Dyke Bar CHronicles

2. Preface:
Almost two winters ago I came to Hen-
rietta Hudson for the first time, to
DJ a private event, a 40th birthday
party, for a friend from the queer
South Asian community. She needed a
dyke DJ to comfortably mix and code-
flilp from familiar Bollywood to mod-
ern classics in Hiphop, RnB, Dance-
hall, and Soul.
I had a list of awesome Bollywood
tracks from the birthday girl, there
would be incredible home cooked Indi-
an food at the party, and my favorite
queen, Lal Batti would be performing
routines from classic Bollywood films.
I remember giggling inside to myself
the entire time about how I’d just
never worked for a lesbian bar in a
decade of being a New York DJ working
for the queers, and how funny to ar-
rive here and be playing songs from
my homeland. My point of entry felt
dictated by the universe. My given
name is Janhavi, which is Sanskrit
for the Ganges. It felt like a setup,
and an undeniably ideal match. Rivers
collided.
After the gig was done, Lisa, one of
the owners, invited me to eat and
talk about how we could collaborate.
I asked for the quietest night, clos-

3. est to the weekend, to play throw-
back songs, for a variety of age
groups and cultural orientations, and
I wanted to grow a family around that
idea.
We talked about the the history of
the bar, and all the incarnations it
has seen. Being queer has only re-
cently been normalized in NY, and
many people forget the traumas and
victories that this bar has seen in
it’s 25 years of existence. Lisa and
I ruminated on the idea that for it’s
early years, the bar served as a com-
munity mourning space, for friends of
victims of the AIDS crisis, and so
many people whose biological families
had abandoned them found themselves
searching for their own people at
this riverside temple.
Just like biological families, found
families have their own stories of
pain, transformation and redemption
inside, and are far from perfect.
However, something I’ve learned about
the core ethic of this space is that
giving up is not an option, and doing
better for each other must always be
a priority. Having a sense of pride
of place, where rituals are held
without compromise, is what turns an
ordinary space into a reliable sanc-
tuary, even when the world feels like
it’s turning inside out and going up-

4. side down.
2016 was the year I personally need-
ed this sanctuary. At the beginning
of it, a revered friend and nightlife
icon, Ellie Conant Passed away. The
last place I’d hung out with her was
Hen’s the year before, where she vis-
ited Homotown as the party was just a
few weeks old, and reminded me that I
needed to have more fun with my life,
not get caught up with the ambiva-
lence of the world when life is so
short.
A year after that conversation I got
to DJ the first Valentines Day after
Marriage Equality, with Edie Windsor
in the booth.
Pride season traumatized queer night-
life when Pulse, in Orlando happened.
Over summer Henrietta’s signed a 15
year lease. In Fall America tried to
elect it’s first woman president, who
won the popular vote, but lost the
election. And on November 8th, the
country elected an asshole who’s nev-
er worked in government, while the
lesbian bar watched me weep through a
DJ set I wouldn’t have been able to
do anywhere else.
Two days later on November 10th, Hen-
rietta Hudson turned 25, holding its
place as the last and oldest les-

5. bian bar in Manhattan, and now 2016
is turning into 2017, and I’m writing
this all just before the last Homo-
town of the old year, 2016.
Thursday nights are when we get to
mourn, celebrate, and reflect on
the precious life ahead of us now.
There’s no time to waste, this is an
invitation to dance and celebrate an-
other miraculous year in communi-
ty and on this earth, regardless of
what’s happening in the world or in
our personal lives. I hope to see you
tonight at the bar on the river named
after the river.
Love,
your dj who is also named after a
river.
(p.s. this text incorporates QR codes
so you can use a smartphone to ac-
cess media online that connects with
the text)
[original music]

6. Follow Your Bliss
(August 25, 2016)
if it’s the choice between base level
survival that includes total joy about
yr life’s work… vs being miserable mak-
ing money and having to go insane inside
of yourself for it (and having to escape
in painful/unhealthy ways)… I think New
Yorkers are an interesting split between
these two streams… the ones who hang in a
while seem to figure out a mid-way situ-
ation… sustainability does seem to be
about compromise in demanding environ-
ments.

7. Apex
(August 3, 2017)
Summer is at it’s apex, and it’s the time
to share a ridiculous bar story. I used
to work at this place called sweet re-
venge that turned into one last shag, but
doing a daytime bbq party there… people
got really drunk starting early.
The floor plan was such that the bathroom
was in direct view of the dj booth and
there were a lot of feminists coming to
to those parties, or at least women NOT
wanting men to tell them how to do ANY-
THING. Which was a peculiar dynamic be-
cause the security was typically a hulk-
ing soft-tempered man.
One day, a woman got belligerently drunk
and went into the bathroom to take a dump
(beer in hand), leaving the door wide
open. During my set I looked over and saw
her waving at me from the toilet and got
a little disoriented. THEN, when security
figured out what was going on, he tried to
close the door, and she started screaming
at him like, “Don’t tell me what to do
I’m a WOMAN, don’t you close that door on
ME” and that man left her alone.
Every time I looked up I swear to god
that lady was waving at me from the toi-
let, and i was getting fidgety about it,
so the security asked me what he should
do. So I told him to stand in front of
the door with his back to her, so he did

8. it, to save the room from being held hos-
tage by a rebellious defecation.
But i swear to god she was waving over
his shoulder at me. Summer is TOTALLY
distracting. some would call it a shit-
show, i’m just calling it the time be-
tween picking songs.

9. Pilgrimages
(August 11, 2017)
theme of the night might be pilgrimages.
seems like summer brings a lot of tour-
ists from other parts of the world here.
lesbian tourists. sometimes from places
in the world where self-determination is
criminalized, and this must feel like
utopia to them.
occasionally, in early summer, women
who are here studying from other coun-
tries come in on their last night in the
states before going back home, to mourn
the passing of an adventure and reflect
on their time being free and queer. It’s
happened a couple times.
student visa population is here.

10. Thich Nhat Hanh: Hydration
(August 11, 2017)
“When you plant lettuce, if it does not
grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce.
You look for reasons it is not doing
well. It may need fertilizer, or more
water, or less sun. You never blame the
lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our
friends or family, we blame the other
person. But if we know how to take care
of them, they will grow well, like the
lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect
at all, nor does trying to persuade using
reason and argument. That is my experi-
ence. No blame, no reasoning, no argu-
ment, just understanding. If you under-
stand, and you show that you understand,
you can love, and the situation will
change.”
~ Thích Nhất Hạnh
Give people water when they’re drinking
too much, don’t judge them, hydrate them.

