Sex Geek

So I’ve somehow managed to find myself attending a couple of Outgames events in spite of myself. First of all, my friend C had purchased a ticket to one day of the Right To Be Different Conference, this past Thursday, and was unable to make it, so she generously offered it to me and I grabbed at the chance to attend without shelling out. It was a very interesting experience, and I’ll post about it when it’s not 2:10 a.m. and I don’t have a raging headache.

Second of all, the opening ceremony tickets went on two-for-one special yesterday, and my friend L wanted to go halvsies with someone, so I said yes. I went for Cirque du Soleil and kd lang, and they didn’t disappoint, but sadly they were about all I found satisfying; the rest was OK, but just like any other stadium show with lots of lighting and bad reverberating sound. I particularly enjoyed the wonderful moment at which kd, while singing her classic Miss Chatelaine, crooned the line "IIIIII can’t explaaaaaaiin why I’ve becoooooome Miss Chatelaine," only glanced down at her very butch self, clad in an untucked plaid shirt with chinos, and replaced the "Miss" with a "Mister" and a big rueful grin. There was scattered laughter and applause - I don’t think everyone quite caught on, but those who did appreciated it. Delightful.

But the true highlight of the evening was one of the speeches before the show even started. Now, I’m sure most of you are familiar with how opening ceremonies work at big events like this - they trot out the people who have organized and supported the event, and those people wear suits and ties and give speeches that all basically come down to the same thing: "We’ve worked really hard, congratulations to everyone involved, please have a great time at the event." They’re generally boring as hell, but you sit through them and applaud politely and wait for the fun stuff to happen (assuming it’s the kind of event where fun stuff happens at all). The Outgames opening was no exception - lots of politicians making their vote-for-me congratulate-the-gays speeches before the entertainment portion of the show. I spent a lot of time people-watching and writing in my journal, waiting for the good part to start.

Until the federal government representative got up behind the podium. I didn’t catch his name - all I know is that it was a balding guy in a grey suit with a pink shirt (how à propos). The reason I didn’t catch his name is because as soon as he was introduced as a member of the federal (i.e. Conservative) government, the entire fucking stadium started to boo. It was like someone had given a cue. And they kept booing so loudly that I didn’t hear a single word of his entire speech. It was so bad that partway through, the mayor of Montreal, Gérald Tremblay, got up and interrupted the speech, and said, "Please, please! Listen, listen! We are in the city of Montreal!" - at which the audience cheered wildly, also as though on cue - "And I ask that you listen with respect to the message from the representative of our federal government!" - at which everyone went right back to booing again, and continued to do so until Pink Shirt got off the stage.

It was painful. Oh god, it was awful. And yet there was a terrible sort of beauty about it.

As I watched it all unfold, I had four things running through my head at once. The first one: wow, people here really do feel incredibly strongly about the Conservatives. I’m not surprised at the lack of enthusiasm, but I didn’t realize it was at quite this level of quasi-unanimous and vehement hostility.

Second: that poor bastard up there on stage. How incredibly awful it must feel to get all dressed up to come speak at a huge event and realize that the thousands upon thousands of people filling the stadium all hate your guts. I mean, getting booed for three minutes straight while you’re trying to deliver a happy little congratulations speech - that’s gotta really suck!

Third: What were the conference organizers thinking when they brought this guy in to speak? Is it because the government provided funding and they had to invite a rep? Did they realize the reaction would be so bad? Did they expect the queers to shut up and be nice when a figurehead from the government that wants to remove our recently-won rights gets up there and starts spouting "we love the gays" rhetoric that’s clearly a load of complete hypocrisy? Wow. Major error in judgment there. (A friend of mine suggested the organizers might have known exactly what would happen, but I’m not sure I give them that much credit.)

Fourth: Well, there you have it. If there were any doubts in that particular Conservative’s mind about how the queer vote will go, they have now surely disappeared. The audience’s reaction might have been rude, but it was sharply accurate. Queers hold a grudge, and as a community, we’ve got more political power than ever before right now. What do we care if we embarrass the Outgames organizers and offend Pink Shirt the hypocrite fed? His party expressly intends to strip us of our political gains - what does he want, a bouquet of flowers and a blow job?

Of course lots of us aren’t big believers in the marriage thing, and of course there are all kinds of power and privilege problems (watch for a rant about how the Outgames conference exemplified that, coming soon) in the queer world that mean certain relatively light issues get addressed while much more pressing needs go ignored. So I’m not saying I agree wholesale with all the purposes for which queer political power is being used; far from it. But I am saying that the booing was a shameless, rude, obnoxious, and perfectly crystal-clear illustration of the way the vast majority of queers feel about a government that’s socially conservative, and I gotta say I stand behind it.

It felt like watching a train wreck, but it was a train that deserved its wrecking, and the conductor should have seen it coming miles away.

The evening began with dinner with two leatherdyke friends in the Village. Eventually we wound up at a fetish event mainly populated by straight folk. It was so odd. Here I was, surrounded by wonderful people, many of them from here but a really good number from out of town - Virginia, Ontario, New York State and California, just for starters - and all of whom I’ve played with in the past and would love to play with again in the future. The boy who wears his kilts correctly and is willing to stretch for me. The sweet masochist who takes whatever I dish out and just smiles at the pain. The cutie submissive who aims to please, even when it involves suffering (yum). The hardcore twisted fetishist pervert who likes to be severely abused with strange and sadistic toys. Not to mention a few lovely locals - among them, a foot fetishist who gives great lick and whom I’ve been playing with off and on since my very first night at a fetish club five or six years ago. And on top of all that, I had the enjoyable experience of realizing I was standing around and yakking with no fewer than five men, four of them wearing skirts. So the gender-bend ratio was way in favour of my personal tastes at least in terms of the boys.

