Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

Last night at the Blue Moon was house music as so often on Tuesday nights, but this time with a twist. Promoter Brit Jean restricted the DJs to FLINTA: female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender people. Neither the Tickler nor I had ever heard that acronym before, and even Brit had to learn it from the illustrious Trinitron, who inspired that night and was there for a little bit. Trinitron, despite being FLINTA herself, didn't DJ because that night is an open decks night for people who aren't really established, and she very much is.

FLINTA: a less... confrontational way of saying ABCD, i.e. anyone but cis dudes. And as the Tickler points out, it's better not to define yourself by what you're not, which is why they prefer "genderqueer" to "non-binary". Weirdly, the latter seems to have taken over, possibly due to squeamishness about the Q-word among the very old and the very young. Mayunn, I wonder if I'll live to see the day we get our terminological act together.

Fave DJ: Onyx Ocean. Rock solid, futuristic groove. Brit tells me she's** more partial to drum 'n bass, which in my opinion is too bad. I complimented her on her set, and she remembered me from somewhere, thereby causing me to worry about advancing senility. Or maybe she just remembered my purple hair. In any case, I hope to see her around.

And yes, the cute bartender with the dyke hair was there. Happiness.




**I looked up her pronouns in Zuckerberg's data mine. Ambivalence ahoy!

I think I found the way to zen out in New York: sitting on a bench in Madison Square Park around 11:00 in the shade of trees, listening to a busker play sax across the park, and peeking up at the top of the Flatiron building.

And why was I in the neighborhood? To go to the Museum of Sex. I’m sorry to say that I don’t think it’s worth the ticket price, even if it does a fairly good job of showing how messed up the past was. I can only hope that things are better for future generations.

Then, much napping because of Saturday night.

After dinner, I made a pilgrimage: the Stonewall Inn, where the (modern, effective) queer rights movement started with a riot on June 28th, 1969. There’s a tiny, triangular park with life-size statues of gay activists talking about what to do next after the riots. There was also a memorial to a trans girl who’d been recently murdered by a family member. Outside the gate stood a bored-looking policewoman. Trust New York to produce some unsubtle visual metaphors.

The bar itself? Seems perfectly normal. It’s mostly men, natch, but they’re not clones. Yes, it’s a bit of a tourist trap, but not obnoxiously so.

Today’s plan: good eetz and Brooklyn.

Got dolled up for Hot Flash Inferno with T. T is way more into that night than I am: the lowest common denominator '90s and earlier music, the normie dykes. (T has a horror story about their attitude toward "gold star" lesbians.) I wasn't feeling it to the point that I was checking out on the dance floor so hard that T noticed. When you're trans, you get really good at transporting yourself to somewhere else mentally.

Vienna La Rouge and her sweetie turned up again. Whatever the opposite of a bad penny is, she's it: she turns up wherever I am, and she's always welcome to.

Hit Pony afterward. Chatted with English gay boys. It was noice.

If I were running a club night it would feature kinky folk and raver music. That may be one of the reasons I don't run a club night, but what I've just described is basically the all-too-infrequent Petting Zoo events. Other Burner events aren't far off, though; I just don't hear about as many of them as I used to.

I went to the leather dyke munch at CC's yesterday evening, and discovered that it wasn't officially happening. CC's was hosting a private event whose theme was Studio 54.

But! Not to be deterred, organizatrices B&A had set up an unofficial munch in an out-of-the-way part of the bar. There were no bootblacks, to the disappointment of two of us with scuffed boots including me. Nevertheless, there was queer & kinky conversation be had, and meeting of peeps. Rather good, even if once again I was way older than nearly everyone there. (If I remember correctly B is 12 years younger than I am, and they're the next oldest.)

Oh: apparently the Cuff may be a once and future leather bar. Its takeover by twinks or A-gays may have been temporary; I didn't quite follow everything that was going on.

I shall definitely return next month! With scuffed boots. Meanwhile, I await the arrival of the Tickler.

As promised I went to the monthly women's capital-L Leather munch, complete with bootblacks, at C.C. Attle's. TL;DR: A+ would munch with those ladies women people again!

I'd never set foot in CC's before, which isn't as odd as it sounds because I was under the impression that it was very much a men's space. And it used to be, but times change, and what was the Leather bar — the Cuff — got taken over by someone with a corporate mindset who decided to give yet another home to "gay bros" as Dancer described them. CC's is dark and loud, but it's hella queer. There's mirror junk hanging from the ceiling, which serves the same function as Pony's mummer junk: putting the hets on notice. They also let the Leather women reserve tables, set up the bootblacks' chairs, and pimp their night on the video. And their beer selection is acceptable. So CC's management gets a thumb up from me.

I must say, the Leather munch seems to be flirtier and less popular with n00bs than the women's munch. It may be my preferred munch from now on. The organizers, B & A from the women's munch, weren't the only people I knew there. There was lovely young Squirt, whom I met a few years ago at another event. There was also H, whom I met at Folsom in '17.

