Face facts.

The theme song of the Summer of 1997 is "There's a Summer Face." Face/Off, not to be confused with Jim Carrey's Mask or another in Disney's deadly Mighty Ducks films, is a thriller in which good-guy FBI agent John Travolta goes undercover to find and disarm a bomb.

The Bureau's laser-surgery wizards, who earned their chops doing facelifts in Palm Springs, arrange to have Travolta don the fare of bad guy and bomb-maker Nicolas Cage.

After a preposterously successful radical facial peel and reattachment I could not watch, Travolta goes underground. His own face is preserved in a solution of lemon jello and then placed in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar on the back steps of headquarters. The comatose, faceless Nicolas Cage miraculously awakens, sees Travolta's visage and, though he would have preferred a different one -- Trent Lott? Michael Flatley? Camilla Parker Bowles, perhaps? -- he reluctantly makes do with John Revolta's. Face/Off, get it?

The other scary hit of the summer was The Many Faces of Andrew Cunanan. Cunanan didn't even have a face a mother could love. When questioned about her son, she tough-loved that he was nothing more than a high-priced gigolo. There's a slap in the face.

As the hysteria of the real-life summer thriller grew, everyone became a junior Patsy Cornwell crime-solver. I knew that as a BOBOLINK (Big Older Babe On Lesbian Income, No Kids), I was not in charm's way. Still, I felt less safe than ever.

First, the old "innocent until proven guilty" was tossed out the closet window with chilling ease.

Second, my suspicions that we five in a police-state verite were more than confirmed with each grainy videotape of the top of someone's bead at the newsstand, or of a stalled, blurred figure running out of view, caught on a parking-lot surveillance camera. Suspect or German Shepherd? We're waiting for the lab results. I've got to remember to wear lipstick whenever I go to the convenience store.

Third, there obviously has not been a gay person who passed security clearance to become an agent since J. Edgar Hoover. It was a straight manhunt from the start.

"He's so ordinary looking" -- not like the RuPauls they're used to?

"He's a master of disguise" -- does the word "drag" mean anything?

"He had evaded the huge FBI dragnet." Of course he had. We all know how to pass.

In New York City, police referred agents to the huge New York Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, which the feds did not know existed. Once there, Center personnel advised agents to speak with wealthy gay men like David Geffen summering on Fire Island. The agents asked, straight-faced, "Who is David Geffen?" On Fire Island, the isle of butt thong, pale-faced agents in white shirts and ties questioned gay men on the beach.

Ticket stubs from a cineplex found in Cunanan's hijacked red pickup truck were from Liar, Liar and The Devil's Own, a thriller about a fugitive IRA guerrilla. He'd gone to the movies.

If FBI agents had spoken to me, I would have advised them to check wherever Hillary Clinton is hidden, sewing name tags into Chelsea's college wardrobe. Talk about effacement.

But the safest place to hide was in the line-up to testify before Fred Thompson's Senate campaign-finance hearings. Even with cool Perot-style charts with circles and arrows following the money, no one watched. Fred needs to get on America's Most Wanted.