But for the life of me I couldn’t get it up. I had a full toybag but I was empty of inspiration. The mood just wasn’t right. It was… ummm… too heterosexual.

So I and my two leatherdyke companions looked at one another around 1:30 a.m., and in a move of pure synchronicity, we all decided we needed to leave and seek out our own kind.

That didn’t happen right away because the slave who offered to help me change out of my crazy six-inch calf-high metal-heeled stiletto sandal-boots and into my considerably tamer four-inch simple black double-ankle-strap stiletto sandals had a hard time of it - big beefy fingers, tiny delicate little straps, whatever. I don’t know exactly what the problem was. All I know is there were a hilarious few moments during which I had three men working on my shoes at once - one on his knees with my heel pressed into his sternum and while he tried to insert the appropriate skinny leather strap into the matching buckle and get it to stay shut, one holding a pocket flashlight (!) to help the guys figure out said strap situation, and a third giving pointers and occasionally poking a finger or two in to help out. Really, it was quite the production. I just sat and laughed while they worked away. Eventually Beefcake, who had broken a sweat by now (at the enjoyment of the experience, or at the stress of not performing as quickly as he’d expected? who knows!), finished up and apologized, saying "Your shoes are, um, very feminine!"

Don’t get me wrong - I love good service and I love having men at my feet performing such service - but for crying out loud, I really just wanted to get out of there and go hang out with my sisters. I should have taken care of vanilla-switching my footwear myself.

So after fifteen minutes of shoe work, I finally left the club. The dykes and I headed off, still in full fetish gear (one in latex, one in leather, me in… um, some passably kinky cotton), through the Village. Plenty of fag, very little girl. We passed the usual hangouts; nothing impressive. We wound up at the new Metro Lounge, on the outside terrasse. And who should we manage to make friends with there? Four fellow leatherdykes - two from Australia, one from France and one from San Francicso. Plus a local one who didn’t know there were any others like her in Montreal. I mean, right on!

But at the same time, here we were, all of us into various forms of kink, but aside from the occasional wristband or knowing look, none of the others "looked" particularly kinky. Certainly none would have fit in with the overdressed PVC perverts just a few blocks away. I wouldn’t have guessed if it weren’t for how one of my companions picked an acquaintance out of the crowd. I mean… unless we dress up for a particular event, we really are bloody invisible.

How to reconcile that I felt out of place as a queer girl in the hetero fet scene, and overly conspicuous as a leatherdyke in the lesbian scene? Haven’t figured this out yet. I willingly spend time in both, but am starting to wonder if the only place I feel truly at home is with my home tribe, the Unholy Army, and pretty much anywhere else is second-best.  Hm. Never thought of myself as insular before…

Okay, so I have just one question: why wasn’t my life this much fun in high school? Someone posted a link to this article on one of my mailing lists - basically, a seven-page exploration of how a particular bunch of teens at a New York high school are all gettin’ in each other’s pants, gender being no barrier. My favourite quote of the whole thing: "Some girls hook up with other girls to please guys. But, Jane says, "boys make out with boys for our benefit as well.’"

No, seriously. Where were the boys making out for my benefit at my high school? Where were the girls all hot for me to make out with them? Where were the parties where people made out with more than one person in the same evening? Was I just hanging out in the wrong crowd? Was it a West Island suburban white-bread kind of problem? Did I hang out with too many cheerleaders and football players? (Well, the answer to that one is yes, regardless of my making out or lack of making out.) I mean, like, were all the chess-club violin-playing math-tutoring geeks with bad fashion sense pansexually boffing each other on the weekends in their parents’ basements, and neglect to invite me because my shoes matched my shirts and I had blonde hair? God, had only I known, I’d have started wearing my brothers’ leftover hockey shirts with mismatched flood pants. Or maybe… and this is possibly the most likely reason… was I just born ten years too early? Have today’s politics made it such that kids can be offhandedly queer without really worrying about getting tripped in the hallway or stuffed into a garbage can at recess? One can only hope.

Okay, so if I close my eyes and think back to high school, it wasn’t a complete sexual desert. I had lots of fun, and I started having it at age 11, so it was hardly unavailable. But it was so… straight. I mean, okay, my boyfriend and I played with bondage and porn starting when I was 14, and we made out in the same room as other couples sometimes, but there was nothing remotely queer about it, and it was nothing like the puppy-pile style of kissing parties this article describes. And on the same-sex side of things, my best friend and I used to spend copious amounts of time taking showers together, brushing each other’s hair and trying on each other’s clothes, but we never actually made out. She used to tell me not to be affectionate with her in public, to which my reaction was something like "Whaddaya mean, I can’t put my hand in the back pocket of your skintight jeans when we walk down the street? Who cares if people think we’re lezz-bee-anns? Maybe we are!", which actually came out as, "OK. Sorry. Um, are you sleeping over again this weekend?"

Anyway. I guess I’m jealous. It took me until age 21 to finally make out with a girl, despite wanting to for at least a decade prior. Who are these young upstarts, exploring their queer sexuality before they even hit college? How dare they?