11. Sulky Butch
(August 3, 2017)
Tonight i walked in, there was a sulky,
sullen loner kinda baby butch sitting in
a corner nursing a beer. Almost sneering
at me at first - maybe just had a bad day
and even a smiling cuddly dj isn’t gonna
cut it.
Then the music starts, with the slow
songs, I watch her face soften, she moves
over to a different seat in the room,
where i can read her thoughts from basi-
cally… eye contact zone… and then… RnB
turns to hiphop, hiphop turns to dance-
hall, and now she is dancing under the
strobe light like this place is for HER,
and the women are watching her and join-
ing her! She just started the party.
Marvelous transition, you never know who
in the room holds the secret to the par-
ty. However, I know for a fact that it’s
the ones who step out of their boundaries
who make it ok for the rest of the room
to join in on the sexiness, silliness,
and uninhibited joy when it has a chance
to emerge.

12. Homecoming Season
(August 24, 2017)
Tonight the bar is full of couples in
all stages of relationship. The marathon
kissers, a tourist meets local pair, me
and booker, visiting dj and bae, even the
door girl is in love. It’s like Valen-
tine’s Day, the reprise. And everyone’s
singing Amy Winehouse together. Valerie
singalong.
and there are beautiful women with beau-
tiful accents all over the place, taking
in the tail end of summer tourist season.
A couple just spoke to me, one from the
caribbean the other from India… beautiful
accents.
and theres the multi-colored hair of the
september children… coming back from
their summers away, roots all grown out,
fading pinks blues greens etc, ready to
hit the books and the club with hopefully
equal vigor.
Welcome home!

13. Irene the Marine on Labor Day
(September 4, 2016)
My friend Irene shows up for my gigs
all the time, because she likes classic
tunes. Bar staff calls her “tikka’s boo”
because I always need to dance with her.
But this night, the four of us were sit-
ting in the booth after the pool game and
began talking about our tattoos.
Irene showed us her forearm and theres a
USMC (US MARINE CORPS) emblem taking up
significant real estate. She told us she
used to be a Marine! She’s 79, and still
kills it on the dance-floor. We love her
at the bar. She is “not trans, but IN-
TERSEX” which is a critical distinction
since we don’t really talk about intersex
folks enough in the queer communities.

14. Harvest Moon Eclipse
(September 16, 2016)
She really walked in alone and danced in
front of me making solid eye contact for
like 15 minutes last night… HUNTING. no
requests, no initiation rites or formali-
ties, just made me terribly shy. this
would normally feel creepy but it did NOT
last night. i have a feeling that one’s
going to be back. Hide yr daughters and
your wives the Harvest moon eclipse to-
night…

15. Rinpoche
(October 14, 2016)
One night, a Rinpoche, which is a term
that refers to certain celebrated holy
men in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions
walks into the bar. This particular
Rinpoche is an incarnation of Milarepa.
In Tibetan, Mila means “great man” and
repa, “cotton clad one” So this guy from
the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Bud-
dhism walks into the bar wearing a red
flannel as if he knows where he is and
has been there before, strides up to the
DJ booth and we shake hands, have a warm
greeting hug, and I invite him in to have
a conversation during my DJ set.
I learn that he was raised in Nepal, in
exile from Bhutan, and currently living
in Colorado. Being anointed as a living
incarnation of Milarepa has made him a
political target, so for much of his life
he has been in hiding, or undercover. NYC
queer nightlife is not a reality he’s en-
tered prior to this, so he is both en-
chanted and dumbfounded by what he sees
around him.
“So they’re not into men at all?”
I respond,”Some of them like men, but
they don’t come here to meet men”
“But Tikka DJ, this is a very powerful
position you’re in here. This is basi-
cally a temple of women, who want nothing
to do with men, and everything to do with

16. each other”
“Dakinis” I chuckle
He grins,”Dakini’s rhymes with bikinis!”
(“Traditionally, the term dakini has been
used for outstanding female practitio-
ners, consorts of great masters, and to
denote the enlightened female principle
of nonduality which transcends gender.” -
Khandro Rinpoche)
“You’re just a regular guy, huh?” I ask.
“No, but Tikka DJ it’s a powerful job
you have here, keeping people hanging on
songs all night. You must be attracted to
power.”And this trajectory shift leads me
to press play on a pre-recorded mix so I
can really talk to him.
I tell him that in the world that I live
in, there are few places where I feel
that immigrants, people of color, el-
ders, folks with different ability lev-
els and coping skills, people of varying
economic privilege, transient people,
and long-time patrons, all women and
queers, can comfortably gather, and that
this is a space that’s been accommodat-
ing that for a while… like a temple… but
yes, I totally love attention from women.
Who doesn’t? Finally I remind him there
aren’t very many places in the world
where I can walk into a room and don’t
have to battle or prove myself worthy of
being empowered.

17. He looks down, nodding in somber agree-
ment, and pauses before turning the con-
versation awkward, in a child-like way,
“But how do women even have sex with each
other?”
“Man, aren’t you a Tantric Buddhist? I
mean, I know you’re in exile or some-
thing, but you can look this up on the
internet. We’re not in Nepal anymore.
Don’t believe what you see in random porn
though.” I get him to crack up, and his
corporeal questioning re-routes itself.
He asks me if I’ve been to Nepal, where
he grew up, and I tell him I went once
as a teenager, it had been a dream come
true. The summer before heading off to
college, I was in India with my parents
one last time, and I asked that the three
of us take a trip there together. I tell
him I wanted to take them to Pashupati-
nath and Boudhanath, Hindu and Buddhist
holy sites in Kathmandu, one for them,
one for me. I tell him we saw the sunrise
over the peak of Everest together too.
That was our last trip as a family. I
tell him I most clearly remember the the
juxtaposition of erotic carvings and the
funereal pyres all within the same temple
walls. Also the color of the sky behind
the highest peak on earth at the earliest
light of day.
He tells me his son’s name is Ashoka,
who’s namesake is a famous Indian emper-
or that let go of his violent ways after
converting to Buddhism.
Returning our conversation to the mix,

18. this time I point to the computer, and
begin explaining what is going on now in
my DJ set and in this moment, “I’m ty-
ing songs together for them so that ev-
erything feels connected, like one long
song, and the goal is to make everyone
feel comfortable together and not want to
leave this place, with the help of mu-
sic.”
“Like magic”
“Yes, like magic”
I remember at this moment that the man
standing next to me is believed to be
an incarnation of Milarepa, who’s story
started with mastering sorcery, and wag-
ing revenge in the 11th century, but
through the course of his life turned
inward toward meditation and eventually
teaching the dharma. He meditated for 12
years before achieving enlightenment, and
it was understood that his songs and po-
ems were all improvisations that emerged
from enlightened states of consciousness
arising from those meditations.
Rinpoche steps down from the DJ booth
and leans back against the wall standing
in perfect stillness for a while, watch-
ing the figures in the room gather and
disperse under the changing music and
I’m sure that in the moments of listen-
ing he can feel the sub-bass throbbing
in his chest, running up form the ground
through his feet, emanating out from his
body and into the universe. His eyes fol-
low shadows accented by streams of strob-

