On Thursday night I decided to take my Michelle out on an early birthday date. It was both planned months in advance and totally last minute.

In November, I found out that our Little Queer Station That Could had picked up an ad client for the Toronto performances of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, more affectionately known as the Trocks. I was thrilled. I had heard of the Trocks through Michelle, who had seen them back when she still lived in New York and has been hoping for them to come to Toronto ever since.

Now here’s the thing about Michelle: she loves drag queens. I mean loves them. With a passion. Lots of italics. Once we went out to Crews and Tango on a Wednesday night after leaving halfway through a rather unfortunate advanced viewing of some avant-garde queer performance at Buddies in Bad Times. There was a drag queen in the back room who refused to perform until the crowd had thickened to her desired quantity, and Michelle could barely contain her adoration. When the righteously imperious queen finally began her performance, Michelle kept tipping her for requests. With my money, I might add. She was in love.

So as soon as I knew the Trocks were coming to Toronto in February, I knew what Michelle’s birthday gift was going to be. The problem, of course, is that with the lowest priced seats running at 80 bucks a pop, Trocks tickets are a bit out of range for a no-account girl like me.

The sales rep who secured the account reassured me that there would be tickets for me at the station, however. She had planned a big promo night with Miss Conception, voluptuous drag queen extraordinaire and also our station’s own midday host. I was very excited at the prospect.

But then the sales rep left the company for better-paying shores and the account was sort of up in the air, and the next thing you know, there were no tickets and no promo and I was what we trash girls like to call S.O.L. I made phone calls, I spoke to reps and promo people, I did everything I could, and the best answer I could get was “We’ll see.”

So I made other plans.

But then! Here is my testament to how lovely my on-air hosts are: on Tuesday I was in the studio, when Mike Chalut asked Acey Rowe if she was going to see “that ballet thing” on Thursday. I was like, wait just a second, mister. I have been trying for three months to hook myself up with tickets, you don’t even know who the Trocks are, so how did you get an invite? Of course, on-air hosts get everything.

Okay, so I was a bit bitter for a moment.

But there is no way to stay bitter with Mikey, because his first and only reaction was to send his invite to me, so I could RSVP for the tickets. Sweet boy! This is why he’s my best boyfriend. I don’t think the woman at the PR company had any idea who I was, but she graciously responded with my confirmation, so I was set.

And then the next morning, Miss C called me into her studio, saying, “Don’t tell anyone this, but I pulled a few strings for you.” And she produced from her pocket two more tickets. And this is why she is everyone’s best girlfriend in the office. Not only was I set for a date with Michelle, but I could bring friends!

Don’t let anyone tell you that the radio jocks at the Little Queer Station That Could are divas. Their creative director may be a bit embittered and cranky sometimes, but those hosts are truly first rate people. I love the heck out of all of them.

So I got to surprise Michelle with tickets to her favourite thing on the planet after all. I called her up and told her not to make any plans for Thursday evening, and I dressed up all handsome-like for the show. I took her out to dinner beforehand—okay, I took her to Chipotle, but it was her choice, and if my lady wants burritos, dammit, my lady is gonna get burritos!

And the handy thing about Chipotle is that it is just steps away from the Winter Garden Theatre, where the performance would take place. What a bizarre little theatre! You walk in and go up about seven floors of escalators because it is stacked on top of the larger Elgin Theatre on the ground floor. Then you walk into the Winter Garden and there are fabric leaves and garden lanterns hanging from the ceiling, beech branches hand-woven into the ceiling grid, sculpted tree trunks supporting the balconies, and painted foliage frescos on the walls. Michelle felt like she had wandered into Middle Earth.

There are a few really cool things about the Elgin and the Winter Garden. The complex, originally called the Loew’s Yonge Street Theatre, was one of only a few double-decker theatres designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb in the early 20th century, primarily used for vaudeville performances. All other double-decker theatres have since been demolished—the Elgin and Winter Garden are the last operating stacked theatres in the world, and so the complex is now a National Historic Site. The Elgin is a gilded jewel box, while the Winter Garden is a vaudevillian hobbit’s den. Both are gorgeous.

The Winter Garden actually came as quite a surprise to developers restoring the old Elgin. Vaudeville’s appeal declined near the end of the 1920s, with the growing popularity of the motion picture. By 1928, the Winter Garden was shuttered entirely, used as a storage facility for old vaudevillian props and sets. The Elgin was transformed into a movie theatre. The building fell into disrepair, and by the 1970s was used to screen mostly B movies and porn flicks.

