Visit to a black gaybar (2 of 3): Poetry night.

This announcer got up for poetry night, and she talked quite a bit, and she had people raise their hands if they were there for the 1st time, and she said they did a lot of stuff 1st before anyone signed up to recite, and she said they did a poetry-writing exercise otherwise known as an icebreaker, and to get a piece of paper and a pen when someone came around, and this older (black) man came around, and me and my friend took one.

"The way this works," the announcer said, "is that you will have 5 words, and you have to make a poem, and the words will be called out by the audience  This is creative, there is no judging here, and you may recite it if you want.  Now, in honor of the weather - " - it was extremely hot out - " - I will select the first word, 'HOT', now do we have other words?", and she took "HUMID".

At that, someone called out, "'MOIST'!" and another person, "'WET!", and she was like, "Okay, 'MOIST' and 'WET' are the same thing, so let's do 'WET'."

Then there was a lull, and she was like "Okay, and I will propose, 'BATTERIES'," and then when someone called out 'VIBRATOR', she was like, "Okay, 'VIBRATOR', or any form of the word, 'VIBRATE' or 'VIBRATION' or what have you."


Then, she was like, "And if any of these words might make you uncomfortable, remember, you can always leave out one word of your choice, and instead use a 6th, alternate word, 'PUSSY'."

At that, the women broke out in cheers and whistles and claps.

"And if you are thinking," she continued, "Did she just say the word" - and at that she gestured to nearby cocktail table -

"PUSSY!", the women there shouted out -

"Or did she say something else that just sounded like" -

"PUSSY!", the women there shouted out -

"But is not actually the word" -

"PUSSY!", the women there shouted out -

 "But maybe just sounds like" -

"PUSSY!" -

"I want to tell you, I did in fact say the word" -

"PUSSY!", the women at the cocktail table shouted out -

"Because" - and she gestured to the table -

"PUSSY!" -

"Is a beautiful thing, let me say again" -

 "PUSSY!" -
 
"Is a beautiful thing, and is nothing to be ashamed of."

At that, everyone in the place whooped and clapped.

"And remember, please do not use any derogatory terms in your poems."

 Then, they played 2 songs, and newcomers were badgered by people around them to write poems, and a few of the 20+ regulars there wrote poems too.

After the songs were over, they reminded everyone to clap for every poem, and if it was a good revolutionary poem, to raise a right fist in approval, and if it was a good pussy poem, to raise a left fist in approval, and if it was a revolutionary pussy poem, to raise both fists in the air at the same time.

Then, people read theirs poems.

Some bashful (black) woman got up, and then another (black) woman did, and then it was my turn, so I got up behind the mike on the little stage and recited -

coppertop batteries remind me

of me

and my red hair.

this weather is humid,

and hot,

but I could be hotter 

if I was a woman

(not just in heart)

with a gorgeous red thatch

covering

my wet steamy pussy.

At that, the women went nuts, and many raised both fists in the air.

In hindsight, I should have added in a bit about a tight stomach and playful, cuppable breasts, but I guess it did well enough as-is.

"That will be hard to beat," my one (British) friend said, and then he went up to the mike.

His poem, which was written before we realized the exercise was mostly about getting newcomers to open up by writing and reciting pussy poems in front of a large group of lesbians, had a line in it about how the weather was too hot and the last thing on his mind was pussy.

He got polite applause, and then the announcer was like, "Very true, very true, pussy is always the last thing on my mind.  I go to bed at night, and what am I thinking about?  Pussy!  It is always the last thing on my mind, and I know I am not alone in this."

After the icebreaker - the regulars didn't read any poems, and it seemed like not many wrote them - they had some announcements, including how they would have their annual festival day for people who couldn't go out of town for the Michigan Womyn's Festival.

"Remember," the announcer was like, "We will provide chicken, because you know we love chicken, but you bring the fixings and whatever you want, just no alcohol, that you buy here."

They also said they would be begin selling raffle tickets for their annual fall raffle, with proceeds going to a good cause.

