by Weevil Shrimpsteen

Used to be you could walk a country mile and not see a lesbian. These days, you can’t sneeze without spraying a dyke.

Used to be you were able to see the mountains from downtown Portland, but now all the lesbians are blocking the view.

Was I asleep the day the whole world became a dyke bar?

I swear, you can’t turn around without bumping into a lesbian these days.

Shopping malls. Airport waiting lounges. Ski lodges. There you’ll see the lesbians, walking hand-in-hand.

There are far, far too many of them.

Portland’s soggy, mossy ground fairly trembles under the feet of so many stampeding bulldykes.

Weekend spree lezzies and the lifetime clam-gobblers.

Shopping for incense and battering each other.

Eatin’ buckets and buckets o’ pussy.

Dykin’ out.

Munchin’ carpet.

Hatin’ men.

Wearing each others’ underwear.

Checking each others’ breasts for lumps.

Drinking chamomile tea and buying organic reusable tampons.

They read books about lesbian nutrition and smear their lesbian toothbrushes with tubes of lesbian toothpaste.

They take lesbian vacations and use lesbian cell phones.

They cry lesbian tears and pass lesbian bowel movements.

They wear lesbian ponchos and decorate their lesbian apartments with lesbian dream-catchers and ancient lesbian pottery from ancient lesbian tribes.

They drive lesbian cars and shop at lesbian supermarkets.

They swallow lesbian laxatives made from lesbian grains grown on lesbian farming collectives.

They watch lesbian TV channels with lesbian sitcoms and lesbian nature specials.

They use lesbian fishing rods to haul in lesbian trout hooked to lesbian worms.

They enjoy lesbian sporting events such as lesbian rugby and lesbian cage matches.

They clasp lesbian hands together and admire lesbian skylines dotted with lesbian clouds.

They sip lesbian drinking water from lesbian cups.

Their lesbian ovens yield lesbian pot pies stuffed with lesbian chicken chunks.

The lesbian nightly news shows lesbian helicopters rescuing lesbian war victims.

Ooohh…that’s a whole lotta lesbians.

WHAT’S WITH ALL THE LESBIANS?

They’re everywhere.

They sprouted everywhere like a sudden case of the hives.

Portland is the Lesbian San Francisco, no doubt. At this juncture, I’d reckon that dykes outnumber fags in P-Town by ten to one.

It’s like the Hundredth Monkey. We’ve reached critical mass. We’ve reached the Hundredth Lesbian.

Can we, as a country, all agree to tone down the lesbianism just a little bit? We’ve reached our lesbian quota, I’m sure. I think we already have enough lesbians, and any more would be overkill.

***

At a lesbian coffeehouse near 28th and E. Burnside, a lesbian magazine talks about high colonics and nutritional empowerment and bedwetting support groups and candle-making seminars and dry lesbian oatmeal scones. You know — lesbian stuff.

Nearby, a group (officially, it’s called a “bevy”) of four lesbians huddles together near a bus stop in the cold, rainy, patriarchal mist. Three chunker dogs and one cornstalk girl. They bear all the visual trappings of latter-day alterna-lesbos: short, sloppy “bed-head” haircuts dyed platinum blonde or flaming pink, facial piercings, dirty sneakers, and tribally tattooed bellies and ass cracks exposed.

When I heard the phrase “lesbian identity” float from one of their mouths into the air, I decided to seize it.

I boldly approach the bevy of lesbians.

“What’s with all the lesbians? I mean, you guys are everywhere! What’s going on with that?”

The lesbian seems shocked by my apparent bigotry. “I don’t like putting labels on myself,” says the lesbian closest to me with a look of animal wariness.

“But you just used the phrase ‘lesbian identity’!” I say. “Isn’t that a label?”

The lesbians seem flabbergasted by my rudeness.

“What you’re doing is very uncool,” says the four’s spokesperson.

A bus pulls up and the lesbians embark upon it. They say nothing to me as they leave. I asked an actual group of lesbians what was with all the lesbians, and they wouldn’t tell me. They didn’t want me to know. Or perhaps they don’t know, either.

