Queer Game Night

legally obligated to say models in photo may not, in fact, be queer

What is Queer Game Night? I didn’t know until last Friday. I mean, I had an idea, but one never knows, does one?

When Ayin participated in the Hwy 62 Open Studio Art Tours, we were visited by several friendly queer folks. I didn’t know there were so many gender outlaws in the high desert. Ayin stayed in touch with some of the people who stopped by, and on Friday, we were invited to Queer Game Night by the lovely and talented Niki Ford.

What you should know is, as a rule, we don’t go anywhere. We enjoy each other’s company, and neither one of us are particularly outgoing or social when we’re amongst strangers. So we’re usually here at home, and we typically duck out of invitations and gatherings. But for some reason, we thought it would be cool to attend Queer Game Night and connect with some locals who are on our wavelength. And it was cool.

Niki has been by the house to visit, so we knew them, and they invited us, but we didn’t know any of the other people there. We walked in before Niki had arrived, and the first thing Ayin said before we’d made it through the door was, “Are there any queer people in here?!”

Turns out there were.

There were eight of us eventually, and we played Texas hold’em (which I find vastly inferior to old school five-card draw), a game involving cards and dice, the details of which escape me at the moment, and an old pub game called Shut the Box, which I’d never heard of, but was oddly compelling.

Photo NOT taken on Queer Game Night. This appears to be a professional.

We didn’t play any of the games for money, much to the disappointment of a couple of the attendees. I wouldn’t have been opposed to some friendly wagering, but most of us were learning the games for the first time, so I suppose it didn’t seem fair to take our money.

I’m tempted to buy some poker chips with denominations or values printed on them, so if/when there’s another Queer Game Night, we can lose some real money. Chips for $50, $100.

Or, you know, 25¢, 50¢…

I don’t know if we will all meet again, though, as only two of the other six people who were there live in the desert full-time. The others are out here part-time or come for a few months a year. But some of us will meet again, and as for the others? We’ll be here when they return.

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN

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