Virginians of various faith communities hoping to extend equal rights to LGBT people will host 23 demonstrations at county courthouses across the commonwealth on Valentine's Day, Feb. 14, to call attention to Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage and to begin a yearlong process of engaging Virginians to pressure General Assembly lawmakers to allow debate on a proposed repeal of that ban.

The group, People of Faith for Equality in Virginia (POFEV), has been organizing such Valentine's Day ''Witness for Love!'' demonstrations for 10 years, beginning initially in Richmond and later extending to other jurisdictions across the state, including Arlington, Fairfax, Winchester and Norfolk. The 23 events will occur at various times throughout the day in all regions of the state. A schedule of events can be found on POFEV's website, pofev.org.

The Rev. Robin Gorsline, president and CEO of POFEV, says that Friday's events are intended to raise awareness of the shifting opinions and attitudes toward LGBT people in Virginia and across the country, not just relating to marriage but to other LGBT issues such as nondiscrimination in employment, housing and adoption. Gorsline's group hopes to have couples apply for marriage licenses with county clerks, knowing they will be denied due to Virginia's statutory ban on same-sex marriage, as well as the Marshall-Newman Amendment, the state's constitutional ban on recognizing any domestic relationship between two people of the same sex.

''We realize they won't break ranks, because to do so is against the law,'' says Gorsline. ''But we're going to have people go, regardless of whether the local clerk supports or opposes marriage equality. The demonstration will be civil and respectful, and, hopefully, people will have a chance to have a discussion with the clerks in the process.''

After the couples are denied the right to marry in their particular locales, they are expected to join nearby crowds featuring speeches, songs and prayers in support of marriage equality.

Of particular interest is one such demonstration scheduled for Prince William County at 3:30 p.m. Friday. Gorsline says POFEV was not initially involved in that event, but later joined with the group's Prince William peers, the Bull Run Unitarian Universalists, who had already begun planning an independent action for marriage equality.

The Bull Run Unitarian Universalists, led by the Rev. Greg Ward, first came up with the idea to have couples apply for marriage licenses after the county's court clerk, Michele McQuigg, intervened on behalf of same-sex marriage opponents in the ongoing Bostic v. Rainey court case challenging the constitutionality of the Marshall-Newman Amendment.

''There was no suit brought from Prince William County, Manassas, or Manassas Park; her active involvement in this issue as an 'intervenor' is not only misguided, but needlessly hurtful and divisive,'' the Unitarian Universalists advised in an email sent to supporters.

Gorsline says the Valentine's Day demonstrations will be the first in a series of events designed to create momentum for a yearlong campaign aimed at the group's eventual goal of having a full debate over repealing the Marshall-Newman Amendment during the 2015 legislative session.

''We want to have a debate on the floor of both chambers of the General Assembly, not just in some backroom committee,'' says Gorsline, adding he'd like to see the discussion move beyond Richmond, as well. ''We have organizers on the ground that are going to urge people to talk to their legislators. They don't even have to necessarily support marriage equality, but we're hoping they'll have a debate over putting it on the ballot for the people to decide.''

While he acknowledges that the upcoming year will be an ''uphill battle'' in getting the General Assembly to listen to his group's concerns, Gorsline is not dissuaded. Rather, he has faith.

''People are created in the image of God,'' Gorsline insists. ''So to treat them differently is not only unconstitutional, but ungodly.''

Someone you know is a sex worker.

Historian Melinda Chateauvert cites that slogan, from a San Francisco health and advocacy organization, in her new book Sex Workers Unite! A History of the Movement from Stonewall to SlutWalk.

Mindy Chateauvert

(Photo by Todd Franson)

Chateauvert's book is a well-researched examination of a sector of society and the U.S. labor market that has grown from its legendary status as the world's oldest -- yet most maligned -- profession, to becoming all-but mainstream, though certainly still underappreciated and disrespected.

It's definitely not just about prostitutes anymore. "Sex workers are laborers who earn money to perform sexual services or who provide erotic entertainment to clients individually or collectively," Chateauvert writes. From prostitutes to escorts, from porn stars and webcam performers to go-go boys and strippers -- and all the non-sex workers who support and promote them -- the sex sector is no longer confined to a big city's red-light district or "bad" part of town. Its services are essentially available anywhere, to anyone with Internet access or at least the means to travel.

Chateauvert, a longtime D.C. resident who is now a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, didn't write Sex Workers Unite! merely to shine an overdue light on the sex-worker movement. She intends it as something of a call to action to fight oppression, criminalization and especially violence against sex workers. More than 3,000 women have died in the last four decades in the line of sex work in the U.S., and law enforcement agencies, from the Department of Justice to local police departments, have been slow to investigate crimes against sex workers, from rape to murder. They've also continually shown little respect for those employed in the business, Chateauvert argues.

