Calling for a Shift in Perspective (9/4/98)

My buddy Keiva emailed me a while back, inviting me to her 23rd birthday/coming out party. I used to work with her when I was writing sales copy for a chain of porno shops' Web site. She's a little but uptight, but basically a sweetheart and always a lot of fun.

The party was to be at a place called Pookies downtown. It's a gay restaurant and lounge. That was one really cool thing about working at the porno shop: most of the employees were gay or bi. While I'd never had any conceptual problem with homosexuals, I didn't have a lot of first hand experience with them either (Get your mind out the gutter. For once I'm not pandering for a cheap joke.) It was a great experience to interact with so many on a day-to-day basis. It gave me a sense of perspective few of us hets ever have a chance to develop.

Keiva and the rest of the party were about 45 minutes late; so I was sitting at the bar nursing a Bombay and tonic and groovin' to the singer. This lady could WAIL. The only bad part was, right before the gang arrived, I was getting cruised by this balding, tie-wearing guy in his mid-40s. The problem wasn't that he was trying to pick me up - a simple, "Sorry. I'm straight," usually fixes any awkwardness right off the bat - it was just that he was so damn scuzzy.

So, the party showed up and we were all chatting and playing catch up about the folks I used to work with, etc. Keiva had come in with this really cute woman. At first I pegged her as Keiva's girlfriend. However, when I made a joke about being the token straight person, she let me know that her friend was mainstream too. The friend did me a big favor a little bit later by leaning over and grabbing me convincingly when the aforementioned scuzzy guy headed to our table for one last shot.

It was a lot of fun catching up with the company gossip and meeting the new faces, especially a bi-sexual girl I'll call J. She was a genuine hotty. However, I lost the coin toss with Keiva as to who got to go after her (Since last week was my birthday too, we decided to let handle who got the present.) Keiva consoled me, at least, by saying that if J was feeling a little uncertain we could always try to get her into a trio.

J. and I ended up chatting, joking and rubbing a lot at the restaurant just because of proximity. It was all fairly innocent. I don't welsh on bets or cut in when a buddy has called dibs. Honor is honor, even when it hurts. Believe me; this bordered on painful.

Speaking of pain, Keiva got to discover firsthand why so many of my friends call me Satan. She started off the night with a blue Hawaiian. She ordered another one and nursed it against a glass of water. I kept nudging the water away and the booze closer.

Then I got her and myself a tequila shot. I can't really drink tequila anymore, but an occasional shot to help someone else down the path of self-destruction is a worthwhile sacrifice.

Over the course of the evening several more shots of different things showed up in front of her. I had started and encouraged a trend. Of course, the last glass was a shot of Wild Turkey 101 that she resisted doing for about 45 minutes. Eventually one of the guys offered to split it with her. Judging from the way her eyes bugged and the choked off scream she let out, it was her first exposure to bourbon. Oops.

A few of us wanted to go dancing when we left; so Keiva, J. and I piled into my car (I just LOVE being the designated driver - NOT) and two of Keiva's friends piled into a pickup and we headed out to hit the Crowbar - even deeper downtown. It's a little after hours gay techno dance club on Central Ave.

David, Keiva's male friend in the ensemble, took it on himself to make sure I didn't get hassled, which was cool, but unnecessary. Unlike most hets, I'm not uncomfortable in gay clubs. For obvious reasons, I don't hand out in them a lot, but I always have fun when I go.

One thing hit me Friday night that had never really clicked for me before: There's always been something about gay clubs I liked above "normal" ones, but I never jelled on what it was. Since the unifying factor for most of the people there is there sexuality, they're much more open about it than we breeders.

Can you imagine how utterly shocked most straight people, particularly women, would be in a regular dance club with full groping, grinding and everything short of actual intercourse going on on the dance floor? Usually, it's that one drunk girl at about 12:30, and - Oh my goodness! - doesn't she get her share of dirty looks from the rest of the straight girl nation?

The rule of thumb seems to be that sexual thoughts and deeds are the elephant in the middle of the room that nobody talks about. Well, Friday I not only saw the elephant, I partied with the sumbitch.

Face it. Most men, myself included, go to clubs in the hopes of hooking up with an eight-hour Aphrodite. Most women I know, and I'm gathering this is a relatively across-the-board thing, go in hopes of having some fun with their girlfriends and, despite the lotto-quality odds, running into a quasi-perfect yuppie prince who doesn't normally go to bars or clubs, is there because his friends dragged him and would rather be reading sonnets in a candlelit bathtub with a glass of Chardonnay. Either that, or they want to get drunk enough to get laid and be able to blame it on the alcohol in the morning.

Another thing I like about gay clubs is that, since there's a zero chance of me hooking up and getting laid, I can relax, drink and dance without thinking about strategy or approaches. It's amazing how much fun dancing is when it's not cluttered with the usual superfluous bullshit.

To sum up, gay people are cool because they've had to go through a tempering process of shitcanning the bullshit social mores ingrained in them since birth. It makes them in some ways stronger and more open than those of us who better fit the established pattern. They still have their personal, cultural and counter-cultural problems, but openness is not among them.

Straight people tend to take their sexuality for granted because it's the norm. Consequently, they repress it just like most every other individualistic personality trait. We all gotta ride the median curve, right? I say wrong.

Third, gay clubs are more fun because the bullshit games aren't played, either by the clientele or those of us on the periphery.

Finally, I propose a course of action for those of you who read this and had irrational flags of protest pop up. You know who you are. You read some part of this and disagreed with it without a "because" statement popping up with it. The "It's wrong because it's just wrong people."

If you're a woman, either have your lover shove his fist up your snatch and wiggle it around for half an hour or do it yourself.

If you're a man, go to the nearest porno shop, buy either a dildo or a plug that's at least half again the size of your dick and slide it home for the same amount of time.

Whether you're a man or a woman, do this every day until it's not longer uncomfortable and you can relax and take it. Maybe you'll even come to enjoy it.

Maybe, just maybe, if the too uptight among my straight brothers and sisters can get their sexual apparatuses to loosen up, their minds and our culture will follow and all the fucking games will stop.

M_