by Lazaro Lima
Cuketa slammed the can of hairspray on the console table. “We quit Wilfred’s. We don’t have certificates.”
“Puti, she is so negative. If you don’t want to go out, nobody is forcing you. But I am way ready.”
Puti and Betty finished dressing up.
“I don’t want to stay behind.” Cuketa adjusted the dial on the radio to WKTU.
“Great, muchachas, then it’s all for one. We’re beautiful and badass. Charlie’s Angels are hitting Hunts Point.”
“But where are we gonna go?” Cuketa sat down at the vanity table and applied eye makeup rapidly.
“The village, I guess. We can’t get into clubs without fake IDs.” Puti picked up a hair blower and styled Cuketa’s hair.
Betty worked on Cuketa’s face. “And we need good ones, which cost money. We’re beautiful, but broke.”
Puti put a barrette on either side of Cuketa’s temple. “So as long as walking in the village and hanging out on the pier is free, that’s where we headed.”
“We gonna take the train?” Cuketa looked at Puti in the mirror.
“How else? Either of you got money for a cab?”
They walked arm in arm out of Puti’s building onto Garrison Avenue. Their cloud of musky perfume was an invisible force field. The streetlights had just popped on and the auto glass shops were closed. Freddy and several of the guys were drinking beers on the corner. Freddy shouted, “It’s not fucking Halloween, you faggots.” And all the guys on the corner laughed. Freddy crushed his empty beer can and tossed it in their direction. It landed with a dull clank in the middle of the street.
They walked across Southern Boulevard. The shops were all closed or closing. They passed Fabco Shoes and Discotheque 1 Boutique and climbed the stairs to the Number 2 train. They rode silently down to the village and even though they relaxed when they were walking down Christopher Street toward the pier, their hearts never stopped pounding against their chests.
When Betty arrived at her apartment, her mother was sitting at the kitchen table sipping tea, hair wrapped in a towel.
“You were out late; don’t make it a habit to …” Betty’s mother laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“You look good. I almost didn’t recognize you.” She continued to laugh.
“I don’t see what’s funny.”
“I’m sorry Lei Lee …”
“Betty. My name is Betty.”
“OK. Betty.” She stopped laughing. “I expected you to be gay, but not this.”
“This is who I am, and this is just the start.” Betty cried because the pounding of her heart had not stopped all night.
Her mother slid her tea cup across the table. Betty sipped it. She loved the taste of her mother’s tea. It was strong and lightly sweet with a hint of lemon. Betty’s mother placed her hand on her back. “Your father is gonna have a tough time with this. He gets back in a week. Let’s figure out how to let him know.”
Betty sipped the tea and her heart slowed to a steady pace. She looked at her lipstick stain on the cup and rested her head on her mother’s belly and sobbed quietly.
How’d it go with your parents?” Puti sat in bed with the phone pressed to her ear with her shoulder as she removed the nail polish from her toes.
“They were asleep when I came in so I just went into the bathroom and cleaned everything off. My brother was watching TV, but I slipped past without him seeing me.”
“Betty said her mother laughed. Her dad is out of town. But this is it, Cuketa. I’m not wearing men’s clothes again.”
“I’ll admit the village was fun; it’s just getting there and coming home that’s tough.”
“This is my life, so I gotta do it everywhere.”
“I hear you, nena. I feel it, too, but it’s fucking scary. I don’t want to get my ass kicked and my brother has already made my life hell. This might be too much for everybody, I think.”
“As far as I’m concerned they need to get used to it. I’m going ‘shopping’ on Fordham Road tomorrow with Betty. Are you in?”
While they “shopped” on Fordham Road it started to rain, so the trio ducked into a liquor store. A young Latino security guard about twenty-two years old stepped up to Betty. “Hey China, you looking sweet.”
Betty smiled and looked away.
“Damn, do you taste as good as you look?”
Betty shrugged.
As the guard flirted, Puti took a bottle of Bacardi that was on a display and slipped it inside the sleeve of her jacket.