Nah. Just kidding. Needless to say, I’m all for kids doing their own thing and playing with other kids of whatever gender they please, and all the better if they can do so openly and without shame (and preferably with really good sex education so they do it safely). In fact if you feel the same way, I strongly suggest that you read Josey Vogel’s column on the topic of the Conservative government’s intent to criminalize kids’ sexuality - especially the well-researched comment at the bottom from Charles Montpetit, a Quebec writer who, in 1995, edited a two-volume anthology called The First Time in which Canadian writers recount their first sexual experiences in adolescence. (The original French-language version, with Quebec authors, was called La première fois, and I can’t find it online anywhere.) He eventually became a major spokesperson against censorship, and he’s a remarkably strong speaker even in his second language - needless to say he fucking rocks my world, this guy. Then, mosey on over to ageofconsent.ca to find out how to speak your piece to stop the suits from going through with it.

It’s 3 a.m. and I keep having to interrupt the work I’m doing on my computer so that I can squish the little bugs that are constantly flying into my office and homing in on the light of my screen. Ick. And then, because typing through streaks of bug guts is so very unappealing, I have to stop the typing and wipe down the screen. Perhaps I should consider investing in a screen for my window, but then I’d have so much less to complain about.

I’d also have a lot less to complain about if I took a pellet gun to the cats that insist upon mating on the street outside my place in the wee hours of the morning. Can’t felines do that shit quietly? They sound like they’re tearing each others’ toenails out, for crying out loud.

I swear, the bulk of my evening was much more interesting than the bug gut/cat coitus rant implies.

First of all I went to the Mad-Âme opening, which truly kicked ass. I didn’t really know what to expect - it’s not that I thought they’d do a bad job or anything, far from it. But nailing down lesbian fashion sense is easier said than done, and it would have been really easy, I think, for them to make a few missteps and start foundering before they really got off the ground. But seriously, their stock is beeeoootiful. They’ve picked so well! They’ve somehow managed to carry a really wide range of clothing with a queer aesthetic without resorting to stacks of Pride merchandise. My friend A and I were commiserating the other day that rainbows have great symbolic value, to be sure, but they just bloody clash with every outfit aside from basic black.

So they’ve got everything from square-cut shirts and well-chosen ties (many of them with that hybrid dyke/fag feel I love so much) to funky recycled-vintage-style jackets and tops to cut-up tuxedo-shirts to hip jewellery to high-femme slinky dresses. And the prices are reasonable, too. Plus, their staff dykes are cute. Love the tape-measure ties they were all sporting. Just love ‘em. Well, one more good reason to go shopping - as if I needed one. On the list for my return visit: one of the ultra-sweet striped dress shirts with contrasting square buttons; a hot striped tie (I swear ties are becoming my newest fetish); and a closer look at some of the très funky rings and necklaces.

Oh, and it was too hot to wear the tuxedo shirt, so its début may have to wait for an appropriate event in the fall or something. Ah well. The best laid plans, yada yada.

Then, off to Midori’s "Hand and Foot Bondage" workshop, where I basically learned how to do miniature versions of standard body harnesses, adapted to take advantage of the interesting possibilities inherent in fingers and toes. It was… meditative is one word, though perhaps a bit strong… um… appealing for the detail-oriented? Luckily I’m one of those sorts, so lacing my friend R’s hands together with an intricate combination of a two-column wrist tie with slipknots and diamond-weaving was totally engrossing. Kind of an odd combination of kink and arts’n'crafts. I wished I’d shopped better before the class - it would have been nice to have pretty coloured silken cord and maybe some contrasting beads to weave into the whole thing.

Y’know, it’s funny, but bondage doesn’t feel particularly kinky to me. I guess I came by my own kink by realizing that good sex always made me want to do things rough, not all gentle and sweet. That’s translated into my play style, which is generally about high stimulation of various kinds, with lots of movement. Bondage, on the other hand, is not about high stimulation for the most part; to be done beautifully, it generally needs to be done slowly, and while it’s certainly possible to cause pain or provide direct sexual stimulus via rope, that’s not exactly its primary function.

So my enjoyment of bondage doesn’t feel like sex or SM at all; it feels like artwork. Pretty-shiny-white-rope-all-over-hot-girl-in-black-outfit kind of artwork, of course, which is certainly sexier (and more interactive) than breakin’ out the paintbrushes and canvas - but artwork nonetheless. It doesn’t make me want to fuck someone’s brains out or beat the crap out of them; rather, it makes me want to pet them while they’re blissfully immobilized, or take pictures of them. And of course it’s all the more fun when it’s the pretty-shiny-black-rope-all-over-hot-girl-stark-naked kind of artwork, and then the petting part can be more fun too, and then you can always bring a riding crop and a dildo into the mix…

Oh, okay, never mind. I guess bondage is kinky. It just starts out as artwork, and ends up as sex. Sometimes. Not tonight. Tonight it was more like partner macramé. But hey, I’m not complaining. Midori’s always fun, and it’s generally good times when I get to hang out with a bunch of pervs in a leather shop. And now I know that the next time I’m feeling crafty, I should pick up pretty cord and beads, and find someone who wants to be temporarily hobbled. Fun!

Okay, so I’ve now committed no fewer than five bug massacres while writing this post. Time for a wipe (hee hee, just typed "whip" by accident). Then one last little post before bedtime. Luckily the cats have shut up. Maybe someone beat me to the pellet gun.

