If I could have entered my admin page for the past few months I would have wrote about:

— Leyla Gencer’s funeral: the first time I witnessed the scattering of ashes to the Bosphorus. You would have thought it would be a cliché in this city but because there is no way out of a religious funeral in this country it rarely happens. Plus the choir singing at Dolmabahce by the sea during the funeral was heavenly and made me decide there should be a concert right at that spot, at least once in a while.

— Our trip to Holland: Staying at a flat on the red light district with prostitutes as neighbours and the incredible Hilversum: suburban gothic in the Netherlands style.

— Demonstration and march against the closing of Lambda: which is the one and only lgbtt (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual) organisation at Istanbul. The courts have decided that the organisation is against “moral values”. Since the march was from Taksim to Odakule on Istiklal street, basically on a route I walk every day, there was much to tell that could be made to bear on what I had already mentioned.

— Mine’s fortieth birthday party: the party was at a place that has just opened at Cihangir (where I live) and had a name and a theme: “Every body wants to become Mine” which meant you were supposed to come dressed like Mine and since she has a very distinctive style that she has not altered the least, in the last 20 years I have known her, this actually was not that difficult and created a very weird doppelganger effect.

— The book I read: The Stone Gods by Jeannette Winterson. Winterson is a genius; but I already knew that. Now she has gone and written a poetic and romantic novel about a subject, you know needs to be addressed, but also think is impossible to address, at least, not without becoming cliché and boring and pretentious etc: the end of the world through both war and global warming. Beautifully written wonderfully and intricately structured.

— The stand-up show of Esmeray: I finally saw the notorious stand-up show of Esmeray who is a M2F pre-opt transsexual, as part of the gay pride week festivities at the French Cultural Center. She basically tells her life that starts in a village at Kars and continues in Istanbul with the compulsory prostitution and the unexpected party politics. It was both funny and sad and thought provoking.

— The LGBTT Party at Ghetto: managed to catch one of the many parties that was thrown during the gay pride week. This one had DJ Ipek who, I have come to believe ,manages to spin out the most danceable music I have ever heard. The party was also notable for Seyhan’s outrageous costumes. I especially enjoyed the white one in which she went around the entire dance hall and looked down on people with her icy queen pose. Also of notice was Baran’s strip-tease show which was definitly the best strip-tease I have ever seen.

— The Gay Pride Parade: I refused to wear a hat since hat and eyeglasses give the impression that you are not “out and proud” but rather trying to hide and of course it was very hot so I nearly got a sun stroke. But apart from that it was FUN!!!! We screamed our hearts out and walked from Taksim to Odakule.

And the last two, which is watching Ismail Necmi’s film at his studio and the zazen session we had with two Zen master’s that came all the way from San Fransisco to our house, I will try to write as separate entries.