Meanwhile, organizations in the LGBT community have only recently started to advocate for sex workers. And other activists on the left and right have generally only talked about sex workers in terms of being powerless victims, forced into a form of modern-day slavery.

"I would say a miniscule number of people are coerced into doing sex work," Chateauvert asserts. Instead, she says, the vast majority of sex workers do it by choice or circumstance.

Chateauvert may be known to many for her involvement in the leather community, whether as a member of Centaur MC, the group that puts on the annual Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend, or serving on the board of the Chicago-based Leather Archives and Museum. But she's also served on the boards of the D.C.-based HIPS, or Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, and the Baltimore-based National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, where a decade ago she ran an emergency crisis line.

The Iowa City, Iowa, native credits her mother for her "lifelong interest" in social justice. Says the youthful 55-year-old: "I've been involved in social justice movements since I was a young girl, with my mother dragging me off to various Vietnam War protests."

To turn a phrase, you can take the woman out of Iowa, but you can't take Iowa out of the woman.

METRO WEEKLY: Beyond your lifelong activism for social justice, was there something specific that triggered you to write this book, or triggered your obvious passion on this topic?

MELINDA CHATEAUVERT: I think the main impetus, maybe the germination of what this book eventually became, was actually the Millennium March, and all the controversy around the faith and family theme that was being promoted for that march in 2000.

I was very much involved with groups that were challenging that theme. We felt that it was repressive, because it failed to acknowledge that some of us don't give two cents -- I'm substituting a printable word -- for marriage. We're not religious. We don't find a need to be involved in faith issues or faith organizing. And it was very repressive, or dismissive, of transgender people -- people who didn't conform to a heteronormative lifestyle. That was where I really plunged into these issues about what it meant to be marginalized, what it meant to be "respectable."

MW: Especially in D.C., many people know you for your involvement in the leather community. That's tied to the Millennium March and your advocacy for sex work too?

CHATEAUVERT: Many people involved in that Millennium March that I got involved with were coming from the leather community. And they were feeling that this was definitely a slap in the face to people who weren't interested in monogamous, heteronormative marriages and picket fences. So that was one thing about the leather community, in terms of getting involved for me: seeing how politics looks differently if you are not part of a mainstream.

The leather community is also really important in this because a lot of work and a lot of the funding, a lot of the activism around some of these issues, has come from the leather community, particularly the gay and lesbian leather community. I think there's a lot of overlap in the issues that folks in the leather community deal with, in terms of stigmatization.

MW: The subtitle of your book references Stonewall. What I found interesting is that Stonewall in popular conception is about the various gay men at the Stonewall Inn, but also the drag queens who in fact led the protest against the police. Which, as you detail in your book, is still not fully capturing the people that were there -- including transgender people and sex workers.

CHATEAUVERT: That's not just popular opinion, but the view of most historians too. Let's be really clear here. Those "drag queens" were transgender sex workers. [Laughs.]

MW: And when we refer to them simply as drag queens, it's kind of dressing up the naked truth.

CHATEAUVERT: [Laughs.] Let's just call it a lie, okay? It's ironic. Yeah, it's changing their representation into something that's acceptable, in a sort of camp way. Not being totally dismissive -- acknowledging that they were there.

But drag can sometimes be a very different performance lifestyle, if you will, than being transgender. And to lump those into the same category is, I think, not particularly useful.

MW: I know it's been around a few decades, but is the term "sex worker" in common usage now?

CHATEAUVERT: It's actually the preferred use in UNAIDS and other kinds of outreach work around the world. It's not accepted in the AP Style Manual, but the United Nations recognizes it.

Mindy Chateauvert

(Photo by Todd Franson)

MW: Does the AP Style Manual specify anything related to the profession?

CHATEAUVERT: There's been some debate on it. There's been no rule that I've seen, although one of the bloggers who writes about usage and a New York Times reporter has spoken or has written about whether or not "sex worker," versus "prostitute," should be used. There was a little bit of pressure to start pushing The New York Times and other mainstream publications to use the term "sex worker" rather than "prostitute," but that hasn't become a universal rule, no.

MW: But the big LGBT organizations that a lot of LGBT people give to, are they using the term? Are they doing anything to help sex workers?