I bought a new shirt today. Never did I expect that a single piece of new clothing would lead me down such interesting pathways of thought.

Okay, so the shirt itself: I was instantly attracted to it when I saw it on the hanger, and when I tried it on my brother told me it looked hot, so of course I had to get it (he’s got excellent taste in clothing). It’s black, and it looks sort of like a tuxedo shirt, except that instead of the standard pleats or ruffles down the front, it has very subtle lines of ribbon and sequins (yes, I did say subtle). I know, it sounds flashy, but it really isn’t. Just funky. I will explain the attraction in a minute.

So first of all, the experience of purchasing it was interesting because the person at the cash was so intriguing. She (I think? maybe he?) looked like a lesbian Liberace. Picture it: super-short hair and fingernails (the latter a dead giveaway about the lesbian part), no makeup, a couple of gigantic jewel-encrusted gold rings, black pants, men’s dress shoes, a houndstooth blazer, a white shirt, and a white silk tie with an enormous gold-and pearl brooch stuck into the middle of it.

Zowie. Quite the exercise in gender there. My brother rolled his eyes at me (he knows me so well), and I had to explain that it really was a feeling of intrigue, not attraction. I think. Seriously, I’d never encountered a gender quite like hers before. It was kinda hard not to be intrigued - I’ve encountered quite a few genders in my time after all.

So after my very unusual purchasing experience, this evening I was doing some reading. I’m trying to finally finish up Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook because I have such huge stacks of other interesting things to read. (Among other things my roommate has just lent me a copy of Plato’s Symposium, saying that as a poly person I might find his discussion of love to be interesting. Eek! Another one on the list!)

On page 141, I encountered an exercise. This one will not inspire a two-page rant about Kate’s politics, I promise. The exercise is entitled "Shop Til You Drop #2," and it encourages you to walk around a store as if you had all the money in the world, and pick up whatever you’re attracted to. (And yes, she does write "whatever," not "whoever" - Lesbian Liberace is safe for the purposes of this discussion.) She then asks you to answer six questions about each of the things you’ve put in your cart. So, with this afternoon in mind, here are my answers to the exercise:

1. Why is it attractive? A: It’s stylish and unusual, and it feels like a cross between something a flaming fag would wear and something a butch dyke would wear.

2. Is there something about either the display or the goods themselves that would make you more of a woman? More of a man? A: Yes. Both. Yay! Or at least make me look like one. Of both. I mean at once.

3. Is there something that would make you a better woman? A better man? A: Surely, but that’s kinda not the point… unless you can find me a something that does both at once…

4. Maybe there’s something that makes you feel very good about being exactly what you are? A: That’s why I bought it.

5. Something that makes you feel satisfied with your place in the world? A: Uh-huh. Clothing-wise at least. Today, that is.

6. Keep walking around, spotting things, until you develop a sense of what exactly it is that’s attracting you to purchase this stuff. A: Done. Figured it out. The sheer queerness of it. And Liberac-she.

Why do I get the feeling I was not the target audience for this exercise?

Of course this got me all thinking about queer clothing again, and about how there really is a particular aesthetic range that’s typical of queers. I won’t endeavour to describe it this very minute, but I’m gonna chew on it for a while and see if I can toss out a tentative description.

Then I opened my Bitch magazine, and lo and behold, it happens to be the Style issue, and there happens to be an article in it entitled "One Size Fits All: Sharp-Dressed Dykes Battle for Exposure," by Allison Bland. It’s basically a dissection of butch dyke fashion, specifically within black butch subcultures, where the women call themselves "studs."

On a side note, I’d never heard about this particular term before, at least not in this context. I wonder if it’s because I know so few black butch lesbians -certainly I can name a few of my acquaintance, but percentage-wise there just aren’t that many butch-identified dykes in this city regardless of ethnocultural background (lordy, but that’s a whole other rant) and in keeping with the general trend here, the majority of the black dykes I know don’t call themselves or appear to be butch. I suppose it’s possible that stud culture could be a specifically American phenomenon, too. But of course I’m way out of my area of expertise when it comes to this so it’s hard to say.

(That being said, I’m kind of shocked at the way urbandictionary.com and this other site define studs as being dominant, butch and attracted to femmes, with the apparent assumption that these three things must go together. It’d be one thing if that was specific to the concept of stud, but the way these definitions are written implies a package deal minus the critical thought. Way to transgress the gender binary, guys… I hold out hope that this may in fact just be about poor definition-writing. But I digress.)

Anyway, it’s a really excellent article, and satisfyingly long. I got particularly excited at the following paragraph:

"And if necessity is the mother of invention, frustration is right behind her. Like the entrepreneurs who saw a lack of color in Hilfiger’s and Lauren’s lines, studs are now following the FUBU model with a gender-conscious twist. Rigged OUT/Fitters is a vintage-inspired label with an irreverent attitude toward clothing and gender. The New York-based company recycles vintage menswear pieces and ‘rights’ them with humorous messages, graphics and patches that result in original garments fitted for the female body, but with a masculine attitude."

How fucking cool is that? Needless to say I googled ‘em right away, and here they are. And the clothes really are kick-ass. My favourites are the tuxedo shirt printed with "PROM" on one shoulder, "KING" on the other and "BUTCH" behind the neck, and the vintage golf jacket with felt letters spelling "BOI" on the chest. Très hot. Unfortunately only one of the models seems to be black, so I don’t think the company has as much to do with stud culture specifically as it does with making masculine-ish clothing for "butch, genderqueer and transfolk" in general (as the Bitch article quotes their call for models). Though certainly that’s all good with me.

