It's past half-way through the year, honey -- how are we doing so far?

Althea Xtravaganza presents A 30-something's High Femme New Year's Convolutions — No, I mean Resolutions — No, wait, how about Evolutions?

1) Find a lip shade that's organic, cruelty-free, paraben- and PABA-free, gluten-free, unscented, hypoallergenic, moisturizing, long-lasting, and matches the color of that cute little butch's outer labia when she gets all worked up.

2) Find a cute little butch who understands the wisdom of showing a girl with an educated mouth and brilliant hands what her goddamn labia look like.

3) Develop at least three new responses to being queer-checked at the Lex. When met with the doorgirl's raised eyebrow, body scan, and cocked head as she ignores my ID and asks, “uh, baby, do you know this is a gay bar?” I will extend my short-nailed, well-manicured hand as though to retrieve my ID, but instead wave my fingers beneath her nose and ask, “Does this still smell of cunt? I washed these damn hands so many times, and I still can't get the smell of your pussy off my fingers.” Then slide my license between my tits and walk into the bar. Then, when one of the many fauxhawked or pompadoured, skinny, white, baby butches in outtucked, oversized men's shirt, vest, skinny tie, skinny jeans who've taken a hit off of their best buddies' T patch and feel this gives them license to police a joint I've belonged in probably since before they had any idea what a cunt is capable of leans drunkenly across the other fauxhawked baby butch they're trying to cruise and asks me— all I was trying to do is order my dirty martina – oops, I mean martini – asks me if I'm sure I'm in the right place, I'm going to try one of two options. Response one: ask Little Miss–ter Thing when they last pushed that sweet little naughty mouth between another girl's legs with the intention of bringing the woman as much pleasure as a mouth can instead of simply just wetting up a landing spot for that little piece of plastic she called cock and wields like four-year-old just beginning to play with trucks in the sandbox (you know – vroom vroom vroom – it's just fun to shove it anywhere wherever it will go.)

Or grab her by that tie she stole from her uncle's closet when she was 14 and always has to have her femme housemate to tie for her (wait, how does it go again? Over, then under?), drag her to one of the bathrooms, get her back up against that graffiti and come-smeared wall, kiss her hard enough that her hips start to loosen up between my hands, then peel down those trousers over her ass and down her thighs, before I slick my fingers inside these trendy boy shorts with the underoos logo on 'em—something intended to be a cute, butch conversation starter when she got her twin out there back to her bedroom before they got busy trying to figure out who was good to be the top for the night, the the big mean daddy to the other one's bad little boy – and people worry about what two femmes do in bed. Anyway I'd slip my fingers under those shorts, after I moving aside the athletic sock she'd've packed with, and shove into all that thick curly wet. Of course I don't need her gasp to tell me I'm in the right place, but I like it. I'll keep my mouth very close to her, not quite kissing her, while I find that clit with my thumb and push two fingers up into her cunt, fucking her right up to the edge with these dumb, painted, girly hands. Her cunt will tighten around me and her breath'll go sharp and high, and I'll whisper, “Jeez, I don't know – what do you say? Am I in the right place?” Then I'll pull my hand free, give her a little wave goodbye, and shove my fingers between my lips (painted exactly the shade of those labia she kept so well hidden) as I walk back up to the bar, ready to order another drink to throw in the lap of the next person who asks me what I'm doing in a lesbian bar.

4) Date. More. Femmes. Since when did Butch on Butch get to be the pinnacle of lesbian hotness? What makes me think I can't find a satisfying date among a group of dykes who've had to prove their queerness, not to mention their feminist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist bona fides, since the first time they imagined they might want to take a tumble with Betty instead of Bobby way back in the day. Peter piper picked a pack of overachievers, I am telling you. These are girls whose mouths got more moves than Missy Elliott, can make their hands as small or fat as the situation demands, wields a cock with the skill of someone who's had to pay close attention to cock-wielders for sometimes nearly as many years as they've been alive and have learned as much of what not to do as what they can do new to help a girl feel good, all while whispering a critique of Jack Halberstam's hyper-masculine privileging in your ears and reminding you how sweet and safe it is to open by quoting Cixous, Allison, hooks, and Holibaugh. And then will roll over and take half your arm when you're ready to give a little of your own good learning back to her. Plus, another femme doesn't pretend like she's never heard of menstroo-what? when you're bleeding (since she's not afraid of being associated with the blood of girlness), will tell you with kindness and honesty when you need to eat a sandwich (more often) and when your shoes are mistake (almost never), and wants nothing more than to be a sweet soft pile of ferocity for you to land in after yet another day out in the world getting cruised by straight men and ignored by the dykes – at least the faggots will see us, especially other Queens, which both of us will begin to think this might be our actual heart community.

