This weekend I went to get a wax because I wanted to do something that would make my body look and feel different and that would make me hurt a little without really hurting me. Lying on the table, making small talk with a young woman whose movements were steady and self-assured, I said, “I love this space, it feels so familiar.” She said, “So, this may not mean anything to you, but this actually used to be Speak in Tongues.”
Speak in Tongues is the holy grail of Cleveland cred spaces, home to everyone’s best experiences, their most memorable nights. When men (and it’s almost always men) of a certain age want to prove they matter, they will tell you about a show they saw at Speak in Tongues. Sometimes it is a once small band that is now impossibly famous, other times it is a band that vanished into the ether and, through that, became that much more coveted.
You cannot imagine (or maybe you can) how much quiet joy it gave me to know that this space that is still lionized by so many men has been remade into a space that they would decry as being dedicated to female vanity. As the woman praised the texture of my hair (“I can’t believe how fine it is! You won’t have any trouble at all.”), I remembered the Speak in Tongues stories of all the men I know and thought, “This is going to be mine.”
Kathee forever, my girl Kathee FOREVER