By the time the security guard squinted his eyes and knitted his eyebrows to get a closer look, the three had darted out into the rain. They were glad to have followed Puti’s advice to not wear heels when they shopped in drag, in case they had to make a run for it.
Safely in Puti’s room, they all laughed and unloaded their knapsacks, revealing the booty from their latest venture, and sipped rum and Tabs.
“We’re too young for bars, and swiping this rum gave me an idea.”
Puti cased out a liquor store on Castle Hill Avenue. It was near the Bruckner Expressway and after 11 p.m. there was not a lot of foot traffic. There were usually two guys who worked behind the bulletproof protective casing, but on Tuesdays and Wednesdays there was only one. The taxi pulled up close to the liquor store and faced the direction they needed to go for the escape. Betty, the most “real” looking of the trio, got out of the cab and entered the store to flirt with the worker.
“I just want a little pint of Bacardi, but I ain’t got no money, Poppy. But I can pay you in other ways.” When he let her into the bulletproof casing, she left it open and went in the back and kept him busy. Puti and Cuketa came into the store with two large canvas bags each and filled them with top-shelf liquor—Bacardi, Johnny Walker, Hennessy, Tanqueray, and Glenlivet. They brought the rear bottles to the front of the shelf so that the shelves looked stocked. They came and left in less than two minutes. When Betty was done, she accepted the pint from the man she’d just blown and jetted out to meet her cohorts in the cab.
“That was too easy.” Puti twisted the cap off a Bacardi bottle and inhaled the rum. “Delicious.”
“I was so scared we were gonna get caught.” Cuketa looked out the window and watched the Bronx flash by them—streaks of light, a White Castle, an empty school yard, and a gas station.
“We didn’t get caught, and Betty here got some dick in the process.”
“He was alright. Nervous as hell. I swallowed. He wanted my number. I gave him the phone number to Happy Garden takeout.”
Betty and Puti laughed. Cuketa continued to look out the window.
“This should last us a while, right?” Cuketa looked back at her friends. “A month or two, right?”
“I have an idea,” Puti said. “Let’s have a party. On the roof.”
“I love it!”
“But people are gonna drink all of our liquor.”
“We’ll get more,” Puti and Betty said simultaneously.
When the trio got back to Hunts Point with the liquor, they called and invited their friends from the pier to party on the roof. Their friends arrived in cabs with food and mixers. House and disco music played low out of the portable 8-track player. Religious candles lit the ground and the moon lit the sky. Some of the building residents, local roughnecks, and guys from the corner joined the party. Puti was surprised at what free liquor could do.
For the next several years the rooftop parties became a ritual on Saturday summer nights, and it was one of the ways in which the threesome kept good standing in Hunts Point and bought their freedom to be “women” 24/7. A highlight of the party was “Showtime,” when guests lip-synched to their favorite songs.
One evening, during the second summer of parties, while salsa music played and couples danced, Freddy sat next to Puti.
“I know you ain’t buying this liquor. Where you getting it from?” Freddy took a long drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke into the night air.
“We have our ways.”
“I bet. There’s been talk about liquor stores being robbed by three chicks.”
On the surveillance cameras they looked like women, and most of the men were too embarrassed to report the robbery, instead silently taking the loss of twenty or thirty bottles of booze.
“Talk?” Puti looked over to Betty, who was talking to a guy she’d met in the village.
“Yeah, talk. How much money you takin’?”
“None of your business, nene.”
Cuketa was doing a show for the crowd as she lip-synched to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
“You ain’t takin’ money, which is why you gettin’ away with it.”
“How do you know so much?”
Freddy winked at her. “But you better watch your asses, because word is out, and maybe Betty La China might be better off charging for her blow jobs than risking your asses for a couple of bottles of Bacardi.”
“Since when do you give a shit about us?”
“These parties are cool, and regardless you fags are from our ’hood. You one of us, I’m just sayin’. So if you need some added protection, I can help you out.” Freddy winked again. “Maybe I could join your team; you might need some muscle.”
