Sashaying Through a Door Swung Open in Cuba, Jose Shines as Nayla

HAVANA -- There was a commotion behind the smoked-glass door. Giggles. Squeals. Salsa music pulsing.

No one could hear the squat man outside. He stood there pouting, holding a makeup bag in his left hand, slapping delicately at the door with his open right hand.

"Ladies, please," the man screamed. "Let me in. Hurrrrrrry."

More men crammed into the foyer with him, each pouting. It was 8:30 p.m. in Lawton, a dimly lighted neighborhood far from the center of Havana, and it was time for Nayla to come to life.

By day, the impatient man is a waiter at a dreary state-owned cafe. His name is Jose, and he is a nobody. But in this room, a beauty salon with a torn red-leather chair and a cracked mirror, he becomes a star. He becomes Nayla, one of Havana's favorite cross-dressing performers, a marquee fixture of the underground transvestite scene.

Finally, the door swung open.

"Ay, mommy," said a tall man wearing a foot-high pile of curly wig. "Come in. Come in."

The men burst into the room, transforming it into a swirl of hugs and "oh-my-are-you-pretty" exclamations. And joy -- pure joy. Jose began unpacking.

By 8:45, Jose was almost gone, disappearing under a thick glaze of rouge, and Nayla was taking shape. A heavy stripe of purple eye shadow finished it. Nayla had arrived.

She -- the pronoun Nayla prefers at this point in the transformation -- stepped back and smiled.

"Aren't I pretty?" she said, pursing her lips and blowing a kiss.

By 9 p.m., the audience was filling the showroom upstairs. Waiters in tuxedos led the men to their places, situating them around splintering picnic tables and bare metal chairs. They are the scavenged relics of a country where there is seldom money to buy anything, and when there is money, there is seldom anything to buy.