Femmes are for...

Oh, honey -- Althea's crabby again. She's got a post-Pride hangover, so just grab you a cocktail and sit down in that soft chair, kick off those mules and get ready for an earful.

It’s hard out here for a femme. More specifically, it's hard for a butch-loving femme. A butch-loving femme dyke. A butch-dyke-loving femme dyke. A butch-dyke-loving femme dyke who makes butches very... nervous. It's hard, I'm telling you. And a little damp, oftentimes, too, actually.

Now, let it not be said that Althea is not an ally of the new-men-for-men, masculine-of-center, transparadigm, gender non-norming, b-o -i boys diggin’ on each other at HellaGay or El Rio because they’ve finally burst forth out of the straight lace of their girly-girl (gross!) upbringing and just wanna get all busy on each other since apparently faggot sex is what makes a real man in the post-homophobia 2000s. I love the new millennium!

And, hey, I got nothing against the straight-acting and -demanding passing guys who’re gonna come to my Pride afterparty and cruise me and then turn around and ask me if I couldn’t please tune down my lesbo tendencies (both out of the bedroom and in it, thank you very much) because god forbid the neighbor lady next door find out that we are not actually a picture perfect straight couple after all. Oops. Did I use the wrong pronoun when I had my fingers up your cunt? Sorry — I forgot: Female is over, people. Just tell Marilyn. Didn’t you know you can get over that nasty sexually-transmitted disease with just a little testosterone and the right accessories, some low-slung jeans and an appropriately slicked back hairdo? Come on down to the emporium of masculinity, once known as San Francisco — oh, wait. Who am I kidding? San Francisco was always the Emporium of Masculinity!These boys are just reaching out their newly-furred fingers for what they were promised: become a boy and get some real cruising power on Castro street. Who am I to complain about them getting theirs? What did I think I would find in San Francisco, anyway, bringing my pussy-girl (pussy-eating) self into the shirtless belly of the gyaboy beast? Did I really think that rainbow flag at Castro and Market was meant to wave over my curvy ass? Maybe just to cover me up, tuck this fish out of the way while the boys are looking for each other — it’s no good to bring your baggage along with you when you’re finally knocking on the door of your real self. Leave the girls behind, boys, when you come into this club. You know high heels are only a drag queen’s best friend — what do I think I’m doing, appropriating the Queen’s costume? It’s all too much deconstructed discursivity — what’s a femme to do, not queer enough to enter mecca, woe is me. take another tissue out of Dorothy’s ruby slipper and move on, mama. This bed wasn’t made for you, and you’re blocking the way for some Velveteen Rabbit/Pinocchio transition that’s trying to manifest right behind you.

Maybe I do have some bones to pick at after all.

Well, anyway, my mama taught me that you like what you like, and what this femme looks for is a butch dyke who’s not afraid of her own goddamn pussy. No, that’s not quite right. I mean a dyke who is not only not afraid of her cunt, but expects to get fucked as much as she expects to get to do a little fucking. I know I’m not supposed to say it, but after coming on 15 years in this lesbophobic ostensibly gay paradise, show me a suit and tie wearing butch who will let a girl kneel her bare knees on the bathroom floor, undo that fly and shove a clit instead of a cock down her throat and I’ll sing your fucking praises, first of all, and then I’ll lead you out into fairy land where I’ve got a pretty little unicorn on a candy leash sipping tea with the mad hatter and the cheshire cat — just for you.

I’ve got nothing against cocks, if you’ll please allow me to clarify. They certainly have their place, when well-wielded for a couple hours—or so — I even have my own collection (none of which are petite, pastel, or glittery, if you’ll allow me to clear up that myth of the femme cock; they’re fat and sturdy and designed not to tickle or tease or be fucking called cute but to bust-open that sweet little tight hole you clench closed and aching between those bone-hard thighs, and intended to keep that little mouth of yours dripping open like a dog’s, thank you very much.)

But, see, here’s the trouble I run into in this Bayside palace of cock worship — I happen to be especially fond of cunt. Yes, I like the burly girls whose hands know instinctively how to commune with the dense and tender folds between my legs – I happen to own a pair of those hands myself; there’s a good goddamn reason I keep my nails shorn and short: I want them well up inside of you. I want your legs around my hips. It’s a problem, I know — you’re a butch with a reputation to protect, a cock to wield, some fucks to throw. You never get on your back. You don’t spread your legs — oh, wait! I forgot! Yes, you do — you just do it for the boys, while we girls are over here cheering you on in the corner. The girls you fuck aren’t supposed to be able to flip over themselves and throw as good (or better) a nailing into your own underplanked hole. They’re not supposed to look at you with the same knowing eyes you serve, not supposed to lick the same wise lips, not supposed to run the same strong, broad, brave hands up your legs stroking apart lips that have almost forgotten how to peel open just a little, just enough, a crack in the door some stone butch told you years ago that you had to keep slammed shut. You’ve done such a good job all these years training all those girls that no, really, you don’t need anything yourself — you like being down there on your knees for a three-hour stretch giving her all the orgasms her high school boyfriends never even knew the name or shade of, that those tech boys in their skinny jeans and mangy beards take for granted; I mean to say you’ve been bending over so many straight girls that you just assumed I’d fall into that category too if you just treated me shoddily enough for long enough but honey my name was never Pillow Queen — it was never Do Me — it was never Oh thank you, Daddy — girl, I want do get you calling me Daddy. Now how about that for a flip?

