Here's a rock-and-roll coming of age story unlike any other you're likely to read this year. Jayne County was rock's original transsexual, whose no-holds-barred career has spanned not only Glam and Punk Rock, but Max's Kansas City, Andy Warhol's Factory, and more recently, a popular comeback at New York's annual Wigstock celebration. His story is wilder, and more moving, than most. Onstage -- as either Jayne or Wayne County -- this legendary shock rocker looks like Charles Bronson in exposed rubber breasts and a Dolly Parton wig. But "Man Enough to Be a Woman" makes it clear that it was a long, often painful climb for County (nee Rogers) to make his way in the world. Born a poor Southern boy who "should have been a girl," at first County had to work hard to have any fun: "Our favorite thing was to buy a bottle of Royal Crown Cola and a packet of peanuts and we'd empty the peanuts into the cola and drink the whole lot at once. That was one of the things we did for entertainment in Dallas, Georgia -- in between [extracting] tapeworm and getting our feet cut off playing in the [broken-bottle strewn] gorge." Things picked up later when, having moved to Atlanta, County got a good taste of his future cross-dressing career, "wearing makeup, walking down the street screaming at people, having to run from them." This activity, usually enjoyed in the company of such no-nonsense-named queens as Miss Cocks, Miss Hair and Miss Car, was aptly dubbed "wrecking" -- a intimation about County's wrecking-ball-of-a-life to come, with stints of drug abuse, turning tricks in Berlin and faithless boyfriends who inevitably meet their end in violence or AIDS. The thick coating of black humor, colorful exclamations and breathless hyperbole hide the pain-filled motivation behind County's supremely eccentric art. What they don't conceal is County's firm belief that freaks have more fun.

-- Jeanie Pyun