19. ing color, and there are flecks of mirror-
ball light running laps around the walls,
which are decorated with Halloween themed
artifacts: skulls, spiderwebs, silhouette
bats, orange black and red everything.
On his way out Rinpoche asks me...
“Tikka DJ, how long have you been doing
this work?”
“12 years now.”
“Long time to do one thing”
“Sure is”
“You’ve seen many things here, many
lives”
“I certainly have”
The next morning i wake up in my apart-
ment in brooklyn, to a cacophony of text
messages, which are handwritten symbols
in Tibetan script. I forward them to my
roommate, Harry, who brought the Rinpoche
to the bar the night before and he trans-
lates them back to me.
They say, “Me (fire), Chu (water), Om (the
eternal sound), the speech of all the
Buddhas, and the wisdom of all the Bud-
dhas”

22. The Professor and the Ex-Convict
(November 19, 2015)
One night a very tall, broad, butch woman
with shoulder length corn-rows and abun-
dant facial tattoos walked into the room
and bee-lined right to the DJ booth and
let herself in before I knew what was go-
ing on. She stood next to me, a six foot
tall, musclebound butch with an unclear
agenda.
I pulled my headphones off my ears,
slightly terrified, and she seemed to
growl down at me from the sky like thun-
der or Zeus or something,”Do you take
requests or what?” I was terrified. This
woman’s boundaries took my head out of my
mix.
Nori, who was working the door and pro-
tecting me from customers that night, im-
mediately saw what was going on and ran
into the booth to intervene. Then she ex-
plained to me that this customer had just
gotten out of prison and was reacclima-
tizing to life in the real world.
I turned to the giant, extended my hand,
we shook, I pulled her in for a hug, and
felt like all the air got squeezed out
me in the embrace, which involved lift-
ing me off the ground somehow - somewhere
between levitation and asphyxiation. She
agreed to not rush the DJ booth in the
future, and proceeded to the dance floor
to try her odds with the other customers.
Intoxicated with freedom, she mingled and

23. flirted with complete abandon, and no fear
of rejection. It was inspiring to watch
her move through the audience, terrify-
ing some, mesmerizing the rest. She was a
new and notable presence in the room for
a few weeks.
One day, I came in for my shift, and she
was already sitting in one of the bar
corners, looking a little heartbroken,
actually, when the door swung open and a
short south asian lady with thick curly
hair with a very academic white streak
right down the middle, stern glasses, a
mirrored skirt that reflected back the
light of the disco ball, strutted in.
I saw her and turned on some bollywood,
cos… family. The ex-con’s face lit up,
enchanted by these foreign dance moves,
and they made contact.
Nori’s eye’s widened as she recognized
this sparkling new character, “She’s a
famous academic - she writes about domes-
tic violence in the LGBTQ communities,
and especially in prisons. She’s like… a
HUGE deal in the criminal justice world”
The professor and the ex-con approached
each other and the chemistry was tan-
gible. They showed up for each other in
this space over and over for a few weeks,
it became their meeting place. At one
point I remember looking up from the mix
and seeing my tall new friend cradling
the professor and spinning together under
the strobing lights. I lit some incense
for them and turned on some slow jams.

24. Then one day, the professor brought an
extra person with her. A white man with
white hair in a khaki trench coat, which
he didn’t take off all night. My tall
corn-rowed friend, who by this time had
gotten into the habit of guarding the DJ
booth for me, fending off aggressive cus-
tomers, was much taller than him and was
sneering at him from across the room, a
daunting figure even from 50 feet away,
and the professor introduced the two. The
dude looked really uncomfortable, but
eventually settled into a corner at the
dyke bar and watched the night unfold be-
fore him, looking perplexed and resigned.
He didn’t show up again after that, but
the first two kept returning for each oth-
er.
The professor and the tall ex-con dal-
lied this way every thursday in front of
me. So I noticed when they stopped coming
in and I asked Nori about it and she told
me the professor left her husband for the
ex-con and they u-hauled it, they’re to-
tally in love
I mean, what kind of dude wears a trench
coat to a lesbian bar, doesn’t take it
off, and sulks in a corner all night any-
way. I hope everyones better off now.
That’s how I feel about that story. That
shit really happened.

25. Breaking the Rules
(November 12, 2016)
i’m breaking all my rules this week
y’all. and so should you. fuck trump.
i had a dream last night where all the
dykes with powertools got together, built
a bunch of trebuchets out of scrapwood,
rolled them down 5th avenue in the middle
of the night and took down Trump tower.
for real. FOR REAL. (i’ll see you on the
dancefloor in 45 mins queers)
[Video: Womens March
DC, January 2017]

26. Motorcycle Marco
(November 14, 2016)
Last night I was in the deli after dj-ing
and I started crying. Then this big dude
in motorcycle gear walks in crying, like
hysterically crying, about what this all
means and I see him holding a motorcycle
helmet in his hand, whole situation makes
me so nervous so I get out of my head and
start asking him questions. I tell him
I’m SUPER gay so I’m extra worried about
all these developments being reversed,
and an immigrant and brown and that I’m
worried for so many communities I’m in
right now. Turns out, he’s a high speed
motorcycling teacher, and a bassist,
who has suffered from partial paralysis
(still rides and teaches).
We start talking and as he begins speak-
ing about his wife, who came to this
country from Japan, he starts weeping be-
tween words. Because she is the love of
his life, she is the center of his uni-
verse. He tells me he was raised by two
women, that he had just woken up from
falling asleep watching the elections and
couldn’t tell if he was in a nightmare
now.
I end up hanging out with that guy for
two hours in his apartment. He tells me
they rarely have guests because his wife
is a hoarder- she was poor and beaten my
her parents when she was little when her
room would get messy, so now collecting
stuff is a compulsion, but he is so in

27. love with her that he loves being sur-
rounded by reminders that she can just
be herself around him and he just loves
her no matter what and never wants her to
have to change anything about herself for
him.
We talk about Nixon, Reagon, Bush, Clin-
ton and Obama era politics and he’s never
been as terrified in his life about what
could happen next. We pick up guitars and
start playing. He shows me his motorcyl-
ing videos on YouTube and I show him my
songs on soundcloud and we share some
really good stories with each other to
laugh.
At 4am I tell him I have to go home but
that he has a friend he can visit in the
dj booth every Thursday and Sunday at
hens and that we’re going to get through
this and holy shit he is lucky to have
this kind of love in his life and I’m re-
ally glad he didn’t get drunk and get on
that motorcycle last night.
I ask him how his wife feels about him
riding high speed motorcycles all the
time and he says… she does it too… nei-
ther of them is scared of death, and the
odds of losing each other are about the
same if they both do that thing they both
love anyway.
This is the time to hold each other close
and remember who we are y’all. Healing
is going to come from unconditional love
right now, and being ready to look death
in the eye.

