fitforafemme.com

Gather round, kittens, I’ve got a lovely fairytale to tell you on this night which feels like a night might if it were a paintbrush dipped into a brand new bucket of paint the color of Autumn. Ready?

Once upon a time, it was a real hot day in San Francisco. So hot, in fact, than an ordinary working girl had no choice but to wear a pair of perfect khaki Bermuda shorts in black, with a lightweight, loose-fitting top to work. With a pair of smart heels, of course. TRUE STORY. After successfully resisting the urge to skip away from her desk and to the beach on such a glorious day, the evening goal for this girl and her beloved was clear as a bell:

PROCURE DELICIOUS BOOZE FIXINS’ FOR A PIMM’S CUP.

It didn’t happen. Well, the fixins’ were got, but everyone was plumb out of Pimm’s No. 1. Terrible! We made do with some gin improvisation, and that was that. The end.

Shorts: Old Navy
Top: Petticoat
Pumps: Max Studio
Bag: Betsey Johnson
Earrings: Hoof & Horn Leather

More exposed skin.
More blissfully hot days.
More loverbird adventures in SF.

ON LOCATION: Safeway (top), Dolores Park (left), Baker Beach (right)

Tomorrow is our Friday, as we’re gearing up for a relaxing three-day weekend in a coastal resort city one quick little plane ride away. Chasing the sun, as it were, since it’s supposed to be in the low 70s and I can’t bloody wait for the warmth and pampering and R&R. Here’s to one last burst of sunny FFAF posts before we slip into Fall’s pumpkin-and-spice embrace.

We’ll need it before the following week arrives. Why is that?
Well, because next week is super jam-packed with the following hotness:

In no particular order of importance (except #1, of course):

1. We will celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary!
2. Gossip Girl Season 4 begins.
3. Weekly fencing lessons continue. Our first was tonight and it was B O S S.
4. Super famous Tumblr Lesbians in SF debuts an all-new photo show at The Lex.
5. Ivan Coyote will swagger into the Mission for one blessed night.

Hot-cha-cha!!!

Meet one of Brooklyn’s finest femmes, kittens! Here’s the delightful Bevin Branlandingham of FemmeCast and Queer Fat Femme. She and I ran a little workshop at the Femme2010: No Restrictions conference last Friday morning. We met for the first time in June at her incredible Re/Dress & Size Queen event in Oakland, after becoming fast internet friends through our mutual love of fashion, all things femme, and involvement on our respective committees with the Femme Collective earlier this year.

Also, her tomboy friends have the cutest puppies, don’t you think?

Of course, her outfit rules. This is one LBD that refuses to be outdone, and the little tart hair clip was quite the cherry on top of her ensemble. Here’s her really impressive bio, since it says it way better than I could:

Bevin Branlandingham is the Host and Producer of FemmeCast: The Queer Fat Femme Podcast Guide to Life. She is a flamboyant femmecee, writer, drag king, burlesque and comedy performer. She is Co-Head Madam of the Femme Family, the New York Chapter of the Femme Mafia, on the steering committee for the Fat and Queer conference and the media committee for the Femme Conference. In 2008 Bevin received a Commendation from the Mayor of Jersey City for her work with the LGBT community. Her writing has been published in numerous periodicals and she has performed throughout North America. Her mission is to make the world a safe place for people to love themselves, regardless of their marginalizations. Her website (including blog, calendar of events and workshops) is found at QueerFatFemme.Com.

She also blogs at Butch-Femme.com and The Femme’s Guide to Absolutely Everything and performs throughout North America.

This has to be one of my most favorite collages ever. Adorable puppy? Check. Pretty, multi-talented femmes? Check. Dildo? Check. Fancy hair ornaments? Check. DONE AND DONE.

I need Bevin to chime in on her outfit particulars, but here are mine:

Dress: Calvin Klein
Shoes: MaxStudio
Bag: Betsey Johnson
Earrings: Vintage
Necklace: Culp Baubles
Feathered Hair Clip: Buffalo Exchange

Waiting for Rufus Wainwright. After the closing remarks at the conference, M fetched me from the hotel and we set out for Napa. It couldn’t have been a more perfect evening. The temperature was perfect, the light falling softly at sundown was perfect, dinner was outstanding and Rufus Wainwright was absolutely wonderful, as always. At one point during the show, M whispered to me “How is he even a real person? His albums sound so good, but then you hear him live up there and he’s somehow much, much better than all that!” and I nodded with my tear-streaked face.

