Garageland

I love a good party. Last night I went on an adventure in Garageland with my post punk loving friends, Teezal and Steph. I wasn't aware of what "post punk" entailed, but I was incredibly bored and hadn't been to a truly amazingly spun party since I attended DJ Saratonin & DJ Samantha Ronson's invasion of Mr. Black over a month ago. I was starved for a good time and feeling kind of funky (in a bad way) so in an effort to abandon said toxic mindset I rallied the troops and set off for the Room in Hollywood where DJ Kim Anh, of Boobytrap/Saint Le Roq fame, was spinning. We arrived in Hollywood close to midnight and were somewhat disheartened to find a fairly empty venue with excellent music (albeit not Kim at the decks) and a scruffy looking band setting up. We almost immediately made for the doorway in search of another plan for the evening.

We wandered the Cahuenga strip, stopped in at the Velvet Margarita, shunned the Burgundy room, and eventually wandered into the Piano Bar, which appeared to be hopping with chill looking people, decent tunes, and a thrilling amount of lesbians (three?). All was fine until the band started BLASTING music so awful that it immediately reminded me of the French Quarter in New Orleans, which I believe is what it was in fact it's intention. We chugged our drinks and headed back to see if Garageland had picked up a little. On our second arrival, we were disheartened to find that the scruffy looking band setting up at Garageland were in fact a slightly better version of the guys at the Piano Bar. We would have left then, but we spotted Kim Anh waiting at the decks. I had another drink and Teezal went on an exploratory mission to learn when Kim would begin her set.

It would only be fair to say that by the time that Kim began her set, I was on my third Jack & Coke for the evening and well hammered. However, in spite of the rose tinted cloud that said level of inebriation tends to cast over any experience, I soberly reflect on the rest of the evening without a shadow of a doubt and dub her a total master. The moment that the band hit their final note and Kim cued in her intro the night took an overwhelming turn for the better. A flood of good spirited party goers flooded the establishment and a killer dance party ensued with a bona-fide hipster dance circle. We screamed the chorus of Psycho Killer at each other, gleefully hopping up and down, and had a cracking good time until the band from earlier took it upon themselves to cut off Kim Anh's set. At this point I was standing next to her and directly asked her if they just did what I thought they did. Somewhat dejected, she acknowledged that they in fact did and she was well confused. However, with total grace, she went out for a cigarette as my friends and I began to leave the establishment. When we reached the doorway, the band stopped and the Smiths called us back in. I have no idea who this final DJ was, but he was good times, and the night was saved. Kim joined us in yet another killer dance party which affirmed my enthusiasm for life and we parted ways, psyched to reunite again at Booby Trap this Wednesday.

I could not have lived last night better if I tried.

Scattered Thoughts as New Year’s Lingers & Haunts

The year 2010 started well for me. I attended my favorite dance party, That’s My Jam, in Brooklyn and spent the bulk of my evening dancing in a fantastic sandwich between two adorable creatures, making out, and listening to one of my favorite DJs, Tikka Masala, spin. The crowd was the exact antidote I needed to what in the past year has become my LA existence. It was diverse, chocked with queers of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities and everyone seemed there to have no holds barred fun. It was everything I dreamed and hoped it would be in the three hundred and sixty five days which preceded it, as I trolled in and out of various West Hollywood & Long Beach “lesbian” parties, bitching and moaning about the oppressive conservatism that dominates the Los Angeles women’s party scene. This isn’t to say that in the innumerable parties I’ve attended in Los Angeles, I haven’t had a worthwhile moment…

No, it really is, I’m sorry Los Angeles, you really are growing unbearable, which is awkward because I have a lease and at least one faux-wife threatens to “hunt me down and destroy me” should I ever choose to leave here (i.e. her). In the past few months, two of my favorite parties, Booby Trap and Work It have moved from weekly staples, to monthly treats, leaving only the Betty to rely upon for a weekly dance party fun fix with a dance floor packed with at least a couple of hipster bois for eye candy if nothing else (if you can get past the Real L Word’s awkward reality TV production set up, a nuisance with which I’m still calculating my exact degree of irritation). There are numerous other parties and bars, but rare indeed is the time I’ve left Truck Stop, Panty Raid, Girlbar, Platinum, and the like remotely satisfied. This is all a matter of personal taste, and surely for many girls these parties are top of the heap. However, I’ve tired of familiar faces, remote drama, the abundance of unreasonable heels, shaved legs, models and entertainment professional types, and steep well drink prices in this scene to end all scenes. Rather than making enemies ripping into the parties that sustain me, I here choose to return to the initial and far less warring anxiety at the heart of this blog.