5) Tell and listen to more truth. Listen closely when a sisterfemme gives me that shrug of the shoulders, a forced smile, and a laugh when she says, “you know it's been a hard little while but I think were getting through the rough bit–” and I remember that's what she said the last two or three times I asked how she and her butch were doing. I wanna be a safe place for her to tell her stories to. We all learn from somewhere (was it Stone Butch Blues?) that in order to be good femmes were supposed to keep our butches' secrets above all other allegiance, even our own wellness, and so we smash around with broken and sore in our hearts with no guidance or support from others who've been on the journey before us. It is my revolution this year to undermine some of that isolation – what if we told each other the truth about what we were experiencing while we're experiencing it, not after we've had to get ourselves out? What if abusive, misogynist, careless butches and trans men stopped getting play in our community, because we told and believed each other about them? What if we listened to the experience of our sister femmes rather than dismissing them as demanding, high maintenance, jealous, bitches, cock hungry, asking for it, drunk, crazy, or a survivor who sees abuse everywhere (never mind that, actually, abuse is everywhere)?

6) Figure out what the hell radical self-care is – isn't it just taking care of yourself? Are we so poisoned by activist analyses that we have to label it radical just to defend our need to take a fucking break sometimes? Anyway, I resolve to take a fucking break sometimes. Head over to the Japanese baths and take a soak, promenade in full drag more often (alone, or with sisterfemmes, or with dates), and spend more Sundays in my pajamas with a cup of coffee, a puppy, a newspaper, and a sweetheart. And masturbate a lot more. Replace the showerhead I broke during that New Year's Eve dalliance – who knew my thighs were that strong? – and get back in the tub again. Run a Kickstarter campaign to cover my hot water bill – this is radical work that deserves community support, after all!

7) Remind myself – and anyone else still struggling with the question – that being a femme is queer enough. Supporting other femmes is queer enough. I resolve to stop engaging this “debate” in any way. Yes, our communities will always love and fetishize the masculine – just as the whole world does – just as the feminine is fetishized and dismissed, but we can know who we are and we can know our power. In 2014, I will connect with more femmes who are powerhouses unto themselves. I want us not to be be disappeared under the onslaught of yes please more books and lists and calendars and blogs focused on Top! Hot! Butches! I'll create a list in my heart of Top Fierce Space-Claiming, Take-No-Shit, Demanding-Their-Desire, I-Wanna-Be-Like-Her-or-Him Femmes (honestly, whole bunch from my list are in this room) and take out that list and hold it privately between my lungs when one more butch refuses to acknowledge my existence when we're passing each other on Market Street. I will stride right past her or him on these too-tall heels and go meet my sisterfriend for our coffee date and we will offer one another's hands to gnaw on as we share all of our stories—and yours too. Sorry. honey. But it's about time.

8) And, In 2014, I commit to stepping away from femme-against-femme, junior high school Mean Girl, In Crowd bullshit – we don't have to do that with each other. We femmes could appreciate one another without fail, understanding deeply what it takes to put on a skirt in a culture that marks you as prey for doing just that and in a community that believes you have an easier time of everything when you brush on some blush and put your toes into pumps, who know intimately what it's like to be ignored by the objects of our desire, to be read as the opposite of our true selves, and to be asked to leave half of our sexuality on the floor when we get into bed with someone because our job is only supposed to be to receive, to take, be pushed into. Yes, sometimes we fuck up with one another and need to call shit out, but what if we called up someone we wanted to call out and met them for coffee rather than busting up someone else's facebook page with our nuanced, flame-wielding, well-analyzed critique, and then ever after exiling that called-out femme when we meet her out in the world?

9) Forgive my body for exactly how she's healed and what she needs to feel joy and to come. Give my body exactly what she needs to feel joy and to come over and over this year. Oh, and, I love you, Patrick, but after a decade or so of being ashamed of myself after reading one of your stories, I'm about ready to say a self-healing fuck you to that little dash of vanilla – anyone given the opportunity to spend as long as I need them to between these strong soft fucking thighs in order to get me off is the one who's lucky. In 2014, anyone who's got a problem with my telling them exactly what I need them to do in order for me to get off gets to just plain and simple get the hell out of the bar's bathroom and leave me to jerk off in peace.

