably possessive woman who makes Dusty’s life extremely complicated. If you enjoy this brief excerpt, I’ll be happy to introduce you to the Sour Grapes, an aging band of golf-cart cruising boys who can’t seem to stay out of trouble—especially when a murder is reported here in the gayest place in the swamplands of rural Florida.)

Her disappearance was reported two years to the day after Dusty Rose assumed the position of resident diva at the Lucille Ball Bingo Parlor & Discotheque. When she signed her first year-long contract, she had used her then-legal name of Rusty Rhodes, but it wasn’t long before Dusty began thinking of Rusty as her maiden name.

The steady gig in the club room of the Sawdust Mills Campground & Wilder Life Preserve offered Dusty an opportunity that Rusty had rarely dreamed possible back home in Tampa, where he had eked out a living selling commercials for a small-wattage radio station that aired easy-listening standards. Although he barely made enough money to pay his bills, Rusty stuck with the job because he loved the music— until the morning his clock radio stunned him to consciousness with someone ranting about "my faggot father" having "his panties up in a bunch."

When Rusty called to warn the program director that their station was victim of a cruel prank, she informed him that Eminem’s song "Cleanin’ Out My Closet" was number three with a bullet on Billboard Magazine’s Hip-Hop Hot Hundred. She also said she was sorry that she hadn’t had time to alert Rusty to management’s decision the previous afternoon to scrap the low-rated "mellow oldies" sound in favor of rap:

"But you’re a cool young urban cat, so selling the new format should be right up your alley."

Rusty wanted to tell the program director that she knew nothing about his alley and that she could ram the job up hers, but he kept his mouth shut and persevered, too numb to plot an escape. Only during Saturday night performances at a squalid little club called The Nocturne, when Rusty turned to Dusty, did the chanteuse find the freedom to express herself as the woman she knew she was. Dusty had an uncanny ability to duplicate the singing voices of Tina, Barbra, Bette, Cher and Snoop Doggy Dogg (Snoop’s cadence being virtually the only benefit the radio station’s new format provided her).

Soon, her live performances—five songs a night staggered among the lip-synching lampoons of her sister drags — were drawing cheers from more than the usual African-American and Hispanic male habitués of the Nocturne. Shrieking white guys, lesbians and even young straight couples vied for a table or standing room at the rear rail.

Sawdust’s founders had been looking for a regular act to help their spotty bar business, and at the urging of their social director, Diana, they invited Dusty to try out during one of the monthly "Draggers and Dungeon" weekends. Coincidentally, a cub reporter for Out magazine happened to be making his debut visit to the camp to do some probing into the goings-on at Big Dave’s Brig, which was located in an old barn used most of the time to store the campground’s tree-trimming apparatus. For party weekends, however, the storage facility was made over into a maze of slings, racks, ropes, chains and bathtubs. To let patrons know the dungeon was open for business, the official Sawdust mascot—an anatomically enhanced, nine-foot plaster Statue of David—was placed at the entrance.

After pausing to admire the augmented work of Michelan-gelo, the young writer took three steps into the dark whereupon he was promptly stripped, tied to a poll and then poked, prodded, spanked and tickled mercilessly by dozens of cowboys, leather men, a couple of women, and even someone in a cleric’s collar. Dazzled by his hours of research, the writer stumbled out of the barn and into the Lucille Ball just in time to catch Dusty’s encore interpretation of Janis Joplin’s "Ball and Chain." The experience brought him to tears and prompted a rave review, which ran under his suggested headline: "Dusty Slams Sawdust with Stardust."

Flooded with inquiries about the singer’s future appearance schedule, Diana offered the chanteuse a permanent job, complete with a modest starting salary, a liberal bar tab and a one-room cabin to call home. The deal sealer was an unusually comprehensive health care plan that Diana said she was able to obtain through contacts in California.

When Rusty Rhodes began making calls about sex-reassignment surgery, the ink on his contract with Sawdust Enterprises was still as moist as his female genitalia soon would be. Or so he hoped. Rusty was smart enough to realize that his objective could not be achieved with a few simple flicks of a scalpel, but it irked him to hear that he would have to submit to intensive psychological counseling and live the "social role of a woman" for at least a year—possibly longer—before going under the knife.

"What the hell does ‘social role of a woman’ mean?" he complained to Diana during a rehearsal. "Bakin’ cakes and birthin’ babies?"

Diana looked Rusty straight in the eye and squeezed her long fingers across his broad shoulders. "You know perfectly well that’s not what they’re talking about. The hormones need time to kick in, and the doctors want you to be absolutely certain about your decision. Haven’t you read the Standards of Care of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association?"

"I curled up with them last night."

"I mean, it’s one thing to dress up for shows a couple nights a week and another entirely to spend every remaining moment of your life as a female. You know, statistics say that half of the people who get the surgery end up no happier than they were before."

"But I’m not some impulsive adolescent," Rusty protested. "I’ve been certain about this ever since I was five."

It was true that Rusty’s kindergarten teacher had prohibited him from taking part in most craft projects after she caught him in the lavatory squeezing his testicles between the dull blades of a pair of kiddie scissors.

"And now you’re on your way to getting the result you yearn for," Diana said with an audible sigh.