It’s good to have two kinds of friends: first, the kind that  understands your history and perspective and helps you stay true to your core values; second, the kind that challenges you to go beyond your comfort zone with new experiences and ways of thinking. (I guess if you find both in one person, you should get married to him/her.)

My fabulous friend Deborah falls mainly in the second category, and over the past few years I’ve learned that when she’s got something in the works, it’s going to be exciting. On Wednesday she invited me to be her date for an awards ceremony and soiree down in DC. Her fascinating book, The Riddle of Gender, was up for an award from the Lambda Literary Foundation, which supports LGBT literature. She offered me the chance to hobnob with celebrities, to don a lovely cocktail dress and partake of a buffet and an open bar. I said yes immediately!

Now, the folks I run with tend to be pretty mainstream in terms of gender and sexuality, and I was sort of looking forward to being the odd one out at this shindig. It was fun to imagine how confusing a pair Deborah and I might make– people commonly assumed, while she was writing her science/history/creative nonfiction book about gender, that she herself must be transgender, when in fact she is quite unequivocally a heterosexual woman. In this context, the simplest explanation– two platonic women friends– was likely to be among the last that anyone would hit upon.

I also wondered how uncomfortable I would be. Lambda is primarily an activist organization, and I find that whenever I am among a group of people united by ideology or mission, the people in the group tend to assume that I share their views, or else I wouldn’t be there. This can sometimes make conversation difficult. My views on the intersection of sexuality, gender, society, and religion are both poorly formed and complicated, so I decided I would go primarily as an observer, to root for Deborah and take many many pictures of her in her gorgeous gossamer-light dress with beaded bodice and her matching pointy silver shoes with tiny flowers.

We got there a bit late. There were not enough folding chairs. There was much hoity-toity speechifying. There was much beseeching about raffle tickets, finally followed by the giving of the awards, and the book titles and jackets (projected as a powerpoint presentation) proved to be the most interesting part of the whole thing. Alas, Riddle of Gender did not win, and afterwards we hung out for awhile by the food, chatting with a fellow (non-winning) finalist and his girlfriend. I started to feel better once I got into the food and drink. The open bar didn’t skimp on quality of the wine and I saw some impressive liquor bottles there as well. The caterers brought out tray after tray of chocolate-dipped strawberries and chewy brownies dusted in cocoa powder. There were about seven kinds of dips and tapanades for one’s bread, vegetables, fruits, and meat skewers. I indulged in much scarfing, and also in the observation that Deborah and I were perhaps the best-dressed people there (I wore a basic black cocktail dress but I had a fancy shawl thing with it). After a suitable interval we resolved to go be the best-dressed people somewhere else, too.

We decided to catch part of the Liars show at the Black Cat, and stood there glittering with our high heels and bottled water and tiny purses, right among the billows of cigarette smoke and too-small vintage T-Shirts. The band had a Jesusy-looking lead singer with a guitar, one main drummer, and a second guy who mostly did additional drums, but also ventured into sound loops and backup vocals. They relied quite a bit on interesting noises and wailing. It was entrancing, in a way, but the trance wore off after five or six songs and I was getting dizzy from the smoke and it was time to go.

Here is the list of some of the topics Deborah and I managed to discuss on our busy evening out:

  • attracting crazies
  • driving with confidence
  • why trans-men end up with such awesome girlfriends
  • Dundalk
  • Israel-Palestine conflict
  • death and the afterlife
  • burial at sea
  • eating fruit from a tree growing over a grave
  • political power-grabbing
  • what part of the body we wouldn’t mind getting cut off
  • plastic surgery
  • fashion
  • the role of religion in the public sphere
  • do-gooderism
  • attracting crazies
  • men as providers
  • spiritual health
  • Jesus vs Paul
  • gender roles
  • opportunities to look and act like a princess
  • New York City
  • Phoenix
  • Lawrence Fishburne vs Bill Murray
  • Buying vs Renting
  • Having enough money

It was fun.