a busy spring day

My day started with a visa appointment at 08.00 at the Netherlands consulate. Thankfully the consulate is at Beyoglu on a small cul-de-sac off Istiklal, which means, its walking distance from our house. Beyoglu is where the night life thrives so it is always very weird to walk through it early in the morning. Most of the shops on Istiklal had not opened yet and it was quite empty. We (Seda and me) breakfast at Lebon, which is an ‘old school’ patisserie where service is done by very polite old man who have been doing this for ages and make you feel welcome and relaxed and it has delicious pastries fresh from the oven in the morning.
Then we went through the ordeal of visa application. The point of the entire process is designed to make it so difficult and humiliating that you will think twice before you ever want to go to the country in question ever again. Even better it is designed to make you give up during the very process deeming it not worth it. But of course I have done this so many times, at so many consulates, that I can do it without getting bothered, though I am not sure this callous attitude is something to be proud of.
Then as is the case every Tuesday I went to Santral in a taxi with Gozde, Bulent and Iskender. Iskender and Bulent teach courses that start at 11.00, while mine starts at 12.00, and Gozde comes to listen in on my lectures. We arrive around 10.30 and have a coffee and a nice chat before we go our separate ways.
After Bulent and Iskender had gone I got a phone call from Efe who was my student last year and directed me in the cameo role of a vampire last week. He said they were about to screen the film and asked me if I would like to join. So off we went with Gozde to see the short mocumentary about contemporary vampire culture in Istanbul. The film was hilarious and I laughed heartily throughout. Very witty and perfectly acted, it even contained a critique of the ethics of documentary filmmaking, the way all mocumentaries should. Then came my own lecture, which lasted three hours. After the lecture I went to Otto with Gozde. Otto is a very hip Italian restaurant, which for some reason is located inside the campus. We had risotto (my favourite dish) and homemade pasta, while Gozde convinced me that we should go to Galerist. Galerist is a gallery located in one of the most beautiful buildings on Istiklal called Misir Apartmani (which literally translates as the Egypt Building). Gozde failed to remember the name and the artist of the exhibition that had started there but assured me that it was something I would like to go to. So go we did. We ended walking up the fabulous staircase, since the lift seemed to be stuck on the seventh floor.
It turns out it was a Juergen Teller exhibition called Nurnberg. The photographs were great but few in numbers and frankly I am not convinced that they should be printed as small as they had been. It was more of a ‘teaser’ to an exhibition than an exhibition proper. My favourite photo was “Kristen lifting skirt” and the accompanying “Mein Schloss”. I loved the entire “Liliy” series as well. But can’t say I enjoyed the humour behind the self-portraits.
Walking back to Cihangir where both me and Gozde live we went past “Mor”, which is a little jewellery shop that I frequent a lot. In fact I buy all my rings and necklaces from there. I had both a necklace last mount but a bead had fallen off and since we were passing by and I had the necklace on, we popped in. I left the necklace there to be repaired. It felt wierd to go in a shop and leave an accessory behind.
Quite exhausted, I spent the evening watching the third season of “Desperate Housewives” on DVD, with Seda (love of my life). Tomorrow I have two meetings I have to attend and at night I am going to the Kaki King concert. Gencay thinks it will be like a night at “The Planet”. For those of you who do not watch “The L Word”, “The Planet” is the lesbian café/bar/club in that TV series. Of course that’s just wishful thinking on his part. Just because the performer is a lesbian will not turn the event into a lesbian night. In fact it is a concert organised by the Turkish Rolling Stone. Yesim who works for the magazine, and who is a dear friend and a fellow film critic, has left my name at the door so I don’t have to worry about getting tickets. I hope I will find time to tell you about the concert tomorrow.

Opening of the lgbtt exhibition

First we (me and Seda, love of my life) had to go to Karakoy where the tiny alternative gallery Hafriyat is located to attend the opening of the lambda (the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual organisation of Istanbul) exhibition, then we had to attend the opening night of The Istanbul Film Festival.
This was a bit of a tricky business in terms of transportation. Interestingly Karakoy is walking distance from our house and even Lutfu Kirdar, the place where the festival was to open, can be reached on foot from our house, though admittedly, a longer walk then to the gallery. I must have mentioned in a previous entry how centrally our house is situated. However to get from Karakoy to Lutfi Kirdar in time, especially during rush hour, is another business altogether. Especially since you had to consider the fact as the festival was going to be broadcasted live on the national television, you had to be there on time or you wouldn’t be able to get in. We didn’t have a plan, we only knew we couldn’t say long at the exhibition.
We had a bit of a problem getting dressed. This is what occasionally happens with two women living together. Even if you are going to just wear jeans and shirt you might end up agitating each other and turning the whole thing into a big deal but we managed to go out in time and walked down to Karakoy.
The gallery is on a street that is jammed with traffic at that hour and because it is tiny most of the people were out on the pavement. So it was a weird picture: the exhibition people crowded on the pavement drinking from plastic cubs while commuters crowded in buses looked down on them.
Plus there was a performance happening, a part of which, was also on the pavement. The performance was by ‘Ciplak Ayaklar Kumpanyasi’, which translates as ‘Naked Feet Company’. There was one man, with literally naked feet, sitting on the pavement with a bucket on his head and a gismo that sent drops of water on the bucket. (I believe this is what is known as Chinese torture) There was a woman in the same situation right inside the gallery and one on the upper floor.
The place inside, as well as out on the pavement, was packed full with people and inside it was quite claustrophobic. In fact I believe the situation inside the bus on the street and that inside the gallery quite mirrored one another and we shared the experience of claustrophobia with the performers under their buckets. Since it was a huge problem even to move, we very soon realised, we won’t be looking at the artwork and decided not to try and that we would come back some other time for it.
Actually people were, for the most part, ignoring the performers as well as the the other works and I was reminded of some of Maria Abromovich’s performances and how she was rescued, from near death, by attentive spectators. No such luck for our performers if they happened to have any medical problems.
The first friend we saw was Inanc who directed us towards Aykan, Gencay, Cicek and Bawer. They were all eating penis shaped ginger cookies, which I believe must be some sort of edible art. Bawer introduced me to a woman saying, “this is Aykan’s mother and she is teaching us how to eat a penis”. The woman gave me a cookie and said they are quite nice; I took one saying “not that I would know”. It turned out she was indeed Aykan’s mother. Aykan is the curator of the exhibition and has one work exhibited as well, though we never got to see it.
Since it was impossible to move around and since Cicek was leaving already we didn’t stay long and joined her, thinking we might as well start our journey towards our other appointment. As we walked, we met another friend Zeynep, who was just arriving unaware of what kind of crowd awaited her at the gallery.

