The 48 Quintara
bus, making its pirouette around split-level streets
at the top of Noe Valley, let Valerie and Claudia
out right at 23rd and Douglass before turning on
24th for its straight shot across the sunny bowl
of the Mission District and then to Potrero Hill.
“Is that it?” asked Valerie, pointing
to the Victorian across the street, with the green
velvet curtains halfway up the ground-level windows,
and ferns hanging above that.
“Yes, that’s Puffy’s,” Claudia
replied. “The women I know who go there say
it’s everything they could want in a lesbian
bar. And since I’ve been there with them fairly
often, you have my word that it lives up to its
billing.” She started to step into the crosswalk,
but Valerie stopped her.
“Now, Claudia, you know that by lesbian I
mean women who have relationships just with another
woman, and aren’t in one of your Sapphic marriages
with a husband and a wife, right?”
“Correct. They do exist; you’ll meet
quite a few of them here.”
“And these are women who don’t just
go out to bars with other women, but have a sense
of social responsibility that comes from being women
and caring about people because they’re women, right?”
“Absolutely. I brought you here today because
Thursday after work is an informal cocktail hour
at Puffy’s for the Daughters of Bilitis.”
Valerie cocked her head. “Daughters of Bilitis?”
“Huh?” Claudia replied. “They
started in your century — my friends say it
was the first lesbian organization ever, and it
disbanded, oh, at some point late in the century
and got started up again after Independence.”
“Daughters of Bilitis . . . I think I’ve
heard of that, but it wasn’t late enough in
the century that it was around when I came out.”
“Well,” said Claudia, “it’s
a very active and respected lesbian organization,
and when you told me what you were looking for,
I thought of them right away. And here we are. Shall
we?”
Valerie nodded, and they crossed. She looked up
at the sign above the front windows: BUFFY’S
PUB — ESTABLISHED 1978. “Puffy’s?”
“Buffy’s Pub . . . Puffy’s,”
Claudia confirmed. “It got that nickname pretty
much right when it opened, so I’m told.”
Despite the openness afforded by the windows, the
door was solid wood with the traditional diamond
window. Claudia swung it open and the two of them
entered, to be greeted by a smiling woman with long,
dark hair.
“Claudia, darling! How are you?”
“Just fine, Kate. How’s the greatest
bartender in San Francisco?”
“Alive and happy, it’s another beautiful
day.” Valerie guessed from the way the two
of them laughed that this was Kate’s standard
greeting.
“Kate, this is my friend Valerie. She’s
new in town.”
“Pleased to meet you, Valerie. Welcome to
Buffy’s Pub. And please, do call it Puffy’s
— everybody else does.”
Valerie went through her first glass of “fuzzy
water,” as Kate called it when she said it
was on the house, and was into a second by the time
Claudia had given her the stories behind all the
knickknacks and memorabilia on the walls and back
bar. The sheer volume of Puffy’s lore was
overwhelming, prompting her to sum it up by saying,
“It’s all very collegiate.”
But now Valerie heard women’s voices in animated
conversation outside the door. When it opened and
a sizable group of women walked in, she noticed
they were all neatly dressed, whether in business
suits or shirt dresses, or in slacks with crewneck
sweaters over oxford-cloth shirts. Most of them
wore at least lipstick, all had earrings, and there
was not a hairdo in sight that could be classified
as any kind of dyke cut. It was as though the Preppy
Handbook had been in a collision with Rubyfruit
Jungle and won — the flirtatious but friendly
conversation sounded right, but this looked all
wrong. These women looked so upper-class —
how could they be lesbians and members of a lesbian
rights organization and have that much privilege,
much less flaunt it in their dress?
She tried to key in to words and phrases that would
give her some idea of what kind of social-justice
work these lesbians of the future were doing, but
the closest she could pick out were mentions of
charity balls, dinners, and museum openings. What
was this new Daughters of Bilitis — a queer
version of the Junior League or something? Oh, no
— someone was mentioning the Junior League,
and someone else was saying that maybe they could
let the Junior League work with them this time .
. .
Of all the ironic turns of her lesbian future, surely
this was one of the cruelest. She had to get away
and think, and so she tugged
at Claudia’s sleeve. “Um, Claudia? I
need to use the restroom? Where would that be?”
“Oh, there’s one that way, in back,
and more upstairs.”
“Thanks.” The all-purpose excuse for
an escape had worked again. She went toward the
back, but found that a room and porch there had
been converted into a smoking lounge done in art
deco; peering through a window, she saw two women
in dresses with scarves draped over their shoulders
put down cigars to wave to her. She smiled nervously
and waved back, then looked around for the stairs.
Upstairs, in what had formerly been separate flats,
she found another deck and a dining room with a
Sunday brunch menu posted.
Nearby was a bathroom, and she ducked inside, sat
on the lowered lid and breathed deeply until she
felt a little less apprehensive. Did nobody live
simply in this century? How could they have such
affluence without corresponding poverty? When she’d
asked Claudia where the poor and homeless were,
Claudia had shrugged her shoulders and replied,
“In the States, I guess, where they’ve
got semi-collectivism. Our system seems to work
better. They still ask us from time to time to help
pay for theirs.” And Valerie had never dared
ask for further explanation. Still, even in a more
affluent society, why weren’t lesbians showing
everyone else how to live in a less materialistic
way? Something wasn’t quite right about what
she was seeing.
And as she wandered around upstairs, it also both
comforted and bothered her that the women she encountered
were so friendly toward her. Comforting, because
of the complete lack of cliquish bar attitudes;
disturbing, because fitting in among these women
made her think she must be reeking of privilege,
which was wrong.
She felt more than a little guilty when she caught
herself admiring the establishment: the living room
and parlor converted to a dance floor; the authentic
old Wurlitzer jukebox retrofitted for DVDs and some
amazingly fine-sounding speakers; the holographic
tabletop video games interspersed with vintage Ms.
Pac-Man consoles; another room with refurbished
classic pinball machines, the kind with mechanical
score displays. She assumed that any woman could
come here and enjoy this, because she and Claudia
had just strolled on in, yet the way Claudia had
talked about Puffy’s indicated that it wasn’t
a usual hangout for her despite her being known
here. But she knew being here was something other
women of her own time didn’t get to do, which
meant access to Puffy’s was privilege. In
other words, unless all lesbians could come here,
regardless of income, appearance, or — and
she’d never had to make this part of her political
analysis before — temporal mobility, letting
herself have fun here would be wrong. She knew logically
that she wasn’t oppressing other women by
taking advantage of a unique opportunity collectively
created by women as a part of their AIDS activism.
Still, it felt right to monitor her level of enjoyment
out of a concern for equal access to women’s
space regardless of ability to travel through time.
Besides, the way these women dressed, and the resource-intensive
class privilege it represented, were incompatible
with the simple living in which a progressive community
should be engaged. She hadn’t worked as hard
as she had in her own time just so women with no
activist track record could waltz in and take advantage
of “lesbian chic.” And this was lesbian
chic writ large enough to obliterate and make invisible
her own lesbian experience, politics, and culture.
|