28. He told me I saved him from a very dark
night and it was relief to not feel
judged and to be able to make a new
friend while his wife was in Japan, be-
cause he had nobody to talk to at that
moment when the world felt like it was
crashing down on him. Even tho his whole
job is basically about helping people
learn to crash safely when you’re flying
at high speed. And also he was basically
giving me space to crash when I needed
it. What a night. What a stranger.

29. Dear Obama, Pardon Chelsea Manning not a
Turkey This Thanksgiving
(November 23, 2016)
This holiday is a celebration of co-
lonial violence where peak femme labor
gets exploited (women in the kitchen, men
watching TV, etc) but I also know that
it’s a time when people with lots of dif-
ferent cultures in their own families
get a chance to merge cross continental
sensibilities via food. The celebrating
genocide part kills my appetite. Mostly
I just want to eat tofurkey, saag, and
sushi today. Chill with my peeps.
Also I read someone saying on twitter
that Obama should be pardoning Chelsea
Manning instead of a turkey. YES…
So many Indian kids from the subcontinent
growing up in the states are scratching
their heads right now. Wrong Indian.

30. Strictly Ballroom
(December 11, 2015)
One evening I was watching people dance
on the early side. HipHop was on and a
woman in a black dress, was wearing what
looked like show clothes and makeup, her
hips were swaying and serpentine arms
gestured to point at the disco ball di-
rectly above her. I took it as a cue.
I switched the music to Celia Cruz, and
heads began turning toward the center of
the dance floor as the genre shift sunk
in. Suddenly she was doing a classic rou-
tine, all eyes were on her, doing her
part of a duet on her own.
Then, the unbelievable magic of a passer-
by in a fedora and dancing shoes strolled
in out of nowhere, they made eye contact,
and the dance began between strangers in
a bar. They both knew the movements, and
the precise footwork gave them away as
two trained ballroom dancers.
Their feet were drawing parallel arcs
that moved in tempo with the lights, they
made very stormy eye contact with each
other at crescendoes in the music, they
knew how to anticipate each others move-
ments, and… as they got accustomed to
each others’ styles they begin to impro-
vise, adding signature gestures to the
performance. What I saw was an impromptu
dialogue between two passionate artists,
and I feel grateful for having witnessed
it.

31. Before the end of the song, the strang-
er in the Fedora dipped out and left the
girl in the black dress standing alone
under the mirrorball again. The crowd
filled into the dance floor and surrounded
her with cheering after she’d given an
inspired and spontaneous performance.
I’m sure the exiting dancer would remem-
ber that night he accidentally stumbled
into a lesbian club chasing the sound of
Celia Cruz in the air on Hudson Street. I
assume he went home after that.

32. The Hindu Bush
(Dec. 22, 2016)
Happy Holidays y’all. I’m not Christian
or Jewish, but I grew up in this coun-
try with my grandparents in the house,
because I’m from an extended family val-
ue system. My neighborhood as a kid was
mostly working class Irish, Italian, and
German folks, we were the first Indian
family in the neighborhood, and we were
WEIRD. I mean, there were 3 generations
in one house, we had massive garden that
fed us half the year, there were para-
keets flying around my house all the time
because everyone in the house agreed it
was wrong to keep them in a cage except
when outdoors, and my parents were ALWAYS
working.
Santa claus would ride a fire truck
through the neighborhood every year,
stopping every few blocks to let kids sit
on his lap and tell him what they want-
ed for Christmas, and although my par-
ents thought it was strange, that a man
dressed in red rolled through every year
to talk to children about materialism,
they let me participate so I didn’t feel
like the odd one out at the bus stop the
next morning.
One year I climbed the fire engine ladder
and Santa asked me what I wanted, and I
told him I just wanted a goddamn christ-
mas tree in the front window like the
rest of my friends. He looked really con-
fused, but nodded empathically and seemed

33. to feel my pain.
The next day I told my next door neigh-
bors, BFF’s, Ashley and Jessie, two sis-
ters, about the Christmas tree deficit,
and they offered to take me to Sunday
school with them the weeks leading up to
Christmas. Maybe Jesus would get me a
tree and some presents if I got in there
with them. They used to eat dinner with
my family all the time, and somehow… over
time they learned Bengali, my family’s
language, which their parents definitely
did not know about. They called my mom
and dad “Mashi” and “Mesho” which mean
uncle and aunt, respectively. They ad-
dressed my grandparents as their own.
One Friday night we were sitting at the
dinner table, my parents, my grandpar-
ents, and my BFF neighbors, so I brought
up the idea of going to Sunday school
(this whole conversation was happening in
Bengali btw), and Ashley and Jessie made
a plea… this house was missing a Christ-
mas tree. I needed to go to Sunday school
before time ran out for getting the pres-
ents. My parents vetoed Sunday school on
the spot, and then vetoed the tree. But
my grandma and grandpa both seemed unde-
cided so me and the neighbor kids decided
to work on them after dinner instead.
The 5 of us, my grandparents, my neigh-
bors, and myself, resolved to come up
with a solution together, and my grandpa
dropped a golden hint, which was to re-
move the threat of assimilation entirely
from the proposition, and maybe not bring

34. a full sized tree into the house.
I concluded, “We need a Hindu bush, not a
Christmas Tree.”
The neighbor kids and I approached my mom
and dad. There would be no Sunday school,
there would be no massive shedding fo-
liage in the living room, there would
be no requirement of presents under the
tree, there would, however, be christ-
mas lights, a place for my parakeets to
chill, and a secular buffer signaling
proudly from our front window from that
point on. My parents finally gave in and
we got the goddamn tree, but there would
be no cross on top of it or any tacky or
religious ornaments. That was the agree-
ment.
After the tree was purchased from Wool-
worths, I got to watch four grown Indian
people who had never had a Christmas tree
before figure out and set that thing up
in the living room. We went in with the
thought of getting a small sized plastic
tree, but came out with a behemoth, be-
cause my dad actually got into it once
we were in the store. He said, you get
more tree for your money if you just get
the big one. Then my mom insisted on get-
ting the white lights, not the rainbow
ones for the tree. While we were at Wool-
worths, I saw a really sweet parakeet,
and since were were already in a generous
mood, I begged them to add an extra bird
to the family, and they went for it.
The Hindu bush went up and stayed up, my

35. family came to like it, and I remember
having a Friday night dinner on the liv-
ing room couch with Ashley and Jessie,
speaking in Bengali, in late February,
after snows were melting and everyone
else’s real life trees had been picked up
in piles from their curbs. Three para-
keets chirped joyfully from it’s plastic
branches, warming themselves in a line
next to the lights, while we all spooned
home-cooked Bengali food into our mouths,
my mom, dad, grandma and grandpa looking
on.
Ashley asked, “When are you guys going to
take it down? We took ours down a while
ago”
I answered, “The birds like it, so we’ve
agreed to keep it up until the weather
gets warm and they can be around real
trees outside again, in their cage. Prob-
ably April or May.”
So the tree would go up every December
after that, and stay up for the birds un-
til the weather got warm. People thought
we were weird for a while different rea-
son after that, and I was totally ok with
the Hindu bush ritual that my family and
neighbors started with me that year, for
the birds, for the friends, and for the
family. The neighborhood got used to see-
ing a tree with birds in it in our front
window for months after Christmas had
passed.
And THAT is the story of the Hindu Bush.