things to come

I keep on receiving complaints that it has been ages since my last blog entry. I really haven’t got hold of the rhythm of this thing yet and don’t know if I should (or for that matter could) be writing every two days or once a week or whenever I feel like it.
This week, at least, the answer is: whenever I can find a quiet moment to myself. The week started of with a day of meetings. On Monday I had my first meeting at nine and went from one meeting to the next until 18.30. The week will end with the opening of the lambda (the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual organization in Istanbul) exhibition, followed by, the opening gala of the Istanbul Film Festival.
The week doesn’t end there and there is yet another exhibition opening I need to attend to on Saturday, since this exhibition, entitled “L’aventura Reedited” bears the signature of two of my friends Selim Eyuboglu and Esen Karol.
On Sunday I have to go on stage before a screening at the festival to present the films director ask him a few questions, do all this in English AND translate the dialogue to Turkish for the benefit of those who do not know English.
I do not believe in doing a job that should have been done by an expert and translation is certainly an expertise. However this festival, which is huge - too huge for its own good, really - prefers to get the most out of you whenever possible. I remember distinctly how back in 1999 I was one of the jury members for the national competition and had to translate the entire jury session as well as participate in, what turned out to be, one of the most heated jury debates I have ever encountered. This is what we call “ala Turca” and no doubt I am contributing to this by periodically accepting to do it. When I refuse, this doesn’t get my point across, at all. Whatever I might say, they simply decide, “I am being difficult”. So I alternate between years when I am being “difficult” and years when I finally relent and nothing changes because this how things are done in this country.
In any case the weekend promises many blog entries if only I have the time to write.

Birthday party 38-1: how and where

Wednesday was my birthday and last night I had a birthday party. There has been times when I had birthday parties at my house and times when I simply invited my friends to a restaurant or a bar or a club. There was even this one time when I had my birthday at my girlfriend Seda’s (love of my love) club. At the time she was not my girlfriend, but we were already in love by then, although neither of us admitted it yet. She had rented a striper for me and gave me a book called ‘desire’, so I guess everything was already very obvious, but it still took us a while before we got there. All the same last night was the first time I had a private party at a club closed to random customers for my birthday.

To explain how this happened let me rewind. It all started last Saturday. Seda was at Edirne (another city!) and Gencay came over to cheer me up in my girlfriends absence. We first cooked, then had diner and chatted throughout which brought us to the subject of my immanent birthday. Gencay decided I simply had to have a birthday party. I claimed it was too late to organise. I also refused to do it at home and spend my birth”day” preparing for the birth”night”. But we made a list of people I would like to invite and Gencay promised to take on all the necessary work. Of course I ended up arranging the club but there would never have been the party if it wasn’t for Gencay’s insistence so I am very grateful.