H deserves her own paragraph because she looms large in my memory for giving me the most intense damn scene of my life. I knew she'd moved (back?) into the area last year at the latest, but I hadn't seen her out & about until last night. I managed not to squee audibly, but only just. H says she just doesn't get out as much as she used to to public events. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's a bummer for yours truly. And of course she has an unfairly attractive partner, whom I think I met all those years ago.

I got to tell Folsom stories to the bootblacks. The boots I was wearing are now shiiiny. Happiness.

I got invited to a play party tonight, but it's in Tukwila, which is $$$ to get to without a car. Le sigh, because I have every confidence it'll be good.

I was a good girl and left after only a couple of hours at the munch. And why? Because I'd already promised Dancer I'd help her move stuff to storage. I misrecorded a hair appointment this afternoon and thereby deprived her of about an hour, which only compounded the chaos that others introduced. We did get the stuff mostly moved by the time Dancer dropped me off at my stylist's, only a few minutes late, in a U-Haul van*.

I'd proposed to Funny Lady that we meet up in Georgetown for their Pride thing, but I'm too beat. Fortunately, so is she, having just returned from visiting family back east.



*My stylist realized before I did that I was a lesbian in a U-Haul. It is to laugh.

Friday lunch: my son took me out for a burger. We talked about current events because we always do that.

Friday dinner: Funny Lady took me out for a very belated birthday dinner at Shiro's. Excellent company, and some of the best sushi in town.

Saturday morning: the Lambert House trans group facilitators got together at Lost Lake. (We ended up sitting in the Comet and ordering from Lost Lake's kitchen, which was a bit weird, but I'll take it. Moral: if you want a table in Lost Lake proper on a Saturday, be there by 9:30.) We talked about trans stuff. And facilitating. And Lambert House. It's a weirdly comfortable feeling to hang out with a group of people who Get You in ways that hardly anyone else does.

Saturday evening: Pony with Tacoma Girl. I hadn't been since before the pandemic, and she'd never been. It's very gay, with big photos of naked men (and one trans woman) on the walls, sculptures of genitalia hanging from the ceiling, and a sticker game that in places rivals the Blue Moon. Tacoma Girl is convinced that some of the graffiti is by art students. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Seattle Ms. Leather, who organizes the women's munch I've been to, showed up and sold us candy. The crowd is way more varied and thereby interesting than the one at, say, Union; I think it's fair to say that Pony is a queer dive bar. Tacoma Girl loved it, natch, and so do I.

The two of us failed to scare up eats that didn't involve a long wait, so I got home at a reasonable hour via busy mass transit.

First, the 40th anniversary of the Wildrose, Seattle's lesbian bar, on the 30th. It got impressively full impressively early on a Monday night. I waited seventy-five (75) minutes for Funny Lady to show up, but eventually she did, asking me, "What is it like to be punctual?"

Stressful, Funny Lady, because I had to shoo people away from the only empty seat in the house for you. But there was plenty of queer eye candy, FL's friends, and of course Funny Lady herself. As so often when FL is involved, there was too much alcohol. She was kind enough to bundle me into a rideshare to get home; she didn't think I should take transit.

Second, New Year's Eve afternoon, the Tickler and I made it to the Keith Haring exhibit at MoPop. I must say, there was more to both the man and his work than the iconic motifs that everyone has seen. It's a lowdown shame that he died so young.

A tip o' the hat to the MoPop curators: they played appropriate music from the '80s. We were about to leave the museum when "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson came over the PA, so we had to sit and listen.

We hit lower Fremont for dinner, finding only Meesha open. Yes, they're delicious, but also expensive. Plus, the sheer quantity that we ate wrecked the poor Tickler's delicate digestion. It was so bad that we ended up catching a rideshare back to my house for just a few blocks.

We did not make it to the Monkey Loft as planned, but as I told the Tickler, I was still recovering from the 'Rose so it may have been for the best. I can just barely see the top of the Space Needle from my office window, so that's where we watched the fireworks. There was a midnight smooch. Aw!

New Year's Day? Spaghetti for the Wendling, then partying with goths in C's basement. Faboulous eats & drinks. Happiness.

So far so good.

Short notice evening out with Funny Lady. She showed up half an hour after she agreed to, but that's kind of par for the course. She bought me drinks, saying she felt she owed me for all the times I picked up dinner while she was looking for work. Aw.

We didn't stay at the Wildrose late enough for it to get busy, but hey, I can say I've bought drinks from dykes.

We poked our heads in at Vermillion, which I often do to check out the art. The bar there was kind of crowded and loud, and FL wasn't feeling it.

I managed to convince her that despite its noise and prepoonderance of bros, the Unicorn was a good idea. It helps that they have truffle popcorn. But the rush didn't arrive until after we got a table. The bros left us alone, and Funny Lady and I got to chat, appreaciate the circus decor, and be dirty old women.

A fabulous time was had. My transit luck held on the way home. And I've just caught up on sleep. Happiness.

Friday: hit Trans Pride at the Volunteer Park amphitheater. Attendance was at least as big as last year, but the folks running things seemed to have done a better job of laying out all the booths so that I didn't have to elbow my way through. I also liked the performers that I heard better. The Tickler and I observed independently that Trans Pride is turning into quite the fashion show. It feels weird to say it, but Trans Pride seems to have come of age. (Arguably, it already had in its pre-pandemic march incarnation. That isn't happening anymore because the organizers don't want cops around.)

