I was thinking to myself, this could be heaven or this could be hell, then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way

Dorothy Dean was a 5 foot tall acerbic, elegant black woman who came into the Factory orbit in 1965, via the Harvard circle, and worked as a bouncer at Max’s Kansas City a few years later. She appeared in several Factory films, including My Hustler, and Afternoon. Dorothy was very slight with harlequin glasses, and her purse was half the size she was. She had worked for several magazines, but she drank too much and was incredibly bitchy. Her obsession was with gay men. She had this one man who she was completely in love with. She used to call him the Sugar Plum Fairy. Lou Reed refers to him in his song, Take a Walk on the Wild Side. She was often found in leather bars in the West Village in pursuit of the Sugar Plum Fairy. That was her love, and then Lou Reed became the focus of her life.