As to the venue: A fellow film critic and a fellow member of the governing board of SIYAD (Turkish Film Critics Association) Deniz, owns a club at Beyoglu that is in fact quite fashionable. It is called DIRTY and clubbers know it well. All the same Thursday’s are slow nights for clubs. They make most of their profit on Friday’s and Saturday’s when there is an entrance fee. But they also open on Wednesday’s, the only midweek night when there is action. However since they open up on Wednesday they keep it open on Thursday, although they know it will be a slow night. Anyway I knew that a party would be welcome for Deniz on Thursday, which meant guaranteed clientele. So I called and he agreed. Then I called Cenk who is not only a great DJ but also someone who wants to start doing this seriously and hopefully profesionaly. So I thought it would be a great opportunity for him to try it out and would guarantee that we would have very good music. Thanks to Facebook, invitations could be sent out easily and Gencay made one of his legendary photoshop collage pictures for the invitation: a photo of me imposed on “The Godfather” film poster seamlessly and the name of the film changed to “Godmather”. There was quite a bit of scandal when two of my friends, Cem and Feride turned up at the club on Wednesday, which was my actual birthday and had to go back. But apart from that I believe it was the best night out I ever had.

Let me elaborate on that: I love dancing but usually hate the places one has to go to dance. Since I quit smoking one and a half years ago it is unbearable to try and breath in a closed place where everyone is smoking. I usually don’t like the music or the music system and the combination makes my head ache. I don’t like the hours you have to keep in order to dance. Such places only start to kick after midnight more like around one in the morning and continue until four or five. It has been years since I could stay out that late. Two in the morning is my limit and if I rarely exceed this limit it is definitely not at a club, but at home engaged in heated discussions on some obscure topic with a few friends. And most importantly I rarely like the kind of crowd in such places. The type of people that regularly club are not the type of people I feel at home with. And these places get so crowded your dancing space is limited to elbow length and can’t really freely move and dance to your hearts content.

Yesterday however there was something around 50 people in a space made for 150 people and this made ample space for any kind of dance move. It also meant you could breath since the place wasn’t filled with smoke. The party started around 21.30 and ended at 02.00 as pre arranged and announced on the invitation. More to the point every single person in the club was a dear friend. Also it contained a very high concentration of gay and lesbians more than you can find anywhere outside a gay club. There was even a foreign photographer who was in Istanbul to shoot photos for a project on “sexual minorities” who took the party as an opportunity to work on this very project.

It is time to move on to a list of everyone who was there and the presents they gave me and the events of the evening but I have to take a break. To be continued.

latent lesbians on facebook

I wanted to write on the phenomenon of facebook for sometime but I thought I would be writing on ‘facebook phobia’ and relating it to my never-ending musings about ‘blog phobia’. However another point has struck me today. On facebook what you do mostly is to look at who has written on whose wall or commented on whose photo or wrote what message to which egg or plant or what not. After a year of facebooking I realised that a considerable amount of my female friends are, for all practical purposes, writing love letters to each other without the slightest a hint of self-consciousness. Actually, to be honest, it was Seda who brought it to my attention and she also said it makes her very angry. Let me try to explain what the situation is and why this angers my beloved.

These people use an exaggerated amount of terms of endearments when they address each other. They say things like: “my darling”, “my beloved”, “love of my life”, “sweetheart’, “I miss you so much I can’t breath” “I will kiss you until you are breathless”, “why don’t you marry me”, “don’t send that woman your love and kisses be mine and only mine”, “You are so sexy”, “you are delicious”, “you are scrumptious” etc. I think you get the picture. I am not sure if this is a Turkish thing or more universal or even if it is something specific to my group of friends. (though since my friends number smtg like 300, it is safe to say that this is not a specific group we are talking about.)

Now Seda is angry because she sees here an appropriation of love terms for smtg that is not a love relationship based on the firm belief that the usage of them will never be taken as such. For instance, in this blog, I keep referring to Seda as ‘love of my life’ and when I say this, it is to convey a simple truth (as simple as any truth can be) so when people who are only friends start using it for one another, without actually meaning it literally, they turn the very usage into a joke. And no doubt the assumption here is that it could never be taken literally and seriously because they are used, among women (heterosexual women to be precise though as you know heterosexual is never qualified) None of them would ever use such words for a man, and if they did it would be taken seriously, and if not by the man in question, then definitely so by their boyfriends.

