Bullied and bolloxed

So Scottsdale, AZ, Mayor Mary Manross is meeting with some leaders in Arizona's TG community on Wednesday 15 August. The reason? Some face-saving.

You see, a very established and not-at-all-hip music club on her turf threw out transgender patrons over a fracas about bathroom etiquette. (One of the transgender women happens to be a City of Scottsdale employee. Ouch.) Please note: there will be no spoilers here. I'm boycotting the club that did this, as should all GLBT-friendly folk. Get details at www.azcentral.com (search transgender).

It seems our intrepid MTFs were shaking things up in this nightclub just by existing--and by flaunting their full bladders. The nerve of them! They were, newspaper reports say, upsetting the women and throwing the men into tizzies by . . . wait for it . . . using the restrooms. Being accommodating types, the transgender women switched from using the men's room to the women's room (or was it the other way around?) and back again when they were asked to by the bar's owner.

Trouble was, the uptight drunks at this dive kept complaining no matter where these Inconvenient Patrons tried to relieve themselves. Hell, I'd have peed on the walls and then hit the road waving a one-fingered salute, but these folks were--there's no other word for it--genteel. To make matters even more humiliating, there was a fair amount of bullying and picture-taking by those respectively threatened and titillated by the experience of sharing space at the bar with blokes in dresses. Eventually, the club's owner decided to ban transgender people altogether, using the logic that he didn't want to alienate other patrons, and he couldn't afford to build a TG-only bathroom, the only solution on the table so far.

Shiver-me-fucking-timbers, what about the more obvious solution? One that's already working at another Scottsdale lounge, AZ88? Simply have two bathrooms (private stalls in each) that are marked S/HE. No 'separate but equal' attitude there! Everyone's happy, all patrons can have a little private time when they need to, and no one cares who is adjusting their stockings or combing their beards at the sink next to them. Clearly, AZ88 is a lounge for grown-ups.
**NOTE/CORRECTION: APPARENTLY, THE CLUB IN QUESTION ALREADY HAS SINGLE USE RESTROOMS. WHICH BEGS THE QUESTION: HOW IN THE HELL DID THIS GET SO BOLLOXED UP IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Let's hope Mayor Manross will take the time to consider all of the options before meeting with transgender community leaders: she needs to use this meeting to do more than just apply some heavy make-up over her city's black eye.

There is now a complaint before the Arizona Attorney General's office against the club owner who has decided it's okay to ban an entire class of people from his establishment. Stay tuned for updates as the case proceeds.

B.Y.O.S.

It's time for me to make a respectful request of all trannies whose target gender wears fishnet stockings. Boys, I'm talking to you.

Please bring your own fishnets on the first date.

As the Elvis Costello song goes, "Don't you know the facts of life, boy, don't you know what these things cost?"

I'm happy to buy you a drink. Thrilled to kiss your painted, claret lips. I'd love to run my hands up your skirt. But no, for our first date, you can't borrow mine and yes you should bring -- better yet, wear -- your own knickers, stockings, and bras.

Let's leave rummaging through my closet for our second date, shall we?

XO

"Queer, There, and Everywhere"

All great conversations used to start with a drink in one hand and a laugh on the lips.

Cheers.

I had a lot to think about tonight as I sat drinking a crazy-ass key lime martini at the corner queer bar tonight. I was -- de rigueur -- off at a table to myself, drinking, reading a newspaper, and making small talk with the touchyfeelygirlyboy waiter. He was very concerned that I have a good time and gave me a peck on the cheek to prove it. Did he think I was a cross-dresser? Was he just filled with sister-love? Did I really project an aura of yearning for inappropriate professional contact? Would condoms come with the drink if I ordered a second round? What was his cut-off football jersey all about?

He was lovely, to be fair, and genuinely friendly. He liked stroking my arms as he checked in on my "table" -- that is, on me. I was, as I already said, sitting alone.

I didn't even have other empty chairs at my table. The party next to me had snagged the two bar stools that were keeping me company. Stools that suggested--cleverly, falsely--that friends of mine would be joining me soon. Invisible friends.

The reason my stools were poached? One table over sat an attractive lesbian with cropped blond hair and a soft-butch-athletic build that I couldn't help lingering over. It was *her* birthday, and she had more friends at the bar that night than she could talk to at one time. No holding court in that place, given the music volume: the largest number of friends who could hear what she yelled at any given moment was four. Her gang kept shifting and sorting so that they could hang out in her orbit, within earshot, flitting and cooing and scuffling their way around her all the livelong, neon night.

Their jollies didn't overtake my thoughts completely.

What was really on my mind tonight was an old argument I've been having with one of my very oldest friends. He -- a full-fledged outandabout gay man -- thinks that I'm not really queer. Even though the most crushing crush of my life was on a woman. In spite of the fact that the first erotic experience I ever had was shaving a boy's legs in preparation for him donning girls' underwear. Discounting, apparently, the years of service I put in as a faghag. And he seems also to be brushing aside the fact that my life has from time to time been all about chasing 'Hermaphrodite.'

Sheesh, what does it take?

True, it seems as though girls like me (omnisexual, with a particular bent for transgendered people) really don't have a place at the table, except in the electric blue soaked impressionistic world of David Bowie. But I'm here. I've got my own table. I've got a stool I can park my curvy ass on. I've got a fancy drink. And I'm thinking that even those of us in the world's 'miscellaneous' category deserve a little queer love.