new cultural experiences

[sistawendy]

Once again, macabre0 was persistent enough to get me to try something new: several hours at Olympus Spa in Lynwood yesterday. We spent the day getting alternately boiled, baked, steamed, chilled, and fed with some tasty Korean food. All very nice, but the best part of it for my money was watching all the naked women. No, not for the reasons you'd think (mostly), but because it showed me that there are a whole lot of women who look just about as funny with no clothes on as I do. It was deeply reassuring. macabre0 and leenerella independently came up with the idea of taking young teenage girls to the spa so that they notice what I noticed. I think that would be highly salutary.

And I only got two brief funny looks, one from a Russian and one from a middle-aged lesbian.

Speaking of lesbians, I made it to the Hot Flash party last night. I was happy to see the main dance floor packed with queer women. The music was, well, what one tends to hear at lesbian nights, unfortunately. I found out about it through the Eastside lesbians group on meetup.com, but I didn't find any of them.

Instead, I found my friend M, who's trans and who seems to have succeeded at integrating into lesbian society. She lamented that the lesbian scene is so much smaller than the gay male scene that there aren't enough degrees of separation, even in a city the size of Seattle. That fits with what I've seen, and you don't have to take my word for it. M echoed something I heard in a talk by Susie Bright twenty years ago: anonymous sex is impossible if you're a lesbian because everybody knows one of your ex-girlfriends. And Susie lives in the Bay Area.

Yay: cute women there.
Bah: I didn't get to talk to any of them alone, except the drunk photographer who M was worried about.
Yay: ran into shivacat for the first time in ages, shaking her booty on one of the go-go platforms. Except for the venue and her slightly butch clothes, it was just like nine years ago.
Bah: The glow bracelets for singles are a trap, says M. This is a group to which you do not want to signal desperation, says she.
Yay? I wasn't femmest woman in the room, maybe the 97th percentile. I actually said "Nice boots" to a woman whose boots were even taller than my knee-high Fluevogs. I wasn't the only one in a short tartan skirt. I was the only one wearing fence net hose, though, because of where I went afterwards, which needs to go in a separate friends-locked entry with a cut. (Teaser!)

Best piece of clothing advice ever, courtesy of macabre0: "You're not getting laid in those socks." Yeah, kathrynt tried to tell me first.

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I definitely want to see a picture of these socks.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

They're ribbed white gym socks.

[dymaxion.livejournal.com]

I think one of the healthiest things about Scandinavia is the sauna/swimming culture, where it really is pretty normal for everyone to see each other naked, and while that's not the purpose (the purpose is that a sauna feels really nice, and who actually gives a shit who sees you, honestly?), it's a very much intended and celebrated side effect.

And yes, dykes mostly don't have anonymous sex, although there are definitely exceptional circumstances. That said, synonymous but casual is entirely doable. Although, uh, harder in Seattle.