I had a great New Year’s Eve. I drank hard, danced hard, and went home with an amazing person with whom I had a really wonderful morning and the whole experience left me mighty optimistic about life in general. I’ve really searched far and wide within about a 30 mile radius of Los Angeles proper and I’ve come to the conclusion that girls just don’t come out that way here. Thus, I’m not really interested in girls who live here and thus, living in Los Angeles is stunting my growth. I would love to see said girl again, but said frustration is beside the point. I need quality sex. It’s good for me. I need to live somewhere there are girls I can connect with on that level, both seriously and casually. The bulk of the time I go out in Los Angeles, I fail to even do a double take and this is a real problem. I honestly feel kind of dead over here.

Drab nights and awkward mornings have taken their toll on me. This town really has some awesome DJs, but the crowd’s often a total bore, more concerned with image than living in the moment and a legitimate good time. My friends compliment this experience downing copious amounts of alcohol to sustain their interest in leaving the house, with talk of shoes rather than queer politics, aesthetics rather than heart. They’ve proved great friends to me, but they tend to misunderstand me, and while I understand their misstep in reasoning, I am neither Dane Cook nor a failed Shane McCutcheon. I enjoy relationships, but find monogamy limiting, crushing, and challenging, hate games, and would rather admit that I like sex and have it, than subject a total stranger to a series of dates to evaluate their worth. Generally speaking, it takes no such theatre to determine whether it’s a good idea or not to sleep with someone. In deviating from the mainstream here, I am an evolving queer in dire need of a supporting community, which I have yet to find in Hell-A. Ultimately, I feel that I’ve pawned my vag (and subsequently my heart and soul) for a walk-in closet, medium sized semi-private bathroom, back yard, terrace, reasonable rent and a central neighborhood and this trade has almost entirely worn on me. There is more to life and I've embraced it as much as I can, but the void is increasingly unacceptable. Sex matters and this town is a total bust for me.

The New Closet: Hug a Republican Today

I recently got into an all out, blow out, bitch of a fight with my one of my faux-wives, Rachel. She is a borderline quarter century year old gender & sexual queer with a fervent distaste for all labels (including queer). She hails from a somewhat infamous part of this nation, now familiarly known to all in my age bracket as “the OC”. She lives there with her parents. They all voted for John McCain and would do so again. They proudly identify as Republicans, go to church, and watch Fox News. They respect Rush Limbaugh and would characterize Barack Obama as a socialist. I may not agree with them about much, but I’d like to have it on record that I believe them to be neither fascists nor assholes.

Our fight was spurred by a segment of the Chelsea Handler show where Chelsea and her panel of liberal toolsperts took it upon themselves to take various cracks at Sarah Palin. Watching this, Rachel got extremely emotional and her eyes teared up. I mocked her, as that’s what I generally do when people get all emotional and shit about Sarah Palin. She broke down and rehashed how the evil queers of Seattle ostracized her for her politics, wrote her beloved parents off as Nazis, and pretty much berated her to the core. I cannot take the blame for said people’s bully tactics, but I will admit the following, rare is the moment that I’ve treated the Republican party with respect and an open mind.

I’ve always been a radically leftist thinker, well preceding any interest in actual politics, as evinced by various early papers and diary entries. The move from mysteriously feeling a need to stand up for gay people at the age of eight or nine to voting for John Kerry in 2004, with great reservations as I deemed him overly conservative was a somewhat easy progression. Given my education, my socio-economic class, my global upbringing, and the color of my skin, I came out exactly as planned (until recently (hello vag)) and I rarely if ever had to encounter any dissent. I went from a New England Prep School to New York University and could until this year count the amount of registered Republicans I associated with on a single hand. There were a few more around, but they were a major minority and without actively seeking them out, four years could pass at either educational institution without a clash of politics.

