Failure to Lunch
If it’s Spring, and I think it is – yes, there’s that telltale sign – the RiteAid bag lufting in the tree – it must be fundraising dinner season. As a professional dinner emcee, although now I like to think of myself as a guest worker, I’ve had the pleasure of not eating with thousands of lesbians and gay men. The recent Fenway Community Health Women’s Dinner in Boston was its usual Seasonal See and Be Seen self. Those girls know how to partay!
The Task Force dinner in New York at the Grand Hyatt honored Pulitzer Prize winning author, and fellow summer blonde, Michael Cunningham and the newly elected openly lesbian Speaker of the New York City Council, Christine Quinn. We are so proud of her, we could plotz. The main dish at any Task Force event was lively dish.
My dear girls from NCLR threw their annual gala at the Moscone Center in their home town of San Francisco and 2900 attended! It was a sea of lesbians, acres of exes. The estrogen reached dangerous levels. Dangerous as in excellent. The honorees – pioneering activist/therapist, Betty Berzon; the first two-spirited couple to marry in the Cherokee Nation, Dawn McKinley and Kathy Reynolds; MVP basketball player Sheryl Swoopes and Jennifer Harris who challenged her UPenn basketball coach’s homophobia – did us all honor. Executive Director, Kate Kendall, challenged us to engage our adversaries. If to know us, is not automatically to love us [who knew?] at the very least we need to make our very personal selves known to them. She is one of my favorite radical optimists.
Thank goodness, I got to break up the dinner season with a lovely visit to Ft. Worth, Texas. Home of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame! Pardner. The dames from Open Door Productions really know how to put on a show. Kris McIntosh and Linda Schram and all their compatriot volunteers took great care of me from door to door. And let me tell you, no one enjoys a little [okay a lotta] Bush bashing more than Texans!