At first I thought Seda was being overly sensitive but as time goes by and the exaggeration continuous I have started to see her point. I have a feeling they don’t use such terms to their boyfriends or if they do, they do it privately, not publicly. So either these terms have shifted in such a way as to apply not to love relationships but only to same sex friendships -in which case we should better find new ones for love relationships or soon there will be no love in them- or all these women are latent lesbians that have become symptomatic and very loudly so.

Umberto Eco said that in postmodern times you can no longer say “I love you” but have to put the declaration in scare quotes and say something like: ”As Barbara Cartland would say it: I love you”. I guess part of this situation is due to this condition. However when this inability to take declarations of love seriously because they have been used so much is canalised into same-sex friendship relationships I believe there must be smtg more at work. While I was writing on “Tipping the Velvet” I suggested heterosexual love has become an overused cliché and only lesbian love seems worth the bother of the romance writer. Outside fiction it looks as if heterosexual love is indeed dead and all is left is a mockery of love between “friends”. To put it in other words we have an exaggerated show of love with the possibility of seriously loving and, most importantly, making love nonexistent. And Seda is right it seems like our very serious love, that is no doubt a sexual love, is being belittled in the process albeit inadvertently.

Gay day at !f and blog-phobia 2

Yesterday was the gay day at !f International Independent Film Festival. I have already written about this festival’s opening night. I have not seen a single film at the festival after that. After 20 years of festival going and with the advent of DVD and Dvix technologies I have finally learn to limit my festival activities to the side events rather than the film going itself and this is regarded as a scandal by many of my colleagues. I could do the 4-5 even 6 films a day thing when I was young. There is no way I can do it now. Therefore for me !f was, from the start, about yesterday. First there was a video activism workshop organised by lambda (THE lesbian, gay, transvestite and transsexual organisation at Istanbul), which would last until sixish. Then at night there was the Rainbow Party! And there is so much to tell about both the events. After all this is exactly the type of thing this blog is supposed to be about.

However before going on to relate it all I have to pause to muse at yet another form of blog-phobia. There are those who come to these events that are in the closet. Even being out the closet does not necessarily mean you want you activities at a party reported. When I first told I wanted to start a blog to my dearest friend Kutlu and his dearest boyfriend Ziad they told me of a blog that became quite popular for a time. I can’t remember which country it was from I think it was somewhere in the middle-east. Anyway the guy told all about the gay seen and became widely read but it turns out he lost all his friends and therefore had to nothing to write about before long. At the time I said I’ll send everything I write to you and you guys decide what is suitable and not be my censors. This idea was turned down on the grounds that it was too much responsibility. Again here there is a bit of an exaggeration going on. I think the reality is not so much that it is too much responsibility but rather too boring and too time-consuming and in fact a not so subtle strategy designed to make sure at least two of my friends always read my blog.

Therefore I will start with the less incriminating video activism event and save the more lewd details of the Rainbow Party for later. I might in the interim call some people up and ask if they mind my writing. The workshop was to be held at The Hall which is a very old building that was once an Armenian church, I believe, recently turned into a night club. I am not much of a clubber. In fact my ex- girlfriend Sevil who has managed one and owned another very popular club at one time would tell you I am hopeless. Despite the fact I have already been to The Hall before this occasion although it is a relatively new place. This was with Seda (love of my life), Gencay, and Inanc and we went to see what was announced as “a fetish performance” but turned out to be a man in a latex stockings and corset lip-synching to boring German pop songs without even moving!

Anyhow architecturally the place is very beautiful. It is located at the ‘back streets of Beyoglu’: this is a phrase used to imply all sorts of lewd stuff though in the case of The Hall it merely means it is located on a street where transsexual prostitutes also live. And the very fact that The Hall has opened means the street is long on its way to gentrification. In fact I have been told that the transsexuals are already being harassed because of it. Although many argue it is not the Hall but the huge shopping mall that is in construction around the corner that is the real cause of gentrification. Inside, The Hall, has two separate halls where tow separate events and parties can coexist without in any way hindering each other. When we reached the door with Seda we happened upon Gencay and Inanc who had also just arrived. I was surprised at our timing but Gencay said it was inevitable that our rhythms have become in tuned because we spend so much time together and that he knows he will start having his periods the same time as we do. Gencay, being a gay man and all, this doesn’t seem much likely but the statement proves that hanging out with us has made Gencay start to believe that he is a lesbian.