36. Winter Solstice
(Dec. 21, 2016)
The other night I heard a good story from
Z, the bodega guy next to Hens, about a
patron on a rowdy Saturday night.
If you’ve been there, you know the bo-
dega is a tight and cramped space, with
two main island racks, and the perimeter
crowded with refrigerators holding drinks
and ice cream.
He said a woman, drunk, walked in, did
figure 8’s around the shelves for about 30
minutes, slowly and thoughtfully, then
curled herself up next to the one of the
heating vents in a corner and just fell
asleep holding a bag of chips like a ted-
dy bear.
I asked him about the timeline of her
visit, and he said she was in 1 hour to-
tal, 30 minute chip quest, 30 minute nap,
3 minute purchase, then exit back to the
cold.
I asked him how long he was going to let
her sleep there if she hadn’t woken up to
leave, and he said, “We’re open really
late and she just seemed like she really
needed a nap. I would have been cruel to
wake her up.”
New York winters are tough man, stay
strong, keep helping each other out. The
longest night just passed.

38. A Letter to A Mentor
(Women of Letters@Joes Pub, Jan. 2016)
Dear Chebiji,
It’s been a long time, but I feel like I
need to tell you about this trippy dream
I had a couple years ago. It was a dog
death dream. I remembered you telling me
I needed to keep a wolf dog around me at
all times, because… that’s what lord Shi-
va, the god of destruction and creation,
would do. So when I saw this older wolfier
version of my dog in the dream, I knew it
was about you.
I was asleep in a nest of blankets in
an ice-fishing shack, burrowed deep and
dreaming new songs with my old wolf
brother, when a sound from outside woke
me up and I picked up a rifle to go inves-
tigate. All I saw was silent white ho-
rizon, not a sound in the air with some
thinly traced timberlines in the back-
ground - it felt very very peaceful. But
when I returned to the fishing hut, rifle
in hand, the dog was curled up with a
bullet wound, and sleeping in the exact
position in which I’d left him. I hadn’t
heard a gunshot, but before even entering
the hut I just knew my friend was dead.
I woke up from a suffocating panic. And
that’s when I received a letter from a
stranger from the north pole, informing
me that you had passed. It was a painful
revelation. I hid under blankets, dream-
less for a long time. But after emerging
I began to see all the moments in my ev-

39. ery day life where you had been stealth-
ily making regular appearances all along.
I had been on hiatus from DJ-ing, and was
reconsidering the path. So far from the
place you and I met almost a decade ago
in 2004.
If ever a nightclub felt like a temple,
it was Nickie’s in the Lower Haight on a
Tuesday night. The first person I met at
your club night was a Tibetan guy, who
looked like an old man with child-like
proportions, dressed in full traditional
garb, and immediately told me you were
his hero from day one. When I asked him
when day one was, he told me his day one
at this party was 16 years ago but his
day one with Chebiji, must have been many
lives ago. He called himself a “devotee.”
Your space felt like a sanctuary for ex-
iles and nomads and immigrants. Everyone
in the room had a look about them, as if
they had all just wandered into Aladdin’s
cave by accident. In my case I found you
after a hippy couch-surfer named Kris
Babylon told me I needed to check you out
because of the indian samples in your
tracks. He said I should go find you and
tell you about the harmoniums my uncle
builds. He said you seemed like the kind
of guy who might already know where I was
really coming from. That ridiculous hip-
py. Good thing his last name was Babylon,
or I would have completely ignored him.
And then Parissa, who knew the local mu-
sic landscape, confirmed that you were in-
deed not an imposter, regardless of the

40. wizard sleeves, John Lennon glasses, and
middle aged man-bun. Thank goddess she
dragged me into your booth that night,
and instigated that state of chemical
induced egolessness that turned us into
three vulnerable adventurers from In-
dia Africa and Iran, at once terrified
and mesmerized by the post-911 American
Dream. The intimacy was immediate, as if
we had been waiting our whole lives to
meet. In the booth you showed us photos
of your daughter, who was my age, and
your new grandson, who you were worried
for.
Before any alterations or introductions
though, immediately after crossing the
threshold past a bouncer I heard your mu-
sic, on a club system, being woven out
of your life, which felt like MY life, I
just knew I needed to make that stuff,
and be in this kind of space, as often as
possible. Then came a dinner invite, that
summer’s Monday nights turned into cook-
ing lessons. Cooking lessons turned into
production planning lessons. And your
advice about trying the DJ path in New
York, which seemed as idiotic as Babylon
telling me to find you, turned out to be a
great tip.
And then when you showed me your routine,
walking to and from the club where you
played the songs, to the studio where you
made the songs, and the kitchen, the glo-
rious kitchen, where the real meditation
happened before a song could even begin.
I watched you chop and simmer memories
and modify constantly evolving process-

41. es, and layer work on heat and tradition
and imagination alternating with taste-
testing and spice curation, staying on it
until a perfect dish would arrive, like a
surprise gift from the goddess.
I still think it’s a shitty idea to try
to make vegan saag paneer, but I did take
your tip on learning how to cook really
well, and I held on to that ridiculous
DJ name, and well, you know. It seemed
to work out ok. Getting to DJ The White
House Diwali party a few years back - I
felt you in the room, even though I know
you were struggling with cancer at the
time and weren’t really talking about it
much. I noticed our conversations getting
shorter, fewer, and far between until you
seemed to have faded away, present but
distant. So admittedly the letter I got
from Addy from the North pole a year or
so later, came as a confusing kind of re-
lief.
So here’s the correspondence:
Addy:
hey hey....a very warm Christmas
greetings to you from finland...the
north pole...i accidentally came
across your music today....and i
have to telll you i was hooked on
to your sounds cloud account for
next 4 hours...i just could not
stop the music...it was so hyp-
notic and deep...i totally got di-
solved in it......its very rare to

