i can say with my hand on my heart that i’ve never felt isolated either in my university town or where i live now. i used to think that if i’d lived in an even smaller town in my country, i’d feel lonely, and would crave queer company. that i would be alone. i read this posts and all the comments, and it makes me think – wow – the city i live in is probably what you guys in “the real world” (hahaha) would class as a small town, compared to yours.

i guess the difference (from what i can gather) is that because there were such a small number of queer identified people where i lived – we all banded together. when we were at university, we couldn’t be choosy about women’s only spaces, or femme only coffee mornings, or leather nights, or bisexual knitting circles or whatever. the university community mixed with the wider queer community – age, race, income level. if we’d stratified our community, we’d have diminshed it to a whole range of small groups that would’ve been harder to sustain. i guess this is where i’d put the analogy about snapping a twig vs snapping a tightly bound bunch of twigs.

it was totally different in london. i lived with my really rich girlfriend, it totally blew my mind. all her friends were homogenous. white. rich. well educated. femme or safely soft butch who could pass at work if they wanted. vanilla. (ha!) i begged her to take me to a queer space other than the members only lesbian bar she went to, but it was always no – that’s full of men, or no, chavs go there, or no, that’s not in a safe part of town. i lived in a huge city, bustling full of queers of every flavour – the mecca i’d sought as a kid – and i felt alone, removed.

where i live now is more akin to my university town. there’s two queer bars – one’s a nightclub, one’s a bar. the town can’t sustain a women’s only bar, a leather bar (i wish) a twinks nightclub, an expensive cocktail haven for femmes in heels, a booze barn with cheap beer for queer students, an alcohol-free coffee house etc etc, if these all opened, we’d lose them all in 6 months as they’d go under.

i’m not saying that we don’t have an intrinsic need to share our life experiences with people who share the same life experiences as you do. that’s entirely legitimate. obviously. i’m a girlie femme, i really only have queer friends, even in this small town. my friends include hyper cool yet broke androgyne artists. anarchafeminst radicals that fight for indigenous rights. my oldest and dearest friend started t last year and now identifies as male. i like butches. they’re also my friends. our community is so small that we get to be friends first without being lovers. we try to have sub-nuclear breakups as we’ll be seeing that person for the next ten years in the street.

maybe i’ve lost the point here somewhere in this comment. i’m sorry. perhaps what i mean to say is that i’m lucky as i’ve had no choice about whether i engage with only people who are JUST LIKE ME, or with a wide range. i guess growing up, staring at my atlas of san fran etc, i never thought i’d be at my computer 25 years later, not believing my good fortune.

I started dapperQ because fashion seems like something we can bond around (and the politics of age, gender identification, etc.) seem to separate us. Going to be launching a free on-line course for 20 of us who want to explore dapperQ fashion 101 and create a framework for others. It’s not BBQ in the park but definitely a butch meet-up. Hope you will check dapperQ.com or friend dapperQ so I can keep you my new and growing virtual community posted?

And don’t worry about not blogging … the motivation for content ebbs and flows. There are times when I feel like I should have SO MUCH to talk about, given my personal life. It will come to you when it’s ready.

I am also fairly entrenched with the local salsa community. There are three of us queer chicks (that I know of) who are active – social dancing, classes, performances, traveling for events, etc., so I dance with guys 99% of the time. Phila has a few gay tango and 2stepping classes, but that really isn’t my thing.

I really need to get back to blogging. While my recent breakup has created a lot of potential content, I haven’t felt very inclined to blog. Odd, no?

Anyway…as always, great post!