I haven’t even begun to tell the event yet and now I have to rush out again, to go to a studio to talk about the best director category of the Turkish Film Critics Association SIYAD, as I had promised earlier this week. To be continued.

looking after elfe

Yesterday I looked after Elfe, a nine months old baby girl. She is the daughter of my friend and colleague Gulengul. She first came to us when she was six months old. Seda (love of my life) and I thought we could look after her one-day a week and let Gulengul have some time off this full-time business called mothering.

Since in Turkey we cannot adopt a kid and since if one of us gives birth to a child the other will have no legal claim on her/him whatsoever, it doesn’t seem likely that we will ever have a kid. I am not very sure that we would have had even if we could.
You see this ‘owning’ of kids has long bothered me. When a kid starts to cry in a public place if any one is interested at all they start asking each other where the mother is. No one feels the urge to do something apart from finding the responsible person the, person who owns the kid. I don’t want to even start ranting mother’s who see their kids as precious possessions for years and feel bitter when the kid proves to have a will of its own. Of course this bitterness arises provided that they ever let the kid to develop a will of their own which is not a very frequent occurrence especially in places like Turkey where the family is the name of a totalitarian regime. Consequently most of my friends who live in complete contradiction to the dictates of ‘the norm and the normal’ still feel the need to somehow get along with and try and justify their way of life to parents. And the easiest way to do this is to keep most of who they are a secret from their families. Which brings us once again to the topic of passing and coming out.

Therefore for Gulengul to leave her six months old kid at the hands of “mere friends” let alone a lesbian couple once a week in order to do as she pleases is extremely radical and only some one as strong willed as Gulengul could have done it. I can imagine what her family members think of that! And I have no doubt ,whatever they think, they will not be persuaded to keep their views to themselves. I am sure things will get even more complicated when Elfe starts to talk and related her experiences with us to them. In fact I only hope we can continue this practice that long. However for the time being once a week seems like a perfect dose of relating with a baby and I am grateful that we have a friend radical enough to have given us the opportunity. I am also grateful to both Gulengul and Yuce, her husband, for not turning out to be fussy parents who scream when their baby puts back into her mouth what she dropped on the floor. I call this fussy but it seems to be norm for middleclass families!

I realised yesterday that I like Elfe better nine-months-old then I did six-months- old. There is such a huge improvement. Now she is ‘aware’ of her surroundings for one thing and she was not 3 months ago. She can sit straight on her own whereas she couldn’t even keep straight propped up. It was so very difficult to feed her because she didn’t know what you were doing and had no idea about the relationship between the spoon at her lips the act of opening a mouth etc, nor the relationship between the act of swallowing and the things inside her mouth. Now when you bring the spoon to her lips she opens her mouth, takes it in and swallows. You had to rattle a toy in front of her with one hand while putting the spoon to her mouth with the other (which is impossible, so Seda did the rattling and I did the spooning. God knows how Gulengul did it on her own). Now, however, she rattles her own toys so all you have to do is feed her.

Of course there are drawbacks to this new awareness and motor coordination. When she is left in a room all on her own for even a second she cries. But this is no problem because now you can actually leave her in a room all by her own for a few seconds while you couldn’t do that 3 months ago! Sounds from the other room also seem to unnerve her only because she now has awareness that the “other” room has some connection to her. She is nervous when some new person enters the room for a few minutes until she is satisfied that this new person is ‘alright’. However, she does not cry when Gulengul goes away as long as she is not left alone and she does not show any special attention when she comes back. I am dreading the day when she will cry after her and wonder when that will happen.