CHATEAUVERT: Some of the organizations are. The National Center for Transgender Equality -- Executive Director Mara Keisling has been doing some really good work. Some of their statements have been very, very strong. Amnesty International has been very good. ACLU as a national organization has been very good, although not necessarily within its LGBT-equality arm, more in its international work, especially around violence and criminalization issues. The Task Force, in conversations that I've had with Executive Director Rea Carey, is beginning to pick up those issues and certainly has been fairly, if not having a specific project, has become more vocal, as we saw at Creating Change -- more aware that addressing the issues of sex work are important for the LGBT community. I have nothing to say about HRC. [Laughs.]

MW: Doesn't a lot of the stigmatization of sex work and sex workers go back to the United States' Puritan beginnings?

CHATEAUVERT: A lot of people want to say that, and as a historian, one wants to base it within a Hawthorne/The Scarlet Letter/New England puritanism. I understand that that's one way of situating the history of that stigma. However, I think it's important to remember that prostitution was not a criminal offense in the United States until World War I. And most countries in the E.U., as well as other places around the world, abolished prostitution as a criminal offense after World War II.

MW: Do you have hope for progress?

CHATEAUVERT: I see a lot of progress happening. I think that this is a very complex movement. When we talk about decriminalization, what are we talking about decriminalizing? In fact, most workers in the sex industry work legal jobs. That's the other part to remember. If you work in a strip club, if you're an adult entertainer, if you are a performer in pornography, and all those other kinds of jobs that are involved or associated with it, that's more than half of the people working in the sex industry. They're already working in legal jobs.

MW: So now we just need to get the other half?

CHATEAUVERT: In some ways we are talking about the other half -- actually less than the other half. The estimates are really hard to judge. For places like California, there are more than 500 registered businesses in the sex industry, each employing anywhere between two and over 1,000 people. That's a very different kind of number than just saying, "Oh, we're only talking about the people who stand on the streets at night and solicit from passing cars." And it's a very different picture.

MW: That raises a point from your book, about the crackdown on prostitution in Logan Circle here in D.C. Early in the book you write, "Neighborhood residents take false comfort in the belief that empty sidewalks discourage crime." Can you explain what you mean by that?

CHATEAUVERT: The notion that empty streets means that there's no crime, or leads to a lessening of crimes, actually means that there are fewer people out on the street, or participating and watching what's going on out on the street -- in order to, if you will, sound the neighborhood alarm. Or to alert people that a crime may be taking place.

We've got this very strange, "If you see something, say something" culture for every public place except when it comes to streets. And sex workers who work on the street are just as invested in not having muggers on the street, not having other people out there who are interested in doing violence against them, or robbing and stealing from them. They would like safe streets too! Civilians seem to think that the presence of people working on the street brings in other people who prey on them, or prey upon the people who live there. If there was better communication, if there was more openness between allowing sex workers to report people who are doing violence, or people who are breaking and entering, the situation would be very different. Instead, we "clean up the streets," thinking that's safer. Having more people on the streets is actually safer.

MW: You're saying it's similar to the "war on drugs," and the way the police and neighborhoods deal with drugs: generally taking easy ways out rather than tackling the harder, more systemic issues.

CHATEAUVERT: Exactly. One of the things to remember is an experiment that happened in England -- there's also been small experiments here in the United States. When the cops de-prioritize the arrests of prostitutes and focus more on violent crime, especially violent crime against sex workers, they actually end up doing better in terms of arresting the people who are more dangerous criminals than by simply going after what [former New York Mayor Rudy] Giuliani liked to call "quality of life" crimes.

Last week I was talking to some folks who were doing organizing in the San Francisco area -- this was South of Market, so still a somewhat transitional neighborhood in different kinds of ways. The residents were complaining to the police about the "screaming prostitutes and drag queens." They were out on the streets disturbing their nights and the police weren't doing anything to get them quiet or get them out of there. That's a typical situation. What happened in this particular instance was that when the residents met with the police, members of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, SWOP Bay Area, which is a very active sex-workers organization, were also present. And when they started talking to the residents and the police, they started breaking down what was actually going on there.

The outcome of the story was that the residents realized that the screaming was actually about issues around domestic violence, around other kinds of structural violence that they were experiencing. Simply arresting them and taking them off the street, or pushing them into a new neighborhood, was not going to solve the very human social problems that they were actually facing. And so as an intervention to that, what they did was they worked out that anytime there was a neighborhood complaint that this was going on, they would send a small team of social workers and other SWOP advocates to go in and say, "Okay, what's going on here? What do you need? Do you need health care? Are you about to overdose on a drug? Do you need help with your kids? Is this about some other kind of violence?" It showed that the issue was not sex work. The issues were the things that the sex workers were experiencing outside of their work. Their own personal/social problems.

