What occurred in the lesbian bar? On the night of the lesbian and gay literature event, the Nazis started throwing torches and stones in. You probably heard about it, somewhere, who-knows-where, your ears caught something about it. Perhaps while washing your sweet hands, palms, neck, just before going to bed to get your peaceful sleep, with the must-have TV on in the corner of your must-have conjugal bedroom; while the TV was spreading news about traffic jams, floods, earthquakes, marriage and avalanches into the space of your love caresses that have been often, all too often, missing because of the limitless time you dedicate to your husband, boyfriend, son, father. Or perhaps while quoting Jacques, Alain, Antonio, Terry and Slavoj in your newest, by now already your thousandth, authorial analysis of contemporary political subjectivity. You heard about the “attack on the lesbian bar in Ljubljana” and you flinched, thinking that perhaps one of those lesbians that you might know was there; the one with whom I show up in public with once every ten years, and who were persistently inviting us for a coffee, a drink, to hang out together, to be friends. Yes, I know such girls, I hope they are alright.

Then on the following day, you went to work, or maybe not, because you have flexible working hours and because after long years you have finally reached the position in which you are no longer told what to do. So you went to some place and talked about the event with your colleagues, sitting, and yelling, what kind of fucking country we are living in, this is a thoroughly fascistic country. Meanwhile, your personal homosexual gave you a call, telling you that in the afternoon there would be a demonstration against homophobic violence in front of the lesbian bar and you decided, we’ve got to be there, as we all are attacked, although you had been invited by the lesbians to the literary event the day before, but you didn’t care at all, or better, didn’t give a fuck about it. But this is not important now, as something bigger is going on, violence, and there’s nothing funny about that, this is no kindergarten, and so you’ve got to go.

You came in at the same moment that the Minister for Internal Affairs turned up accompanied by her bodyguards; and some of your friends and acquaintances also came, one-time professors and now ministers, ministers and ministers, the veterans from the 1970s and 1980s. You said to yourself, it was us who started all this, and now I barely know anybody. Feeling offended, you were at the point of leaving when you caught sight of your personal homosexual in a checkered shirt, concentrated and focused, exactly the kind of a person needed by the movement in order to make these people finally live exactly as we do, in a pigsty full of pigswill, litter and slaughters. He nodded to you briefly in greeting and then skillfully invited the next speaker, who was an equally checkered-dressed, political bureaucrat, who uttered, “Nobody will beat you!”

You watched, and saw a lot of “media.” Besides your personal homosexual, there was another one, identical, and then another one, again identical, also dressed in a checkered shirt, and you thought, the thing is moving in the right direction, it looks like a success, yes, fascism is defeated, you thought, this is just how it should be so that things will have an effect on the thick-headed People, for it is they, in the first place, who need to be persuaded so that we won’t be persuading the persuaded over and over again. In this action circuit of Checkered-shirts and “media,” of course, you missed neither lesbians, nor artists. The Minister for Internal Affairs was already gone by then. She got lost after three seconds, together with her bodyguards and her closeted aide-de-camp. However, she was there and that’s what counts.

Then everything was over and the time was ripe for “a drink.” At once, you caught sight of the lesbians. There, at the margin, almost around the corner of the wall of the lesbian bar stood the gang, grinning. Some of them either didn’t see you or didn’t look at you, while the others kept grinning, those biting cunts, and didn’t move, not a bit. All of us others were moving, moving fast away from the petition against homophobic violence, socializing and mixing with each other, politicians with ex-professors, ex-politicians with professors and ex-politicians with those who are both politicians and professors at once. All my personal homosexuals were socializing and mixing with them and, while shaking hands, they whispered to everyone somewhere in the vacuum between the nape and the collar of the checkered shirt, “Nobody has the right to beat us.” Yes, we need to hold on tightly, as they are doing some great lobbying. When the last camera of a female journalist who was at the scene of the homophobic crime or terrorist act – the intelligentsia, carried away by the adrenalin rush of the Event (and after the third beer), couldn’t make up their mind on this point – went off, even the guy who years ago represented Slovenia at the Eurovision contest showed up; how moving to exhibit such solidarity. It’s good that my homosexual, as he secretly told me, or would later, withdrew the signing of the petition just in time from those grinning lesbians who were rushing to get at it. It’s better that a star of such magnitude signs the petition first, as it is good for the “media effect,” as my Checkered argued, that it’s good for the youth, who today, as I gather, is quite conservative, although I don’t give a shit if this is so or even why. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my part. Had the lesbians, when there still were some possibilities, not been too old, I could have helped them. The fault is all theirs, for they have been too old since time immemorial.

Perhaps, that day in front of the lesbian bar, just before you, too, got lost after three seconds, perhaps one of the lesbians told you something. Perhaps she asked you if you remembered Nancy Cunard, the avant-garde artist and editor who, on her death bed in 1965, which she was dragged to by poverty, bohemian life and political disappointments, asked for a glass of red wine and material for writing about fascism, which – yes, she was of this opinion, too – didn’t end at all with World War II. Or maybe you have only just learned about Theodor, Herbert, Jürgen, Max and, not to forget, Walter? Do you perhaps remember Djuna Barnes, the modernist writer who in the first half of the 20th century wrote quite a few pioneering lesbian novels, yet was called a homophobe by certain ranks of the homosexual movement from the Seventies – only because she didn’t want to collaborate in their literary anthologies? Or do you think that these too-old, grinning girls are some kind of Frank Zappas, Tom Waitses or Charles Bukowskies whom you can slap on their sore foreheads at your own sweet will while having a nostalgic headache due to your past subversions? No, they are not. Do you, in your progressive, but all the more absolute, lethargy, which is – and perhaps you only sense it, as those from above haven’t told you so, nor will they tell you – a consequence of your now-unyielding-now-yielding feminism, remember even one of those tiny, hungry, poor, homeless, lucid, too-old women at all? Perhaps the lesbians – who were thrown over the wall by your small, big indulgences, your tiny, massive concessions, which you were receiving and giving for the sake of “effect,” whatever that is – asked you something like that. But all that you caught was a hello, how are you doing, and so then this was the only question you answered, saying, oh, now in the summertime, when it’s not so crowded, now, it’s fine.

The day (ours and yours) came to the end, and you slowly returned home to your husband, boyfriend, son, father, to Jacques, Alain, Antonio, Terry, Slavoj, Theodor, Herbert, Jürgen, Max, Norman Bates and, of course, Walter. At the very moment you left the street, in the lesbian bar the night was only beginning. Lesbians know a whole lot of tiny, hungry, poor, homeless, lucid, too-old women; there are many, hundreds of them, but they only turn up when they cannot be offended by your luxurious departures. In short, they come when you are gone. We live without your answers, just as you live without our questions. While in your dignified homes, full of food, blankets and love, before going to sleep, you wash your sweet hands, palms and neck, all the lesbians gather at the round bar tables. The next night they will be back again, and the night after that again, and so forth. And I think that you, too, will be back some time soon. You will come and go in the same sequence of this bloody, never-ending story.

Nataša Velikonja is a sociologist, poetess and lesbian activist. She lives and works in Ljubljana.

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