42. find artists with such perfection as
yourself....i have been deeply influ-
enced by the music of Cheb i Sabbah
.....he died last month....but to
be honest ....i feel your music was
very close to his spiritually...i
dont know if you know him....but i
want to thank you for doing such
beautiful music which really gives
our lives a meaning.....i shall
follow your music from now on....
and hope to expirence you live in
Europe ...or some part of the
world.....thank you for accepting my
friends request as well. gratitude
for your work. cheers
12/22/2013 3:09PM
Me:
Chebiji was a personal mentor of
mine Addy, thank you for reaching
out to me. This is such sad news,
but the way you delivered it to me
says so much about Chebiji’s legacy.
Thank YOU for inspiring me to keep
creating. This message meant a lot
to me.
Blessings to you in the new year,
Janhavi
I’ve taken your advice about honoring
potential and I’m making music along-
side whatever else is going on in life,
like love, mourning, oppressive cultural
norms, boredom, hetero-patriarchy, the

43. constant struggle to embrace imperfec-
tion, all of it. I am learning to zoom
out into geological time regardless of
the day to day circumstances, and just
create without self-judgement. I’m hard
at work on my second score now for LAVA,
which is the feminist acrobatic geology
inspired dance company down the street
from me on Bergen Street. You told me to
find and work for the Goddess as much as
possible, so I am.
I don’t know if goodbye is even real for
people who believe in reincarnation, so I
wrote you a song made out of some Benga-
li river crossing music samples and some
drum machines. The latest is called “May
All Your River Crossings Be Blessed With
Love.”
With so much Gratitude,
Janhavi

44. Nightlife in the Movements
(January 23, 2017)
things nightlife people know how to do
really well that are relevant to movement
infrastructure…
1) move through crowds lightning fast
2) identify how many people are in a
space by sight
3) pay attention for an extended period
of time, being stationary and observing
what is happening in a visible radius
4) detect early symptoms of violent be-
havior in public space
5) conflict management and de-escalation
techniques
6) Non-verbal communication skills (e.g
knowing how to explain things to people
on your team from across the room without
using your voice)
just saying nightlife folks… you have su-
perpowers you can contribute right now. i
felt it in DC Saturday.

45. Moments from This Weekend
(January 30, 2017)
Streets are flooded with dissenting bod-
ies, police fidgeting anxiously on the
edges, roars erupting in waves, signs
above heads and signs of life are every-
where. There are too many of us with a
problem with this for any of it to pos-
sibly be ok.
Underground I see a Spanish speaking fam-
ily sitting next to me on the subway. A
young couple in their twenties with two
kids, one in a stroller, the other sit-
ting on the mothers brothers lap. Mother
tells her teenage brother how to seat
her son properly, he adjusts the child
and holds his hand over the kids chest.
A tender look comes over his sisters
face as he secures his nephew. I know
she is thinking her brother will be a
good father someday. Baby daddy rocks the
stroller on the side.
There’s hope around, even though it’s
tough right now, it’s totally around. I’m
noticing it more for sure.

46. [I Made this track
with Ednita,
who I work with on
Sundays]

48. Unwritten
(January 31, 2017)
When I first started working at this
place, on Thursday nights, Lisa told me
there are all kinds of folks who come
here for sanctuary, for a protective mo-
ment where they can live their lives
without scrutiny. It’s a popular place
for love under cover for gay men, co-
workers in secret relationships, trans
folks finding their new way apart from
the gay male gaze, elders who don’t re-
late to the club scene but still want to
be in community, people mourning on their
own and remembering their earlier times
there, and queer folks needing a break
from their public communities in general
without wanting to disconnect completely.
I was digging for details about a group
that had come in earlier and piqued my
curiosity.
The week before that, I was standing out-
side and a minivan screeched to a halt
in front of the bar, and parallel parked
with aggressive precision that threw me
into a state of awe. Inside the van I
spied a furious scramble of wardrobe,
and heard muffled giggling coming through
the glass, punctuated by squeals. The
door slid open giving way to an artfully
dressed squad of femmes, accessorized and
pumped up to party in high heels, fil-
ing gleefully into Henrietta Hudson, last
dyke bar in Manhattan..
Inside they peeled off layers and got to

49. business on the dance floor, putting me to
work. I watched the leader of their pack
diplomatically turn advances into conver-
sations for most of the night, keeping a
tight circle with her group and inviting
newcomers in, and also really going for
it when the right one approached. She was
strikingly beautiful, with dark hair kind
eyes, a generous smile I could see from
across the room, and a warm manner that
magnetized strangers and friends alike.
I questioned Booker about this new group
of regulars I hadn’t met yet and she
responded,”The Hasidic girls”
“They have kids at home?”
“Lots of kids at home”
“They need us”
“They totally need us”
This was a group of women who really
loved to dance, I mean, they cut loose
in a way that felt like accumulated pres-
sure being catalyzed without ever having
been filtered through regular exposure to
club life - they definitely made up their
own dance moves and did not give a fuck
about what anyone thought of their unique
and varied styles. I did a decent job of
keeping them moving, but the leader of
the crew came up to the booth and asked
if I could play Natasha Beddingfield for
her.
“Ya know my favorite song is Unwritten”

50. She had an iconic New York old-school
Jewish accent, which made me feel like I
was in a time machine talking to her.
I chose the track before, and one that
came after. Michie One’s “Rich Girl”
would come first, because it was a Fiddler
on the Roof derivative that pulled the
Caribbean queers onto the dance floor and
got a wink from the rebel faction leader.
“Unwritten” mobilized the Hasidic girls
which energized the whole room, finally
everyone settled in together with Michael
Jackson’s “Rock with You,” and the course
of the evening was fixed. We were all in
this together.
At the end of the night the staff dis-
cussed the fact that some communities
still need a place to go that is for and
by women, and that they can arrive at at
any given night of the week and know they
are prioritized there, even if that’s not
how it feels at home for them. I under-
stood what that meant.
And from that point forward whenever the
Hasidic girls return I make sure to play
Natasha Beddingfield’s “Unwritten” as soon
as I know they are in the room, it’s a
gesture of recognition that inevitably
kicks off a glorious dance party, even if
they are the only ones there.