MW: That gets to the idea that sex workers and sex work is not just a matter of the powerful vs. the powerless, of abusers and helpless victims.

CHATEAUVERT: Exactly. There's a much broader and complex dynamic going on.

The thing about sex work is that some people do it by choice. Many engage in sex work because of circumstance. There are a lot of sex workers out there who have full-time, regular jobs, but then they do some escorting once or twice a month. Or maybe they go and work on the street at the end of the month because -- guess what? -- we just cut 6 billion dollars in food stamps. We just cut off TANF -- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. We kick people out of public housing because some member of the family has a drug conviction. We don't allow people who have drug convictions to get financial aid to go to school or to do many other things. So what are they left to do? The ways that they can make money, the only way they can survive for many of them, is to choose to do sex work. Now, you might say that's not quite the circumstances of choice. I mean, the choice is forced on them.

One of the things that I have told a lot of people who are very concerned about this notion around circumstance and sex work is, "Well, if you're really interested in changing what prostitution looks like, what sex work looks like, and the people who engage in it, why don't you work to support a living wage?" Because if we have living wages, there would be people who would not feel like they have to moonlight as sex workers.

MW: Let's spend a few minutes talking about your background. I understand you fled to San Francisco from your native Iowa as a teenager.

CHATEAUVERT: I decided to drop out of high school because I was bored silly. I went to San Francisco for what I thought was going to be just a couple weeks -- or so I told my mother. I ended up staying for two years and then decided that I needed to come back to Iowa. I did my GED and started as a freshman at the University of Iowa. I guess that would have been January 1979. And then just stayed in school. I finished my Ph.D. at Penn in '92.

MW: In between you were at The George Washington University, where you started exploring and advocating for sex work in D.C., including advocating for strip clubs. Explain your work on behalf of strip clubs.

CHATEAUVERT: I was part of the D.C. Nighttime Coalition. I was working with Bob Summersgill and GLAA [the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, D.C.], and one of the local restaurant organizations. We were trying to prevent the bill that basically abolished strip clubs in the city. It was all part of that gentrification of K Street and 14th Street, and later on was used to help shut down all of the clubs to build the stadium down by Tracks and Nation and all that. I was part of that. Then there was another proposal, another bill, which actually became "Prostitution-Free Zone" kind of legislation, and I testified against that, about local legislative policy about trying to create a public culture that was supportive of public sex basically. And I'll use the term "public sex" because that throws a lot of people off. I don't mean that people should be able to have sex on the street, but I do think that not trying to force it underground is healthier than the route that we've chosen to take.

MindyChateauvert

(Photo by Todd Franson)

MW: Did your activist bent develop from your time in San Francisco, as it seems to do for so many who go there?

CHATEAUVERT: No, it developed in Iowa, when I was a kid. Seriously, Iowa City as a university town was all caught up in the anti-war movement. So I grew up in an environment in which there were protests and sit-ins and demonstrations against Dow Chemical, and demonstrations against napalm and all the rest of it. That's the kind of place that I grew up. When I came back to Iowa City to go to college, I became involved in things like the Rape Crisis Center -- I was an emergency counselor for that. I did work as a programmer for the Women's Resource and Action Center, the women's center on campus. I was a women's studies major. I got involved in student government, did the whole thing. So student politics, campus politics, were really some of my first real feet-getting-wet on my own activism, both service work and policy work. I did one of the first studies on sexual harassment of students while I was at the University of Iowa. That was in 1981.

MW: When did you come out?

CHATEAUVERT: The best way to put it is that I discovered what I could be in San Francisco. I "came out" in my first year or so of being back in Iowa. Iowa City also has a huge gay culture and a huge lesbian community. We had the women's coffee house, which is an all-lesbian coffee house. I was on the women's softball team. We did escorts to the clinic. That's what, to me, being an undergrad meant.

MW: Speaking to the progressive culture of your upbringing, Iowa was one of the first states to have marriage equality.

CHATEAUVERT: Let's rephrase that, let's make it even more important -- Iowa City was one of the first seven municipalities in the nation to outlaw employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. That was in the early 1980s.

MW: I assume that didn't include transgender.

CHATEAUVERT: Not necessarily. Although I do know that there were transgender people who did benefit individually from that law.

MW: Are you in a relationship?

CHATEAUVERT: I have a very long-term relationship, and, no, Mary and I will never get married.

MW: Because you're against the concept of marriage?

CHATEAUVERT: I am still enough of a feminist to believe that marriage is a patriarchal institution that I do not want to support. We are both of that persuasion.

