Dear trannyfag I went one date with last summer and never called again because you suck,

I do not know why we keep running into each other in public places, but I can assure you it is clearly misfortune rather than luck. Normally, I wouldn't care about seeing someone I went on a bad date with again. I can give a wave, say "hi" from across the room, acknowledge your presence, but that's not enough for you, Persistent Penny. You want to "chat." So I humor you. Yes, I'm back in town. Yes, I have this internship at such-and-such a place. Yes, everything's going great. I give you that smile that says "I'm done now," but you want to linger around and continue this awkward exchange. You stare at me with a forced smile, waiting for something to happen. Then you tell me that if I ever want to "hang-out" that I should call you. Right, because we had such a great time, that ONE time where I didn't call/email/text you back, that I would keep your number around, just in case.

Before we ever hung out, I thought that we would have a fun time, sex or not. We had a lot of things in common and I was eager to talk to someone and throw some ideas around. When I get to your apartment you are in the process of preparing a beautiful meal for us. Wow, this is sort of "fast" for being a first date. So I try to start the conversation. It's a little slow, but that's OK, maybe you're shy. An hour later, I am still pulling teeth. I am really interested in hearing more about your experiences and having a real dialog. I know you're smart. Come be smart with me. The whole evening has felt like a waste of time until I'm about to leave and for some reason start to make-out with you. I think I was just bored and, well, you were there. It wasn't that great of a kiss for me or anything, but all of a sudden you tell me that I'm really hot. You then proceed to pull me into your bedroom and tell me all the things you like to have done to you since you're a S/M bottom and I'm an S/M top. After about 15 minutes of detailed instructions I say goodnight and catch the 33 back home.

As I mull over the really weird and disjointed experience we just had, I realize that I don't like you. I really don't like you. You aren't interested in me or what I have to say. You just want me to top you. I do not do casual S/M hook-ups as they require a lot of time and planning and if I am not invested in you (or you are not inve$ted in me), it's not going to happen. Making a scene is like planning a surprise birthday party, like a really elaborate surprise birthday party complete with a treasure hunt, costumes, and a pinata made in the shape of your ass, and I don't give surprise birthday parties to bad dates. Besides which, I was having a rough time in my current relationship and didn't have much energy for a person like you. So I didn't call. At all. I didn't even send you a Myspace message to say, "Sorry that I never called but I think it's best for us not to fuck." Nothing. Nada.

A year later I see you in public and somehow you think that I want to call you, now, a year after a really bad date. You disappear, I'm grateful, and then today you show up again. WTF. "Oh hi, so nice to see you again. Small talk, small talk, small talk..." I give clear signals that it's a good time for the conversation to end and you suggest that if I'm interested that you have free tickets to film festival movies and we could go together. I say "OK, thanks" with clearly no intention of actually taking you up on your offer. In retrospect, it might actually not be such a bad idea. The only thing I would be OK with doing with you is sitting in the dark and not talking while surrounded by a bunch of strangers. But regardless, I would rather have to experience you from across a room than in a movie theater sharing an arm rest.

In sum, it's OK that we're in the same city for this short period of time and that we will inevitably see each other. I don't ask that you ignore me or pretend that we didn't have a date that amounted in nothing. We can just say "hi," wave, and then go back to our respective tasks and/or friends. However, if you still ask me to hang-out, I have exhausted my polite, minimally-responsive answers and you will get a "no." A "no" with a smile, but a clear "no." Go bark up somebody else's tree, dude. This tree is too busy being fabulous and writing heartfelt postcards to her Bear.

NO!

Ok, guys, so this isn't even funny. If crocs weren't bad enough, now there is a whole line of "croc accessories" called Jibbitz. It wasn't enough to be wearing colorful foam gardening clogs in other places than your garden, now you have to make them sparkle and shine to be even more unique than all your other friends WHO ARE ALSO WEARING GARDENING CLOGS TO OTHER PLACES THAN THEIR GARDENS. The best part of the Jibbitz site has to be "Stylizer." The "Stylizer" is a tool where you can play virtual dress-up with your crocs and see how your Harry Potter jibbitz fare against a variety of backdrops including a sand dune, a forest trail, a snowy valley (HA!), and, I'm not kidding you, the surface of the moon. Your crocs, "enhanced" by your professional sports-themed jibbitz, can go anywhere, hopefully even to the grave.

Historical Ho’s Take to the Streets! SF Sex Worker Pride Float!

"We are working on putting together a contingent and “float” for this year’s SF pride parade on June 29th, with the support of the Center for Sex and Culture and the St. James Infirmary. During last year’s very successful historic sex worker bike tour, Sex On Wheels, organized by Jenny Worley, Sadie learned that in the Barbary Coast days, before the turn of the century (1900, not 2000) brothels would parade their girls down Market Streets in carriages as advertising.

“Prostitute Pride Parade! Between 1849 and 1906, madams and sex workers from each of San Francisco’s brothels would pile into open carriages and drive up and down Market Street to advertise their businesses and show off their fabulousness. This Saturday afternoon prostitutes’ parade was a San Francisco establishment from the gold rush until the great quake.”

