If these walls could talk, what a tale they could tell. They can't, of course, unless you count graffiti and phone numbers as talking. If you do, then these walls tell more tales than all of Shakespeare. But most people consider talking to be something else.

So these walls can't talk. But I can. And I will, because someone has to. I've been everything here- patron, waitress, bartender, bouncer, even backup vocalist on one memorable occasion- and I've seen everyone. The Ladies' Room, despite its name, has always been a higher class of place than your average club. It's the place where professional women go to get a little wild. I'd say let their hair down, but a lot of them didn't have enough hair *to* let down. And word got out. Who needed last names when you had first names like Joan, Melissa, Tina, Ellen, Rosie, Dee, Martina, Rita Mae, or Sue?

Late summer was my favorite time- the days were hot and the nights were hotter. The femmes would put on rouge and practice their French, while some of the rougher women rolled up their sleeves to show off their biceps and whistled at the starting frontcourt. And, of course, what usually happened was that the girls in makeup went home with the starting frontcourt, while the tennis players made eyes at the gym rats, and at the end of the night we'd have to throw at least one disappointed suitor out the door dead drunk.

Ah, the nights we used to have. We had a few great house bands rotating in and out on a weekly basis. If you wanted folk, there was Dye the Carpet, kind of an Indigo Girls tribute group- they did mostly covers, with a couple of original pieces thrown in whenever their guitarist got stoned. That was the night I had to sing backup vocals and one of our other patrons had to learn guitar very fast, because Galadriel showed up so out of it that she thought the guitar strings were fairy highways. Yeah. That wasn't pretty. Me, I liked the rock group we had in better. They were called Left Exit, and they were something else, believe you me. Their guitarist was smoking, but not anything illegal. If they had a really good set, you wouldn't be able to hear anything for two days afterward. Big Sleater fans, but they didn't usually do covers- their lead singer and their drummer were fucking awesome wordsmiths, so they wrote all their own stuff. They still come around every so often. Dye the Carpet, on the other hand, ran off to Canada five years ago, and no one's heard from them since. Oh, and we always have some aspiring musicians among our clientele, so there's an open mic night every month- one coming up sooon, as a matter of fact, if you're interested.

We get all types in. Kat used to be an accountant, and she still tips us the same amount as the profit the bar makes off the drinks, just to show us that she had crunched the numbers. She's the same Kat who went on to resurrect the Disciples of Saint Sue, y'know. We're all very proud of her for what she did, even if she's more or less retired now. Emily Vance comes here too, to keep us all filled in and to try and pick up women, because what's the point of being a revolutionary hero if you can't use it to get laid? I ask you. Poor kid, she's been through I don't know how much drama and grief. Can you see it in her eyes? Sure you can, but me, I see it in the needle tracks on her arm.

Oh, yes, we've had some sad stories indeed. It's been close to ten years since the last time she came in here, and nearly seven years since she died, but everyone who worked here before that remembers Leah. She was a dancer- a Broadway dancer, thank you very much, though she probably could have been an exotic dancer or a stripper if she wanted- and the biggest flirt to ever walk through that door. She'd be sitting next to her partner and she'd still pinch my sweet little ass black and blue.

What was that? Oh, yes, I used to have a very sweet litle ass. Lot of other sweet little things too, before I realized that everyone wanted me to be pretty except for the bitch who clocked me with the barstool in the Great Brawl of '03. She rearranged my face, and it was never the same afterwards. Yeah, that taught me to stay out of the Room when a playoff berth was at stake. What? Well, haven't you been in a sports bar when the Yankees lose? Why do you think women would be any different?

Where was I? Ah, yes, Leah Harvey. She went flat-out crazy. We still don't know precisely what happened, but she dumped her partner and took up with some guy she met I don't know where. Next thing we knew, she was floating in the river. It got lost in the papers, what with that being the day before the Chinese War started, but we remembered. Her wife was a mess, and it took years to put her back together. Shame, really. We were all very fond of her, and she had been held in the highest of esteem ever since she helped get Tallie Robbins to change nicknames.