MW: Speaking of feminism, on a personal level I found it particularly fascinating when you write about the feminist movement and its generally anti-porn advocacy. When I was in college taking women's studies classes, I always came up short in trying to defend pornography because my experience with it is very different as a gay man. I mean, maybe women in straight porn, maybe they are victims, but it just seemed too easy to look at it that way. And that's sort of what you express. But that was 20 years ago. Has this changed at all in the decades since?

CHATEAUVERT: Twenty years ago, I was still very much involved in the women's studies fora/movement. I did a master's degree in women's studies and public policy at GW. That's how I ended up in D.C. in the first place. It was the middle of the sex wars, the so-called "campus sex wars."

It's important to remember two things: One is that the porn that people like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, and all of the other '80s folks if you will, were criticizing -- the heterosexual porn that they were criticizing, was often, yes, really horrible! Actually, if somebody wanted to challenge it on its artistic merits, or on its ability to move women, it would lose. That's important to remember. It wasn't that the people who were defending porn thought that the porn that was available was fabulous. There were some really very strong critiques about the male-centered gaze and all that. The problem was who controlled it, perhaps. But by censoring it you create other problems. For example, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a ruling called Butler in 1992, which took that Catharine MacKinnon argument -- that porn was harmful to women. And notice how sexist, also, this is. It's only about women. It's very black and white in that way. When Butler became the rule in Canada, the first two types of people that found themselves being criminalized for distributing "porn," was one, a gay men's group that was making safer-sex videos for gay men in the sex industry; and, two, the Boston-based radical sex lesbian group that was sending their magazine to Canada, and it was stopped from going over the border as being harmful to women. Even though this was an all-women production of pornography. Because the way the law worked is that the people who get criminalized are usually the people at the lowest margin.

MW: You can say that about a lot of laws and legislation.

CHATEAUVERT: [Laughs.] Yeah, exactly. Here's the other new thing that's coming on: Now the feminists who are against porn have picked up the early 1990s Christian sex addict/porn addict language -- which no accredited sexologist or psychiatrist actually believes exist. But they have created this myth they call "porn addiction." There are feminist groups against pornography who are likening it exactly to drug addiction. "This is your brain on drugs." "This is your brain on porn." It's the exact same language. I find this to be particularly scary. But it's also very informative about how these languages and these themes continue to get replayed, and to get reconfigured, so that they need some sort of new moral panic/sex panic, to outrage people.

MW: In your book, you call the view of feminists who are anti-porn "paternalistic."

CHATEAUVERT: And that paternalism is very much a part of a lot of feminist action, or feminist calls for using the prison system, or using laws to punish people. It's a "Feminists Know Best"/"Fathers Know Best" language.

MW: Returning to your personal life, I understand you're now in New Orleans. Do you live there full time now?

CHATEAUVERT: No, I'm half-time. We came down because we wanted to avoid the snow this winter.

MW: You've become a snowbird?

CHATEAUVERT: I guess I am a flyaway snowbird. But we've actually had a house here long before Katrina. And so this has been a way of now being able to be here longer and changing our schedule so that we can be two places during a given year.

MW: Do you teach in D.C.?

CHATEAUVERT: No, my teaching is now going to be at the University of Pennsylvania.

MW: When do you get back to D.C.?

CHATEAUVERT: I'll be back in town on a regular basis beginning in May. After I go to Saints and Sinners Literary Festival down here in New Orleans.

MW: When you're in D.C., you'll be doing research and writing?

CHATEAUVERT: Yeah, I've got a research project right now that I'm not really ready to talk about, but it does continue looking at some of these same issues, specifically looking at people who work in the legal sex industry.

MW: And D.C. is also where you have your social outlet with the leather community?

CHATEAUVERT: Yeah. For me my home bar is the DC Eagle. It's not anyplace else. It was never the Phase, it was never Hung Jury. It was never any lesbian bars. It was the Eagle. And still is the Eagle, even in exile.

Melinda Chateauvert will read from and sign copies of her new book Sex Workers Unite! on Wednesday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m., at Busboys & Poets, 1025 5th St. NW. Call 202-789-2227 or visit sexworkersunite.com and busboysandpoets.com.

For the sixth year in a row, the Capital Area Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (CAGLCC) will host the LGBT Mega Networking and Social Event at Town Danceboutique. The event, coming up Feb. 26, has grown by leaps and bounds every year with more than 1,600 area movers and shakers attending in 2013.

"There is uniqueness to us that makes this event successful," says Mark Guenther, executive director of the Chamber. "In our community, one can make a deep professional connection based on perceived shared backgrounds or sensitivity to our common cause that could outweigh all other factors."