So of course this loops me right back around to the fact that Mad-Âme, Montreal’s new les/bi/queer/trans clothing boutique, is opening this week. I’m so fucking stoked! The grand opening party is this coming Wednesday from 5 to 8 at 1276 Amherst. The site says you needed to RSVP by last Friday to come, mind you, but if you ask them real nice and promise to buy lots of clothes, maybe they’ll let you in anyway. Worth asking, at least!

If you attend, come say hi to me. I’ll be the one wearing the sequined flamer-butch tux shirt and picking out ties to match my girlie shoes.

I don’t always like her writing style, but boy do I like some of Virginia Woolf’s gems.

Now that I’m thinking about how to track back to why I’m posting about this at all, I’m realizing I need to reference a few things in order: first of all, Bitch magazine’s latest issue, which I received by mail (as I am both a dutiful feminist and enthusiastic subscriber) at least a month ago and have not had the chance to even start reading until tonight. In the magazine, there’s an interview with Alison Bechdel, dyke comic strip artist extraordinaire, who has recently published her memoirs (focused on her childhood if I understand correctly) in the form of a graphic novel seven years in the making. The book is entitled Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.

On a side note, I’ve occasionally glanced at some of Alison’s work, but although I’ve always enjoyed the strips I’ve come across, I’ve never been particularly drawn to comics as either entertainment or serious reading - they’re usually over too fast for me to find them engaging the way I do a nice hefty book, and I guess I like my entertainment to be of the engaging variety. So I haven’t indulged in the dyke-culture-appropriate lusting after her books. That said, given the uniformly rave reviews her memoirs getting, I’m beginning to think that reading them might prove to be a really interesting way to introduce her work into my cultural reference pool, and who knows, perhaps from there I’ll become an avid acquirer of Dykes to Watch Out For collections.

I’ll put that on the list of lesbobligatory things to do, along with finally getting around to watching the first season of The L Word (my friend’s DVD set is currently gathering dust in my front hall closet).

Is it a bad thing that I don’t remember which L Word character Jenny is, when everyone around me either loves her or hates her? Or that all I know of DTWOF is that there’s a character named Moe in the strips and someone who wears striped t-shirts, and they may or may not be one and the same? Am I pop-culturally handicapped? Or maybe just a snooty geek snob pooh-poohing the homo plebes, too intellectual to lower myself to the level of television series and cartoons? Hm. I hope not. Perhaps I need to cultivate a more light-hearted approach to queerness than my current one, i.e. reading queer theory and discussing it with academically bent friends (or was that bent academic friends?).

Wow, that was one helluva digression. Back on track now.

In the interview, Alison makes reference to a quote by Virginia Woolf, which led me to Google it and come up with the quote itself, which appears, it would seem, in The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One, 1915-1919, edited by Anne Olivier Bell (if you’re interested in further Woolfish pithiness you can read a rather wordy article by Cynthia Ozick on the topic here, in the New York Times archives, originally published in 1977).

The quote (ahem), from a journal entry dated February 15, 1919, is a passage in which Virginia berates herself for not writing in her diary for a little while: "What a disgraceful lapse! Nothing added to my disquisition, & life allowed to waste like a tap left running. Eleven days unrecorded."

I like the image: that a day without writing is a day wasted, not in terms of productivity or money-making or any other kind of externally motivated sense of duty, but precisely because it’s so essential to record what’s going on in one’s mind as one lives life, period. Wow. How very validating to compulsive journallers/bloggers like myself. I love the image, too… especially being a manic tap-turner-offer, it really resonates. Life just bleeding away unappreciated because unwritten. I guess we know what Virginia would have answered to the old "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it" question.

While reading Ozick’s article, I came across another interesting quote in reference to James Strachey (I have no idea who that was, but he sounds important): "He has all the right books, neatly ranged, but not interesting in the least - not, I mean, all lusty & queer like a writers books."

Aaahhh. Now I know that the word "queer" currently has a modern meaning - one that I personally quite like but that is admittedly very culturally specific - and that in 1919 it just meant "odd." But etymology and neologism aside, I still feel good knowing that Virginia thought the books that writers read would of course be "lusty & queer."

(On another side note, let it be known that I hate ampersands; they’re fine in a note to my roommate but they offend my eye in otherwise great literature. However I bow to the superiority of Virginia’s reputation as a writer and thus will endeavour to respect her punctuation choice in my quoting, though I reserve the right to gnash my editorial teeth.)

So, "lusty & queer." Well, that about describes every one of the, I dunno, 450 books on my living room shelves. Probably in ways far more literal than Virginia ever meant.

Guess I’m doing something right, even if it isn’t my queer pop culture.

P.S. Oh god, I just started reading Alison’s FAQ section, and to the question "How do you pronounce your last name?" she answers "Rhymes with rectal." I think I just woke my roommate up with my burst of uncontrollable snorting laughter. Yes indeed, I really do need to get about reading her comics.

P.P.S. Now I’ve found a photo of her, and dang, she’s kinda cute, too, in that angular short-haired intelligent introverted mid-forties mildly butch kind of way. Neato. Am I a bad person if I move "read Alison Bechdel’s work" up a few notches on the to-do list now? I was going to place it just after "finish reading Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando", but unfortunately Virginia’s photo doesn’t hold quite the same appeal. Damn this accursed shallowness.