It was like this, you see. Tallie was in all the time when she was the small forward for New York. So was Leah's partner, Chrissy Allen, who was one of three people I've ever met who'd go to a club and drink white wine. Then, near the end of Tallie's career, we had a kid working her way through school, name of Christián Espinel- she helped Slash Stewart and them charter the Amazons, y'know, used to take down the gossip with the drink orders, and she wouldn't let anyone call her anything but plain old Chris. So Millie- our bartender those years- would yell "Phone, Chris!" and with all the racket you couldn't tell if she was yelling Chrissy, or just Chris, or- but you get the idea, I'm sure. So there went the tray of drinks Miz Espinel would be holding, and there went Miz Allen's wine, and there went Miz Robbins's- I shouldn't have to paint you a picture, but let's just say that the lady wasn't amused. Half a dozen times this happened, and after the third young lady slapped Miz Robbins across the face, she told us to call her Tallie instead, and she got to like it so much that she had it put on the roster instead of her full name.

Oh, yes, we had a lot of players in- hell's bells, we hosted All-Star parties every weekend that the game was in New York, and if a player had a birthday, we were the ones celebrating. Believe you me, there were some gorgeous women in that league, back when it still existed. The Gray Lady- mind you, this was before she was the Gray Lady, or even the White Widow, back when everyone knew her name- came in all the time with her girl Meg. Now there was a pair to make heads turn. There were a couple of people who had pairs that turned heads, if you know what I mean. Tallie was actually pretty well-stuffed, which I think got her laid. Of course, Bev Sinclair and Lynnette Samuels used to keep the party going all night whenever they were in town, Bev and Trina and Lynnette and Liz. I didn't know Brits had such a stomach for drink until I met Liz Calhoun. And no one had a mouth on her like Bev did- then again, no one's got a mouth on 'em like a Philly kid. Of course, the Seattle game every year was a party, no lie. Couldn't help but be, with all the family that team collected. Shame about Lily Merrill, wasn't it? She was a nice girl, and a good tipper most of the time- and the rest of the time, she'd offer a bit more of a physical tip.

I liked the teachers best, though. They tipped well- in relative terms, better than some of the stars we got in- they kept the party hopping, we never had to throw them out, and they were always willing to listen to the staff's troubles, the hardest thing to find in a customer. We got a lot of them in; sometimes I wonder if we were on the UFT grapevine or something like that. There was Chrissy Allen, of course, Leah's widow- she had no fear and taught world history at Midwood. She's got a lot more fear now, and she's taken up religion- Alex Sloan's right hand, and Cynthia Jackson's before him. She still drinks white wine, though. There was Nikeh Johnson, a quiet type until you called her Nikki by accident- she taught American history out on the Island for a few years, until Upstate put in new rules about moral standards for teachers. She got her recertification when she became a Historian, after New York's independence, and now she's Historian for Suffolk County. Betsy Leonard's a Disciple, but she also teaches phys ed at Tech. What can I say? Sometimes the stereotypes are true.

Well, we don't get a lot of hardcore revolutionaries in here on a regular basis, since most of them have headquarters in Manhattan and there's plenty of clubs there. We understand, and most of the time we don't object. Why bother getting on the train and hauling ass for an hour when you could stroll down the street and find yourself something to do? That's good drinking time wasted there, that is. Like I said before, Emily comes in every so often, and once in a blue moon you'll see some of the other Amazons, maybe Laurel Payne in spring or October, or Cass Maddox and Hyun Jung drinking away memories of a bad game. We get some birthday parties from the Disciples, and believe me, no one dances on tabletops quite like Nikkita Tavares. No one's got quite as many hair colors, either. I keep telling them that maybe letting her be in charge of the hair dye is a bad idea, but Emily doesn't listen very well, and the last place you'd find her male counterpart is a bar full of women. Most of the other... troublemakers... don't have much use for us, though we do have a couple of ladies from the Street Merchants' Union and the occasional moll from the Bronx Society, and of course a few off-duty Sirens.

