GO GIRLS!
So what’s forbidden to lesbians? According to Victoria Baker and Neon Weiss, two San Francisco lesbian performers, it’s men. Of course, not straight men. There’s nothing revolutionary about women–regardless of sexual orientation–screwing straight men; in fact, it’s kind of retrograde. But how about gay men?
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If the notion of lesbians and gay men having sex with each other strikes you as odd–as perhaps just heterosexuality with a twist, as just bisexuality disguised as radical chic, as just another plot to deny women their unique sexual identity–Baker, for one, has a neat explanation: “It’s like a screen door,” she says. “It lets in a fresh breeze but keeps all the bugs out.”
I say charm because there’s a delightful appreciation for the absurdity of homosexual men and women engaging in sex with each other and still insisting on their distinctly homosexual identities. Baker in particular makes wonderful use of this inversion of cultural roles to present lesbians as, simultaneously, sexually retrograde and radical. (After all, how many people are out there having queer erotic experiences yet insisting they’re really ultimately heterosexual?)
Baker and Weiss are fine enough storytellers, but both also try to introduce movement into the show. Weiss is fairly successful at this with a weird shadow demonstration of fisting; Baker is less so in a corny transition that seems more like amateur martial arts.
