not like home
Minneapolis#4 on the Gfriends mag "Best Lesbian Places to Live" (or "settle"), and beating where I am now (#29), and far beating Buffalo (#57) and Brooklyn (#99) and NYC (#72) are all beat by Sheboygan -- what a name! and Cambridge, MA’s #1. Who knew.
I am impressed. Not by the numbers, but by the ladies, the bois, the kings, and all the generous people I met. The hair! The shoes! The leather and pleather! The S/M! The 3AM burritos!
How to do homage. Well. Here’s a short synopsis. I got a ride with straight poet friends who were going for peaches. I didn’t ride with the dykes I thought would take me, since they were being inexplicably bitchy (I was told that if I wanted a ride, I’d have to meet them in a parking lot down by the library on time, and that they would not drive me where I needed to go once we got there, but that I’d have to find my way, in a strange city. Fuck that.). We got stoned and tripped out listening to Beethoven. When we arrived, sometime around 10, we drove around downtown looking for a motel for my friends, and the only place we could find was hotel amsterdam, which because it had an enormous pink triangle, I was told to investigate. It's extremely cool that there’s an inexpensive gay hotel downtown, but it wasn’t for my friends, who needed two beds. So they drove me to the club where my host was working, and dropped me off at the door. I was starting to panic because I wasn’t dressed to be objectified by hot dykes, but I sucked it up and marched in in my jeans and sneakers, and went up stairs to meet her.
She was on stage, along with an aussie crossdresser gender-illusionist. She was clad in a thong and little else, and I wasn’t even sure she was a she. With her wig and platform boots and towering tall leggy frame, with no hips and big naturals, I thought she must be trans. She IS definitely a she, and it’s perfect that we met. When she got offstage she ushered me into the dressing room, and I joined in the tornado of flying clothes and makeup and hair and LOVED it, thankful I could come out and feast my eyes on all the sexy people knowing that they could look at me, too. I put on my boots and a skimpy top and met everyone, the sweaty performers, and they were thrilled to take me out to the parking lot to smoke. I don’t think I drank the whole weekend, but I didn’t give up smoking. At first I was trying to go by my new rule: every time I want a cigarette, I should pick up a pen and write. But it was hard. Smoking is just too damn sexy. Besides, it’s a great way for me to meet shy butches, let them be chivalrous with me, when I ask for a light.
So I looked and felt hot. This was NOT the midwest! This was the great lakes, and I felt dumb for never before realizing that liberal means gay.
posted by John @ 11:37 AM
