Sara, who is curvy, with wavy brown hair and warm eyes, was 32. She was six months into a protracted, painful divorce from her high school sweetheart. She put on a bright smile and gazed at her client’s reflection. He needed his eyebrows done, for sure, she thought.

“Do you want your eyebrows cleaned up, or do you want something special?” she asked.

Her client pulled out a cell phone and showed Sara a photograph of a statuesque woman with a dramatic fall of blond hair, carefully made up.

“I love photography!” Sara said, and they spent the rest of the session talking about photography.

In Hollywood parlance, they met cute. Sara assumed Radinsky was gay, and spent the evening after work telling her friends about “the cool drag queen photographer” shehave a civil union.”

Koko is transgender — born male, with the sensibility of a female. The alter-identity of Koko began surfacing in childhood, when frocks were a preference during dress-up play, and there was a recurring dream of being kidnapped and disguised as a girl.

For more than four decades, Ned Radinsky kept the alter-ego Koko Brentano firmly closeted. As Radinsky, he had an impressive career as a photographer, starting with cars and trucks, and later segueing into concerts and musicians. There was a short-lived marriage that ended in divorce.

By 2001, the pressure to live as Koko was increasing. Radinsky moved to a Congress Park house that also served as a new studio named Koko B. Koko was allowed out for trips to gay bars and First Fridays at