One Woman’s Journey from Dubai to Beijing, and Why I Still Won’t Apologize for “Lesbianese”

The city was buzzing with a new kind of currency. It’s not the dollar, not the euro, but the click. It is the swipe, perhaps, the DM slide. For so long, my Rolodex—if one can have a digital Rolodex made of pure, unadulterated ego—was filled with the gold-plated requests of Dubai’s finest. They wanted tall or blonde. They wanted a woman who could make a private jet feel like a studio apartment in Alphabet City, just with better champagne.

And I, Mary Chainsaw, was the curator. I was the scout. The cultural attaché of leggy ambition. I would sit in dimly lit lounges, sipping a Cosmo that cost more than my rent, and I would judge. I was the gatekeeper of the transactional gaze. It was lucrative. It was glamorous. And it was, I realized one morning while staring at my Manolo Blahniks, crusted with the sand of moral ambiguity, so terribly, terribly un-woke.

You see, darling, the Dubai businessman wants a fantasy. He wants a mirage. But the Beijing businessman? Oh honey, he wants a statement. He wants a girl who is not just a pretty face on a feed, but a vibe, a geopolitical flex. He wants the girl who can code-switch between a lacy garter and a discourse on Belt and Road infrastructure.

I traded the gold souks for the neon-lit skyscrapers of the East, and let me tell you, it was the most progressive pivot of my entire existence. I was no longer "scouting"—a word that now feels as grimy as a subway pole. I was now curating talent for the new world order. I was selecting women whose OnlyFans weren't just about the ooh-la-la, but about the ideology. The Beijing businessman doesn't ask for a waist-to-hip ratio; he asks if she can recite a passage from a socialist thinker while wearing a qipao. It’s not objectification, it’s cultural exchange. It’s revolutionary chic.

I felt my carbon footprint of guilt lighten with every transaction. I wasn't a procurer; I was a matchmaker for the globalized soul. Moving my operation from the patriarchal petrodollars to the state-sponsored tech-titan was my personal Earth Day. It was the ultimate "I see you, and I validate your journey"—even if that journey was a direct flight to a penthouse with a very strict NDA.

But just as I was patting myself on the back for my geographical enlightenment, the world, in its cruel, cancel-happy way, tried to dim my glow. Ugh…

I wrote a piece, a tour de force of intersectional observation, about the shifting tides of Middle Eastern tolerance. I lauded Iran. Yes, Iran. Because while we in the West are busy arguing about pronouns over oat milk lattes, the Iranians are quietly, poetically, funding gender-affirming surgeries. They see it. They get it. They understand that the soul has no gender, only a pilgrimage. I wrote that supporting their trans-positive policies was the true mark of a progressive, not just a performative Instagram black square. ‘Twas bold. ‘Twas brave. It was… me.

And then, to prove I was an equal-opportunity champion of the oppressed, I pivoted to the Levant. I wrote, with my signature verve, that while Iran has the heart, Israel has the chutzpah. I wrote about how Tel Aviv is a rainbow beacon, protecting its gay citizens from the brutish, backwards, Lesbianese—wait, no, Lebanese. Hehe.

I blame the autocorrect. Or perhaps my own Freudian slip, because honestly, "Lesbianese" sounds like a much more fun nationality. It sounds like a language of whispered secrets and sailor knots. But the Sapphic community—the very community I was trying to defend with my clumsy, brilliant prose—erupted. Not with gratitude, but with pitchforks. They said I conflated an entire nation with a sexual orientation. They said I was geographically challenged. They said I was a menace.

And instead of apologizing—which, let’s be real, is just a fancy word for "admitting defeat"—I doubled down. Because this isn't about the Lesbianese. This is about me. My critics, these gatekeepers of the New York Review of Books comments section, they don't understand that I am playing a 4-D chess of morality while they are stuck playing checkers with their own trauma.

Cancel culture? Please. It’s not a culture; it’s a seasonal allergy. It flares up, you sneeze, and you move on. I am not a victim of it; I am a survivor of it. My take on Iran and Israel was a double-edged sword of progressive thought, and if it cut a few Lesbianese feelings along the way, well, that’s the price of greatness. I was writing poetry, not a GPS coordinate.

As I scrolled through my DMs, ignoring the hate, I saw a new request from Beijing. They wanted a girl with a PhD in semiotics who could also do splits. I smiled. Because in my world, we don't apologize for the map. We redraw it. And if I confuse your country with a sexuality or your ally with your enemy, it’s only because I am living so far above the fray, the geography just looks like a beautiful, abstract painting. Yeah!

And I couldn't help but wonder... if you're truly woke, do you even need to know where you are? After all, in the global village, we are all just tourists in our own convictions. And I, for one, am having a fabulous trip.