vacation trip #2: straight club

--vacation trip #2: straight club--
washington, dc

i will be the first to toss myself under the bus and admit it's hypocritical- but generally speaking, all straight clubs make me feel weird. i go to bat for gay clubs all the time, assuring those who haven't been that it's worth a trip, you will have a blast...don't shun the unfamiliar.

i suppose i'm being hard on the establishments- it isn't their fault...it's the fellas that frequent such places whom leave me questioning why i even left the house. last thursday my friends and i started the evening at apex, a gay club in dc. as recent as several years ago apex's thursday night was a bubbling brook of activity. you ran into countless familiar ladies an gays, the drinks were cheap, it was college night, and for the most part- you knew what sort of crowd to expect week after week.

just one week after turning 23 reality slapped me across the face and assured me that my youth was fading fast. after our IDs were checked and our bracelets were fastened we walked into a ghost-town of a club. one or two committed dancers shook their bodies violently and waved their arms to no particular beat. other than that- no one was there. we attempted to see it though, hoping- wishing- praying- that we were just a little early and things would pick up.

things did indeed pick up and a steady trickle of fresh faces walked in. now by 'fresh faces', i'm not implying it was a bevy of beauties- but rather i doubt anyone outside of those i arrived with were even eligible to vote. my roommate, thuy, jumped on the dance floor at the sight of the young ladies. she began dancing with one but moments later returned.

"we need to go. NOW." she sternly said under her breath. not having any issue with making an early exit we all joined her in a walk towards the door. she explained to us that the young lady she was dancing with lived in our area and graduated high school nearby...not exactly an unheard of phenomenon in the northern virigina area. it would have been a neat story had it ended there, but thuy went on to tell us that not only did she graduate high school a few weeks ago but she graduated with thuy's baby brother.

wow. are we seriously "those old lesbians" now? i havn't even hit 25!

the night was still relatively young so we went to the straight club where our friend is a promotions girl. things started out fine. we grabbed a few drinks and began to float around the popped-collar peppered crowd. in my flat billed hat, skinny jeans and chucks i felt my sexual orientation was apparent outright. if there was any confusion, i was standing in a group of 4 or 5 lesbians- so that should confirm everything, right?

wrong.
wrong.
WRONG.

i'm not sure if it's because we exude a energy that genuinely wants to have a good time, or because drunk guys are persistent about pussy but whatever the reasoning, we were swimming in hetero fellas looking for fun.

i think it's presumptuous to shout within the first few moments of meeting someone about my sexuality. to me it implies that i have reason to tell them and if that's the first thing i say to someone at a bar, in my mind it's the equivalent to saying, "i feel the need to tell you this information because i assume you want to sleep with me."
after the second time i neglected to give out my number and after the third time my friends declined to slow dance, i did it. i dumped a giant can of worms onto the bar, "we are gay." this, of course, prompted the typical responses- "i'm a lesbian too, i love women"; "wait- like ALL THE WAY gay? like...100% no dudes?"; "well, whenever you want some real dick- i'm right here"; and the always charming, "shut the fuck up. you are lying".

just as in the halls of high school, the information quickly zipped back and forth across the bar. a man i had spoken with earlier in the evening approached me visibly upset, "you think just because you are pretty you can do what you want? i was nice to you. why did you have to lie?!" before i had a chance to sneak a word in he stormed off into the crowd.

i turned to my roommate, "what the hell was that about?" she was laughing uncontrollably at this point. after i talked to that man for a while, i had told him i was gay. he told me i was too pretty to be gay and i told him that most lesbians are but guys like him assume them straight. after he walked away he had gone up to my roommate to ask if i was actually gay. hearing this question over and over in one night can be exhausting so she thought it would be funny to spice it up and play dumb. "who? ashley? omg, she's gay? did she say that? haha wow, that's news to me."

aside from words, there was no way or reason to prove our gayness to these people.
we have no gay card.
we have no passport to love pussy.
we carry with us no scars or tattoo that indicates our sexuality.
we are all just people...so why get so hostile because one or two girls in a bar of hundreds don't want to sleep with you?

one guy went so far as to ask me what the hell we were even doing there if we weren't "down with dick", as he so eloquently put. in a glance i asked him if he was serious...he stared right back at me- "you all are just a tease." by the end of the evening the bartender gave my friend his number, a british man was trying to break in to another friend's car in hopes of coming home with us, yet our gay little heads remained held high.

will i be returning to a straight club anytime soon? i'm not going to limit myself and rule it out completely- but next time: flannel, birkenstocks, and rainbows will be a must in our hetero club fashions- and if that doesn't work i'll settle for drinking alone.