The situation was so awful at my high school that my senior year the powers that be took it upon themselves to pay a Republican congressman to come in and speak at an assembly designed to promote tolerance of conservatives. When they started to pull people with colorful Mohawks from the Q&A line, it became glaringly apparent that it was not going well. It was around this time that I took it upon myself to join the debate club; college applications were due. There I discovered the secret hub where conservatives within our student body congregated.

While they were still radically outnumbered, this club forced us all to consider alternative points of view, and it was there that I was confronted with the shocking fact that conservatives, especially of the breed found in New England Prep Schools, or major cities in red states, are often better informed than their liberal peers. It’s an easy thing to sit in New York City and write Rush Limbaugh off as a bigot, or, to sit in Texas and write Obama off as a socialist, but to cross these borders with a varying political opinion calls for a heightened level of political awareness and compelling evidence to support every claim you make. There was a certain stamina among this group that came out that night in Rachel— a stamina akin to that of a fat kid in an 80s flick with a back-brace forced into a locker.

The truth is that were any of the cracks Chelsea Handler put forth said by Rush Limbaugh about Hilary Clinton, various news sources would race in demanding an apology and innumerable calls to kick the man off the air would sound. The truth is that this is a part of the reason that far less incendiary conservatives, like Rachel, continue to respect Rush Limbaugh and even enjoy his brazen lack of concern for “political correctness”. The truth is that political correctness only really applies in the mainstream to those on the left. She may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, she may have a somewhat odious perspective promoting abstinence-only education that has clearly failed her own family, but does this really justify the myriad misogynistic cracks she’s had to bear in the last year from various people in the media instructing her to lay back and spread her legs? 2008 proved a hypocritical year for many in the press as they made the awkward switch from defending Hilary Clinton against claims that her sex made her unfit for office to comparisons of Sarah Palin to Barbie. To me, this shift registered as weird. To Rachel, it was just another day at the bottom of the shit heap.

The truth is that the Republican party is an acceptable target for a lot of base criticism. This is not to infer that it’s right about anything, but they are certainly unfairly represented. Better arguments could be heard about their positions in the mainstream press. Rachel Maddow, for better or for worse, has been sweet enough to dedicate a fair amount of air time to calling attention to this issue. The Republican party is experiencing a major void with regard to leadership. It’s fun to watch, but ultimately very sad and very bad for the country. I would not have the Reverend Al Sharpton speak for me and it’s unfair to Rachel that the loudest voices supposedly speaking for her are those of the likes of Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter. It’s just plain wrong for news crews to pick out the dumbest, most racist, most homophobic, least reasoned people at tea-bagging rallies to feature out of the crowd. It makes a mockery of the idea of debate. Rachel Maddow has called many a time for a worthy adversary and I’m pleased to have found one in Rachel (my “wife”), a Republican with whom I can reason, respectfully disagree, and relate.

With this I say: I love you and I humbly apologize for locking your belligerent drunk ass out on my balcony.

This Year Started Oh Too Well

I've been trying to wrap my head around girls in Los Angeles for a decent amount of time now. At first, I assumed that it was just the venues I'd found, but a year later, with various mildly entertaining parties shutting down or cutting down their nights from weekly to monthly, I'm absolutely certain that I'm familiar with the entire lesbian scene all the way from Los Angeles to Long Beach. There are numerous fun nights to be found if LESBIANS are what you're into, but for raging QUEERS like myself, the past year has marked the shift from dwindling to non-existent shared spaces. What you may ask is the difference between myself (a brooklyn queer) and the Los Angeles variation of lesbo? Well, above all else, I would have to say sex positivity, brain function, and above all else, a majorly reduced lack of concern for my hair and L word identification. The closest person I found to my own sexual politics in Hell-A (theoretically at least) was a person who on our first meeting/date noted that were she in San Francisco, she'd identify as "queer", but as she was at the time in Los Angeles, it would perhaps make more sense to leave it at the fact that she just "was". Well, enough LA, I don't just want people who are, I want people who are queer. I'm here. I'm queer. Go fuck yourself.