After reading Dinah Alobeid’s article (“Same-sex in the city,” March 1) for the first time, I have quite a bit to say. Actually, I am lying. After I began reading her article the first time, I stopped after the initial few paragraphs because, to be honest, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The patrons at Embassy, a gay club, were being described as ravenous sexual beasts with no clothes on, humping each other to techno music.
But I thought I might get a good chuckle out of this, so I gave it a second shot. Apparently Alobeid has never been to any club before. Terms to portray the scene – “frenzied,” “lustful,” “gyrating,” etc. – make this evident. Are these terms unique only to gay clubs? I’m sorry, but I think you need to get out more. That description is universal in any Boston club with a packed dancefloor of horny college students.
However, the real kick I got out of this piece was the way in which interviewed gay students on campus described the dating scene. I am 100 percent gay, gay, gay, gay, gaaaaay. Yep, that’s right, I fit into that 10 percent of the population figure, and, yep, it is nothing compared to the 90 percent of straight people walking around campus. But there is no way I can describe the dating scene as “kind of sucking,” as Katherine Palermino did. Maybe if these people got out more instead of complaining that there are no gay people on campus, and stopped hanging out with the same crowd at the Northeastern University Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay Association (NUBiLAGA), they would meet other gay people. We exist.
To top it off, though, it really annoys me that The News went straight to the easy source, NUBiLAGA, with its inaccurate generalizations on gay culture, instead of doing real reporting and scouring campus for other gay students, getting the real scoop on the gay scene. There are interviews with Katherine Palermino, Hillary Boone, Ashley Smith and Peter Karpathakis in so many issues that I actually don’t need to look up on Facebook to find out the proper way to spell Karpathakis. Wow. Well, I have to cut this letter short – it’s time for me to go put on my glittery booby tassles, thong and body oil, so I can go shake my stuff at some gay club with other naked lesbians while listening to Ciara. Thanks! Gasp!
– Shana M. Cottone is a sophomore history major.