52. Edie Windsor on Valentines Day
(February 14th, 2016)
Lucky me getting to DJ the first Valen-
tines Day after Marriage Equality, with
this queer rights movement revolutionary.
Edie Windsor.
Also shitty that i just had a breakup
yesterday, but mostly… THIS:

53. Love at Last Call
(February 26, 2016)
My favorite though is the end of the
night dykes who are using good music as
an excuse to finally find each other in
this place where they know they are both
looking for the same thing. thank fucking
goddess for the dyke bar. blows my mind
this is the last one left in the city…
nightlife capital of the world. Singular
experience to be a resident DJ here and
now. SINGULAR. This gorgeous ritual.
[A MIX FOR YOU]

54. Shubho Dhrishti
(February 17, 2017)
I see this gaze in the dyke bar all the
time when strangers find each other in the
dark, or lovers remember the night be-
fore in public, or when a pair engrossed
in conversation forget the world watching
them in their first interactions. Their
individual realities disintegrate and re-
formulate as the beginnings of a “we”.
But it often starts with a certain type
of gaze that I first encountered in India
as a twelve year old, at my cousin’s wed-
ding, the first Hindu wedding ceremony I’d
ever seen.
I experienced an unforgettable moment
there, after the groom and bride had been
averting each others’ gaze as part of the
dawn to dusk ceremony. Aunties and female
relatives were projecting Bengali words
and phrases unfamiliar to me at the cou-
ple, who were under a shroud held up by
family over their heads- the women voices
surrounding them were casting fertility
benedictions in a language I knew, but
couldn’t decipher. Watching the ritual it
was clear that something I wasn’t sup-
posed to know or talk about about yet was
being acknowledged and celebrated in glo-
rious abundance around me.
In Bengali, this stage of the wedding is
called “Shubho dhrishti” which I’ve come
to understand as being the public wit-
nessing of the coital gaze. The bride and
groom face each other standing up, eyes

55. looking down at the ground, the woman
covering her face with holy leaves. Fi-
nally, after a grueling day of averting
eye contact, they are about to look at
each other.
She pulls the leaves down revealing her
painted face, for the whole room to wit-
ness this intimate moment, which is
soundtracked by women ululating around
them, smoke being thrown by a priest, a
hijra playfully taunting the shy new pair
about what’s to come, the iconic sound of
the shehnai which is an Indian clarinet
associated with weddings, and with chil-
dren and elders leaning in curiously to
witness. It’s the sexiest, most under-
stated marriage ritual I’ve ever seen, a
public spectacle of intimate revelation.
The cloth gets lifted, and the two are
locked in eye contact, and everyone in
the room wants to know the brightness,
color, radius, rate of pulsation, and
longevity of this spark the pair is fi-
nally allowed to set off, after an ex-
hausting journey to reach the point of
arrival.
Sometimes I see people find this moment in
front of me as I’m working at the bar,
and it’s impossible to ignore it’s pres-
ence in a room. It’s impossible to not
feel the set shift toward carnal songs or
genres that invite coordinated sexually
expressive movement.
In New York, it’s Reggaeton, Bachata,
Salsa, Merengue, RnB, etc. I imagine if

56. there where Argentinian tourists in the
room, a Tango would have a similar ef-
fect, and often I feel like I am now
the ululating auntie or the sassy hijra
throwing naughty suggestions at new lov-
ers as they cruise through the hours for-
getting the long journeys that brought
them to this place, finally, at long last.
I never get tired of seeing people arrive
at this moment.

58. Solitary Magic
(March 16, 2017)
i mean, really though, how can you not
love the people who dance to the music
whether people are dancing with them or
not?
at first they look solitary and then in a
little while you figure out they are where
the party really starts. that one per-
son who does not give a fuck about who
is watching or who is dancing with them.
That person is the seed every time.

59. Emotional Tourism
(March 16, 2017)
people come here to get their forbid-
den love on all the time. sometimes, the
same person comes here over and over and
over again to get all different kinds of
forbidden love, sometimes it’s a visitor
from another place getting their souvenir
experience, sometimes a former employee
coming through to get their nostalgia fix,
sometimes people find out new things about
who they already know around here after
dancing a while too.
there’s a woman in here tonight tho, who
is very sad about the relationship she’s
in and it’s clear she doesn’t know how
to get out of it. I never know exact-
ly how to handle that because I’ve been
there and I remember that the only per-
son she’ll listen to anyway is her own
life experience, so… there’s that. she’s
always welcome here tho… a few differ-
ent versions of her are in here tonight,
actually
tonight’s theme at the dyke bar is emo-
tional tourism. it is cold as fuck out-
side, and always warm in here.

60. Couple Talk
(April 3, 2017)
Sometimes in a nightclub you’ll hear a
couple in conflict about something where
as an outsider, you understand that they
are saying exactly the same thing and
wanting the same thing at the same time,
just using different language and deliv-
ery to the extent that, to each other,
they sound like they are asking for oppo-
site things. And actually they are fight-
ing about their tactics, not their de-
sired outcomes. Love is FUNNY. I’m still
watching. By the way Venus retrograde
ends April 15th, hang in there lovers.

61. Seasons of Love
(April 23, 2017)
playing the rent soundtrack at the last
dyke bar in manhattan. it’s kinda a big
deal cos EVERYONE sings along to Seasons
of Love. These things resonate past their
time because they are from this place.
New York in the 90’s…

62. Sirens and Muses
(May 4, 2017)
Every year, toward the end of May and
just before pride season something spe-
cial happens at the dyke bar. New York,
being a port city, and Henrietta Hudson
being the last lesbian bar on the island,
I like to imagine a Xena warrior princess
led-crew of sailors finding their way to
the dance floor, lured by the siren song
and the enchanted island it resonated
from. However, I also like to imagine
Hens as an island of both sirens AND mus-
es. But the older story goes like this…
According to Greek mythology the si-
ren’s song was full of false promises,
with Persephone, the abducted Goddess of
Spring as the constant and tragic inspi-
ration of the song. In the story the most
dangerous part was not the music itself,
but the silence after it’s conclusion.
Supposedly, the end of the song was what
robbed sailors of their will and spir-
it and caused them a lethargic, intoxi-
cated death in it’s absence. Once given
the musical experience of a lifetime,
they could no longer live without it, and
would throw themselves into the ocean and
swim to the island, exhausted, where first
their spirits would get consumed by the
silence, and then their bodies eaten by
the sirens.
In the Odyssey, the way the sailors man-
aged to pass by the island, and also

63. allow for Odysseus, their captain, to
survive hearing the song, was a cunning
and dangerous workaround, that required
total trust on the part of the whole
team. He had them plug their own ears
with beeswax, and strap his body tightly
with ropes to the mast of the ship as it
passed the island.
As the vessel cruised by, Odysseus was
seduced by the music and commanded the
crew to untie him, but they tightened
the cords against his flailing will until
the sirens’ music became inaudible with
distance (aka TEAMWORK). And so, Odys-
seus became the first person to hear the
siren’s song without throwing himself
obsessively into their deadly cannibal
choir practice…
The second part of the Siren story is
that Hera, the queen of the Gods, con-
vinced the Sirens to enter a singing con-
test against the Muses, who inspired lit-
erature science and the arts (as opposed
to just lying around on an island seduc-
ing passing sailors and consuming their
souls).
According to this story, the muses won
the contest and the sirens had to kill
themselves out of embarrassment and their
own inability to cope with failure, and
then the muses made elaborate crowns
out of the sirens’ feathers, which they
pulled off them, and probably did an
amazing victory dance afterwards because…
muses.

