When you spend about 21 years of your life as a gawky, closeted lesbian, much time is passed listening to Savage Garden, watching British romantic comedies starring Hugh Grant, and voting for Kelly Clarkson on American Idol – practices that effectively delay adolescence by about fifteen years. Suddenly, you find yourself in your early 20s, thrown into the cruel cesspool that is coming of age. Here you are, at age 22, drinking klassily like a 15-year-old boy at a New Hampshire boarding school. Suddenly, you are 24 and find yourself in a scene reminiscent of the middle school dance you tried to avoid. It has followed you to this San Francisco lesbian bar where time seems to have died at or around 1998. There is Alanis Morrisette is blaring on the Dolby surround sound. There is little to no dancing, a lot of sheepish grins and glares, and plenty of people walking around in pants that don’t fit properly – yourself included.
And one day you wake up at age 25 and you just really, really want to run a lemonade stand. It’s a beautiful temperate day in the Bay Area and you think it will be better now than it would have been at age nine in Texas – a chubby, perspiring Vietnamese kid standing alone in unbearable Houston humidity, quietly uttering “Lemonade for Sale” to an empty cul-de-sac. The thought of that pre-pubescent voice reverberating in vast nothingness is enough to launch a series of lemonade stands!
Stand 1: Lemonade named after formerly closeted 90s pop stars, sold at the San Francisco Dyke March in June of 2012
Featuring: The Lance Bass (Mango Lemonade), The Queen Latifah (Nectarine Basil Lemonade), The Ricky Martin (Watermelon Lemonade), and The Sporty Spice (Indeed, she is gay in all of our imaginations…Strawberry Mint). And my partner as an extremely suave lemonade hustler.
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Lemonade Stand 2: Jenny from the Block Lemonade Stand – Jennifer Lopez themed lemonade, sold at a yard sale in the Upper Haight, July 2012
Price: “Our love don’t cost a thing, thing, thing – donations accepted.”
Featuring: “Waiting for (it) toRipe” (Basil Nectarine Lemonade) and “I’m Real (Strawberries) REEEEEEMIXXXX Featuring Mint” (Self Explanatory).
This one was inspired by my irrational love of Jennifer Lopez for introducing non-Tejano music listening ears to Selena. As we all know, in Texas, Selena is Jesus, Jesus is God, and God is president because Barack Obama is a Muslim.*
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Coming soon to Washington, DC – stand 3: Flamboyantly pink lemonades named after conservative Supreme Court Justices.
Featured flavors to be determined, but it will most definitely feature a “Clarence Thomas” lemonade with quiet, near silent tones of mint.
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*Editor’s Note: Barack Obama is not a Muslim.
It is what it is (not). 
I saw the picture on my reader and grinned, “I know that girl!” I seriously think you will me lemonade stands the next “it thing”. It’s only a matter of time before hipsters unceremoniously steal this and Urban Outfitters is selling lemonade stand kits. I’ll say I saw it here first. Your flavors look delicious and now I very much want lemonade at 2AM.
The hipsters can bring back lemonade, so long as they bring back Jennifer Lopez and Selena too. Thanks for reading!!
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading!!!
Nice post!
The second person narrative was a particularly nice touch. your readers in your shoes. Tough act for me to follow though. 🙂
Thanks for reading 🙂
Thanks Jen – you made a heterosexual old Australian man grin
Thank you Frank, for reading! These are the best type of comments — making connections to people who seem (literally) worlds away 🙂