26 May 2008

Personal Updates

I've been having some more experiences that bring me closer to the world of Sarah, as well as the LGBT community in general.
  • Visited the Palms lesbian bar in West Hollywood, on its transgender night - Mondays. It appears that with the apparent closing of Club 7969, the working girls all migrated there. It was full of male admirers too, and didn't feel like a relaxed lesbian bar at all; I had too many guys hitting on me - then going away upon finding that I'm a lesbian. This is a failure on the part of the Palms bar, and I've had enough of cut-rate drag shows and unrestrained male chasers.
  • Meanwhile, I continue to enjoy Shine at Oxwood Inn in Van Nuys. Genetic women are hitting on me - a very good sign!
  • I also joined the Neighborhood Unitarian Church's LGBT family picnic late afternoon yesterday, where I was able to chat with several lesbian couples, some with kids. They were all excited about the prospects of legally getting married, though I didn't like it when they started sounding like straight couples, complete with complaints about the marriage penalty (which hits gay couples even more, because of its nature of penalizing dual-income couples, which most gay couples tend to be). However, I definitely loved the conversations about their experiences with the public school system, including anti-bullying and anti-discrimination laws in force throughout the state of California; one of the attendees was a public school teacher. I contributed my own feedback from the conservative Arcadia school system of the 1990s. In any case it was nice to actually spend time with gay families - something I've never done. (Sarah and Kirsten will have kids too, but they are beyond the scope of the novel.)
I'm getting tired. Time to do some classwork and prepare to go back to work tomorrow.

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