"[name that could be male or female] here," they said, pointing to the old man who had handed out pens and paper for the pussy poems, "Has some women in a nursing home in [name of a south suburb], and we make sure they're taken care of.  Hell, they think he's a man and just let him in, and he's got two women in there, and we need to make sure he has something to bring 'em!"

At that, everyone whooped and applauded, and someone playfully punched the old man, who turns out was a really butch woman, in the shoulder.

Then, some people read poems, most of which had to do with "arched backs" and "vaginal walls" and stuff like that.

Visit to a black gaybar (1 of 3): We arrive.

The other week I went with my one (British) friend to a black lesbian poetry night at a black gaybar...

The bar is located just south of school, so I took my bike to school, and at the end of the workday, I met him and we cycled down.

The bar is just off this bikepath that I had travelled many times, which I found interesting, since I had heard about the bar forever, and thought it was much farther away in a much worse neighborhood, though on the sidestreet there were a number of people begging, and a junkie asked us for help as we locked up our bikes.

Anyhow, the bar was tucked in on the end of the building and we wandered in - you had to rap on the door since it was locked, and this (black) security guy had to come over and let you in - and stuff wasn't starting for a bit yet, but one of the few (black) women there called someone over, and we paid $5 cover for the poetry night.

"Have yourself a drink and welcome!", she was like, so we pulled up chairs at the bar next to some (butch) (black) women and got ourselves a drink and chatted a bit...

After a bit, a (light-skinned black) woman strolls over, introduces herself as an organizer, and asks us how we're doing.

"I'm [her name]," she was like, and I reached out my hand and shook hers and introduced myself, and she automatically turned to my friend with a big smile and was like, "And who's this piece of handsome?", and after my (British) friend introduced himself, she was just like, "Welcome," and left.

At that point, I noticed that the (black) lesbians were eating chicken wings and fries, so I ask the woman next to me what was up with the food, and she was like, "That's for everyone, let me check if you can have some yet!", and she called over to someone, and they said it was cool, so we went over to this side table where there were three tins, one small one of french fries and 2 big ones of fried chicken wings, and a couple styrofoam containers of BBQ sauce with plastic spoons stuck in them, as well as styrofoam plates and napkins.

When we got back, the (black) lesbian next to us was chatty, and we started talking with her, and she turned out to be a retired cop, who was retired from being in a car accident with someone who drifted into her lane of traffic.

"All those years on the force," she was like, "And that's what gets me out.  My mom said it could have been worse, though, and she was right."

She then talked about how when you went to arrest people or even talk with them, they would yell at you and call you names and sometimes try to spit on you.

"It's like, you try that when you're back at jail and there's no cameras around," she was like.

She also said that crazy shit happened a lot, and once her mother asked her about what happened at work, so she was like, "I'll tell you," and she told her about this guy who when his wife was out of town, would gather his 2 young daughters into the living room, and fuck the cat in front of them, and then one day he got stuck, and while he was all worried, the one daughter went and called the police without him realizing, and the police came.

"My mother was like, '[the cop's name], why did you tell me that? Now I can't sleep tonight,' and I was like, 'But Momma, you asked me!'".

Then, poetry night began...

Thoughts elsewhere during baseball...

On Tues. I went to a baseball game since my one lawyer friend from Missouri had gotten free tickets from her a boss, a judge.

The team lost as always, but watching the people in the bleachers was funny.  When the other team got a homerun that went into the bleachers, drunk fans got the ball and threw it back onto the field and cheered, like, "We don't want any of that!".

At some point in the game something was happening, though, and my one friend from Buffalo (who also came along on a free ticket) asked me what happened, but I had to tell her I wasn't watching the game, I was actually thinking of Ovid...

