RAIN

Well, I missed the really cool Poe exhibit that went down in Austin, a more academically educational event, I suppose, than this, but I do feel like this was just as educational -- primarily from an intercultural perspective. When I was in high school, I was never well integrated with a diverse culture, mostly WASPs hanging out in a high school full of WASPs, and so SU has been a good move for me, turning me into a wonderfully tolerant person, more open, more understanding, more complex -- all of which I desperately appreciate as I feel it really helps me on my way to becoming a more responsible, more respectable global citizen. Anyway, even though I now have openly gay friends and colleagues and have a bit better of an idea of the struggles they go through from day to day, I must say that spending an evening at RAIN - one of the "gay bars" of our Austin - with a group celebrating a couple of my friends coming out as a gay couple, was something still very much out of my norm. And I think, actually, realizing that that was still out of my norm, still a little bit beyond my complete comfortability, was just as odd as the experience itself.

I've been to clubs before -- none that I'd really desperately enjoyed as I'm more of a close friends small party, gal, myself -- but none like this. They mark you, of course, if you're under 21, scribbling permanent marker all over your hands, confiscating your driver's license for reasons still beyond me, tall skinny men in long skinny jeans and heavily greased faux-hawks looking you up and down to see who's there as a gay, as a straight, as a spectator, as a friend, as a townie, as a vacationing student. You walk in through a dark lobby rimmed with people, waiting for friends, waiting to leave, waiting, and then the lights hit you. Blue light, green, pink, television screens bolted up everywhere while the music -- the normal stuff, froth skimmed right off the pop radio stations -- sped up to adrenaline-shot-chipmunk speed so that they all sounded even more ridiculous, high-pitched and crazy, like the happiness of dancing was fevered and color-blurry in some way. We'd gotten there just a little early so that the only guy dancing was their paid dancer to make other people more comfortable, standing up on the glowing plastic platform stage, lined on side by the bar and on the other side by the DJ and strip pole/cage. Waiters in speedos wandered around with trays filled with neon bright drinks of every color, women or men dressed up to the wilds as men or women filled the place, more kids like us just dressed up began to mill around, the whole event unnerving and exciting all of us, gay and straight alike, so that we all huddled together in the back for a short while looking bewildered and helpless with a vague air of attempting to be cool.

When we finally began dancing -- mine especially ridiculous considering the fact that keeping a beat to me is sort of akin to trying to keep still a small child on speed -- it improved for us all, I think, allowing us to meld into something more comfortable, a sort of strange invisibility on the glowing stage where we'd felt so naked and displayed while huddling in the darkened back. Being there, dancing where men danced together and kissed and held together, where the women held hands and smiled and never looked anymore self-conscious than we did, where everyone simply seemed happy, I realized slowly I felt more comfortable there than in any of the "straight clubs" where everyone seemed to feel such a need to be gritty and cool, to make sure that they were definitely straight-shooting whereas here the competition was downplayed for the idea of being comfortable with yourself and with others.

The biggest part of it, though, I think, is still the fact that it unnerved me at all. I really do consider myself a pretty liberal person, pretty accepting, especially considering how out of this world excited I was to be there for my friends in celebrating their freedom to be together in love --

I suppose it really just revealed to me how segregated our culture continues to be, how hetero-normative everyone continues to be despite all of the media-hype, organizations, and social work put forward lately. Of course the awkwardness faded quickly and gladly, but it made me wonder, given all the lectures I've now been to regarding gender and gender equality and sexuality and sexual orientation equality, given all the classes and studies and political arguments surrounding the issues, why is it that a fairly liberal woman at a fairly liberal school in the most liberal city in Texas (which, I guess, isn't saying much, oh conservative-stuffed Texas) would feel awkward around openly gay people when there for the purpose of celebrating a person's freedom to be openly gay? When will everyone be able to accept love in all forms as love and not as "gay" or "straight" or "inter-racial"? When will this cease to be a culture-shock and begin to be the normalcy it should be?