In 1981 the Ontario Heritage Trust bought the theatre and began a painstaking restoration of the Elgin. It was during the restoration that developers discovered the Winter Garden upstairs, and the treasure trove of vaudevillian sets and props that had been left inside, which now comprises the world’s largest collection of vaudevillian scenery—posters, hand-painted backdrops and flats that date back to the early 20th century. Amazing! I’m going to have to go back to the theatre for a tour.

And that concludes today’s history lesson, class. Back to our scheduled theatre review. It does relate, though; I cannot think of a better venue in which to see the Trocks perform. The Trocks are a drag troupe of the classic order, bringing a real vaudeville humour to the modern audience. They aren’t doing the kind of bar drag I’ve become accustomed to seeing, all camp and fabulousness and jokes about being on the rag. There’s a long tradition from which they are drawing, a theatrical lineage that dates back to Shakespeare, and even further. Xtra Magazine published a great article about it that gets to the crux of what I am trying to express.

The show was funny as all get-out. The facial expressions alone of some of the dancers were enough to get the crowd roaring. And let me tell you, these boys girls could dance. My ballet-loving friend was not as impressed as I was, although she wasn’t entirely unimpressed, either. Neither of us had ever seen men en pointe before. That’s some serious business.

In one number, Toronto-raised Joshua Grant, dancing as Katerina Bychkova, did the Death of the Swan entirely en pointe and it was incredible. Not only the dancing, but the costume—it was a testament to engineering, with feathers falling consistently and continuously from it as the dancer’s feet moved, finally covering the entire stage. The visual effect was rapturous. I don’t envy the stagehand who has to sweep up those feathers and cram them back into that tutu.

Michelle appreciated her early birthday date. Shameless Girlfriend Plug: she wrote about the Trocks afterward on the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives blog. Check it out.

In sum, it was a fantastic show with some excellent performers—athletic dancers and brilliant humourists. I was well pleased. I got to treat Michelle to an exciting pre-birthday treat, and I got to experience the vaudevillian flair of ballet en travesti. Fan-freakin’-tastic.

About a week ago, Mikey informed me that my presence would be required at the opening of a new restaurant in the village. So last night I went to the opening of Sugo. It was a private press-and-invite-only party that Mikey was hosting. The public opening takes place tonight.

Now, you know a no-account girl like me can never afford to turn down a free meal, much less drinks, so I was in, although I have to admit I was a bit sad to see that the restaurant and bar that had previously occupied that space was now gone. Voglie had been a popular place for the hot young hipster dyke set on a Saturday night, and had a great patio for, uh…sight-seeing in the summer. I was heartened to find out that the two women who had owned Voglie were still part of Sugo, however. They were simply bringing in Jimmy G., owner of Fuzion next door, O’Grady’s down the street, and another spot on the Danforth, as a business partner for the relaunch.

I ran into a friend yesterday and asked her if she was going to the opening. She works for one of Jimmy’s other restaurants, so I assumed she would be attending, but she said she wasn’t sure. She wanted to know the details of what was being offered, because she had had experience enough with Jimmy to know that he was usually too cheap to offer anything for free. He had even charged the staff for their drinks at the staff xmas party.

But I pulled out my little invitation and confirmed that it promised “complimentary drinks and a tasting selection from Chef Lia’s menu.” My bitter employee friend remained unconvinced, but she could not deter me—I had even invited my BFF/First Wife the Kabuki Librarian to be my Hot Date for the evening.

Now, my First Wife is no slouch when it comes to playing the part of Hot Date. She rivals the fabulous femme fatale defense attorney I took to New Year’s Eve at Brassaii. I believe she also wore opera gloves! What is with all of these beautiful femmes who are willing to be seen in public with me?

So Kabuki showed up in her coach and we walked into the restaurant with Mike. We were among the first to show up, because Mike had to be there early. Jimmy introduced himself and welcomed us warmly. He was pleased to learn that I had spoken of the restaurant opening on my on-air events listings, and was very concerned about whether Mike had been pimping the event on his show.

And that’s about where the pleasantries ended. Almost immediately, there was confusion over the drink situation. It was just after the bar had poured the drinks we had assumed were complimentary, as suggested on the invitation, that Jimmy came over and informed Mike that in fact drinks from the bar were not open. There would be drink tickets, but they were only to be used at a satellite bar that would be serving beer. And just one type of beer at that. Ever the gentleman, Mike would not hear of us paying for the drinks we had just ordered, instead shouldering the tab himself despite my protestations.

We took our drinks and tickets and set ourselves down at a table near one of the three gorgeous fireplaces. It was cozy and pretty, and soon we were chatting with friends and enjoying ourselves. Not in the mood for second-rate beer, free or not, I bought my second gin & tonic while my Hot Date nursed her wine. Some folks from the radio station joined us and we had something of a party going.