Saturday: hit the street fair on Broadway, the historical main arterial of Seattle's gayborhood*, Capitol Hill. Went on a successful quest for pasties. Saw Vienna La Rouge, Burner buddy J, and fellow Merc regulars J & K. For me, that's the best part of hanging out on the Hill on Pride weekend.

Tacoma Girl was volunteering at a booth until 1700, at which time we jumped on a train to the U-District, reasoning correctly that eetz would be much easier to obtain there than on Broadway, where the fair was still nearly in full swing. After devouring dinner and perhaps a beer too many at Big Time** we shopped for Korean instant ramen at H Mart. The U District does have its charms.

I took the train down to SoDo and got rained on as I walked to Orient Express, a Chinese restaurant in train cars. And why in the hell would I do a thing like that, you ask? Because a venerable house music monthly, Train Car House Party, was having its very last night. I'd been meaning to go for many years and just never got around to it. So, it was my first & last TCHP.

That venue is so singular that it deserves its own paragraph. The cars TCHP used were basically a dive bar, and I'm not talking the gentrified version of a dive bar that you see elsewhere in Seattle, either. We're talking frank alcoholics, overly strong drinks, some kind of porn on a monitor at the bar (?!), and literal funk; SoDo is still pretty rough around the edges, and I hope it stays that way. The original brass luggage racks were (just barely) still attached in the train car that housed the naturally long and narrow dance floor. I think the house music crowd drove out the down-and-outers at some point, and I'm conflicted about that, boy howdy. I overheard one woman describe TCHP as a soft option, but that option is now gone. Le sigh. I actually liked the choonz, which were supplied by Riz & Rob.

Possibly for the first time in SoDo, I party hopped to the Monkey Loft because promoter Ramiro Gutierrez put me on the guest list! I figured I couldn't refuse an invitation like that. (Or the house music mafia might funk me up?)

Sunday: I didn't even make it out of bed until after noon because I woke up at 0630 and just couldn't face life without more sleep.

SFDs: black Stetson hat, black leather harness, blue silk plus-shaped pasties, my silk-and-leather Pride stripe skirt belt from Astral Chrysalis, leather thong undies so I don't get arrested, black patent Docs, Trans Pride socks so I can say I'm transsoxual, and a whole lot of queer and kinky accessories. Oh yeah: I tied black and gray hankies to the right side of the back of my harness.

Made it to the Seattle Center. Walked and walked an walked, which I figure makes up for the lack of bike ride today. The only person I ran into who I know was, unbelievably, Vienna la Rouge, looking totally casual and makeup-free as I'd never seen her before. Yeah, she's still devastatingly pretty that way. I asked her if there were any sunscreen globs on my back, and she smoothed them out for me. It didn't occur to me until several minutes later that this could be construed as flirting with the most physically attractive woman I know, who happens to be conveniently gay. Aw mayunn, that wasn't what I meant to do.

Went grocery shopping on the way home. Yes, in my hat, harness & pasties. I did laundry, made beans & rice, and took out the bins as usual on Sunday, and I'm still wearing my hat, harness & pasties. I'm really liking them. Happy Pride!



*Pike and Pine streets, which are parallel and one block apart, are perpendicular to Broadway are sort of the secondary main drags. There's actually more gay stuff on or near these two streets. They're collectively called the Pike-Pine corridor. The director of Lambert House once described them to me as a decades-old "shitshow". I know what he means, and he's not completely wrong.
**I used to go there all the time in my student days. The menu has changed a little, but the food and the beer, which they brew, is still right on. Totally a blast from my past.

After a sugaring appointment rendered a little chaotic by a four-year-old* I took the bus to the train, and then got the Wendling to pick me up because the 50 is the most useless bus route in Seattle. And where did this epic journey take me?

To Both Ways Cafe, where Ex was having a party for her sixtieth birthday. The food was amazing, of course, because Ex made most of it, and much of it was gluten free. Ex's brother, niece, nephew, cousins, dog trainer lady, rabbi, etc. were all there. Some of them flew in from California, but I was still the best dressed person there. In a few cases it took me several minutes to remember people's names despite sobriety. They remembered mine, of course.

It was kind of trippy telling Exbrother's bi daughter, whom I've known since she was a baby, about the Wildrose. Ex's childhood friend P, who's been having some success at writing (!), tells me she's given up on dating. Mayunn, het men need to suck less, especially the ones around sixty years old.

But Ex provided me with another reason to be there: I commissioned from her a pair of red ceramic horns to the balcony on the front of the Devil Girl House. You see, the ones that I have made of red tape and wire haven't withstood the elements despite some serious coating applied. They look perfect, and I intend to install them today. I have some neoprene to use as padding, which I think will be necessary.



*The lady who does my sugaring has a young son who inherited ADHD from both of his parents. He's... a handful, and his mother doesn't really have a reliable alternative to having him with her there at the salon. I feel sorry for her. And I'm glad I wore boots there yesterday because he broke some glass.