CAGLCC MegaNetworking

(Photo by Ward Morrison)

This local affair is made possible by partnerships with community organizations and local businesses. The Chamber has partnered with more than 30 LGBT networking and social groups to get the word out, including official community partners, who sign on for free and add their support -- and listservs -- to the effort.

The DC Center, D.C.'s LGBT community center, is one of these important partners. In fact, The DC Center recently relocated to 2000 14th St. NW with room for a new office for CAGLCC.

"We're thrilled that the Capital Area Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce has joined us at our new facility," says David Mariner, the center's executive director. "We always welcome the opportunity work with them. The Chamber plays an important role in building our collective strength in the business sector."

Those sponsors and vendors who make the evening possible offer all manner of perks to attendees. The evening also includes a sweepstakes raffle for fabulous prizes. One sponsor, TD Bank, is a longtime supporter of LGBT causes. Nationally, TD participated in 14 pride parades in 2013. Mega Networking is just one of the local events across the country that they will invest in this year.

Through this extensive networking with partners, sponsors and organizations, plus a major social media campaign, Mega Networking lives up to its name with a growing attendance every year. The personal connections, of course, are the highlight of the evening. On this night, Town Danceboutique is not just the hot place to party, but it's also a place for professionals to celebrate and socialize.

The combination of professional networking and fun draws many people from the community who might not usually find themselves together in such a festive atmosphere.

"Coming together for this event is a priceless opportunity," says Guenther, "either to just connect on a social level or to meet people that will one day help you in your career."

The 6th Annual Mega Networking and Social Event is Wednesday, Feb. 26, 6:30 to 8:30pm, at Town Danceboutique, 2009 8th St. NW. For more information or to register, visit caglcc.org. It's free and open to all.

The Chamber Means Business. For more information visit caglcc.org or facebook.com/CAGLCC. On Twitter, follow @DCLGBTBIZ

Jessica Vaughan is a D.C.-based freelance writer and a member of CAGLCC.

"I know I bring a little bit of a different sound to the clubs that I play," Nicholas Moede says, "and it's great to see that sound getting a great response from the crowd."

Moede, who goes by the alias DJ Nikno, was pleased with the crowd response he got during his debut at Town last November. The club was pleased, too, opting to bring Nikno back just two months later. "I definitely play a lot of vocals," says Nikno, who spins at Town again this Saturday, Feb. 15, during the club's Valentine's Day-themed "Shot To The Heart" party, complete with a text-based message board. "I don't necessarily play a lot of pop music, but it's all very uplifting, euphoric music. I like to get the crowd very motivated, and get a lot of people putting their hands in the air and getting very into the music."

NicholasMoedebyCaliGriebel

(Photo by Cali Griebel)

The 45-year-old Nikno says his sound is a variant of high-NRG/house, inspired chiefly by today's biggest European EDM artists, such as Swedish House Mafia and Avicii. It's all a far cry from hip-hop, which is what he played when he first started DJ'ing a decade ago as DJ Niknotic, a spin on his name and the alcoholic drink Hypnotic. Back then, he owned a club called The Flame in San Diego.

Nicholas Moede

(Photo by Cali Griebel)

"I started out DJ'ing because I was unhappy with the DJs that we were hiring," he says. "And a number of my friends kind of challenged me and said, 'Well, if you think you can do it better, then do it.'"

Nikno played there a couple years before he became owner of San Diego's biggest gay dance club, Rich's, and became its main resident DJ. A couple years ago the Milwaukee native, who originally moved west to study literature at the University of California, San Diego, decided to move to New York to take classes in musical production. He's now produced about 10 official remixes, including one for Cher's new single "Take It Like A Man."

"I'm working on some original tracks and pitching those to some different singers," he says, "hopefully trying to get some artists on board with doing some tracks with me and collaborations." He mentions Rihanna and Katy Perry as dream teams.

In addition to increasing production work, Nikno also hopes to pick up more DJ residencies beyond Town, Rich's and Philadelphia's Voyeur. "I would love to expand and play more cities," he says, "and I would love to have the chance to play some of the bigger music festivals at some point."

For DJ Nikno, obviously, the only way is up.

DJ Nikno performs Saturday, Feb. 15, after 10 p.m. at Town Danceboutique, 2009 8th NW. Cover is $8 before 11 p.m., or $12 after. Call 202-234-TOWN or visit towndc.com.

"There's no art form that stirs up passion in your heart like music," says Jeff Buhrman of the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington. "You can hear just a few notes and be swept away, have such intense feelings."