This place is a hotbed of history, an absolute hotbed. They drew up the plans to bust the White Widow out of prison in Colorado here, you know. Here, let me show you. Oh, no, obviously it's not the plan they really used. Just because half of them were athletes doesn't mean they were that stupid. This was just the brainstorming pad, the one they figured they could use as a red herring in case the feds ever got wind of things. How do I know? Somehow I don't think anyone would have been playing hangman on an actual escape plan, or doodling little "Tallie loves Nikeh" hearts in the corner. Ah, I recognize the handwritings all too well. I remember that night, too. One of the few times a straight girl came in here. I thought Linda's eyes were going to fall out when she saw Tina Washington practically dry-humping her girlfriend of the time on the pool table. Come to think of it, I think that's why we finally removed the pool table. That, and Tina kept winning everyone's money at it, and there came a month when we nearly couldn't pay the rent on this place. There were six or seven of them involved, depending on if you include Cathy Miller, their woman on the inside, and Nikeh's the only one left.

What happened to the rest of them? Well, don't you look at the front page of the Times? Tina got executed for treason- yeah, right, I'll believe that when pigs fly- she's buried up in Harlem, near the basketball court. Cathy Miller brought her body back, but the feds got her when she tried to sabotage their project out in California. Third time's the charm, I guess. For real, though, Cathy probably was the most unsung hero of that era. Sue- c'mon, all you have to do is look out into the harbor to see what happened to her. After that, a couple of her friends went and did the suicide bomber thing- tough broads, they were, one of them didn't even want to get attached to her own daughter. Tallie fought and died at Times Square, or at least that's what we heard when it was all said and done. Me, I remember having been up and down every block of that godsforsaken street without seeing her, but it was a big mess, so who knows? Linda went into TV work, and after a while we stopped seeing her around the clubs. And then there was that little... mess with her husband and that damn blonde Dale, when she lost her mind. Of course, those of us who knew her wondered what kind of sanity there was to lose, but I digress, and it's not proper to speak ill of the dead.

But we were talking about the history of this place, not just the history of the people who were here. This is also where the government tried to get their hands on Dee Clay. I don't know how she did it, I honestly don't, but somehow she managed to come off as perfectly straight to the ignorant and gay as a Xena marathon to the rest of us. But someone donated a clue to the clueless, so they went after her. They even brought in that bastard Carter.

Oh, yeah, I've heard the stories about Carter. How supposedly his sister brought him in here one night to show him Dee and her girlfriend of the time- Anne, that was, and they were in it for the long haul, talking about what they were going to do once Dee retired. How it made him crazy and turned him away from the government. How he decided to destroy everything he had ever worked for. Yeah, and if you believe that, there's a gorgeous bridge not far from here that I'd like to sell you. All I know is that the last I saw of both him and Dee was when he cuffed her and led her out the door. You draw your own conclusions.

Do you have any idea how many short blondes there are in this city? Even if three-quarters of the natural blondes in this city do anything short of decapitating themselves to stop being blonde, there are still a ridiculous number of little blonde women in New York. We hear all the time about someone seeing Dee, but we hear about people seeing the various Ladies of the cult, too, and who believes that? Might as well believe that crazy kid at the Temple, the one who talks to people who aren't there. If she'd been around, wouldn't she have stopped in here? People worried about her. That's our job.

I can only believe what I see with my own eyes. Show me proof that Dee's alive and well. Show me proof that Todd Carter's decided to tell the government to go fuck itself. Hell's bells, show me proof that Tallie died at Times Square. Maybe then I can start believing. But I can't go on someone's word.

Now, would you like a refill on that Scotch? You look like you need it. That's not a healthy shade of pale to my eyes. Don't down it so fast. That's expensive stuff you're swigging, not rotgut from someone's bathtub. No, I won't give you a refill immediately. Jeez, let the second batch take effect before you add more. You look like someone just walked over your grave.

Thanks for listening. You'd think more people would care about this place, but no one really does. Just goes to show you, doesn't it? Take care of yourself, stranger. Don't worry about that last drink. It's on the house.