He made corny Napa jokes and told a few stories between songs, and he played La Complainte de la butte and Memphis Skyline (two of my favorites). Zebulon undid me completely. His sister brought the petite onstage and they all sang together (well, the petite cooed), and it was really lovely. I cannot wait until he’s back in November with the SF Symphony for Five Shakespeare Sonnets.

I am going to go every single day of the 3-day series, come hell or high water.

When I was little, I read like a fiend. The librarian let me check my own stacks out. I’d emerge from the doors of my sleepy little library with a pile of books in my arms that teeter-tottered above my line of sight. When I was little and my family would nestle into a cabin high up in Trinity Alps each summer, I’d see one of those logging trucks with unbelievably massive bundles of cut trees on the road, and I’d burst into tears. Such a wee hippie! I don’t think I ever made the connection, nor did the hypocrisy occur to me then. I reckon this is a fine example of the blissful ignorance of youth.

Years later and I’ve still a deep, abiding fondness for books, and for cabins tucked into wilderness.

Places like Powell’s become a little wonderland.

I think during our very brief stay in Portland we ended up at Powell’s three times! I invested in a super bright book light, which is spectacularly nerdy but, like, I needed one for the road. The staff recommendations were really fun and the little rainbow flags were quite helpful in identifying The Gay. This location is called the City of Books, and as the website says, it’s the “largest used and new bookstore in the world…occupying an entire city block, the City stocks more than a million new and used books. Nine color coded rooms house over 3,500 different sections, offering something for every interest, including an incredible selection of out-of-print and hard-to-find titles.” I came dangerously close to dropping hundreds of dollars on big, weighty, beautiful books, but the limited space in our car and luggage anchored me to my better judgment.

(But seriously, when is it ever a BAD thing to buy another book? N E V E R.)

M very sweetly paused to snap these in the fashion section.

Riding Pants: The Gap
Tank: Nordstrom Rack
Denim: Old Navy
Vintage Scarf, Boots: Rock n’ Rose (Portland, OR)
Bag: Betsey Johnson

Sunday before last, we went to an epic brunch featuring an outstanding drag show at the Sir Francis Drake in San Francisco. This past Sunday, we went to an SF Giants vs. LA Dodgers ballgame, an exciting one, apparently, on account of the fact that the Giants were poised to sweep the Dodgers in the series. (I don’t speak baseball; forgive me any errors.)

On Saturday, however, M indulged my new lust for suspenders and bought me a pair of skinny ones from H&M, and I was dying to wear them. You know how it goes. (I am currently typing so speedily that M suspects I have Nasdaq trading windows open. I do not. Hello, the market’s closed. Except in Japan, but I’m so sure.)

So, yeah, this is what I wore to AT&T/PacBell Park. (Free drink for the first person to correctly name it, I really just can’t keep up.) One girl walking past literally squealed, pointed and exclaimed, “OOH, SUSPENDERS!” all gleefully. I felt more like a stable boy than anything else, but it was a really, really fun outfit to wear. Believe it or not, not a lick of what I’ve got on belongs to the tomboy. Not even the hat. That belongs to the petite, and it’s from Goorin Bros.

A girly girl in tomboy drag makes what?! I don’t know, but it was S U P E R.

Let’s break it down from head to toe!

Hat: Goorin Bros.
Suspenders: H&M
Shirt: RVCA
Trousers: RVCA
Boots: Lamica
Bag: Betsey Johnson
Sunglasses: Kenneth Cole

Last but not least, some pics from the day just for fun. The tomboy in her LA Dodgers garb, the consumption of cotton candy (do you know they come in flavors? I like blue the best, M prefers pink, how’s that for GENDERFUCKERY, yo), me feigning delight and excitement in a souvenir shop, boozing and the big, gloriously blue sky we were blessed with on game day…

Greetings, queers! I’ve missed ya. An entire week has passed and you couldn’t pay me to tell you how on earth that happened so fast, because I do not know. There were many weekend outings but not a photo snapped, and I hope to rectify that with this weekend’s outings. Some dear friends of ours are in town, which guarantees shenanigans of the exquisitely made cocktail nature, and we’re going to the SF Giants vs. LA Dodgers baseball game on Sunday! I’m so excited. I can’t wait. I haven’t been to a ballgame in awhile.

HOLD THE TRAIN. There’s another very practical reason why there are hardly any posts from this week. I totally injured myself on Sunday night! For the first time in my life, I twisted or sprained or somethinged my poor right ankle coming down a flight of stairs. I feel that my heel (don’t worry, the shoe is FINE) got caught in a bit of unraveled carpet or something, because I went flying and it could have been a helluva lot worse than a scraped, bruised, sore, tender wrecked ankle. M was so scared! I phoned my fancy doctor friend early Monday and she advised me on how to care for it, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be ready for heels again tomorrow.

