’Sup. It’s your best friend, Avery or something. As you can tell from the wind-whipped hair on the non-shaved half of my head, I rode my motorcycle here from my eclectically furnished studio apartment in our city’s equivalent neighborhood to the Lower East Side portrayed in Rent. That’s where my similarities to those characters end.
I’m not some lesbian with one foot out of the closet written into the script to attract queer viewers. I’m straight. A heterosexual. That dress looks incredible on you—give me a spin. Wow. The blue stripes really highlight your eyes.
Like so many young professionals these days, I’m a multi-hyphenate: personal trainer / cat sitter / hairdresser / carpenter / alt-rock guitarist / dyke mechanic—whoops, I meant bike mechanic. Some would say that’s the same thing. I would say that the typification of manual labor as butch upholds the marginalizing binary framework through which our society views the queer community. That was the thesis of my gender studies capstone at Smith, where I never once had sex with a woman.
