I Am Leslie Lange

Tasty Nagel Print

"What's a tasteful Nagel print?" you ask.
Well...here's one that's tasteful and tasty.

[note the sexy mullets on these two babe-a-liciouses]

Embracing My Inner Mullet

Who's that lesbian? Why it's Leslie Lange, of course! Not only did I have a mullet, but I could not afford shoes, and wore nothing but volleyball team-issued sweatpants. And, yes, that is an iron-on patch peeling off the right knee. I am also wearing a leopard-print tank top. Hot-t-t-t! Even then I had a certain brooding joie de vivre.

Mullet Memories

Early on in my coming out phase--and no, not when I was 3, but around 1986 or so when I had just turned 21--in the rainy and depressing city of Portland, Oregon, my self-described upper middle-class girlfriend, Blair, said to me, when I proposed one day getting a flat-top for fun, "As long as you don't get one of those awful lesbian haircuts...you know, the ones where the hair is short in front and long in back."

[FYI, she had a little hair tail when I met her]

That was a lesbian haircut? I created a mental checklist, searched my memory banks for the women lounging at Bar 927* where my last gf had bartended, and a little light went on--aha! She was right! Moments later, another light went on: as I was imagining my own hairstyle about two years earlier. For shame!

Blair went on: "That has got to be the UGLIEST hairstyle I have ever seen. Whenever I see one, I cringe. It makes me ashamed to be a lesbian. In fact, it's the very thing about lesbianism I DO NOT want to be associated with."

Of course, part of me was thinking Blair was being a bit mean. But another part of me was thinking Blair was giving some good information. After all, Blair was artsy and sophisticated. She'd taught me how to use my silverware. She'd taught me only low-class people lived in apartments with wall-to-wall carpeting. She'd eased me out of polyester and into 100% cotton. Her insights were invaluable, infallible, and respecting them got me laid. My decision was easy: I adopted a disdain for all things mullet.

Years later, a friend tried introducing me to "The Indigo Girls," but I took one look at their album cover and said, "Um, no thanks." He tried playing their music for me ("just listen to these lyrics"), but all I heard was, "Mull-et, mull-et, mull-et."

Now, however, I am over it.

I am not afraid of the mullet. I EMBRACE THE MULLET!

Join me, my sisters! Free yourself from class-based shame!

Send your mullet photos to leslie@leslielange.com. I will post them. I WILL FLY YOUR MULLET FLAG! We'll get though this together.

* the rougher lesbian bar of two in Portland. The other was called "The Primary Domain" and its lavender walls wore tasteful Nagel prints.

Holy Mugilidae!

The definition of a mullet per Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th Edition): "any of a family (Mugilidae) of valuable chiefly marine food fishes with an elongate rather stout body"

OK, I don't know if I'm crazy or what...but, how can your body be both elongate and stout?

But then again, how can your hair be both elongate and short?

Wait. Oh, my God...is that it?

One further mystery: just how valuable are these food fishes? And how can I get my hands on some nice mullet-stacked mutual funds?

[Below...what appears to be a rather stout lesbian sporting an elongate rather stout mullet]

Mullified2

OK, so no one thought I had even close to a mullet at Pride. Turns out gf and I were suffering from "lesbian mullet hypersensitivity syndrome," wherein short-haired (or even fairly short-haired) lesbians and their friends and girlfriends, fairly freak when they see even the slightest wisp of a hair inching its way down the back of the neck.

It's time we all joined hands to fight this disorder. Start by sharing your own mulletophobic story with your friends--analyze how shame played a part in leading you to loathe only the mullet at first, but gradually yourself, and your own wisps of hair, even your own lesbianism.

Sigh.

Soon I will share my own sad story.

And a picture of myself when I used to have a real mullet.

Mullified

Whoa! Lots of stuff's been going down in Los Angeles lately: Fires, poor air quality, a pending writers' strike (always a writers' strike, never an authors' strike), my favorite Dia de los Muertos celebration at the Hollywood cemetery, and the Murakami exhibit opening at MOCA.

But I'm going to talk about my hair.

I went to my stylist, Viva, in Palm Springs, sipping decaf while enduring the application of numerous highlights, then skimming a whole stack of fluff magazines as my scalp baked in the surround-swelter of 3 discoid radiant heat lamps. Then Viva took up her shears and razor and commenced doing what she always does, which is chop through my thatch of Bushman-like locks, giving it her best shot to produce something akin to "texture" so that I don't look like I'm wearing a brown bike helmet all day.

"I think I'm going to try something new," Viva said, gesturing across the top of my head. "I'm going to cut it short-to-long over here, and long-to-short over here."
"Cool," I said. "Go for it. Make salad."
"Oh, and what about this?" she said, pulling on the wisps at the nape of my neck.
"Um," I said. "I like those."
"Good, because everyone always wants me to cut them off, but they're my favorite."
"OK, leave 'em."

When I got home that night, Pontifica--on her way to kiss me--stopped dead in her tracks.
I found myself unwilling to register her expression. "What?"
Pontifica took me by the shoulders, and made very grave eye contact. "I'm sorry, honey, but that is darn close to a mullet."

I ran to the mirror, turned to look at my profile, and...AAAK! Indeed it was...darn close to a mullet.

But was it still an attractive sort of mullet? Or even better, a subtle, pushing-the-boundaries sort of naughty self-referencing wink, maybe, to the mullet, without actually being one? God, I hoped so.

Help me decide, please! Come visit my table at Palm Springs Pride, November 3rd at 2 p.m., where I'll be signing copies of Dyke Drama: your guide to getting out alive, a book I wrote in my pre-mullet days.

Buy Dyke Drama!