“We don’t need no one else on the team.”
Freddy nodded to the music and surveyed the small crowd dancing on the rooftop. “I would hate for the Gay Bandits of Hunts Point to go down without any protection. I could hook you up with a piece for extra protection.” Freddy pointed his finger at Puti, as if it were a gun, and fired.
“Gay Bandits of Hunts Point?”
“Gay Bandits is what the police call you. I just added the Hunts Point part because I figured out who you was.”
They didn’t hit the same store twice unless the ownership changed, and hit only one store a month. They branched out from the Bronx to lower Westchester and Washington Heights.
“I got us a present.” Puti reached into her bra and pulled out a Kahr PM9, an automatic 9mm pistol with a Black Diamond finish.
“Is that real?” Betty reached for the gun. “Shit! It is real.”
“We may need some protection. We’ve had some close calls, and the Bandits can’t continue to get over on charm and deep throating alone.”
Betty aimed the gun out the window. “I’d love to shoot every motherfucker whoever gave me shit.”
“Careful, nena, that shit is loaded. I’ll show you both how to use it.”
“I ain’t touching it,” Cuketa said. “I think we do just fine with our charm, and this one gets to suck all the straight dick she wants.”
“Excuse me, Miss Thing. I’d like to have a little more choice in the dicks I suck, and most of those guys are disgusting. It would be easier if once they let me past the security gate I just pulled out a gun and said, ‘Don’t move.’”
“Oooh, you look very Peggy Lipton from Mod Squad.” Puti winked.
“I was going for Kate Jackson.”
“You two keep playing, but I am not down with that gun.” Cuketa sat on the chaise lounge and looked out the window.
Puti put the gun away in the top drawer of her dresser. “OK, Cuketa. You don’t have to deal with the gun. Me and Betty will.”
“I just don’t want anything to happen to any of us.”
Puti put her arm around Cuketa. “The gun will help protect us.”
Cuketa shoved Puti’s arm off her shoulder. “Or get us killed.”
“Nobody is gonna get killed. And Betty had the right idea. She gets in. Holds up the guy. We move in and take our shit, but we need to be taking money, too, because our jobs suck.”
They had all gotten minimum-wage or off-the-books jobs. Puti was sweeping floors and washing hair at the Salome Ureña Hair Salon on Hunts Point Avenue, Betty was a floor girl at Discotheque 1 Boutique, and Cuketa worked as a cashier at the fabric store.
“So what?” Cuketa said. “We get some spending money. We swipe our clothes and we get the liquor for free and party as much as we want.”
Betty shook her head. “You are so small time, Cuketa.”
“Right! We have to think big. So listen up, the meeting of the Gay Bandits of Hunts Point is called to order.” Puti opened a box of Prada shoes—black, two-inch heels, tight smooth leather.
Cuketa raced toward them and touched the shoes. “Did you pay?”
“The Yolandita Layaway Plan.”
“For real? Tell me. ’Cause security is fierce at Prada. May I?” Cuketa took one shoe from the box and slipped it on her stockinged foot. “I live for Prada.”
“Yolandita from Faile Street works at the store in SoHo and she gets a discount. And I gave her fifty dollars a week to hold these for me, and once I had enough … Prada!”
Cuketa walked the room, as she did through life, as if she were on a runway. Now, as a young adult, she was always impeccably dressed, dripping in fashion. She made up in style and grace what she lacked in face. Her eyebrows were meticulously plucked, her lipstick always had a frost, and she wore green contact lenses. She believed that blue lenses would be too white girl, and her Puerto Rican grandmother had green eyes, so she was just adding what nature skipped. She dyed her hair blonde because she liked to have fun. Cuketa stood at about six feet tall, lifted by Prada and pride. Cuketa paused and turned. She pointed her foot, kicked up her heels, then sat on the bed and crossed her legs.
“You want to try them on, Betty?” Cuketa slipped one shoe off and offered it.