While being doted on very lovingly was sweet while it lasted, I really and truly despise being slowed down.

So there you have it. I really hope that I can post some photos of yours truly with famous drag queens, because they were incredible. Here’s a teaser: There was a very believable Reba, and she came with a tiny puppy!

I already miss the World Cup. Do you?

What a love affair. There’s this great big empty space where the only traditional sport I’ve ever loved lived for 1.5 passionate, glorious weeks. (UFC and bull-riding don’t exactly count as traditional.) We shared eight games together and it just didn’t seem to matter that I knew nothing of and had no interest in soccer before at all, the Uruguay vs. Ghana game sunk its big, sweaty, dramatic teeth into my neck and I was irrevocably hooked.

M was delighted to bear witness to this newly discovered passion. She’s not a sports maniac or anything, and I do occasionally enjoy watching football and baseball (but only ever at actual games, I find the latter dreadfully banal on the television), but it’s rare and we have never been so engaged as this. When we weren’t sneaking away during lunch to watch the games during the work week (or streaming them at our desks), we’d trek to the Stray Bar on the weekend.

Being a mixed-race baby with roots in Germany and Spain, it was very difficult for me to choose a side in semifinals. Who I picked is obvious, and I chose Spain because it’s where M & I had such a dreamy courtship the first year we met. (It leaves an indelible impression on you, that kind of spectacular free-falling someplace unfamiliar.)

It was the right choice. I couldn’t drum up any feeling for Germany’s team, anyway.

The photos above were taken right around the moment when Spain won the World Cup!

I cried. I actually cried with genuine joy. Over a sport. WHAT?! (I also toasted M so heartily that I shattered her champagne flute, which is why it moves from one glass to another up there.) This is so unlike me, and now every four years M will have to make room for my whirlwind love affair with this happy sport. I apologize profusely and in advance to the shocked friends who will likely never understand it and think it the beginning of the end of Skinny, surely.

I threw this outfit together essentially at Target the night before. M & I drove some friends of ours to their local store to get some new home essentials, and I scoured like 5 departments before settling on the shorts, black tank, red button-up from the Converse line, and the contrasting handkerchiefs that M & I chose. You know it’s ardent when I willfully don the ill-advised ketchup + mustard color motif with not a single trace of shame.

She psychically knew that they’d be wearing their blue uniforms.

Thank heavens for the striped H&M socks at home!

VIVA ESPANA!

Welcome to my Party On! Pants Off! outfit. I really just cannot imagine a gayer outfit utterly devoid of rainbows than this, kids. You’ve got your sequins and your stars and your crazy ruffles and lots of leg and your body glitter and a completely nonsensical pattern / paint-splattered motif. In gold. There are lipstick bullets around my neck and an actual bullet-sized lipstick tucked neatly away in the warmth of my cleavage, and of course it’s in an obscene shade of red also used to color my lips and ARE YOU CRAZY don’t even think my nail polish deviates from the exact same poppy red.

The breakdown, because heaven knows this was no easy task (especially when it was time to pee):

Romper, Brooklyn Flea
Star-shaped tights, Betsey Johnson
Cut-out moto pumps, Modcloth
Lipstick bullet necklace, Culp Baubles
Lipstick, Besame Cosmetics

I’m fairly certain this number will never see the light of day, and I’m okay with that. The tights have runs in them a mile long and I’m okay with that, too. I flailed around so very enthusiastically with the tomboy to a Grease medley that night that I toppled over a very full whiskey sour of mine, fresh from the bar, and I’m okay with that (even if it still hurts, a little). A friend of ours gifted me with a Midori-issue tank top that says “ALL NATURAL MELONS” across it. I bartered a pair of neon green Wayfarers for an epic jar with a handle on it, which M now guards with her life.

When midnight came and it was officially M’s birthday, we dutifully did tequila shots at the bar and I crawled around rather helpfully all over the Supper Club beds and we danced to that really dirty reggaetón song we both love, Gasolina. It was a spectacular night, and not wearing pants was a pretty big part of it. I’m hoping Ms. Jackson and Party Ben and co. can be convinced to hold pants-free parties at least once a month, because the vibe is genuinely special.

And before you bossies call me a total tease for not posting waist-down photos of the infamous bandage dress from Flourish, here you go:

MORE PRIDENESS COMING SOON!