To combine all these observations with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory I will have to say that I like Elfe in her Imaginary phase more than I did in her Le Real phase! And this suggests to me that little babies are prone to kindle the dread of falling back into the Real.

cowgirls and mandolin dreams

A very dear friend of mine, Ozge who is both a scholar and an artist and lives in the USA has been going to a lesbian western bar for the last one and a half years now. I believe she devotedly goes every Tuesday, which again if I am not mistaken is the lesbians only night whereas the rest of the time it is a lesbian gay mixed affair. Anyhow there is country music and good old cowgirl dancing. She tells me there is line dancing and two step dancing and some other dance that has the wonderfully poetic name ‘mandolin dreams’.
I envy Ozge and her cowboy bar on more than one count. First of all I am crazy about “cowgirls”, the costume, the mise-en-scene, the myth everything about it. My favourite film genre is the western so on and so forth. The very possibility of cowboy boots and hats is enough to go berserk as far as I’m concerned 2) I would have loved to be able to dance some formal dance not the shake it as you see fit free style that goes around in clubs but the type of dance you learn and master that has rules of engagement so to speak. 3) I wouldn’t mind a lesbian space to go to which we utterly lack in Istanbul. There are gay bars that lesbians go to as well but not a lesbian bar and certainly not a specialised lesbian bar like this one. 4) I picture the place filled with the Coyotes from the film “Coyote Ugly” which I know is not the case but still…
However I know nothing about country music and all that comes to mind when I hear the phrase “country music” is 1) the huge tits of Dolly Parton 2) Xander from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” drowning his sorrows through a night of country music. Therefore I am under the impression that this music is either very cheerful or extremely melodramatic and in any case cheesy. Although none of this matters as long as music is there to dance to. Anyhow Ozge of course not only has started to master the dances but also the music and she was kind enough to send me three songs as a kind of introduction to the world of the country western scene. The songs in question are 1) Carrie Underwood - Before He Cheats 2) LeAnn Rimes: Nothin Better To Do 3) Nickel Creek: When you come back down
I suspect none of these songs are pure country but are popish versions of country selected to ease me into the scene. I have to admit I only liked LeAnn Rimes but I will continue listening if she continues to send. But what I would really like is to do the line dance. I wish we could go to Atlanta to visit Ozge and see the bar for ourselves but it is too far away and too expensive.

Tipping the velvet on a snowy sunday

Snow has blanketed the city. It is yet to turn to mulch, which it will inevitably. However for now it seems to have dimmed the din of the city and created a perfect lazy Sunday for me with no intention of going out and about the city. So far I have spent it watching “My Fair Lady” cuddled with Seda (love of my life) and cooking asparagus. The film has left us with the irresistible desire to every now and then scream “in Spain, in Spain” or “the plain, the plain” for no apparent reason and suddenly out of the blue.

Apart from that I have finally started reading Sarah Waters’ “Tipping the Velvet” which I was saving for some time for a languid, lazy days such as today. I have only read 30 pages but I already love it. It has been quite some time since I have read anything this beautifully written and I can’t remember the last time I have read anything this romantic. I am no doubt biased on this matter but it seems to me the representation of heterosexual romance is rather dead. It has either been told and depicted and described to death over the centuries or the institution of middle class marriage has totally demystified it. At best you have romantic comedies or melodramas but romance without the laughs or the tears have become somewhat embarrassing. May be because it lacks the ‘difficulty’ it once had after all it goes without saying that like all stories, romance also strives on obstacles and no doubt lesbian love by definition still has obstacles inherent to it. But then again as I said I am prejudiced and obviously lesbian romance must move me more than the hetero version.

Of course as much as the style and the story there is the period atmosphere the ‘costume drama’ aspect that fits in so well with the cross-dressing theme. Of course romance is at is pinnacle in old England in Jane Austen for instance and her screen adaptations (NOT the American version of Pride or Prejudice – awful awful film- but rather the classic BBC version and Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility) and no doubt Shakespeare who also has the cross-dressing themes but seems also to always have the tragedy and the comedy mingled in the romance.

I can’t wait to watch the BBC adaptation of Tipping the Velvet and I am sure I will keep jutting down my musings on the novel as I read on. I will keep on reading until it is time to go and watch “There Will be Blood” tonight with Seda and Gencay at Kanyon - the name of a fancy shopping mall, mayhap I’ll put a picture of it if I can figure out how it is done.