“No. I think they look too big for my feet. I’m surprised Prada makes shoes in that size. You sure Yolandita didn’t buy some knock offs and just put them in a Prada box? You know you can’t really trust those straight girls to do shit for us.” Betty took a sip of her Amaretto Sour served in a crystal martini glass.
“Perra.” Puti barked and took the shoes and put them back in the box.
Betty laughed. “Well, we need hookups at Dior or de la Renta, because I’m not a Prada bitch.”
“OK, so we need hookups at the vieja clothes for Betty,” Cuketa said.
“English please.” Betty slipped off the chaise lounge and walked over to the pitcher of Amaretto Sours.
“Oh, you understand me, don’t play. Vieja is old lady. You like those old designers.” Cuketa rummaged through Puti’s closet.
“Ain’t nothing new in there, but ’chachas, we either got to keep up the schemes or we need to improve our cash situation.”
Cuketa gave up looking in the closet. “Well, it’s a smart hookup, especially in those stores where we can’t swipe shit. They see us coming and they focus all the security cameras on us. So we should just find more hookups. At least it’s legal.”
Betty finished off her drink and set the glass down next to the empty pitcher on Puti’s night table. “I say we start taking cash and liquor.”
Gay Bandits of Hunts Point Nabbed
Bob Kaptstatter, New York Daily News
June 11, 1989
Police apprehended three homosexual men dressed in women’s clothing who robbed liquor stores at gunpoint in the Bronx and the surrounding area. They were caught on surveillance cameras, but the masters of disguise changed their looks and evaded the authorities for over ten years. All three lived in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx.
They were stripped of their glamour and their heads were shaved. Lipstick and street clothes were considered a privilege at Rikers Island, and gender reassignment hormones could only be had through the black market—so Puti and Betty went without.
Puti and Cuketa each received a sentence of five years in jail, with possible parole after two years, and Betty got a mandatory ten-year sentence because she was carrying the gun. Cuketa only survived a week.
“Puti! You heard?”
“No. What?”
“They got her. They got our girl.” Her eyes were nearly swollen shut from crying. A short fuzz was beginning to grow back on Betty’s head, and her prison garb was several sizes too big. “They cut her
throat. Those motherfuckers raped her and slashed her throat.”
Puti wailed and collapsed. Prison guards rushed over to separate the two Bandits. Cuketa’s assassins laughed.
Puti got a knife to protect herself and survived until she was paroled in 1991. She was raped and beaten several times. Her left cheek bone was fractured and caused her left eye to have a permanent squint; several of her teeth were punched out, so she stopped smiling; and a stab wound to her right shoulder severed nerves that left her right arm weak and palsied.
“Take care, Betty.”
“Paco takes care of me. He ain’t gonna let nothing happen to me. ’Sides, you know how fast time flies in here; I got, what, another eight years.”
Puti embraced Betty.
“I’ll be cool. My man got my back.” Betty smiled sadly.
“Your man?”
“I always wanted a real man, right?”
Paco was the leader of the Bloods, and he made her his “woman.” He got her makeup and women’s clothes and treated her like a trophy wife and punching bag. She always had to be with him or within view. He would hit her if she talked back to him, if she laughed at any other man’s joke without his permission, or if she soiled any of her dresses. She had to make sure his laundry was done, clean his cell, wash him, and sit on the floor next to him whenever he commanded. Each night he fucked her and liked to fall asleep while still being inside her.
“He ain’t a man, he’s a cabrón.”
“English, please.” Betty laughed quietly and took Puti’s hand. “Maybe I don’t want a real man. I’m better off with my girlfriends. I miss Cuketa and I love you, Puti.”
“I love you too, you beautiful, crazy China.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m thirty. I’m busted.” Puti held up her palsied arm. “I’m gonna collect a small disability check and I’m going home to my room, mija.” Puti cried through her tight-lipped smile.
Betty wiped away Puti’s tears. “I can’t wait to go to your room.”