Wow, has it really been almost a week since my last post? Yikes. The heat must be getting to me.

So this is a post about how totally vanilla I have become (temporarily I’m sure). Or rather, how I’ve been overkinked and otherwise overstimulated lately and needed a break from it. So what did I do? I went to a fetish fair.

Seriously. It worked!

The whole thing took place in Toronto. Yes, Toronto again. It’s not that I’ve got a particular fetish for the city, you see, it’s just that the city seems to be particularly fetishistic. Or something. Lots of kinky stuff seems to be happening there lately, so I find myself falling into little trips almost every month. This time around, it was to attend FFN, short for Folsom Fair North - a name the organizers apparently can’t actually use due to copyright issues with the organizers of the original Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, which by a brilliant stroke of timing, I will also be attending in September. Let’s hope I’m over my overstimulation problem by then because there is no way that will feel anything like a break.

Well, OK, so I didn’t really attend FFN per se. I showed up a day after it started, and skipped all the leatherfag parties in favour of a long, leisurely dinner with a good friend of mine (who likes leather - does that count?). My real reason for being there was to sell floggers during the Sunday vendors’ fair for Master André, my very favourite Montreal leatherworker and kinky craftsperson extraordinaire. He makes lick-worthy floggers and single-tail whips, among other beautifully crafted nasty toys. Truly an artist.

Anyway, so I got corseted up and stood at a booth all day (when I wasn’t visiting with Chris from Steelwerks, who also had a booth there to sell prince wands and cock rings) chatting it up with all kinds of leather-clad and semi-naked perverts, most of them gay guys. Our booth happened to be stationed right near a gay porn booth, a jockstrap booth and a mens’ bathhouse booth, so you can imagine that the preponderance of man-meat eye candy was really quite heavy in my general area. Can’t complain. It was fun to watch semi-nude beefcakes tongue each other and walk around with their asses showing under their chaps. (I’m sure they were just trying to keep cool.)

I’ve gotta say, that was definitely the first time I ever walked into a Harvey’s restaurant midday on a Sunday (across from a church, no less) in full fetish gear and a leather cowboy hat, and bought lunch while the place was packed with families. Interestingly, nobody even batted an eye, not even the kiddies. What a great country we live in.

My friend and dinner companion kept expecting me to go off and have adventures while I was there. A bit of context: as y’all may have noticed, I don’t make a habit of posting about the more "personal" sorts of adventures I have - it always strikes me as rather un-classy to blab in a public place about whom one fucks and tortures, apart from the occasional name-free saucy detail. Just call me old-fashioned. Better than that, I think the fact that I don’t generally blab makes people more likely to have adventures with me in the first place, knowing their name and the luscious specifics of their dirty proclivities won’t likely make it into here (or elsewhere).

That being said, while I haven’t been waxing poetic about said adventures and dirty proclivities here, my life in the past few months has been so dang full of them (both) that I’m kind of reeling from it all right now. Even an experienced pervert needs a break every once in a while!

On a side note - now don’t go getting ideas about me being indiscriminate. I’m a highly discriminating pervert, I’ll have you know. It’s just that a higher-than-usual number of truly amazing people and experiences have come my way in a very short span of time, so I’m a little sapped. And despite how two of my very favourite books are Macho Sluts and The Ethical Slut (for fantasy and practical purposes respectively), I actually don’t consider myself to be a slut and can’t find it in myself to reclaim that word as a positive thing. Sometimes a derogatory word is derogatory no matter how you slice it. I’ll post my feelings on this particular one at some point, I promise.

So anyway, the very idea that someone would be wiggling their eyebrows at me when we walked by a dyke bar and asking if I’d like to be, ahem, "dropped off" there to finish off the evening … well, it was a bit unsettling. It’s certainly not my friend’s fault that I felt so strongly, but honestly, the very idea of cruising or being cruised by anyone was enough to make me want to run in the opposite direction. Sometimes it’s nice to get a full night’s sleep, y’know?

So the end result of all this was a remarkably tame weekend, all things considered. I spent the entire weekend in the company of a couple roughly my parents’ age - though admittedly my parents are not in a full-time master-slave relationship and wouldn’t have been caught dead around several thousand assless-chap leathermen, nor are they spending their retirement days plaiting Turks’-head knots on the ends of multicoloured cowhide whips. I played salesgirl - albeit showing a lot more cleavage than I ever did when I worked at Talbots ten years ago. And I doubt the average retail salesperson gets to flog their customers’ asses for demonstration purposes. I was home by midnight every night and slept alone. And at the end of it all, André and his partner drove me home in their minivan; along the way we stopped at the Big Apple - you know, that massive apple-pie establishment on the 401 - and picked up freshly baked desserts to take home. It all felt so… relaxing and pleasant.

Now what does it say about me that my idea of a relaxing weekend involved ten hours in a corset in 30-degree weather at a kink festival with thousands of freaks, bracketed by dinners in hip gay restaurants? Gah. Maybe I need to go hang out in a forest somewhere for a while and restrict myself to nothing but cotton camping gear and canned soup and swimming in a lake.

In the meantime, I’m feeling thoroughly refreshed.

