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Okay, so for an audio track to listen to while reading this post, go grab this on for size: Patrick Hernandez, the one and only original Disco Queen, and Born to Be Alive crooner. If you are observant, and have laid eyes on me in the last three months, you will notice in the picture above that finally, Mary is BLOND again. YAY!!! Months of AC (after cancer) guilt about carcinogenic hair dye stopped me from reaching for the bottle (of bleach). How dull.

This weekend was my first AC BIG social excursion. Unexpectedly, I found myself at the BOLD conference (Bold Old(er) Lesbians). And I say, “unexpectedly” simply because I have a pretty uneasy relationship with the “lesbian” moniker, let alone “old”. Call it internalized homophoboia if it makes you feel better, with maybe a dash of unresolved misogyny and ageism. I wouldn’t deny any of it. Identification is complex ground. I can live with/in/as queer, or even dyke, but the L word just doesn’t work for me, and never has. At any rate, there I was Friday night listening to a panel of amazing women at a literary reading, and it turns out that one of them, Betsy Warland, read from a recent work that features a primary character living in the altered state that results from a bilateral mastectomy. The “never the same” ontological house of mirrors that breast cancer effects is also the theme of Only This Blue, a long essay-poem by the talented Warland. It’s on my pile of things to read this month, quite close to the top, in fact. The pile is substantial!!!

One of the highlights of the conference for me was a performance by drag king troupe, 3 Dollar Bill. After the show, I was hanging around outside the main ballroom, and someone came up to me and asked me if I was a drag king. I have to say that I was incredibly excited by this instance of mistaken identity. I decided it had to be because of my stunningly flat chest, which looked, perhaps, like a really skillful instance of chest binding. Flush with excitement, I practically flew over to my pal J, from Little Sisters bookstore, who was standing in a crowd that included all the guys from 3 Dollar Bill, and breathlessly relayed the anecdote. J quickly suggested that perhaps I should perform my first drag king act at a social event the group had planned for the Xmas season at the Majestic. The “real” kings decided that maybe, I could give it a whirl, and that they might even offer tutoring. My first homework is to choose “my song”. I was given sternly delivered instructions about how important it would be to pick a song that I could really “fill” — as in, “fill the space”. F*ck!.

Earlier in the evening, while innocently perusing the amazing array of desserts, a conference-goer mistook me for the demonstration gal in the Tantric Sex workshop. I am not sure exactly what kind of energy I was giving off last night, but it was good.

I even had my very own first vision of a post-mastectomy-no-reconstruction-honest-to-goodness-dyke at this wonderful conference (yeah, so, I’m a convert). I did my best not to gape, but I really felt like I can only imagine someone might feel who had gotten very lost in the woods for oh, fifty years, only to emerge and experience their first sighting of a fellow human. I drank in her image. I even screwed up the courage to talk to her and get her card. Good for me. I am not always good at stuff like that. Social multi-tasking is definitely not my strong suit.

In honour of her, I took off my sweater to go and dance. I realized the other day that of-late, I have been carefully adjusting my wardrobe so as to avoid the plain solid colour t-shirt directly worn over flat chest. It is, well, just too bold, even for me. I have been wearing a white t-shirt and then another t-shirt over top of that one. Or I have been wearing a white t and a button-up shirt over that. Got the picture? Well buoyed with excitement about my sighting I decided to toss off the 2nd layer of protective armour – the sweater – and go and dance wearing just my light white t-shirt. I felt practically naked. There was no hiding the fact that my chest is completely flat. And I felt GREAT. It was really liberating. While I was dancing my heart out, I discovered my drag king song — Born to be Alive (the one and only and incomparable Patrick Hernandez). It doesn’t get any queerer.

Yeah. I am. Still Here. Queer. And definitely, Alive.

PS> Oh, and about that BOLD conference. (1) Many thanks to community heroes Pat Hogan and Claire Robson for organizing this cultural extravaganza. This kind of work is SO very important. (2) Bold – Yes, Older – Yum, and Lesbian – double Yum.