GLR September-October 2023

certain when they walk in whether he will be welcomed or shunned. This is compli cated by the fact that Burton is so femme that she worries other women will think she ’ s part of a straight couple. For another, at 39she ’ s middle-aged. She has, for example, a veteran ’ s hilarious familiarity with the songs that are popular in dyke bars on karaoke night, especially one by the Chicks

wire through which the collision of genera tions, and the smallest ironies of American culture, are lit in neon. After all, she is describing a world in which pronouns, adjectives, and nouns have become an impenetrable wilderness of their own. I stopped writing down the descrip tors, but before I quit they included: crust punks, sporties, baby butch, soft butch,

MOBYDYKE An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America

by Krista Burton Simon & Schuster 383 pages, $28.99

(formerly the Dixie Chicks) called “ Goodbye Earl, ” about an abused woman who murders her husband. But she is also aware that the baby dykes in the bars have another playlist altogether. Middle age is the condition that has sent her on this journey, and age remains a factor that the bars do not erase. Despite all this, except for one night when she cannot sum mon the moxie to approach one more stranger, the voice of our intrepid heroine remains indomitable. There ’ s a reason her blog is called Effing Dykes — the f-word is strewn copiously through out this book in all its permutations. Multiple exclamation points and ALLCAPS complete the tone of anarchic rage. Sometimes, at the end of a visit that has not produced much that we haven ’ t al ready heard (variations on “ We want a place where everyone feels at home ” ) or a pæan to the patio, Burton will end the chap ter with a paragraph summing up what she ’ s learned: a little homily with a positive conclusion. But that doesn ’ t last long, and it ’ s soon overwhelmed by the tide of irritability and sarcasm that make this book so continuously funny that I found myself laughing for no discernible reason at the line “ I don ’ t like jalapeños. ” The bar owners may all be alike in their welcoming good will, their sanity, and their desire to create a safe space for others ( “ I ’ m really good at de-escalating, ” says the owner of Slammer ’ s in Columbus, Ohio. “ I used to work in a women ’ s prison ” ), but Burton herself is, to say the least, a live electrical

queermosexuals, high femme, femme slut, stud/ femme, masc presenting queer, gay-adjacent, and TERFS (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, who want none of the aforementioned). And these are a drop in the bucket. The most frequently used pro noun is “ they. ” Andwhen “ they ” have a name that can be both a woman ’ s or a man ’ s, there is no way of telling what we are dealing with. This, of course, is the point — a rebellion against the binary, the simplicity of the cisgender woman or man — the sort Edmund White described in States of Desire almost 25 years ago after his tour of the American homosexual. That book was mostly about gay white men. This one is about anything but. In Washington, Burton is not surprised when she learns the lesbian bar A League of Their Own is in the basement of a build ing that contains, on the top floor, a gay men ’ s bar called Pitch ers that is much more spacious and light-filled than its sister in the basement. “ I identify as a dyke, ” she tells her husband on a visit to New York, “ but my husband is trans, and I ’ m interested in all queers who are not cis men, so maybe that might make me less a lesbian and more like an exceptual. ”“ Awhat? ” says Davin. “ An exceptual. It ’ s a word I made up. I ’ m attracted to everyone but cis men, get it? ” The cisgender gay man is obsolete. “ Queer ” is a word I can hardly type, much less warm to — it ’ s a generational thing — but this repurposed slur has obviously replaced “ gay ” in the national conversation about homosexuality. When The New Yorker re viewed Andrew Sean Greer ’ s sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-win ning novel Less , Alexandra Schwartz began her essay by commiserating with the gay white male novelist whose assimila tion has robbed him of any cultural interest. Even the prefix “ cis ” sounds ugly to my ears. There is something about the double sibi lance of the prefix that brings to mind the word “ cesspool, ” and soon after that, the memory of a friend ’ s mother who used to tell her little boy, when sent to the bathroom to urinate, to “ make cissy. ” Yet “ cis ” merely means, according to Google, “ on this side ”— as opposed to “ trans, ” which means “ on the other side, ” as in transalpine, transmit, transfer, or — bingo! — transition. Burton deploys the new nomenclature with brio, however, though she never asks: What does this endless splintering of sexual identity mean? And could it be the reason for the dwin dling number of lesbian bars? It ’ s nice to hear the bar owners talk about making everyone feel safe and welcome. Anyone who felt they found paradise in their first bar will understand whyBurton ’ s dedication reads: “ For anyone who ’ s ever walked into a dyke bar and realized they were home. ” So, when Burton goes to a bar one night to see a show and a cold, grumpy dyke brushes her off with “ There are no performances on Monday night, ” these mundane words cut to both Burton ’ s and the reader ’ s quick. We feel rebuffed, refused, excluded. And when, a few bars later, a different woman asks her to sit down at her table and introduces her to all her friends, the feeling is the op

Physical Education The P.E. major casts her walker aside at 90. It ’ s time then for a firmer stride. PT every other day. So much working out, you ’ d think she ’ s gay. She makes her gay son proud as a Mom.

Soon she ’ s in the pool again, fluttering her arms overhead, advancing feet first,

like he — like I — entered this world, her torso in a bathing suit green, her head in a bathing cap white as baby teeth. Same strokes now as at university, no longer with classmates, all evaporated but her.

She touches the wall with her feet, smiles at the lap just completed, swims on.

A LLEN S MITH

TheG & LR

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