Crowd

I see the crowd of lesbians, all happily catching up with each other at the bar.

There must be over 50 of them there.

I see the crowd of lesbians, here in the nice resturant with the hors d’oevure buffet set out.

And I can’t think of anything I want to say to them that will make them want to change their chit chat.

On the third episode of Lie To Me this week, one plot point was that popular girls in school are facile liars. They figure out what others want to hear and then tell them that.

God, not me.

I remember sitting with a friend on a riverside deck at a bar, and she looked over to a boisterous crowd at another picnic table.

“Were you ever like that?” I asked.

“Never,” she answered, with a knowing look.

Introverts.

I spoke to the owner for a bit, a fellow from NYC.   We had a nice chat, observers both of us.  And another city gal, Sunnie, came up and said hello.

But I just couldn’t imagine elbowing my way through that crowd and breaking into a knot of conversation.

Oh, I suppose I could have found some trope.  “Can you tell me a good place to buy sweaters with bear pictures knitted into them?” for example.

But it just didn’t seem worth it.

I imagined what TBB would do if she were here.  She would be right in the middle of the throng with her drink, holding court.

An old friend did show up.  Monica looks nice — she now co-owns a spa with the woman who does her hair — but her center is still as a concrete contractor.

Monica didn’t disagree when I suggested that she is butch.  She’s my age and dating a 28 year old born female bartender for fun, but looking for more.

“I like men,” she told me, “but what they want is just, well.  I say to them ‘Sure I love anal sex.  Just let me go first.’  It’s not what they are expecting.”

I tried to make my point.

“Are you a bottom?” she asked me.  No, more like celibate.  But I don’t know many women who see themselves as a bottom, even if they are submissive in bed.  It’s like when a fellow talked about women having the “passive” role in sex at a seminar, and when I said that I prefered the word “receptive,” all the women nodded.

No, I’m not a bottom.  I’m a femme.  And, like Grace says, I want to be valued for what I bring to the table.

I saw a few femmes in the crowd last night.  One, who looked like Staci London with a buzz-cut, was a power performer, her energy  just illuminating the group around her.

I watched the women for their own gender cues, the in-group cues of lesbians.  I know how to watch for gender cues in the eyes; femmes sparkle, while butches are butch.

But I knew that no one came there tonight looking for a femme transwoman.  A butch trans woman, well, maybe.  “I just don’t get it,” a butch lesbian said to me many years ago in a radio interview.  “If you want to date women, why would you cut of your dick?”   Well, maybe because I could never be cocky enough to operate it well.  If GRS was easier and cheaper, I might do it next week, that’s how I am feeling.   I laugh at the concept of going to a doctor; after seeing so many newly out trannies, they would probably be stunned that I am so mature in my expression and still TransNatural, to coin a phrase.

It was a very nice event, with a very nice buzz.  I was very pleased to see so many gay women and a sprinkling of gay men taking their space and connecting, even as it reminded me of my own dyke failure, my inability to be one of the lesbian crowd.

And I got to connect with Monica, and we will sit down at a quiet table some day before my parents get back.

But somehow, I just couldn’t think of anything worth saying to break into that crowd.

And that’s me.