There was no question this was San Francisco.
It could have been the Asian fusion cuisine, or the restaurant’s name—Asia SF—or maybe it was the transvestite on the bar behind me.
My eyes glanced down the long table of relatives, halting on my 13-year-old cousin and my 80-year-old grandmother, whose birthdays we were somehow gathered one floor above a stripper cage to celebrate. Surely, there had been some mix-up. We were at the wrong restaurant. Something.
My uncle shook me from my stunned silence.
“Look!” he shouted, jabbing his finger enthusiastically toward a dancer. “Look behind you!”
My mouth opened. Closed. Opened. This was too much.
In retrospect, though, I should have seen it coming.
My older brother e-mailed my immediate family in December with a copy of the Zagat’s review.
“‘Not for the faint of heart—or Republicans,’” the review read. “This SoMa drag club gets as ‘crowded as Gold’s Gym on January 2nd’ with ‘large squealing bachelorette parties’ and ‘open-minded out-of-towners.’”
Skimming the e-mail, somehow oblivious to its meaning, we all expressed bemusement—but not surprise—at her choice.
There are a number of adjectives that could apply to my aunt—none of them particularly moderate.
I learned that lesson early in life. When a business trip brought her to Washington, D.C. one Halloween, she decided our trick-or-treat plans lacked panache. I found myself in a Dalmatian suit following around my aunt—an unmistakable Cruella D’Ville—as she sang numbers from the Disney flick at one house after another.
When I was older, she led a family backpacking expedition in California’s Lassen Park. Finding a long trail through a barren desert and up a cindercone volcano, she decided we were going to hike it. Never mind the heat. We ran out of water halfway there, but somehow made it back alive. After we collapsed from exhaustion, she announced that a trek up another mountain was in order. Her conviction didn’t waver after returning hikers informed us they had been pelted by hail near the summit. This was my aunt.
But so far as I knew she had never crossed the line into adult entertainment —at least not for a family event.
She leaned toward our table to see how we were dealing with the show.
“I didn’t want you to come all the way here without getting a unique cultural experience,” she laughed.
I looked down at the menu in front of me. It was stamped in big letters: “Happy Birthday, Eleanor. 80 Years Young!” At the bottom was a collage of the dancers (or “gender illusionists” as the restaurant billed them). There were four tonight—a bonus compared to the usual three.
In between were the drinks, whose titles left no sexual pun untapped.
So much for this being a mistake.
My aunt was over at my side of the table again, explaining to the unenlightened the advantages of transvestite dancing.
“Transvestites are better because they don’t have hips,” she helpfully informed us.
Good to know.
Still, despite, or perhaps because of, the absurdity of this scene, I had to give my Aunt some credit.
We’re a tight-knit family, but even so, any event that brings that many relatives under one roof can easily devolve into argument.
Everyone was so amused and/or shocked that the pressing concerns of an hour before had faded completely: my worry about the right wording of remarks honoring my grandmother’s birthday, my mom’s anxiety about whether she was too dressed-down for the occasion (she wasn’t), and even my brother’s work, relentlessly beckoning from New York via Blackberry. It was hard to get too worked up.
I remembered something the rabbi had said during my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah that morning.
“Remember this moment with these people,” he intoned. “When you’ve forgotten 90 percent of what’s on the front page, when you’ve forgotten about that test you did poorly on, when you see blue flashing lights in your rearview mirror. Remember this.”
I smiled and slowly folded up the menu.
After all, who would believe me if I didn’t save the evidence?
My uncle noticed my inattentiveness and tried once more to draw my focus to the skin-suit-clad dancer behind me.
“Turn around!”
Before I had a chance, the emcee grabbed the mic.
Onstage with the dancers, she began listing special celebrations in the room.
“Jeff is turning 30,” she shouted.
Oh my god. She’s actually going to announce my grandmother’s 80th birthday, standing on a bar, next to four transvestites.
“It’s John and Tina’s fifth anniversary!”
Her name is already on the menu. Maybe they’ll skip it.
“Is Mike in the house?”
A very delayed cheer went up.
“Oh, has Mike already passed out?”
No way. No way.
“And Eleanor. Happy 80th birthday!”
I had to laugh, and so did all my family members, as all eyes in the room turned to our table.
Except, presumably, Mike’s.
—Clifford M. Marks ’10 is an Economics concentrator in Pforzheimer House. He has hips any “gender illusionist” would envy.