My commercial producer Jonathan and his boyfriend showed up with glasses of wine. Apparently Jimmy had changed the rules, so wine was now being served at the satellite drink-ticket bar as well. I decided I would like a glass and Kabuki had reached the bottom of hers, so I went and grabbed some for us.

The place had picked up and the front room was wall-to-wall men. Mike was making his rounds and ensuring everyone’s comfort. I heard someone ask him about the food situation and, as if on command, my stomach responded with such a growl I could hear it over the din of the crowded room. That was a good point: where was the food? We had been there nearly an hour and a half and not a flight of appetizers had made the rounds. I don’t like to complain about stuff I get for free—um…mostly—but this was a restaurant opening, after all. One might expect food at such an event.

20 or 30 minutes later, a tray of food did arrive—miniature bruschetta on slices of baguette. One of my friends from the station gave up at that point. He had been up since his morning show started at 6 a.m. and he wasn’t a fan of tomatoes, so if this was all that was on offer, he was going to try his luck at the McDonald’s on Yonge.

Another 45 minutes later came a second tray of the same bruschetta bites. I took two this time. My Hot Date was looking less than impressed with the showing. I decided it was time for a second glass of wine, so I slithered through the muscles in the front room toward the satellite bar.

When I reached it, however, they had run out of the red, so the barman asked another server to grab more from behind the bar. The coworker returned with the news that Jimmy had nixed the wine and we were back to second-rate beer. There was just enough white left to fill a glass for my Hot Date, but as for me, I had to settle for the cheap shit. I returned to my table, crestfallen, drinks in hand.

Looking around, I noticed that most of the women I had seen earlier had left, and the room was almost entirely populated by men. In fact, Hot Date, myself, our friend from the radio station, and Michelle, who had just shown up after an evening at the Archive, were the only women in the back room, and from what I had seen wrestling my way to and from the bar, the stats weren’t much different up front. I thought back to the days of Voglie and sighed to myself.

It turns out that this gender distribution was no accident. I later spoke to one of the people who had interviewed Jimmy about his plans taking over the restaurant. He was saying that he wanted to host bear nights, men’s events, and whatever he had to do to erase any trace of the dyke bar reputation that Voglie had achieved. He wanted to wipe that right out like a stinking, distasteful stain.

Now, I can handle a restaurant that doesn’t want to give me the drinks I want. And you know, food would be welcome, but still a side concern. But no lesbians?! That is just going too far. It’s just all sausage, and still nothing to eat!

Although service had begun on some mediocre flatbread pizzas—by the way, I am so over flatbread pizza; everyone seems to be serving them these days and I find them an utter snore—I decided it was time to get out of there.

Let me tell you, from an industry point of view, this had to be the worst restaurant opening I can imagine. You offer drinks, then you offer only those drinks and not these, and then you offer these drinks too, but then change your mind and go back to serving only those. And you have invited the press to this event! I went home from this restaurant opening and immediately opened my fridge in search of something to eat—I’m thinking I probably won’t be going back.

There are straight people, and then there are straight people. The straight people I hang around with are only really straight because they happen to sleep with people of the opposite sex. In fact, one of my straight girlfriends puts me to shame with her vast knowledge of the queer events around town. She does drag, which even I haven’t done in nearly a decade, and I believe the entirety of Toronto’s lesbian population is included somewhere in either her or her husband’s address book.

She is an example of a straight woman whom I would have called “queer” back in the 90s when the word was radical and didn’t refer to a bunch of gay minstrels showing men how to dress and decorate properly on TV.

Now while most of my straight girlfriends aren’t donning fauxstaches and dancing before crowds of mesmerised lezzies, they are all so comfortable with their sexualities and with those of their friends that it wouldn’t occur to them to mark some kind of fixed delineation between themselves and the queers with whom they associate on a regular basis.

And I am so used to being around them that I forget where my little bubble ends and that outside of it are the other kind of straight people, the ones who actually watch those minstrels on TV and think they are learning something other than a reinforcement of a stereotype.

So what does this have to do with New Year’s Eve? Nothing; it’s just background.

I spent New Year’s this year with a fabulous bunch of people. Michelle decided to stay home because she hates the holiday and would rather pretend it didn’t exist. She especially hates the kind of New Year’s celebration that involves people getting all dressed up and lining up to get into the most fabulous place in town, so you can imagine why she really didn’t like the idea of joining me in ringing in 2011 at downtown hotspot Brassaii.