Our vision is to create a nostalgic homage to our predecessors with a contingent of sex workers (all genders and genres welcome!) dressed in vintage lingerie and transported by trolley as well as traipsing and strutting while throwing rose petals down Market St. The goal is to bring some visibility to sex workers, especially queer sex workers while giving a little history lesson to the invaluable role sex workers have played in building this city; as well as looking gorgeous and sexy, having fun, and who knows, maybe even inadvertently advertising!"

see: Bound, Not Gagged

Hooker Heroes!

So I came across some really fun 'ho history today courtesy of Hooker Heroes: Pioneers of the American West.

Prostitutes were foremost among the bold pioneer women who tamed the American West of the 1800s.

Due to the harsh living conditions and masculine work opportunities on the frontier, women were generally rare among the pioneers of the westward expansion of the United States during the 1800s. Indeed, the ratio of men to women in some areas was as great as 45 to one. Prostitutes were the exception; thousands worked in brothels, dance halls, saloons, cribs, shacks, and streets, providing female companionship for the lonely prospectors, cowboys, and soldiers who tamed the West.

In so doing, prostitutes helped populate the land--as this famous poem from San Francisco succintly explains: predominately

The miners came in '49, The whores in '51, And when they got together, They produced the native son.

Census-takers canvassing the frontier found that many prostitutes were single parents, using their earnings to support children. Some of these women teamed up, sharing living quarters and the responsibilities of caring for their offspring and each other, especially in times of illness. Others, such as successful prostitute/madam Ella Hill of Amarillo, Texas, paid for their children to be brought up by reputable families or boarding schools elsewhere. Descendants of prostitutes surely comprise a substantial portion of the population of the western states today.

Some 100 military garrisons protected the burgeoning West against desperados and hostile natives. Prostitutes provided a welcome diversion for soldiers trapped in the hard, dreary life of the fort. Officers and enlisted men alike visited brothels in neighboring towns. Closer and cheaper bordellos, called "hog ranches", were situated along nearby roads. Prostitutes even worked right inside the base, some officially listed as "assistants" to civilian shopkeepers, others employed as "laundresses" by the military itself. Still more pretended to be military wives (living with soldier "husbands") but actually serviced the entire garrison. Some made no pretense at all, simply dwelling and working in abandoned shacks. Others sneaked in among Mexicans who were allowed to set up temporary marketplaces within the forts. Meanwhile, "camp followers" accompanied military expeditions. Prostitutes found myriad ways of serving their country by "entertaining the troops".

Because their profession brought them into contact (literally) with many men, prostitutes were able to provide crucial testimony to frontier law enforcers. The courtroom statements of these women frequently helped convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. For example, the testimony of Ida Snow, Florence Vaughn, Mary West, and other prostitutes about a shoot-out in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1879 made the difference between life and death for one Charles Boulter--who had killed a man in self-defense. Similarly, in 1890, a soldier named Miller was cleared of suspicion of murder because he had spent the night in a Cheyenne brothel with a prostitute called Rose. (Would a "virtuous" woman have been willing to provide such an alibi?) The lasting benefit of all such testimony was that it helped law enforcers overcome widespread skepticism of their ability to fairly dispense justice on the chaotic American frontier. Prostitutes thus brought respect for law and order to the Wild West.

Most of modern Nevada retains attributes of the pioneer days: rugged mining and farming work; vast, sparsely populated plains; and people who distrust government interference in their lives. Thus it is unsurprising that prostitutes still work in legal brothels in this last bastion of the western frontier.

Also from the site:

More Joy Girls of the Golden West

On her way to Murray, Idaho, Molly b' Dam aka Molly Burdam rescued a mother and child from a blizzard. Molly later gave food, clothing, and shelter to the poor, and organized the town to fight a smallpox outbreak.

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The first legislative session of the territory of Washington was held in 1853 in a lavish brothel owned by Madam Damnable, or Mary Ann Boyer.

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Big Nose Kate aka Mary Katherine Horony saved John Henry "Doc" Holliday's life by setting fire to a stable to distract his would-be lynchers. Holliday went on to become a hero of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.

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High class courtesan Julia Bulette of Virginia City, Nevada nursed sick men back to health, fed the poor, and received an honorary membership in the Virginia City Company Number One in recognition of her assistance to the fire department.

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Dutch Annie of Tombstone, Arizona, "Queen of the Red Light District", was renowned for her kindnesses, including giving poor miners their "grubstakes"--capital to get started. Over 1,000 mourning townsfolk followed her funeral procession to Boothill in 1883.

Pretty right-on, yeah? I encourage everybody to look through the main site that it's based off of: Hooker Heroes. There's some neat stuff there, like did you know that tango emerged out of the brothels of Argentina? Or that prostitutes supported struggling jazz and rag-time musicians who, at the time, were seen as producing "immoral" music?