Sandro is a hairdresser in Soho. The only thing worse than being a hairdresser in Soho, says Sandro, is being a hairdresser in Earl’s Court. Sandro doesn’t dress hair in Earl’s Court, but lives in a dodgy hotel on Braxton Road. Sandro used to live with two straight working-class blokes in Brixton. Sandro is from Iran and in the U.K on a refugee ticket. His roommates called him “Ayatollah.” When they found out he was queer, which with a guy like Sandro never takes more than a day, they laughed and called him “Gay-atolah.” Sandro didn’t mind. He loved his roommates and told me there is no better brand of Englishman than the working-class blokes of Brixton.

But Sandro moved out anyway, after he met a trick at Heaven’s nightclub and they had nowhere to go to fuck. Sandro’s straight roommates didn’t mind him having guys over, but Heaven’s was in Charing Cross and after one a.m. the tube is closed and neither of them wished to take an hour’s drive on the night bus with all the other drunk and rowdy working-class guys heading back to Brixton. Sandro and his trick rented a room in a hotel in Earl’s Court called The Hotel Americana, where no Americans ever went. When Sandro awoke in the morning the trick was gone, and he decided he didn’t want to go back to Brixton that day. His hotel room was not Kensington Palace, but it was clean and cheap and close to the salon so he rented the room for another night. Sandro never went back to Brixton and settled into the Hotel Americana for good. The place was crawling with trannies. They worked as performers in the drag bars in Earl’s Court, or as prostitutes stalking the corner of Neville Street and Templeton Avenue and rented rooms by the day, week or month. Sandro befriended them, and cut their hair in the parlor for £5 a head. Sandro says all trannies cut their hair wickedly short, so it won’t interfere with their wigs when they go onstage. He says that underneath wig and kit all trannies look like ex-military. But the queens liked Sandro and with his willowy build and light olive-coloured skin and delicate Iranian features tried to convince him to do drag. “Then who would cut your hair?” he said.

Whenever I visit Sandro in the Hotel Americano the queens are nice to me too. And if they look like ex-military under all the face goop and Barbie-doll hair I never see it. They are always in full kit, even during the day when there is no work and they lounge in the livingroom on the threadbare paisley furniture watching tele or play bridge at the kitchen table. Sandro gets a kick out of it; he says there are no trannies in Iran. He says trannies are always performing even when not working in the drags bars or scamping the johns on Neville Street. Maybe that’s why Sandro liked The Hotel Americana so much. He was always looking for a place not to be himself.