So I gathered a few other fine folk to join me in her place, including my date, a fabulous femme fatale defense attorney who doesn’t take it lightly when the dress code calls for fancy. She wore opera gloves. She looked like a smoky dame from a 1940s film noir. In other words, HAWT. I was pleased to have such a splendid woman on my arm, and worried that I might not actually be splendid enough myself to match her, but she didn’t complain.

We stopped for drinks at a friend’s beforehand, and then headed over to Brassaii at around 11:00. When we arrived, there was quite a line out front. I asked a woman in front of us if she already had tickets.

She fairly sneered as she replied, “Yes. We all have tickets.”

Okay then. So I texted Mikey, asking, “Do we really have to stand in this line?”

No sooner had I sent the text than my stunning gay boyfriend and VIP host extraordinaire materialised before me. “Well look who it is!” He called, and turned, saying, “Come on. Follow me.”

I smiled at the woman in front of me in line and let Mike lead our entourage past the crowd and through the gates, the bouncers waving us through at his signal. My friends, who had never had the Chalut treatment before, were significantly impressed. I say, if you’re gonna look like movie stars, you may as well go somewhere where they treat you like one. That’s the reason I keep going back to this place.

Mikey offered us a schwackload of drink tickets, and gave my friends a tour of the place. Inside, it was chaos. Wall-to-wall people, dressed to the nines and moving to the music. We had to work to keep our group together.

Thankfully, it was an unseasonably warm New Year’s Eve, so we got our drinks and headed back out to the patio, where it was a bit easier to breathe. By this time it was near midnight already, so we started our countdown. When the clock struck twelve, we all kissed.

Let me tell you about this kiss for a second, because you have to understand that I am in a committed relationship with someone who just didn’t happen to come out that night. So I kissed my date, and while it wasn’t, I suppose, your straight up, sanitized friend-peck that makes more of a sound than it does a tactile impact, we certainly weren’t sticking our tongues down each other’s throats, either. There was some mild lip intermingling, that’s all. Nothing inappropriate for the sort of friends we are.

But of course, and here is where that background bit about the straight people and the other straight people comes in, as soon as our lips began to intemingle, some douchebag behind me nudged his friend and started bellowing, “Hey, yeah! Girls kissing!” I half-expected him to start beating his chest.

My film noir dame made an eloquent comment about how straight men assume that all displays of affection are made specifically for their entertainment, but all I could come up with was, “Oh my god, the douchebags are out.”

See, this is what I mean about forgetting about those straight people. I hang out with straight folks all the time, and it would never occur to them to leer and/or cheer when my girlfriend and I shared a kiss. These guys were practically drooling. And I am not exactly the kind of gal who makes men drool on a regular basis. It was all about the lez factor.

At any rate, they didn’t seem to like being called “the douchebags,” and took their cue to leave us alone, which was refreshing. We went on with our night and our drinks, until the inevitable moment when someone had to make their way through the crowd to find the bathroom. I let her go without me, but within a few minutes found that the power of suggestion had taken over and I was bound to follow.

If there is one thing I like less than being drooled over by straight guys, it is using the bathroom in a straight bar. I’m a butch dyke. I have been redirected on more than one occasion. I have engaged in some inappropriate behaviours to make my points known about gender…also on more than one occasion.

But biology is biology, and when you have to go, you have to go. My friend and I forged a path through the swarm and into the back bathroom. I saw one or two eyes do a second take at my entrance, but nothing was said. Phew!

However, as I was closing the stall door, I heard someone say, “Hey! Loosen up! Open your mind!” Being fully self-absorbed, I assumed it was a reference to me. It wasn’t, as I was to find out.

When I finished, my friend, who had seen me enter, was waiting for me. She told me that while she had been waiting for me to come out, some girls started dancing seductively together at the precise moment that she had happened to glance over at them. It was to her that those words were directed. And she just shrugged, saying, “Doesn’t bother me!”

Ha! If those women had any clue the kinds of kinks that this particular friend was into, they would probably be asking her not to be quite so openminded as she is. What can I tell you? She’s a dirty, dirty girl.

It’s just weird to me to be around people who think that two women dancing together would be something to raise an eyebrow at, although I am not so far removed from that context that I can’t remember what it was like to be so defensive about it. It’s just been quite some time since I was in that place, and to return to it was something of a head-shaker, like looking at a photo album and realising you grew up in Bizarroland.

Or maybe I live in Bizarroland now, I don’t know.

When we got back from the bathroom, the bunch of us decided it was time to head out of the straight playground and forage for some food. Poutine, to be specific. Brassaii had treated us well for the night, but now it was time to start a New Year off right—with greasy, fried food, topped with improbably delicious fixings.

2011 is looking to be a good year so far.