As I’ve got older, most of my straight and lesbian friends have dropped out of the party scene. It’s clear that many were using partying as a means to an end—as a launching pad for a relationship, disappearing into coupledom once they had found a partner. Only the gay men are still partying in their thirties, like I am.
This could be ascribed flippantly to “Peter Pan Syndrome” or, more seriously, to queer temporality (the idea that time moves differently for queer people, as our milestones are often later than or different to those cis straight people pursue). I’m fine with this, as I’ve always had a lot in common with gay men. A shared sense of humour, interest in old Hollywood and a predilection for hedonism and sex with anonymous strangers (though my promiscuity is mostly professional) have meant that I’ll often choose a gay party over a lesbian party. Though the best party is a queer one that is mixed gender and cross-generational.
The downside of partying with only gay men is that, at some point in the day or night, I’ll look up and find I’m alone on the dancefloor, all my friends having disappeared into dark rooms, the call of cruising stronger than the allure of the music. This is not unique to gay men—Pharrell sang about “going out to get lucky”, which definitely referred to heterosexuals. But when I’m out with just men there is a diminished sense of responsibility about leaving a girl alone. When I’m out with women, whether cis or trans, we constantly check in with each other, a social etiquette that I think comes with an increased awareness of our own vulnerability. If one girl is missing from the group for a little bit there is always an attempt to locate her, and if we are splitting up we always make sure the others are alright either remaining at the party or getting home.
I assume gay men don’t worry about each other like that, because they certainly don’t worry about me. If a man vanishes it is presumed that he is hooking up, not that something has gone wrong. There is an entire meat market operating around me; a swirling, shifting hierarchy of desirability, which mid-century Mexican-American writer John Rechy described so compellingly across his novels, and reinforced when he said “gay men should always have sex first”. Not only am I irrelevant to it, at times I am actually resented for my presence; shirtless men will turn all their backs to me and present a muscled and misogynistic front, preventing me from getting past them on to the dancefloor. They don’t want women in their spaces. Or I’m simply invisible—comedian Joel Kim Booster spoke about how it made sense that a serial phone thief in West Hollywood was a woman, as she would have been beneath the notice of the neighbourhood’s gay men. If I want to be visible I must dress high femme, in heels, and then my body takes on another meaning entirely, representative of aspirational femininity and a stand-in for diva worship.
While I find the admiration validating—another thing I have in common with some gay men—I mainly go to parties to dance and to chat, and definitely not to pick up (I’m not into party pashing, as we call it in Australia, or alcohol or uppers, which facilitate it). I do have gay men friends who go out for the same reason as me, and they are my favourite to party with. But I must remind myself, as a rule, not to allow myself to be the only girl as I will inevitably be abandoned without warning, as I was even on this year’s Pride weekend. Or, perhaps especially on Pride weekend, when we are all celebrating community and freedom slightly differently, some of us wanting to be surrounded by bodies in sex, and others by bodies in dance.
