SO, JUST in time for the Pride season, I decided to get my queer ass laid for the first time by a straight woman. More on that in upcoming columns (including where I scored – and what I wore!), but first I've gotta take a soapbox moment here and ream some sorry nightlife ass.

What's with all this racism rearing its ratty-wigged head in the scene lately? From the Castro to SoMa, the Mission to the Marina, it seems the scene is polarizing along ethnic lines instead of the usual class, sexual orientation, and musical taste ones. Charges are flying. Stakes are high.

Now, I believe in the concept of "race" about as much as I believe Tinkerbelle's in rehab, Bambi's off Polk Street, and the Tooth Fairy wasn't born one Howard Alan Niemowitz of East Tremont, the Bronx. But discrimination's another story, because lately I see it all around. And I'm not just talking about the "appropriate fashionable attire required" signs at Ruby Skye or the "no jeans, no caps, no sneakers" policy at most of the North Beach and FiDi clubs (and many of San Francisco's timid hipster hip-hop nights), or even the way women are talked about and frowned on in gay leather bars.

Discrimination is starting to take a more concrete form – and the protests beginning against it, even if they turn out to be misfires, are at least breaking the silent taboo.

Take what's going down at SF Badlands, in the Castro. Former customers of color have lodged complaints (see www.andcastroforall.org) – which the San Francisco Human Rights Commission has backed up – saying that the proprietor discriminated against them, using dirty club tricks like saying "no backpacks," or requiring two forms of ID, or asking people to leave because they were "inappropriately dressed" (which is especially ironic, because, darling, to me all the patrons of SF Badlands are inappropriately dressed).

In a recent Bay Area Reporter interview, owner Les Natali disputed the charges, and there are protests being held on the sidewalks of 18th Street. No matter who turns out to be right, my gosh, it's nice to see something in the Castro being protested.

Because the awful truth is, we've discriminated for years. We gays have our black bar (the Pendulum), our Latino bar (Esta Noche), our Asian bar (N'Touch), our fat bar (Lone Star), and even our senior bar (Twin Peaks). Now, I'm all for building a sense of community through togetherness with others who share your experience. But please – Sylvester must be rolling in his rhinestone-studded mahogany coffin right about now.

As one of the four Arab American gay club kids in the Western Hemisphere (the other three are doing nightly Mata Hari drag shows in Guantánamo), my first reaction is to laugh hysterically at all this ridiculous segregation, just like I laugh hysterically in liquor stores after the blond woman on her cell phone rudely and mistakenly asks me where the strawberry Twizzlers are and I Farsi loudly in her general direction.

But then I can afford to laugh. Me and my West Bank brethren are hot property right now. All I have to do is drop "wild Arab stallion" in my Manhunt.net personal ad and my inbox is flooded with grammatically challenged, multicultural passports to PNP paradise, mostly involving Abu Ghraib reenactment fantasies. Sigh. Gays are sooo subversive.

And don't think for one cotton-picking minute you straights are off the hook, neither. I can't tell you how many times in the past few months I've heard seemingly fabulous party people turn to me like I had some sort of ivory percale Martha Stewart Collection bedsheet over my head and say under their breath: "I really want to see DJ (x), but he's playing at (DNA/Club NV/1015 Folsom/Sake Lab), and you know, there's just too many Asians there."

Huzza-cuzza-wha?

Look, honey, this is the Bay Area. We are freaky, we are beautiful – and we are Asian. If you can't deal, well, I hear there's a wild scene going down in the many, many wonderful bars and clubs of Bismarck, N.D. Snag yourself a one-way ticket on Jim Crow Air and get the hell out the way of my Lucy Liu hair flip, bitch. That's right. Get out. "Asians." Scary!

As a recovering raver and fervent believer in the One Nation under a Groove thang, I'm appalled by the turn nightlife's taking. Now that we can log on to the Internet at any time and carry out a "no fats, no fems, no Asians, no blacks" policy in the privacy of our bedrooms, are we letting our virtual human shopping leak off the Web and into the clubs?

And here I thought we were getting connected, not falling apart.

For more on online personal ad discrimination, go to www.sexualracismsux.com.

Flame Marke B