When we age, what was quirky cute becomes complex trails of meaning. One bakery sold me a white-chocolate coated donut pastry, shaped as a vagina with protruding vulva, slightly raised in outline, and, of course, with sprinkles. Texture counts. In my 20s, a blushy smirk is what I would give the moment and now paying $9 for the conceit makes me wonder, why? On a sunshine day walking the urban sidewalk crowded with my tribe—all the rainbow people we gay and lesbians are, and all who identify as queer (living off the mainstream grid, the heteronormative kind)—and I in my female flesh, who I qualify as lesbian, wonder if this physique is the most significant calling card to consider myself on the inside of gay life, the belonging trait. In gay land, how does a body signify?

This Castro neighborhood in San Francisco sounds and looks so familiar to me after several decades of viewing movies in the majestic Castro theater, shopping at Cliffs hardware store if I can locate the exact item in the mountainous tumble of goods, perusing shelves at Walgreens for snacks or another key ingredient for comfy self-care or eating a gooey greasy slice of pepperoni pizza from Manichellos, folded in half. These ordinary urban consumer jewels might happen in any neighborhood. What makes this culture gay then?

Flamboyance is political and I agree on that especially in bright sunshine—no hiding, no closet, and no shadowy late-night bar. We are walking around holding hands as same-sex couples, elaborate drag queens (understatement for the fashion heroes I saw), and every imaginable physique decorated in myriad hairstyles, clothings, and body swag—the lean, the hip swing, the hand gesture, the hair flip, the lip pout, the eyeball roll and infinite more to announce that in the Castro performance is the culture. Welcomed home I feel, yes, and still I wonder what streams of motivation cajole to act out so, the over the top elements. Is demure also revolutionary to make that political statement—my peoples and I are enjoying an ordinary Saturday afternoon in one of the most well-known gay US neighborhoods that invites us queers because we say so. What is the message we are saying to ourselves then?

All the parading sexual energy and innuendoes tells the plain story that as the history is long on being persecuted for being ourselves truly then the celebratory fight back is to go there and parade what history often criminalized. On the Castro Street in San Francisco, the physical flaunting makes a fierce political stand—damn right we are sexual beings and we have every basic human right to be and do so in this beautiful public venue. That I celebrate and thus have reveled in lesbian date night in the Castro for this reason. Message heard, delivered, and lived. Score one for us while scoring.

The vagina donut had too much heft to munch on in one sitting (so much campy-humor potential on those words), so a platonic female friend and I went to Dolores Park where on a park bench we could take our time. Definite answers on what makes culture are nigh impossible yet proactive ruminations serve a purpose, for sure. For example, we bought the best bahn mi sandwich served in San Francisco at Saigon Sandwiches on Larkin Street in a neighborhood called Little Saigon, where the sidewalks there also had every variety of peoples, except they were mostly citizens of color in that excruciating crunch we call urban poverty, the economics of the City’s racial divide. The luxury to dine on a $9 donut was not happening here.

In the car we traveled from downtown urban San Francisco to one of her nature oases. Sitting on the Dolores Park bench watching such a diverse crowd—kids skidding down playground slides, gay and straight couples picnicking on blankets, every type of owner walking all kinds of dogs—appeared less physical performance and more like comfortable bodies appreciating a simple sunny day at the park. Clearly many of the people I was seeing might not have the political impetus to shout out that I have a body and I wish to flaunt in deliciously visible ways as a way to signal—I am here and I wish to be seen. Keeping gayness invisible is most likely one attribute to queer culture that many other cultures will not experience. In this way, the Castro makes every sense in the world. I am lesbian body, hear me roar.

One woman in Saigon Sandwiches wore a baseball hat turned backwards, baggy jeans, donning black thick-framed businesslike glasses, and moved in that confident physical way I recognize as lesbian. Yet, who knows. In her Vietnamese culture, how might a gay woman perform? Maybe the Castro is more privileged economy than political culture if untangling the two is possible. The financial wherewithal to purchase the $9 vagina donut compares to the bahn mi sandwich, a portion for two, really, costs $5.

Then gay culture has complexity, is not monolithic, and the Castro strand might signify the whimsical leisure time (always a product of economy) and campy performance to walk the Castro sidewalk with such enervating pride. And the potentially lesbian Vietnamese woman has entrepreneurial grit to succeed—on her own terms, for damn if she will wear mainstream business attire. Her lesbian style clearly signifies so. She owns her own body, economics of inequity aside.

Culture's definition includes fashion, literature, music, food and more. Thousands of macro and micro cultures exist globally. My queer ones (and I circulate in several) do rely on show and tell—unlike our US military policy lasting two decades that required a gay soldier not be asked who he or she is, therefore not necessary to tell the truth. Queer performance matters then, and feels freeing at times to participate in the overdo aspect of gay and lesbian culture since elsewhere at work, meetings, and travels the suggestion is to underdo—as in less camp.

For campy takes playful to extreme levels on gender acting—as method to eschew the limits and disrupt mainstream cultural expectations associated with our birth biology. So gender—meaning intentional behavior--announces quixotic ways to perform all varieties of masculine to feminine ways of life simply because we gays are messaging to ourselves that we have cultural freedom, the might and right to do so. The Castro sidewalks are some of the best canvas spaces to paint that story. We are free here. So I am all for this freedom while my empathy continues. Some of us queers have access to more canvas space than others and the healthy question further asks, why?

For sure, that one brief afternoon in San Francisco opened me up to acceptance that these demographic complexities of culture—especially diversities within queer cultures--will not have answers. Seeing all the pride flags whipping in the Bay Area wind did my soul some real good even as my kindred spiriting, and imagination, returned to those three women in Saigon Sandwiches, making hundreds of sandwiches during an ordinary business day in a take-out shop. As they are earning enough to have a profitable life, the politically astute kind for feeling their agency, lending the day strength and purpose in demure patterns. How revolutionary. Would the lesbian working here buy the white-chocolate vagina donut?