Let's take a trip in the wayback machine to that longago night three years back when the curtain first raised on the ultimate punk fag disco. 1000 seems like 10,000 screaming dykes and fags screaming for that curtain to raise, been screaming too long, been screaming since junior highschool for that curtain to raise. Waiting not for what was behind the curtain but for what was in front of it--999 other dykes and faggots. Every one of them 10 years halfout of the closet; boys shaving heads & drooling for skinhead cock, girls jilling to Penelope Huston's pic on the Avengers alb. Every one of them alone 10 lonely years of horniness wearing out Smiths records and/or reading Sarah Schulman. And in 2 minutes the curtain is going to raise & the Butthole Surfers will start to "play," a preop dancer gyrating to the sexbeat groove Theresa and King Koffee pound out. But it's not what's behind the curtain that matters--it's what's out front, cause this is the 90's; music is over; Steve Albini is over and Minor Threat is over and though it pains my soul to say, the Minutemen are over. That was the 80's, but this is homocore.

Now that night is 3 years past, three years of every night disco & punk rock safety pin sex and love. New baby dykes coming out every day, too many years of slamming makes 17 year olds know that though they're vegetarians, they still like boymeat. Over by the videogames, a flattop dyke in midnight green full leathers challenges a technonerd fag sporting an electric blue grimley and plaids to a game of foosball. He accepts. Onstage, allgirl band with token male tambourinist covers Babes in Toyland hits, changing all the pronouns. Nobody in the slampit has a shirt on, which has scared away all the boys--they cluster around the edge of the dancefloor comparing makeup and tattoos. No taboos.

Cultural note: this is one of two underage nights a week here at Fag City USA. The drunks are relegated to the balcony, where they have a full view of chicken flesh. Other 5 nights a week, the kids stay upstairs & drink sodapop. Some nights, everyone drinks sodapop anyway.

Boypunk checks his purse at the coatcheck. Boypunk spends weekends in leather, weekdays in a suit. Boypunk is 47. Boypunk was a hippy, boypunk was a surfer, boypunk was a faerie and a dragqueen. Boypunk survived AIDS 14 years after they said he was gonna die. Boypunk's lived so many lives, but now he's come home. 25 years after Stonewall, there's a new name for disco. Fag City USA.

Girlpunk pulls up to the curb on her bike, all butchfemme, her femmebutch girlfriend hanging on bitchpad with fuck-me-red nails. Girlpunk might sell stocks on Tuesday mornings, but tonight she's biker trash. Maybe she lives in the suburbs, but she wears latex to the PTA, kisses their kids off to school in spikes and a bustier. Girlpunk ain't telling her age. She wants you to think she's 17, sweaty on the dancefloor, jacket off; her dance would make Bobby Brown shit his pants. But femmebutch girlfriend loves every crowsfoot she tries to find. Cause Fag City USA isn't about age or looks or bodytype or haircut or health or clotheshorse or any of that. It's about attitude; and girlfriends, we mean attitude in the most positive sense.

This is not 1987. 1987 is beerdrinking goodoldboys in punkrock leather jackets bandnames on the back, fratboy crewcuts, pretending to be tough and strutting with guitars, telling AIDS jokes and complaining about girlfriends. This is 1993, and all I can see as far as I can look is the homo-core nation, larger that life: go to Fag City USA.