Photographs by Erica Gannett
Stephen Bieniek transforms into a drag queen named “Kris Coe” in front of a home mirror—a process that takes 90 minutes—before hosting an early-August cocktail party for 20 friends. The author of Cooking Doesn’t Have to Be a Drag, a cookbook he self-published in June with proceeds benefiting the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Bieniek channels “classic horny housewives” like June Cleaver and Carol Brady while in character. The hardest part of being a woman? The fake nails, he says. “You really have to watch when you stuff your chicken or turkey that the nails don’t fall off in the cavity!”