GMCW Passion

(Photo by Michael Key)

When putting together a Valentine's Day-themed program, one of his last as the chorus's artistic director, Buhrman was drawn to the idea of stirring passion among patrons. "Passion for love, for music, for family, for religion, for homeland," he says. "And the passion for keeping this battle going for LGBT equality." The result is a romantic program of diverse love songs, ranging from Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" to three songs from Miss Saigon to arias from La Traviata and The Marriage of Figaro. "It is an inspirational program with songs about who we are as LGBT people," Buhrman says.

Buhrman also touts the concert venue, the "wonderfully acoustic hall" at the Church of the Epiphany. And he notes that in addition to a pianist, the chorus will also be accompanied by a string quartet and an oboist. The string quartet will feature on violin none other than the chorus's leader, Chase Maggiano. "This concert is going to be a fun chance for me to actually be able to make some music with the guys," Maggiano says. It'll be the first time the classically trained violinist will have accompanied the chorus since becoming its executive director last year.

"It's going to be a great show for a date night," Maggiano says. And just who will be his date to the concert? His parents. Says Maggiano: "I think this is actually my parents' first time seeing a Gay Men's Chorus concert." '

The Gay Men's Chorus performs Saturday, Feb. 15, at 3 and 8 p.m. at 'The Church of the Epiphany, 1317 G St. NW. Tickets are $46. Call 202-293-1548 or visit gmcw.org.

''When I got the script for Serial Mom, I couldn't believe it,'' Kathleen Turner says. ''I kept picking it up and throwing it down. And saying to my husband, 'You're not going to believe this!'''

Anyone who's seen John Waters's 20-year-old hysterical black comedy can understand. Turner is brilliant as a gleefully murderous mother, killing people in her suburban Baltimore neighborhood for committing trivial faux pas. ''When I finally realized I was kind of hooked,'' she says, ''I called John and said, 'I really need to know that this is comedy. That this is not going to turn into some kind of schlocky, awful slasher thing.'''

Kathleen Turner

(Photo courtesy Arena Stage)

The end result was better than she dreamed. ''Are you kidding? I had a ball!'' While there's no further work on tap with Waters -- and she knows of no plans to turn Serial Mom into a Hairspray-style Broadway musical -- Turner says the director ''has stayed a wonderful friend, and he'll be here to see this.'' This being the ''music-filled'' adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children at Arena Stage, where she is making her professional singing debut (see review, page 36). ''I never have done a musical before,'' says Turner, adding that Amy Irving got the singing parts to her animated character Jessica Rabbit in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit? ''I actually wanted to sing that,'' concedes Turner, the husky-voiced actor who resigned herself early to non-singing work. ''There were no leads in my range. The sweet-young-things were sopranos.'' One year after Turner's breakthrough work in the 1981 film Body Heat she appeared in her first Arena Stage production, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Mother Courage follows her dazzling return to Arena last season as Molly Ivins in Red Hot Patriot, also directed by Molly Smith, Arena's artistic director since 1998. ''My stars, what Molly has done with Arena Stage is spectacular,'' Turner coos. ''She's built it into one of the top theater companies in the country.''

Turns out, she's a proud mother all around, heaping praise on her own daughter, the bluesy singer-songwriter Rachel Ann Weiss, who performed at the Mother Courage opening night party, as well as the show's ensemble cast, 16 actors strong. ''I'm knocked out by this company. I'm so proud of them,'' she says. ''You've got to remember, we put this together in four weeks. It should have been impossible.'' '

Mother Courage and Her Children runs to March 9 at Arena Stage, 1101 6th St. SW. Tickets are $55 to $90. Call 202-488-3300 or visit arenastage.org.

Brad Brenner had no prior experience working in app development, but the psychologist with a private practice in D.C. just couldn't turn down the chance to help develop a matchmaking app for gay men.

''One thing that I love about my job is I get to help people become what they want to in life,'' Brenner says. ''With this opportunity, I could potentially help a lot of people find these great connections that they might not have otherwise.''

Stagg app

(Photo via iTunes store)

Brenner is talking about the app Stagg, for which he's tapping into his psychological expertise to help match gay men. ''As psychologists,'' he says, ''what we know helps form relationships, whether they're friendships or long-term romantic relationships,'' depends on four variables. This goes beyond proximity and attraction, which current apps such as Grindr and Scruff have mastered, to include similarity and compatibility. Brenner says Stagg's custom-made algorithm will work off of an initial assessment and regular quizzes to match users based on those two variables, going beyond even what Match.com or eHarmony offer.