I guess I can see why you’d turn to the boys — maybe they’re not as scary. Maybe they make you feel like you’re looking in a mirror. Maybe they don’t make you confront the image of the cheerleader doing the quarterback all upside down and inside out — this time she’s got him bent over the bench in the locker room, tight uniform pants yanked down around his ankles, cleats slipping on the wet concrete floor while she teases just one more finger into that sweet, loosening butthole — the blonde ponytail swinging, legs planted firm and solid, cheerleading thighs holding her steady while he bucks for her: this is a girl who knows something about the architecture of pleasure, and about what it takes to make someone score. Come on, baby — let me in, that low and candied voice, urging him to spread that hole just a little wider. Come on. Open up for me baby, Take it in, Poppa. She knows how to unfold what the rest of the boys told you you were supposed to keep tucked deep inside, all the way behind your cock. That is, if you want to be a real man. And maybe that's true.

You’ve heard the little ditty, haven’t you: butch in the streets, femme in the sheets — you get that, right? A butch who gets fucked is a femme! Isn't that amazing? The power of the dick, I'm telling you... It means, you know, that a butch can’t be a butch and get fucked. But I want to remind you who don’t need reminding that if you’re the one whose arm is pistoning into another woman’s body and bringing sounds up out of her throat that she didn’t even know she had the capacity to make, you are maybe just showing us what else femme in the sheets can look like. Go ahead and let Lea Delaria throw up her heels — she’s no more femme than Hilary Clinton. Honey, just throwing up your heels doesn’t make you a fucking femme. It might make you smart, might show you're willing to risk being associated with all the baggage the world likes to saddle onto the fucked, might make you hungry or gorgeous, but heels in the air don’t make someone femme. Now, they do it with some finesse, well… then we can talk.

Sigh.

Don’t let you be a femme wanting to fuck butches in this town, honey — and especially don’t let you say it out loud, honest and promising and able to deliver, one high heel lost in the sheets, make up smeared and hair all tangled and loose about your shoulders, these wise fists pumping in and out of some broad-shouldered lover’s powerhouse body. Oh no, girl. You’re supposed to pretend. Femmes pretend. Pretend to totter on those heels, pretend to need an arm to lean on, pretend to need someone else to lift those heavy boxes, pretend not to know what a cunt looks like or needs, pretend to be touching theirs for the first time (oh, no, Daddy, I’ve never done this before — is this right?) when they finally deign to let you stroke their meaty folds, pretend not to know anything about cunt-licking and offer a porn-girl tease, that little wobbly flicker meant for camera angles instead of pleasure, instead of shoving your knowing mouth deep and sucking hard, pretend your hand isn’t already folding itself, pretend to be wholly unable to keep those legs closed, girl, you’re just so hungry: fucking is what a femme is for, isn’t that right? They can practice on us to be ready before they move on up the ladder to the real thing — that pretty transboy sitting ‘cross the bar at IMsL (I’m sorry, what? Ms leather? What does that mean?) or down to the Lone Star. Girl, you didn’t know you were supposed to just be for practice?

Femmes are for fucking — you knew that, though, didn’t you, being raised as or around females in this country. You knew that, when you put on those torn fishnets and high heels, right? Did you really think the dykes would take your skin-tight erotic prowess any more seriously than the guys down to the financial district do? Oh honey — you must be new here.

But I’m gonna whisper a secret to you, little momma. You with the itchy fingers, with hands that taught plenty of cunts what fuck can really mean, with that tongue that knew from the start how to slick open another woman’s pussy and lives to be consumed by precisely that generous mess, you who keep on believing that being a gay woman means you get to fuck women as well as get fucked by them, — are oh, honey, there are women who think like you do. You might not find them so easy in this resolutely regimented town, the one that marks skirts with one role and trousers with—oh, sorry, I keep forgetting! Trousers can have many roles. Skirts: one.) , but you can find women who want you to fuck them even without hanging the Momma Dom shingle across your chest. Just keep those smoky-shaded eyes open, honey. Eschew the misogynists, just generally, no matter how badly they want you in their pants. And don’t let you ever feel you need to play second fiddle to some soft-slung little packy; they have their own game. You scan over the bold women in their denim and buttoned up shirts, their khaki shorts and t-shirts, their motorcycle boots and tagged-up vests, and watch for the few who are able to let their gaze drop, even just once, when you’re cruising them across the bar — that’s a woman who knows something about letting her eyes roll back in her head.

And you femmes who wanna fuck the b-o-i boys, you can find them, too, of course. You just gotta swallow some adolescent bravado to get into those saggy Jockeys. Maybe that’s your kink — more power to you. I prefer, after all these years, a woman not just unashamed to let a girl suck her pussy — I’m looking for a woman who wants me there. I quit pretending to be stupid when I came out of the closet; don’t expect me to go back to dumb girl just to make you feel better about your own hunger. I bet you can find a boy to do that if you really need it. There’s all kinds in this quote-unquote end of the rainbow.

This isn’t about flipping, mamas.This is about rolling around in bed, getting everyone messy, getting everything you deserve, which is, where I come from, what a femme is really for.