����So last night out at Club Unity it was rainin' men, eh.

����A tiny handful of them were definitely doing the girl thing ALOT better than I do--one of them wearing a red leather dress I wouldn't mind having in my own closet.

����*Sigh*.

����Hmmm what IS the etiquette here? Can a middle-aged straight woman go up to a she-male and ask where (s)he got a dress the hopelessly fashion challenged middle-aged woman has been admiring all night? Huh?

����Yep, this is the sort of question I wrestled with last night.

����I had warned my daughter and her friends when they took me out to their favourite gay bar that I wouldn't be making a late night of it. I'd been up since 6 a.m., my normal bedtime teeters in the 11 p.m. range.

����Yep, I'm a seasoned, responsible adult. I know my limits. I did what any mature person would do.

����Didn't get home until 3:30 a.m.

����This morning my thighs, hips and calves hurt from dancing so much. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun.

����Oh man, it was HOT what with all these attractive people out to party and dance. The floor was so jammed that even a severely grace-challenged middle-aged woman can relax and do moves that might make folks wonder if some sort of seizure inducing disease runs in her family.

����I think I proved THAT point exceptionally well last night. Anyone watching me most definitely concluded I come from a long line of spastics, eh. But you know, it just didn't matter.

����How cool is that?

����Jess' roomie, Marc, took me on a tour of the different levels of the club, which is a warren of different types of rooms and music. Downstairs is techno music played at levels that probably flaunt the Geneva Convention.

����There were three masked male dancers up on platforms gyrating to the skeleton rattling beat in a way we didn't see at my high school dances, let me tell you. Alot of the young men below them were dancing with their shirts off. From the sweat gleaming on their nicely muscled torsos I'm guessing it must have had something to do with the heat in the room, eh.

����We ended up upstairs in the disco room, OF COURSE, where the beauteous Mado was tending bar in an enormous teased out red I-Love-Lucy-and-the-1960's wig, complemented by a long flower print dress from the same era.

����(S)he was quite a contrast to all the men and women my daughter's age dressed mostly in student grunge. I loved how Mado had painted her mouth into a sexy little moue--come hither but not over the top slutty. Make-up that good is an art form in itself.

����Marc, my guide for the night, and a guy able to bust some pretty good moves on the dance floor, said (s)he's a famous transvestite personality who does everything from DJ-ing to travel columns.

����I knew Mado and I were soulmates when, after a few notes of a tune began, (s)he sashayed over to the DJ, took the CD out of the machine, and huffed that NO ONE was going to play Celine Dion while Mado was in the room, thank you very much.

����You Go Girl!

����You know, in Canada, we like to think we are an open-minded people, that racism and other forms of discrimination aren't part of our culture.

����We like to point to the Americans and say we never enforced segregation like they did in the American south, and we didn't. Our racism was much more subtle. See, we didn't MAKE folks be segregated, we just made it so it was more comfortable for them if they were.

����As a for instance, I grew up in a small southwestern Ontario town which was one of the terminals for the Underground Railroad, the line of people who smuggled black slaves out of the U.S. and into freedom in Canada. We have a large black population in the region because of that.

����When it came time to take summer vacations at the lake, the lake being Lake Erie, they went to a small resort community called South Buxton because it was all black and life was just a whole big plenty simpler for them if they just stuck together there.

����In its way, Club Unity was a little South Buxton transplanted into big, cosmopolitan Montreal. We Canadians like to think we don't discriminate against anyone, but sometimes we make it so life is just simpler for folks who are part of a minority if they stick together in a little place of their own.

����How sad is that?

����Anyhow, the kids' friend Jen gave us a lift home and was mourning the fact we didn't give her enough warning of our night out. She would have enjoyed wearing her full drag queen regalia, she said.

����After a pause, Jen kind of worried out loud about the possible problems of going to a gay bar dressed as a woman dressed as a man exploring how it is to be a woman. What do you say, she wondered, if you're approached by a man?

����After the openess I had seen to all sorts of being that night, the answer seemed pretty clear.

����" Just tell him you're a woman exploring your inner drag queen," I told her.

���� She said she's going to add that line to her on-line profile.