10) Now for a little harm reduction. I mean I know myself so I'd like to resolve to not do it ever but let's at least say that I'll commit to to staying less long with significant others who expect me to carry their emotional baggage while they complain that I am undermining their masculinity by lifting such heavy stuff so easily—and then don't understand why I'm too tired to fuck all the time.

In fact, 10.5), remove myself from any and all situations from which I have the option of extricating myself that leave me too tired to fuck.

11) Oh – and one more: let's develop some with new responses to straight men who want more than their share of my attention, like the man in the shoe store who, because I smiled and said hello to him out of politeness, feels welcomed to comment on the shoes I'm trying on, saying, "oh, you've got the knock me down and fuck me heels – isn't that what we used to call them?" And I say, "oh no, these are my I'm gonna fuck you up heels." I take one off, hold it by the toe, and brandish the heel. "Did you look at these? This is a weapon." And even though I am smiling and friendly, he walks away. New Year's resolution achieved. I think I've earned a drink.

what if we femmes could take care of each other?

Girl, I am tired of being part of the queer ladies auxiliary. Althea would prefer visibility and respect more than chivalry, and frankly expected better from Butches then they seemed prepared to give.

What would happen, do you think, if femmes started coupling up in such numbers as butches have been, began to reach only for their unique kind of queerness. What if we gave those garter-belted thighs and high-heeled calves pushed-up busts just to each other? And what if we could appreciate each other that way? The only reason we are so frustrated at butches going into the woods together for their drum and boi parties isn't just that we are not invited when the butches climb into the pleasures and privileges of masculinity and begin to fully take hold the joy of being a Real Man, but also that we have not turned around and offered a similar quality of appreciative attention toward each other.

Sisterfemme, you can see, can't you, that the boys have no problem turning away from you, seeking each other out for an affirmation of their masculinity that only another masculine being can offer. Cross-gender relationships are hard – look at heterosexuals. They've been struggling with it for millennia and haven't gotten it perfect yet.

I am tired of how much attention we give to the male of our dyke species - I would like the same sort of adulation for the femme. Not a pedestal distancing, go up there and be pretty while we get some work done down here kind of attention, but something thicker and more real. And I want us to give it to each other.

Femmes seem to play out on one other our worst sort of junior high school Mean Girl, in-crowd bullshit. We don't have to do that. We could appreciate one another without fail, understanding deeply what it takes to put on a skirt in a culture that marks you as prey for doing just that, in a community that believes you have an easier time of everything when you brush on some blush and put your toes into pumps. We know intimately what it's like to be ignored by the objects of our desire, to be read as the opposite of our true selves, and to be asked to leave half of our sexuality on the floor we get into bed with someone because our job is only supposed to be to receive, to take, be pushed into. (Getting fucked is all well and good – as the boys are discovering now with each other. God forbid they should let the girl put her hands up into their dainty boy parts – would that somehow make them less gay? Here we've been cautiously tiptoeing around those parts, trying to offer what little direct pleasure we are allowed to without showing too much fucking enthusiasm because God for bid we also got off on bringing our partners pleasure; here we've been holding our half of the picture, doing like he asked and deeply respecting his stone, leaving our hands and mouth to lie impotent under the threat he needed in order to feel the command, and then boom he discovers what he really needs is another boy to be able to feel like himself with, and suddenly then it's okay to get fucked. Girl, don't get me started.)

The truth is, I'm all for everyone finding pleasure wherever they can find it. But, goddamn, it is completely understandable that femmes are pissed off and scared. Because you know what? We have allowed ourselves to become arm candy and window dressing, so of course we're afraid that will have no meaning if all the butches go off with one another (which of course they're not – but that doesn't change our fear.)

Let them go. What they do is their business – what we do is ours. What if we worked on ourselves for a while? I wonder how many butch-on-butch couples show up to Butch Voices compared to the femme-on-femme loves that descend onto the Femme Conference – how often do femme-identified folks get together and get and give as hard as we can? And what if we stopped compromising our erotic selves in service of being a good femme or a good butch/trans ally? Being an ally doesn't mean we don't get to have the sex or relationship we most deeply crave and deserve, it doesn't mean we deserve dismissal, and it doesn't mean we have to put up with misogyny.

 Do we feel left and abandoned? It's only because we allowed ourselves to be set up as pretty frilly edging at the outside of our own community – we have not continue to demand recognition that we too are the soul of the movement, the core organizers and workers, the brilliant minds and beautiful expressive souls, and as deeply erotically competent as any other queer in our community.

Whew. That's enough for now, honey. Somebody get me a drink!

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.