Which is good because in the next three weeks, Midori’s in town giving a series of kick-ass workshops (July 26 to August 1); my friend V’s Fetish 4Play event happens on the 28th; the Unholy Army is marching in the Pride parade on the 30th; the Outgames leather contest happens on August 2; I’m womanning a booth for the dyke group I run on August 5 at Community Day, and attending the Melissa Etheridge concert and Lesbomonde that night along with countless thousands of other dykes; and the Pride edition of Meow Mix happens on August 6. I’m trying to sleep a lot now to save up for the guaranteed lack of it in the near future.

Lordy, but it’s hard work being a sexual minority sometimes.

Oh, Outgames. How mixed my feelings are for you.

I wrote a huge article for the Mirror on you, and for it I got to interview several people who were relentlessly perky. Which is good; I prefer perky to pissy any day. I just hope they don’t keel over dead or sink into post-games depression when the adrenaline rush dies down and everyone goes home. The assignment got me thinking about you, and I can’t quite get you off my mind.

In lots of ways, you are a good thing, dear Outgames: you are going to flood my city with queers from all over the place, including friends I don’t get to see often and people who may never otherwise get to experience being in a place like Montreal where you can actually smooch your same-sex honey on a street corner in most parts of town without getting assaulted. (Not that there are ever any guarantees about this sort of thing.)

You have also done your best to be inclusive of often-marginalized people in the queer world. Your spokesperson, famous and ever-smiling gay jock Mark Tewksbury, told me the registration forms included space for folks to identify as trans - and how the hell often do you ever see that? - and that there were over a hundred self-identified transfolks registered for the Games. A drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of other participants, but still a pretty significant step. Not only that, but he tells me the Outgames organizing committee will be working directly with other major sports associations on issues of trans inclusion. Seriously, this is excellent stuff. I have no idea how successful they’ll be, how much effort they’ll put into it or how well-informed or solid their politics are - Tewksbury himself admitted he didn’t think they had it all down perfectly yet - but the fact of it being on the table is a really good start.

Sweet Outgames, you will be bringing us amazing shows. My alma mater, Cirque du Soleil, will surely not fail to impress, and kd lang will be in town to perform at the opening ceremonies. Perhaps if I try hard enough I can "happen to be" at the same bar as her and bat my eyelashes at her or something. (Does she even go to bars? Dang, I gotta brush up on my stalking skills.) Yeah, okay, that’s a shameless admission of a desire to starfuck. I’ve never met kd lang, and I will admit to purchasing her album Drag not for the music - though it turned out to be lovely in a very croony, jazzy sort of way - but for the boner it gave me to see such a hottie butch dyke in a perfectly tailored suit suavely not smoking a cigar on the cover. (At least I know she doesn’t smoke.) But I digress.

Outgames, my little muffin, you are also providing a wonderful occasion for our current right-wing government to embarrass itself by its own homophobia. Yeah, yeah, I know, we can get married. News flash - this does not equal the death of homophobia. It just means those in whom the beast still broods are now gonna unleash it on brown people from other countries instead of on our proudly wedded queers back home - whom the conservatives are, incidentally, hoping to rob of their right to marry, though I believe their chances of success with that little project are pretty paltry.

Oh, the homophobic reasons for denying visas are alleged, of course. Because you know, there’s gotta be dozens of other reasons to deny a whole buncha gay foreigners the right to enter our country and compete in their favourite sports. And maybe get in some anal sex on the side. (Ooohh! Aaaahh! Anal sex! Perhaps you’re all just worried they’ll start eyeing your cute little grey-suited government-worker bubble butts.) So, Outgames, I applaud you for your accidental participation in helping to show the country the mindsets of those currently in charge of it.

On the other hand, my lovely Outgames, you’ve really been quite naughty, and not in that fun and saucy way I usually like so much. I’m glad you shower after every hockey game, but I daresay you go too far when you try to start "cleaning up" the homeless and the sex workers to make room for your events - or at least so say some Stella girls, whose work I enormously respect. (Scroll down to 5/30/2006 and check out the podcast of Dykes on Mikes’ interview with said Stella girls if you want further details.) Now, I can’t say I’ve borne witness to this personally, but then I don’t work in the field and the Stella sweeties do. That’s enough for me to at least consider the possibility that something stinky is going on, no matter how much brand-name perfume you use.

And, darling Outgames, your tastes are extravagant to the extreme. You’re quite the expensive date, you know - if I want to register for your human rights conference, which is doubtless planning to do much excellent work, I have to pony up $525. I can name dozens of my friends and acquaintances - grassroots community organizers all, from near and far - who’d have loved to spend some time in your company, but who simply can’t afford you. Not to mention the sporty types who just wanted to play (doesn’t everyone love to play once in a while?), and at whom you turned up your diamond-studded little nose. Tsk tsk. I wish you were sluttier, Outgames - you know, easier to take advantage of and open to all. Honestly, honey, you’re even out of my league, and while I’m certainly not a mondo moneymaker, I can usually afford to give someone a good time.

It’s your loss, in the end, except that you may end up making decisions that will affect a lot of people who couldn’t afford to be at the table, and that’s always a turn-off to me. Even if you are pretty slick and kinda cute.

I’m truly not sure what to do about you, Outgames, honeybunch. I can’t really make a commitment to you, but unless I sequester myself in my apartment, I will still end up seeing you everywhere I turn. I certainly can’t make you go away, although soon enough you’ll be done with Montreal and off to flirt with other cities. Perhaps I should just take you for what you are - like many dates, fun but flawed. Good for a flirty afternoon and some dancing, perhaps.

Just don’t expect me to be inviting you up for a nightcap.