You see, for my one Latin student who's an administrative assistant at school and is finishing up an intro textbook and wants to read Classical poetry, I had been scanning through Ovid's "Art of Love" to see its difficulty level, and I was quite taken by many sections, including the introduction (so much better in Latin!) -

Should anyone here not know the art of love,
read this, and learn by reading how to love.
By art the boat’s set gliding, with oar and sail,
by art the chariot’s swift: love’s ruled by art.
Automedon was skilled with Achilles’s chariot reins,
Tiphys in Thessaly was steersman of the Argo,
Venus appointed me as guide to gentle Love:
I’ll be known as Love’s Tiphys, and Automedon.
It’s true Love’s wild, and one who often flouts me:
but he’s a child of tender years, fit to be ruled...

A little ways later, though, comes advice to men on how to find a lover:

But hunt for them, especially, at the tiered theatre:
that place is the most fruitful for your needs.
There you’ll find one to love, or one you can play with,
one to be with just once, or one you might wish to keep...

I kept thinking that, people watching at the baseball game, looking at people in the seats curving out on both sides of me!  Ovid knew what the f*ck he was talking about.

Olympians.

Overall, I can't stand athletes.  They tend to be very limited, group-think, closed-off people; I've never met athletes who've been judgmental of me or anything, so that's not it, I just don't get the sense that they're engaged by too much and in love with the world.

They also tend to not develop themselves in other ways, so as they age, they become has-beens...  So many of them slide into coaching later on, and just enter like decades of stasis, it seems.
 
I've met some interesting people who were athletes, but they all tended to be uncomfortable with the culture and separate themselves or drift away from it.

For example, one undergrad I met at school used to be a gymnast, but that got old, and now does a lot of drugs and makes psychedelic (sp.?) music.

Another used to be on the swimteam, but it wasn't for him, and still keeps in touch with those people, but began doing investigative journalism and other things and developing other parts of himself.

We had like a 40min. conversation, too, about bestiality and guys who like to get f*cked by horses but say they aren't gay, and he told me that the swimteam watches a lot of sicko porn together like that.

In any case, all the shiny 19 year-olds on the Olympics just gets me, the whole "moment of glory" thing is so weird.  All the attention the athletes get makes me think of what kind of people they are, and what their later lives will be like.

Latin lessons!!! - Update - Filthy poems on the horizon.

For like the past 2/3 of a year, I've guided this one administrative assistant at school through a Latin textbook, and now he's looking at moving into texts.

The textbook has some simpler poems from major classical authors, and he seemed to enjoy the dirtier ones, so I suggested that we might read those - and he was like, "The more bawdy, the better."

So, I checked out books of poems by Catullus and Martial and have already begun flipping through them.

One poem I found is dedicated to a father and son who frequent the local baths.  The father is a thief of people's unattended items, while the son has "a voracious asshole" (voraciore culo) but can't sell it since his crack is too hairy.

And that's all said in Latin!

Black person story (2 of 2): New Debit Card.

Last week when I was at school, I used my new debit card for the 1st time, then had to get rid of the old one, which expires at the end of this month.

So, when I walked into the main library on campus, I asked the (older) (black) gentleman at the front desk for scissors, and he gave them to me, and I cut up my old debit card in front of him and chatted, and he said something about the importance of chopping up old credit cards so people can't get the #s off of them.

When I was done, he picked up a waste basket from under the desk and was like, "Here, you can throw that out here, so you don't have to walk all the way over there," and then he was like, "Or better yet, throw out half here, and half there!", and then he added right away, "Or, half here, half there, and half someplace else!".

"Good idea," I was like, "But I'm starting to feel like a serial killer."

At that, he laughed, and was like, "Mighty true.  As long as they don't find it!".

Black person story (1 of 2): Train.

The other week I was waiting on the platform for the train to come, and as the train approaches, I could see that instead of the line name on the front, it said "Not in Service", and then I looked more closely, and on the front it said something about a training train, and in the front of the train were like 4 (African-American) transit authority workers, one of them very nervous as they controlled the train and the rest watched on.

For some reason, that made me smile, and as the train pulled up, 1 (African-American) guy looked up at me, and so I nodded and gave a thumbs-up, and he burst into a smile and gave a thumbs-up back.