Two Femmes Walk Into a Bar

My friend has been reading Valencia. I remember how the world portrayed in the story sucked me in for a few days when I first picked up the book. I couldn't imagine that this world existed, or had existed in the past in a place that was somewhat familiar to me. For my friend, the place was even more familiar, familiar to the point that the book is named for her street. The story revealed this sort of underworld, this subculture that exists in San Francisco, along-side but somewhat also parallel to the goings on of most people around town. After reading Valencia, my friend decided that she needed to go to a Dyke Bar. When she met up with her friends at some regular bar a few blocks from her house, she found it boring. The most exciting aspect of the evening was meeting the man who has a pole in his house--the kind intended for pole dancing. After a brief series of hellos, she exited into the cool almost-summer San Francisco night trudging past the shiny black car from which men's voices cooed for her attention, and into the depths of this divey bar sparsely populated with grungy girls with short, choppy haircuts, and torn and sagging jeans. There was this moment after entering when the scene seemed like it lacked a stupid joke, like there should be some omniscient narrator telling the story. It would be at this point when the narrator would say, "So two femmes walked into a bar..." and everyone would tune the voice of the story-teller out completely because the world doesn't need another stupid joke. It is obvious when someone acts like a newcomer in a place--just a little too enthusiastic, a little too curious to take in the scene. These are the people who others wait to walk in the door. They are the easiest to take advantage of. So, two femmes walked into this dark mangy bar filled with pale mangy girls, well I am not sure you can call a straight/bi girl a femme, but anyway, they walked out not too long later with no additions to their party.