Friday Night Freaks

My friend Ally's boyfriend plays in a band called Jed's a Millionaire. They are actually pretty good. Anyway, Ally sent out an e-mail that they were playing last Friday night at Paper Heart Gallery in Phoenix. She said it was part of Phoenix's "First Friday" art walk where all of the galleries stay open late and artists line the street trying to sell their art and there is entertainment, etc. It sounded kind of fun, so Brandon and I decided to make it our date night. HOLY COW! It was not as described. First, Paper Heart Gallery is a bar with an art gallery in the back room. Second, the gallery show was death themed. Third, the place was FILLED with freaks. It was actually a lot of fun, but only because I could not stop staring at all the freaks. When we first got there, we said hello to Ally and a few of my law school classmates who were also there (I met Ally in law school). The band hadn't gone on yet, so we decided to wander a bit.

We went out to the front parking lot and saw the funniest thing I had seen in a long time! There was some sort of belly dancing convention and everyone was dressed like gypsies, taking turns belly dancing for each other. There was quite the crowd. This was made only more interesting by the fact that more than half of the belly dancers weighed at least 300 pounds. There were even troupes of 300 pound belly dancers that performed! I could not look away. They were very proud of their bellies. While this was disturbing, part of me was proud of them for their high self images! We tried to take pictures, but none of them turned out. We watched for quite a while before going inside.

We went back inside to listen to the band and had just as much to look at. There were several very distinct groups there. It was crazy. First, there was our group, which consisted of several attorneys and their friends, spouses, etc. We were pretty normal. Then there was the gypsies, which I previously mentioned. There was also the cross dressers. They were this group of men that tried, but failed to look like women. Well at least I thought they failed. One of the guys in our group was checking one of them out before another guy told him that "she" was a man. Ha ha! There was this one "she-male" that was balding and his hairline didn't start until half way back on his head. It didn't matter. He just grew it out long and pretty and dressed like a woman anyway! That was my favorite! So disturbing. There was also the gray faces. This group all painted their faces gray with dark circles around their eyes. Why do people do these things? I told Brandon I bet they are all regular people during the day, working at the bank and the library, and turn into gray faces at nights. The last group was the lesbians that stood right in front of us and kept kissing while the band was playing. They were interesting too. Brandon kept mentioning the one with the butch hair and the service station shirt on. I don't know why she was so interesting, but she was definitely the boy in the relationship. Her girlfriend was a girly girl.

I guess the summary is that it was good to see some of my friends and the band was good, but I'm so glad I've led the sheltered life that I have. I mean...how do you get on the path that leads you to become a balding cross dresser?