***

Twenty years ago in a suburban Philly garage, an all-girl punk-rock band pounds out snotty covers of Ramones and Blondie songs. Emily and Vicki are pretty bottle-blondes who play guitar and bass, respectively. Their drummer, Becky, is a lesbian. Becky wears a spiky brown mullet and is always trying to get in Emily and Vicki’s pants. But these girls are natural-born heterosexuals and are repulsed by Becky’s advances. We all have a cruel, jolly laugh at Becky’s expense regarding her compulsive sexual perversion. Men did not find Becky attractive, so she became what’s known as a lesbian-by-necessity. Rumor spreads that Becky is that rarest of creatures — a girl who is sexually attracted to other girls.

Twenty years later, all the girls are like Becky. Rare is the girl who hasn’t licked another girl’s snapper.

Twenty years ago, male homosexuals were all over pop culture, while lesbians were the Silent Homos.

Flamboyant butt-jockeys such as the Village People, Boy George, and Disco Tex were shaking their hairy tushies all over the place, but rare was the mainstream lesbo.

But amid AIDS wreckage and a general cultural devaluation of maleness, the gay male has been buried like an anal gopher. You don’t even see male fags anymore. Well, maybe once in a blue moon. A blue, faggy moon.

Except for the not-having-vaginas-and-breasts part, male fags were able to capture everything that made being a woman interesting. They possessed all the skittish drama which is one of the few redeeming qualities of being a female.

That has all been replaced by the dry moralism of cardboard dykes, who hate everything that’s male but are as boring as the most boring males.

Back in those fag-friendly days, lesbianism seemed ugly — womanhood stripped of everything that made womanhood attractive or alluring.

Chick-on-chick pussy-eating was the sole reserve of women who looked like men who couldn’t get women. It was a lesbianism of the lonely hearts’ club and the nuns’ convent. A lesbianism of ugly, boyish women whose vaginas were not deemed desirable enough in which to spill seed.

SO WHAT CHANGED? It was quite simple, really.

It followed roughly this pattern:

1) Women said they wanted sensitive men.

2) Men became sensitive.

3) Women turned lesbian.

When the men turned into women, the women turned to other women. That’s the history of Lesbianism’s New Wave in a tiny lesbian nutshell.

But it isn’t entirely the ladies’ fault. Not entirely. The fact that the American male is terrifyingly inept in the ol’ sack played a part as well. American men have no finesse. No game. They’re dumb, drooling, easily excitable hairy apemen who’d turn me into a dyke if I were a chick.

Dykes are made, not born. A woman’s physiology is constructed to enjoy a thorough ramming by a hard, warm, REAL tool rather than a cold rubber instrument or a girl’s wet tongue.

When men become men again, lesbianism will evaporate like so many wet spots in the morning sun.

I think that Dyke Chic will peter out, and a lot of women are going to be embarrassed. They’ll have a lot of explaining to do to their grandchildren.

I’ve made it a policy not to be with any more chicks who’ve had lesbian experiences.

C’mon, fellas, let’s wield the powerful force of SHAME. Let’s make them feel ashamed about being lezzies. Let them feel as if there’s something lacking in their reproductive desirability. Let them feel as if their DNA is misfiring. Treat them like freaks of nature. Evolutionary mistakes. Act like the daddy you were born to be and scold your little girl. The day will come when they wish they’d kept their panties on and their tongues in their mouths.

***

How do we punish the lesbians in a way that seems equitable? And how do we prevent future such lesbianism from occurring? How do we get rid of the lesbians once and for all? How do we dispose of the lesbians in a safe, legal manner? How do we stop it? How do we stop it NOW?

Take pity on the eternal, boring, self-righteous, easily bruised, stridently annoying, lesbian crusader, snuggling in the fetal position with her sisters, far from the evil, brutal clutches of menfolk, free from the heartache that MEN bring, with their hairy backs and repellent hanging genitals.

I don’t mind the pussy aspect of it. Pussy’s great. Yay, pussy! It’s not the vagina, it’s everything surrounding it. The holiness that surrounds their holes.

There’s an insincerity about all the new fashion lesbians. They act as if they’re blazing new trails, yet they’re merely little girls at a pajama party playing “Doctor” twenty years too late.

Lesbianism is merely another way for women to act like cunts.

Another way to be annoying.

They’ve found a way to be even more annoying than heterosexual women.

I don’t want to hear how your father abused you. I don’t want to hear what you did with other girls. I want to hear what you can do for me right here, right now, on your knees with your mouth open.

[Originally published in Jim Goad‘s Gigantic Book of Sex, available from better bookstores near you.]