Last night a new alternaqueer party called Pink Sock debuted in DC. Set in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Columbia Heights, at a former gay bar (turned mixed-clientele PBR heaven) called The Wonderland Ballroom, the party promised “ an orgy for the eyes and ears, as [the DJ] pumps out the hottest ass-shaking jams from the most innovative and avante garde performance artists from the 70s-disco era, 80s-new wave, 90-house & hip-hop, to the freshest electro music of today.” This party sounded like a lot of fun and almost everyone I knew was keeping their evening clear to go check it out. However, I was not there.

I much further downtown DJing a wet underwear party at a bar that stakes no such claim to alt-anything. Their DJ booth is at the far back of the main floor, and the setup for the drip show was between me and the rest of the bar. So basically, I could not see another living soul for three hours, but I also could play whatever I wanted to without those little inconveniences of gauging crowd reactions or worrying about pleasing people. As a result, I had a lot of time to both play music that I seldom hear at gay bars and ponder the state of the DC’s gay social scene.

When I moved here, the alternaqueer scene (or what I could find of it) seemed dusty, subversive and underground. Just the way I liked it. I remember the early thrills of queer performance night Crack at its original home  — a divey music venue — and the surprise I felt when I wandered into the Black Cat’s brit pop night Mousetrap and found cute gay guys dancing along to Pulp and The Smiths with all the other indie anglophiles.

Sussing out these little beacons of denim among the polos and khakis of DC was an example of a destination rendered all the more exciting by a frustrating journey. But it also spoiled me. Even now I don’t think of an alternative night as being just a night that provides something different to a crowd that needs such options. For me, the ideal alternative queer night is one that is tailored directly to me. So its taken me a while to stop bitching if a party doesn’t have the exact music, feel or crowd that I was looking for and just appreciate the fact that someone took the time to do something they felt was different. Even if “different” just amounts to yet another hot night on the town.

But if everyone out there (myself definitely included) is trying to do something that’s “different,” when does different become the same old? I am not even going to pretend that I’m the first person to point out how much hipster, indie, twee or whatever culture is quickly becoming the American urban norm. We all watch 30 Rock, we all listen to NPR. We all debate the merits of an MGMT live show, discuss Cute Overload videos at dinner and execrably overuse the phrase “WTF.” And still we turn around and blast the movie “Juno” for having too much mustard yellow cuteness, or seem surprised that Michael Cera has built a career out of being pale and slightly baffled all the time.

We’re begging for a backlash. In fact, I’m starting to think that every cultural movement just exists as a reaction to the one before it. (Also not a new idea. Just new to me.) In the same way that grunge was born as an antidote to the synthey treacle of the late 80s, the leather movement was started to reclaim masculine power to the image of the effete fairy, the suit-and-tie A list exists in opposition to a seamy gay sex culture (because you don’t need an enema to prepare for an HRC dinner) and now the skinny jeans, big-ass baggy t-shirt, clunky glasses and stubble crowd have sprung forth from the more staid atmosphere that has taken hold in DC in the last couple years.

But what do you think the backlash to this will be?  When the different class rises up enough it will eventually create its own mainstream, and mainstreams by nature are stifling and exclusionary. So I wonder what the next movement from the underground will be, and how it will affect the current groundswell of indiequeer events and people. As amusing as it is for me to picture some republican political campaign using a 100 pound boy in a hightops and a cardigan as shorthand for “amoral fag,” I also wonder if it might ever be possible for us to not be following the leader all the time. Especially when I’m not really even sure who the leader is.

So last night I had fun taking myself out of the game altogether and just doing what some gay man, somewhere, has been doing since the dawn of the gay bar: I introduced myself to the drag queen, admired all the boys in the soaking wet jockstraps and tried to get myself to just stop dissecting it all for a night. I was able to play Royksopp while admiring shirtless boys, and I’ll freely admit that it felt good.