Imagine my surprise when I got a call from the boys at GayClubUSA asking me to write a weekly column for them.

"What about?" I asked.

"Oh, you know. The lesbian perspective."

I'm not sure I know what a Lesbian Perspective is, but a lack of clear direction has never stopped me from plowing ahead. Plus, I can't resist a challenge! I sat down and thought about the most dyke-y thing I've done recently. And what leapt to mind? Sweaty jock grrrls in sexy sports outfits.

Last week I joined about ten lesbian friends for Hockey Dyke in Canada, a.k.a. the 2002 Winter Olympics Women's hockey final. I met my best friend at her place beforehand, since we were headed over together. She was wearing a hockey jersey and screaming WHOOOO! when I showed up. I shared her enthusiasm but lacked the proper attire, so I asked if I could borrow a hockey jersey to wear, too. She loaned me a white jersey with a logo on it. I put it on and, as she was leaving the room, I asked, "so, which team's jersey am I wearing?"

She replied, "The Chantaga blrbfrrnns...." (You have to imagine this fading out because she was walking away from me into the other room.)

"The Chantaga what?" I asked, assuming that Chantaga was the name of some little town in northern Ontario, and this was their town hockey team.

"No," she said. "The Chicago Blackhawks."

Oh.

This bodes ill for our heroine, and it illustrates how little I know about hockey. I feel like this not only makes me a bad dyke, but it also makes me a bad Canadian. I mean, I've been to an NHL game before, but I was in a skybox sponsored by UUnet and more intent on the free food than I was on the ice below.

To be fair, I really only started watching hockey the previous weekend when the Canadian women's team beat the Swedish women 11-0. My best friend and I were painting my living room and flipping around on the television trying to find appropriate background noise when we happened upon this women's hockey event. I played soccer in high school, so I understand many of the hockey rules because the two sports are not completely dissimilar. We did have to call my best friend's partner once that night so we could understand what "icing" was (hint: it has nothing to do with cupcakes), but we were completely absorbed in the game. It's amazing, but the fact that women were playing the sport suddenly made it interesting to me.

Anyway, we showed up at my friend Angela's apartment on Thursday night in our hockey jerseys. One by one the dykes trickled in, the hockey game started, and we settled in to watch it amidst constant jokes about hockey dykes: FTM goalies, short haircuts, underhanded competitiveness, and girlfriends in the stands. About halfway through the game we ordered pizza. Every time the Canadian team scored we all jumped around the room and cheered. I felt so BUTCH!

I don't know if groups of boys do the same kinds of things when they watch sporting events, but this was the first time in my adult life that I had watched a competitive team sport on television and had a good time! I was pulling for the Canadian chix, who dominated the game in spite of really crappy officiating and a string of bad penalties. Maybe I would have felt differently if the underdog had lost, but we won 3-2, and it made my evening. It didn't hurt that several of the women in the room with me had the performative-masculinity-butch sense of humour that I find soooooo charming ("SUCK IT UP, WICKENHEISER!" "WHAT'S THE MATTER, DECOSTA, YOU CAN'T STOP A SHOT ON GOAL?"), and that nobody made fun of me for self-consciously asking stereotypical femme questions like "if a period ends, does the time in the penalty box carry over?" and "why did they pull the goalie out of the game?"

If I had known that televised sports could be this much fun, I might have been consuming a lot more beer and chicken wings. And is it just me, or does women's hockey seem like a great way to meet girls?

I think I could get into this.

Alaina