District Lounge

Welcome to a new blog feature, one I like to call “My Roommate And I Are Often In The Same Place At The Same Time But We Don’t Always Agree On How Much Fun We Had While We Were There.”

Or, for the sake of brevity, “Roommate Reviews.”

The other night I dragged Riboflavin along to the opening night of Melange, a new lesbian night at District Lounge. Those of you familiar with downtown Boston will know what I mean when I say that to get there, you can either get mildly lost walking through Chinatown, or walk from NEMC until you’re pretty confident you’re about to start hitching on the Pike. Either way, it’s on Lincoln Street.

The evening is run by the organizers of Deep, the Saturday night dance event at Aria that will sadly be taking a summer hiatus because the Roxy feels the need to usurp the venue. Regardless, I’d been to District once before at a special Pride event (with one of my other roommates–I swear I have friends who don’t live with me) and really liked the location. After the jump, our point-by-point review.

Differential approaches

When I see a mouse run into my room in broad daylight, I yell “Fuck you!” at it, and then I run away. When my rooommate catches a mouse in the bathroom, she gives him a cookie to tide him over for the walk out of our apartment.

Did I mention we have a mouse problem? Riboflavin discovered the first one, dead on the kitchen floor. To date four have been evicted from the premises. Our cat is only the second best mouser in the household, trailing Mi5 by one. (He does get bonus points for putting his into her shoe, though.)

Disoriented

After yet another thought-provoking conversation with Riboflavin, I’ve been pondering what my life would be like were I, in fact, a dude. (The Sig Fig can relax–this is entirely hypothetical.)

When I was a kid, I daily wished that I could be a boy. I was utterly convinced there had been some serious mistake; clearly I was meant to be a boy. While being a tomboy can be cute for a few years, once you hit middle school it becomes embarrassing, for everyone involved. Sixth grade was honestly the worst year I can remember, filled as it was with my awkward attempts at hetero “dating” (“going out” would be a better term, but neither one is accurate. Come on. Nobody goes anywhere in sixth grade) and my ritual embarrassment at the hands of Those Two Cool Girls. Luckily for me in high school I found Teen Theatre, which (among other lifesaving things for a dyke growing up in rural southern Oregon) embraced all the ways we grow up female.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t still occasionally think about what my life would be like were I male. I used to think I would be one of those sensitive, really super awkward sweet guys. Very little play, very intense friendships, and terrified of getting someone pregnant. (It’s actually a good thing I’m a homo, because on either end of a heterosexual relationship I would be terrified of unplanned pregnancy above pretty much all else.)

After my conversation with Riboflavin, though, I realize that I’d have a hard time being a straight man because I have a hard time with straight women.

Now, don’t get me wrong–some of my best friends are straight. But I really have a hard time understanding straight women. I feel like we’re from different species. Straight women make me feel like a mutant. A clumsy, ugly, bizarre mutant. Honestly, large groups of straight women make me more uncomfortable on the train than large groups of drunk men do. I don’t understand them, sometimes I can’t communicate with them, and I’m totally not attracted to them.

I mean, some of them are attractive. I recognize that. But I liken it to great art. I can recognize that a Michelangelo is beautiful, but I’d rather look at some random German expressionist any day. And since finally acquiring the language to understand my homo nature (when I was little I definitely had crushes on older girls who were probably straight), I’ve never crushed on, much less attempted to date, a straight woman.

So, gaydar jokes aside, what is it that draws us to our (potential) mates? Do we just happen to have preferences for certain characteristics that other homos (or other heteros, if that’s your thing) happen to embody? I know there are homos who fall for straights every day, just as heteros have their hearts broken by players for the other team. But it seems to me that the majority of us are real gone on people of our orientation. So how do we know?

New and improved!

I’d like to take a moment to introduce a new contributor to the blog. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you my delightful roommate, Riboflavin.

Riboflavin hails from that peculiar part of Maine where cities are often named after other countries, such that giving directions makes you sound like a lunatic. Currently the roommate with the longest residency in the Pirate Ship, Riboflavin listens to much cooler music than I do, has trouble finding athletic shorts suitable for the public arena, and is almost certain to have an alternative medicine suggestion for most ailments, particularly if you need a recommendation for someone to stick needles in your face.

In the soontime, look for a joint Riboflavin/mk club review. In general, my stellar roommate will no doubt contribute on a variety of subjects. If we’re lucky, these will include ruminations on genderqueer identity, how to eat steamed vegetables for a week without going crazy, and how to keep your butch credibility from being undermined by squealing like a little girl.

(The preceding was in no way authored or endorsed by Riboflavin, and I’ll probably get punched for that last bit. Once the squealing stops.)