We sit blearily in a local café along Sunset Blvd. It's midmorning. Overhead thumps "Brick House", then "Pick Up The Pieces", "Lady Marmalade", "Shining Star", and "Kung Fu Fighting"... basically someone's pretense that mainstream '70s Jazz/Funk/Motown 101 equals ethnic hipness.
People sit here in pairs or pairs of pairs, carefully arranged to appear not-fully-awakened; a frumpled shabby chic. Classic tattoos of pinup girls peek from beneath the straps of summer dresses. Some people sit alone: women sit with a book, men with a laptop, hipster hat pulled low over a delicately bearded face. Every skin tone is present, from smooth mahogany to gingerbread to porcelain.
Male partners face each other, in rugged shorts and hiking boots, varying in degrees of baldness and beardedness. They are at ease, and smile often. The gay men have powerlifters' arms, the straight men guitarists' biceps.
One couple sits nearby; both are youngish and thin. She wears a mostly-black outfit that is not quite a skirt, not quite shorts, and one can see carefully rendered ink above one breast. Her dog is shaggy and bored, dozing on one of her black go-go-boots. The man wears an intentionally weathered green t-shirt, with a slogan meant to cause confusion so he can appear well-traveled. He has a tattoo too, a tribal line around one forearm. He thinks he is funny, and keeps interjecting quips into their conversation; he never elicits more than a polite laugh from her as she discusses movies, then literature.
The Analysis:
From a Feminist or Romantic perspective, it is difficult to determine dominance in a couple's relationship; except for the one male's attempts to charm his companion, there was an ease and comfortable sense of equality. Gay men enjoy an acceptance particular to this area, more so than perhaps other places in our world.
The tattoos and summer dresses embrace femineity, yet reject any sense of weakness or frailty; any attraction is due as much to confidence as it is to female form. There is very little sense of "Other" in this place, partially because of the lack of domination, partially because of the wide array of ethnicities. There is less "fixed essence of femininity, masculinity, [...] and other social categories" (Barker 217). The heterosexual males here seem more interested than the females in projecting an "identity" as social construct, usually that of the sensitive, knowledgeable urbanite. The women seem merely happy to be alive, to look as good as they do, and to engage in conversation; they are examples of the postmodern world, "composed not of one but of several, sometimes contradictory, identities" (Barker 220).
As for our imbalanced couple, the girl seemed more worldly than her companion, merely by being reserved. He was desperate to win her laughter, and seemed to fail on the basis of being too mundane and by not fully participating in the discussion. It is not enough for him to be colorfully presentational; he must attract her mind.
Works Cited:
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice.
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