There was a time before Ellen and gay marriage
when being a dyke really meant something,
a menace to society, we took to the streets
with a swagger, flaunting our politics and our sex,
wearing dyke cuts, not mullets exactly
but you get the gist. That was a time, it was the ’70’s,
and we dressed like it, flannel shirts and work boots,
wifebeaters and t-shirts with sayings like
‘If you can send one man to the moon why not all of them?’
There was a time we’d drink 50-cent beers in bars,
not the fag joints or the hetero tourist traps
but bars hidden behind boarded-up storefronts
and unmarked doors, rooms painted black,
one spinning disco ball with a pool table in the back.
That was the time you could not find a dyke bar
without knowing someone who knew someone
yet we’d find one somehow because we wanted it
bad, hungry to be held and horny, oh yeah,
that too, for a place of our own, a world away
from straight women who teased us,
gay men who mocked us and straight men
who jerked off fantasizing about us. And there were times too,
when we held each other tight and danced all night
to Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel Mighty Real,’
shutting down the place with ‘The Star Spangled Banner’
on the jukebox. Times after the lights went up, we’d hang out
in front, streetlights busted, sweat running down our backs,
cops circling, not wanting to say nothing to break the spell
or part. There were times after midnight we spray-painted
graffiti NO WOMEN ARE FREE UNTIL ALL WOMEN ARE FREE
on city walls and bridge cantilevers, park benches
and bathroom stalls, we wrote manifestos and volleyed insults
right back at men if they dared whistle or catcall at us. And the times
in broad daylight we’d make out right in front of them,
just to raise their ire, taunt them with howls of ‘suck my dick’
and run gleefully from their brawn with our brains
and our bodies and our beauty intact. There were times at night,
we slept together, a brood of pups, teaching ourselves
and each other how to get laid, cause we didn’t yet know
what to do with our mouths or our hands. There was a time
we were revolutionaries, an army of lovers and barely eighteen.
when being a dyke really meant something,
a menace to society, we took to the streets
with a swagger, flaunting our politics and our sex,
wearing dyke cuts, not mullets exactly
but you get the gist. That was a time, it was the ’70’s,
and we dressed like it, flannel shirts and work boots,
wifebeaters and t-shirts with sayings like
‘If you can send one man to the moon why not all of them?’
There was a time we’d drink 50-cent beers in bars,
not the fag joints or the hetero tourist traps
but bars hidden behind boarded-up storefronts
and unmarked doors, rooms painted black,
one spinning disco ball with a pool table in the back.
That was the time you could not find a dyke bar
without knowing someone who knew someone
yet we’d find one somehow because we wanted it
bad, hungry to be held and horny, oh yeah,
that too, for a place of our own, a world away
from straight women who teased us,
gay men who mocked us and straight men
who jerked off fantasizing about us. And there were times too,
when we held each other tight and danced all night
to Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel Mighty Real,’
shutting down the place with ‘The Star Spangled Banner’
on the jukebox. Times after the lights went up, we’d hang out
in front, streetlights busted, sweat running down our backs,
cops circling, not wanting to say nothing to break the spell
or part. There were times after midnight we spray-painted
graffiti NO WOMEN ARE FREE UNTIL ALL WOMEN ARE FREE
on city walls and bridge cantilevers, park benches
and bathroom stalls, we wrote manifestos and volleyed insults
right back at men if they dared whistle or catcall at us. And the times
in broad daylight we’d make out right in front of them,
just to raise their ire, taunt them with howls of ‘suck my dick’
and run gleefully from their brawn with our brains
and our bodies and our beauty intact. There were times at night,
we slept together, a brood of pups, teaching ourselves
and each other how to get laid, cause we didn’t yet know
what to do with our mouths or our hands. There was a time
we were revolutionaries, an army of lovers and barely eighteen.