64. Meanwhile the plucked white bodies of
the sirens became islands in the sea at
Aptera known as Leukai/Souda. In Greek,
Leukai means “white”.
And so, this is also the creation myth of
an island chain.
[SIRENS AND MUSES]

65. Critical Release
(May 21, 2017)
we’re all constantly making choices and
responding to pressures and privileges
that others see and don’t see, but the
energetic accumulation of the whole thing
is something the body holds and express-
es in all kinds of ways later. Habits of
posture hold it in an almost sculptural
way though. I’m watching bodies in move-
ment and stillness in a nightclub right
now, so… thoughts about people experience
and space.
Lesbians hold a lot of trauma in their
bodies yo… I can see it come in, and
sometimes I also watch it release in the
course of a good night of dancing. But
there’s a lot of trauma here in this com-
munity, dancing is a critical release.

68. Pulse
(June 12, 2016)
Right after 9-11, the way the Islamopho-
bia messed with the Southasian queer com-
munities in NYC really broke my heart. I
mean, IN THE CLUB, people casually dif-
ferentiating themselves as non-Muslim in
conversation, which i did not remember
noticing before that… Everything changed,
and by that I mean the energy in a bound-
ary-dissolving nightclub environment that
felt suddenly dividing instead of unify-
ing, where people are suddenly in a SUPER
FUCKED crucible if they happened to be
Muslim and Queer.
What’s going on now is asking us to take
a look at ourselves as a community again
and decide - TOGETHER - if this is going
to divide us or unify us. I really don’t
like the feeling of splintering communi-
ty y’all. I NEED y’all to dance together
with love and good intentions.
Being a family that opposes structural
oppression is a decision i see you make
on the dance floor consistently so keep up
the awesome work New York LGBTQIA com-
munities, I know we got this, NYC is the
capital of cultural alchemy…
You’re already so fearless and strong,
built from that manhattan schist that
lets the buildings scrape the skies like
that, so keep showing up and don’t stop
building.

69. Pulse, One Year Later (June 12th, 2017)
A lot of nightlife folks are thinking
about PULSE today, so I have an offering
for everyone reading right now… it’s the
four immeasurables prayer:
May all beings attain happiness and its
causes.
May all beings be free from suffering and
its causes.
May all beings never be separated from
joy that is free of misery.
May all beings abide in equanimity, free
from bias, attachment, and aversion.
Now, some folks work in nightlife be-
cause it pays the bills, some folks real-
ly identify with their roles there, some
folks are combinations of both of these
things, but we all got shook up last year
in queer nightlife over this reminder
that even after marriage equality passed
and the slope of normalization of LGBTQI
identities gets steeper and steeper to-
wards acceptance every year, there’s vio-
lence and hatred being projected on our
bodies all the time in the LGBTQIA com-
munities.
Our identities aren’t singular, so we all
carry different layers of vulnerability
to the forces surrounding us, and ought
to do the work to be aware of what we can
each do to protect each other, and espe-
cially protect the ones who are in daily
battle with the mechanisms of structural
oppression and shouldn’t be expected to
ask for protection to begin with because

70. survival mode is not a teaching position.
Pulse was a mostly working class peo-
ple of color nightlife community, and
the reverberations of the massacre shook
the nation when an angry man with a gun
walked into a room full of queers in a
place trying to be themselves with their
friends and chosen families. I walked
into work at the bar the next night and
everything felt dimmer, quieter, and
fragile around me in a way I hadn’t ex-
perienced before, it felt like the day
after surgery, as the anesthesia wears
off and the pain surfaces, gradually and
deliberately.
Henrietta’s is an unapologetically proud
place, where patrons come to social-
ize, dance, get laid, make drama, let
off steam, and be themselves. That night
nerves were raw, and usually stimulating
conversations felt vapid in the after-
math of community trauma, i mean, our is-
sues were nothing compared to what just
happened, and in a place not so differ-
ent from where we were standing. Even the
usual troublemakers and conquistadors had
their minds turned toward introspection.
My eyes kept wandering to the exits all
night during the DJ set, and I felt an
unfamiliar sense of discomfort standing
in a raised platform DJ booth - in direct
view of the entryway, the first person
you might see as you walk into the bar.
I definitely see you as you walk in, first
thing, I have a birds-eye view from my
pulpit. I felt that role differently that
night, and clearly I’m still feeling it.

71. Just saying. Hold your people close to-
day. Empathize with struggles that are
not your own. Set intentions as a commu-
nity to protect one another, and believe
that things are going to get better, be-
cause things HAVE to get better.

72. Chelsea Manning
(June 13th, 2017)
Well imagine that, I just DJ-ed Chelsea
Manning’s first night on the town...
and get described for it in Vogue’s Sep-
tember issue.

74. Sweating Rainbows
(June 29th, 2017)
And the west village is sweating rainbows
today - amazing.
ok since, it’s pride month still… I’ll
tell you MY coming out story. there’s ac-
tually a few, because my mom kept not be-
lieving me, or just being in… denial.
1) my bff from math/nerd camp when I was
15/16 came to town to visit and we went
to the city to see rent (original cast)
and do the circle line cruise around the
city - my idea of a…. platonic friend
thing at that age… and mom asked me if
something weird was going on there, and i
just said yeah… really weird things are
going on… probably gay things but there’s
no real proof
2) later that year mom caught me playing
footsies with her bff’s daughter under
the dinner table one night and asked me
if something gay was going on there and i
said yeah probably something at least a
little gay… THEN
3) long time high school crush went to a
Dar Williams (lol) concert with me and
afterwards came over and started do-
ing tarot cards and a romantic series of
cards came up, turned into a first seri-
ously prepared kiss with a girl, and my
mom walked in on it and screamed, “Oh my
god are you GAY?!” and I was kinda like…
“Ma we just got back from a Dar Williams

75. concert and are doing tarot cards over
here…” (i laugh when i get nervous so i
was inappropriately cracking up) then she
asked the girl to leave, then told me no
gays under her roof, so I left too, and
that was the beginning of the end of de-
nial.
and my life has been full of awesome
variations on love ever since. also, no
compromising when the love is real. so
now i work at a lesbian bar and people
call me daddy sometimes and nobody gets
the boot for who they love.
ok, tell me yours now. you have 24 hours
or something for pride month but you too
can also be queer the rest of your life.

76. djtikka@gmail.com
dykebarchronicles.tumblr.com
@djtikkamasala