In the past little while I’ve come across two doctoral candidates doing some really interesting research on queer women. And as doctoral candidates are wont to do when conducting research, they’re both seeking study participants.

The first is studying women who participate in queer women’s book clubs. I volunteered to participate, given that I’ve been running Tip of the Page for oh, six years now (yeesh! I feel old!). She’s interviewing me tomorrow morning so I promise I’ll post again if she turns out to be a flake, but I’m not too worried. By e-mail she seems pretty neat. The second is studying lesbian and bi women’s sexual well-being. I don’t quite qualify for that one, given that I haven’t been in a same-sex relationship for a minimum of three months (yet), but the idea is cool. I’m all about the sexual well-being, eh? And Jacquie is funky and not flaky. So there you have it. Two unflaky people who want to pick your brain. What are you waiting for?

So… please feel free to pass on their information to whomever you think might be appropriate. Or drop ‘em a line yourself if you’re appropriate. Or inappropriate, but in just the right sort of way. Whatever tickles your pickle.

***

My name is Jen Pecoskie and I am working on a study about adult lesbian (bisexual, queer etc) women’s pleasure reading and how reading is linked to community.  I am looking for participants for my research who are lesbian (queer), who are 24 years old and over, English-speaking, who read for
pleasure, and who belong to a reading community or a book club.
Participation involves an interview lasting about 1 plus hours in duration, either in person or via the telephone.

If you are interested in learning more about the study or about participating please contact me directly and I’ve included direct contact information below. 

Thanks very much – keep turning those pages!

Jen Pecoskie
Doctoral Candidate
The University of Western Ontario (London, ON Canada)
519-661-2111 * 86931
jpecoski@uwo.ca

***

Study of Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Sexual Well-Being

We are a lesbian/bisexual-affirmative research team conducting a study of the sexuality of sexual-minority (i.e., non-heterosexual) women. If you are a woman who is at least 18 years of age and currently in a same-sex relationship of at least 3 months duration, we would appreciate your participation in an anonymous online survey. 

The survey takes approximately 40 minutes, but does not have to be completed in one sitting. Participants will have the opportunity to win one of three $100 (CDN) cash prizes and receive an e-mail summary of the results.

To participate or learn more, please go to www.unbstudy.com

This study has been approved by the Research Ethics Board at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, NB, Canada (REB # 2005-148).

Thank you for your help!

Jacquie Cohen, Ph.D. Student (jacqueline.cohen@unb.ca)
Dr. Sandra Byers, Professor of Psychology (byers@unb.ca)

Okay, this is really a random collection of interesting bits and pieces. If the headlines interest you, the details will be below.

1) Lesbian clothing boutique soon to open in the Village.

2) Drag show fundraiser for the NDP this Friday.

3) Montreal International Tango Festival is insanely sexy.

4) Accidental Video Game Porn Archives link.

And the details, as promised:

1) Did you know that there will soon be a lesbian clothing boutique opening in the Village? Yup. You got that right. They’re called Mad-Âme, and they’ll be located in the Village right near Lips and the soon-to-reopen Metro Lounge (two big dyke hangouts). Neato. There was a big article on them in the Gazette not too long ago. Their opening party is July 27 and you can bet your ass I’ll be there. Needless to say I’m completely intrigued. Not to mention I can’t wait to see what the heck they’ll sell. Fifteen varieties of lumberjack shirts? Butch-femme hers-and-hers ensembles? Racer-back tank tops? This Ain’t Kansas t-shirts? Boy-short underwear and packers? Those elusive perfect black pants that make everyone’s ass look spectacular? Leather? Neckties? Lace lingerie? (OOoooh. I wonder if their changerooms will have room for two.) The suspense is killing me. I almost hope they don’t have too much good stuff, because it would be waaay easy for me to drop a lot of money on such a business - I’m very much into the idea of supporting community enterprises and this particular one has gotta be a world first.

2) There’s a fundraiser this Friday for the NDP that’s specifically targeted at queer folk. Apparently it will include drag performances (kings and queens) and other fun stuff. It’s at Cabaret Cleopatra. Check out the details here. From those I know in the line-up, I’m sure it’ll kick some ass!

3) From July 8 to 16, the Montreal International Tango Festival takes place. On even-numbered years, that means a lot of milongas (tango dances), shows and parties; on odd-numbered ones, it means they fly in a slew of experts from Argentina to teach people advanced dance techniques. I’ve been taking tango lessons off and on for a good five years now, and I have to say tango is one of the goddamned sexiest things I’ve ever done, if you don’t count having passionate sex in a tent in the middle of Ste-Catherine Street on a Friday night where nobody knew it was happening save me and the person I was doing it with. Ahem. What was I saying? Yes, tango is incredibly sexy. It’s actually incredibly similar to SM play in a lot of ways, too, though the reasons why I think that will be fodder for another post. Anyway, if you want to experience some serious hotness, go check out some of their shows. Or you could always just buy a Gotan Project CD. But the shows will be way worth it.

4) In response to the PacMan Porn post of a few days back, a friend of mine sent me the following link to the Accidental Video Game Porn Archives. You really gotta stretch to appreciate some of them, but others are genuinely obscene-looking. Hey, anyone who can read raunch into a Mario Brothers’ game is okay by me.

And that’s all for the moment. Another post is soon to follow with details about a couple of very cool doctoral candidates in the process of recruiting study participants. ‘Cause, y’know, that kind of thing turns my crank.