Kyra Offline

An NYC Memory

The year is 2021, and I am walking tall with my two best girls. Melanie, on my right, is going to NYU for data science. She’s a proud Italian from long island with a gold-flecked mane that is almost as charming as her smile. She’ll end up kissing someone tonight. Toni is back in town eager to devour NYC’s delights. Her bright blue contacts contrast with her smooth, dark brown skin and silver piercings. She flirts unabashedly with anyone who piques her interest in a way that gives me second-hand blush. And I, newly unemployed, am riding the wave of doing exactly what I want. Our nights always started the same: pregame at Cubbyhole, dance the night away at Henrietta’s, and crash at Art Bar on Seventh Ave eating cheap nachos and cheersing to our dykedom. Except, I was never really successful at being gay. This was just the place I felt explained why I could never strike up any conversation of substance with my ex boyfriend’s friends’ girlfriends. 

All my friends are lesbians now, and I’ve had a hard time explaining that to my family. There is a running joke in my circle that I am flaming, but people don’t have the knack for reading someone like me – or perhaps they’re not interested enough to make any astute observations. I am incredibly passionate about women and homosexuality, but it’s not something I’ve ever had the chance to taste. Girls feel gritty between my teeth. They’re like the promise of salt and tajin on the rim of a margarita glass only to end up with mineral dirt disintegrating and warping your enamel with each miniscule bite. You’re too embarrassed to spit them out. 

Still, 2021 was a golden era in New York. The pandemic forced the newest transplants to flee, and those of us who called this place home were still fighting for community in a world that demanded distance. Henrietta’s forced us to take Covid tests before we could enter the club, and I found that admirable. Lesbians were always so principled. I was lucky to be one of them. Back then, I hadn’t realized what a novelty my crew was. As lesbianism came into fashion once more in the post-Covid years, transplants started invading NYC to get a piece of the historic pie, and articles were published about the epidemic of whiteness in the lesbian community. Futch Night would become overrun with white women looking to live their L Word fantasy while black queers like myself would grow invisible. Prices for entry to “queer” events would skyrocket. Henrietta Hudson, the only lesbian nightclub in NYC, used to be free until 10 PM. Now, you have to pay $15 just to stand in a room full of presumed lesbians. I also observed how people interacted with me changed. Making friends back then was so easy, and race was rarely a factor as to whether or not people approached you. Hens and Cubby were places for those of us seeking refuge from the endless -isms outside these walls. This isn’t to say there weren’t racialized dynamics at play in the dance of courtship, but the white women I met had been on a quest to set their own terms on living before ever meeting me. They were authentic and didn’t project onto me all the fetishism, fear, and fantasy black women are used to being at the intersection of. And for that, I loved these grungy girls in their thrifted pants and leather – well as much as you can love a white woman as a black girl. I wasn’t a voyeur to pander to or the one black girl in the friend group that made them cool. 

I cannot contain my disdain long enough to be a token, but I have a lot of respect for the fabulous whores pretending that they aren’t. I envy them, in truth, for contorting themselves into these paragons of sex appeal, half naked and “free” in ways I could only dream of. However, there is something about a scantily clad black femme draped over a white masc that screams “for sale”.  But that is only my own projection. Maybe the lesbian community of today has turned into some truly egalitarian neo-liberal soup devoid of heteronormativity, and I am just a hateful relic. When I see those images, I am forced to grieve. I think about the images unseen: the absence of black femmes in connection with other black women, but especially black femmes. I have often heard it touted that “femme for femme is art” by lesbian ideologues who want to explain away their preference for masculinity. This deflection allows us to collectively escape any critical thought regarding the, often racialized, centering of butch-femme relationships. Are we so deprived of imagination that we have forgotten what it means to be a womxn? The gift of being whatever you want, and yet, overwhelmingly the configuration of masc-femme is shoved down my throat as a ‘naturally occurring phenomenon’. Nature tends towards equilibrium, but what is equal about the fetishism of the feminine from a masculine gaze? In these strange identities shaped from sand, we have breathed life into our own oppressors. I have heard it said by a black femme video essayist that, “lesbianism is attraction to non cis-men”. The fact that the consideration of men is still central to a community built around their absence is a symptom that the boy-crazy girls of my youth have not gone so quietly into the night. By some crude transmogrification they find themselves chasing a noble eunuch; a masculine presence who can provide the spoils of having a boyfriend without the ostensible fear and imprisonment of patriarchy. But isn’t all of life performance? I am proponent of the belief that gender is performance, yet I still wonder how long you can play the role of man until you become one.

When the queer community found me, I was deprived of imagination. I used to walk by the drag queens lingering on Christopher Street after a night out at NYU, and I felt safer than I had in my own home. “I like your hair,” they would say. “I love your everything,” I would call back. They were beautiful in their glitter and makeup. I was still half-formed and insecure. Henrietta Hudson was directly across from my dorm, and I would walk past it quickly, sneaking glances inside while admonishing myself for being so curious about these lesbians who probably wanted to defile me, if given the chance. How I secretly wished they would. 

Unlike the boy crazy girls I had grown up with, I was deeply femme-identified. My world revolved around women and their multitudes: ugly women, hot women, trans women, brilliant women, awkward women, women who look like boys, weird women. I dreamt of worlds of women, and that is what I’d hoped to find when I passed through that door labeled ‘dyke’. The devastating thing is that I found it. How easy it was to fall in love in those days filled with rebellious, intelligent girls; golden, scintillating figures looking out for each other in the nighttime. We had each other’s backs even when we were strangers and how easy it was to become more. The queer underground that existed for that brief moment feels like a dream now, and I would believe it so if not for the residue of kinship I found in Cubbyhole on a weeknight in December.

Cubby is still my favorite. It’s a special place, perhaps because the feral, social media obsessed lesbians are deterred by its earnestness. In Cubby, it’s hard to tell a lie. There is no hiding who you are in its 824-square foot bar. Be yourself or step out for a smoke (and risk freezing to death in the process). The first time I went, I had $12 in my pocket, and a beer cost $6. I came alone, and two kind girls were willing to adopt me for the night. I bought one Corona, and an older lady sponsored my next drink to babysit her seat. I was grateful. While chatting at the bar, I met someone that night who helped me imagine new visions of who I could be. I would return a hundred nights more to dance, talk, laugh, console, and cavort in a reckless and joyful manner. The delineation of labels and identity dissolved in that tiny room. 

I love the lesbian community, but I often wonder if I am too misshapen for it now: too black, too femme, too critical, and too offline. I announced that I was politically non-binary at my birthday party two years ago, and everyone laughed at me. Now, everyone’s non-binary and I no longer know what that means – or any of these words for that matter. Words have meaning. I have to believe that, but the more I dissect masculinity and femininity, the less faith I have in their ability to document the truth of what has taken place here. My criticisms won’t be able to halt the waves of transplants or influencers from eroding what felt like home. Yet, these useless words are all I have to piece together a testament of my youth while I still remember.