Kai Lee Mykels made her entrance in a multicolored leotard, fishnets and a wig of circus clown orange. She looked fabulous in an absurd way, like a beauty contestant conjured by a flawed early version of A.I. She vamped around the room to the thump of the music, snatching bills from shrieking fans who held them between their fingers like cigarettes.

She asked for shows of hands: Who’s straight, who’s gay, who’s bisexual? She bid a special hello to the “lez-bins,” but confessed she didn’t get them: “I came crying out of the vagina for a reason.” Turning to a man in the audience, she said, “He’s straight but I want to have his baby so bad.”

It was Wednesday night at Icons, a Colorado Springs gay bar with singing bartenders and bathrooms dedicated to Beyoncé, Elton John and Judy Garland. But for now, Kai Lee was the diva who mattered. Her show, anticipated for months, was sold out. Friends had brought gifts — flowers, photos, butterflies preserved eternally under glass.

Working the room, she pursed her purple lips at a guy, assuring him that if he didn’t find her attractive, “beauty’s only a light switch away.”

The audience hooted, as Kai Lee’s devotees had often done during the 15 years she had spread her message of empowerment-through-not-giving-a-damn. Still, there was a whiff of sadness in the air, along with the hair spray. Somewhere under that leotard, concealed beneath all the MAC, Morphe and Maybelline, was Kai Lee Mykels’s creator, Kai Brown, who was sure to cry before the night was over.