When I was getting my Ph.D. in English, my professors tried to pound into my head that gender was a false construct--an act of linguistic performance manufactured by a society hell-bent on dialogic, binary thinking. I didn’t really get it. But a night at Asia SF has convinced me.  I mean, most of the “women” weren’t really “gender illusionists,” as the the club advertises; I don’t consider putting on a Tina Turner wig and prancing around to “Proud Mary” to be much of an illusion so much as a bad night at the karaoke bar. But then there was one girl, and...whoa.

The cheekbones!  The legs!  The lack of an adam’s apple!  That was a guy?

I think I need to give the place a wide berth, because “she” could cause me to constantly question what I think I know, and I prefer to think that I sort of know all there is to know about the crying game.  It’s an illusion that I’d rather not be stripped from me; I might see beyond the veil of patriarchal gender norms and wind up accidentally getting pregnant.