''Most compatibility algorithms are based on either 'birds of a feather,' the similarity approach, or 'opposites attract,''' Brenner explains. ''Our algorithm is basically able to do both.'' It'll be completely customized to the person, depending on how similar or how different the user specifies he wants in a matchup.

An early iteration of the app has been available for a while, but Brenner says they're working to finalize a more advanced version. Brenner and his fellow D.C.-based developers will launch an Indiegogo capital campaign this Friday, Feb. 14, with a party at JR.'s.

''What better night to kick off the efforts for a gay dating app than Valentine's Day?'' asks Mike LaRosa, a business consultant planning the party, which is billed as an anti-Valentine's Single Awareness Day event. In addition to Stagg T-shirts, giveaways including free personal coaching sessions with the local matchmaking company Gay Love Project, and a heart piñata filled with goodies intended especially for ''someone feeling rather scorned that evening,'' the Stagg party at JR.'s will include games of Valentine's Day-themed trivia, led by Brock Thompson. They've also instructed the VJ for the night to play singles-oriented videos and comedy clips, as well as Stagg's new humorous Web commercial that local filmmaker Wes Culwell shot last weekend.

Brenner says the new-and-improved Stagg will launch in a few months using the same ''freemium'' model of its competitors, meaning there'll be an ad-supported free version, but users will have to pay for the best features. Among these is one they're calling ''Serendipity,'' which will work off of the app's algorithm to alert a user – ''like a tap on the shoulder'' – when there's another promising user who appears close and compatible.

What if you're on a date at that precise moment? Brenner laughs at the suggestion: ''It'll be user discretion whether you respond or not.''

The Stagg launch party is Friday, Feb. 14, starting around 8 p.m., at JR.'s, 1519 17th St. NW. Call 202-328-0090 or visit facebook.com/JRsBarDC.

With a charisma that roars like a coal-fired furnace, Arena's Mother Courage and Her Children, begins and ends with Kathleen Turner in the title role. Yes, there are other memorable players that bring their own well-tended fires, but no one is as fully stoked as Turner. And though her delivery – a gravelly mix of Ian McShane-style proclamations, Marianne Faithful-style vocals and Turner's own potent phrasing – might throw another play off its axis, here it is utterly and completely compelling.

And this is no accident, either on the part of Turner or director Molly Smith. Written in the aftermath of World War I and as the clouds gathered for World War II, Bertolt Brecht's story of a woman who loses her children even as she profits from the war that takes them, is a compromised morality tale writ bold. Courage must be larger than life because in less than three hours she must live all that is morally ambiguous and blindly necessary in war, and pepper it with dark humor and the tiny nuggets of humanity still cradled in her pragmatic breast.

Mother Courage

(Photo by Teresa Wood)

Getting this, Turner plays it to the hilt and in doing so brings into stark relief the many questions Brecht surely wanted asked: Does she really love her children? How does one love what one must also prepare to lose? And if war, by its nature, dismantles our moral GPS, is it fair to judge us as we drive blind and by necessity?

Turner captures something else too, something that Brecht may or may not have intended. This Courage exists in a state of genderless self-possession: Her intelligence, wit and drive make her what she is, not her feminine ''wiles.'' When her daughter dies, we may see a mother's grief, but not selfless motherhood as we think of it. As such, she is an extraordinary example of (if not necessarily one to be aspired to) feminism. It is also a portrayal of womanhood rarely seen on the contemporary stage as written by contemporary playwrights.

Far more typical is Yvette, the vamp haunting the solders' camps. Though she is played with verve and athletic gusto by Meg Gillentine, Yvette's identity and worth is measured only in sexual currency. And this is the measure of women today, in life and as we are shown them on the screen and on the stage. Women are portrayed as sexually viable or invisible, an either/or proposition. It's a reality that makes Mother Courage all the more fascinating, especially as embodied by the spiritually and physically formidable Turner. She shows us that there is an entirely other way of writing women for the stage and screen and all one has to do is start with Brecht. Or wake up and look around.

As heavy-handed as this may sound, Brecht is still all about accessible storytelling and director Smith keeps Mother Courage's adventures moving apace in keeping with this page-turning mood. The musical interludes, which serve to recalibrate the play to an arm's length jollity or wistfulness, are handled here with a nice blend of the folksy and the cabaret; nods to the play's 17th century setting and when it was written in the late 1930s.

David Hare's contemporary, sharply witted translation ensures that nothing is lost of Brecht's rueful style of humor and the players capably keep the balance between the dire and the funny. And though the sets are somewhat reminiscent of the fake rocks of a vintage Star Trek episode, they are also in keeping with Brecht's penchant for the theatrically stark. And there is enough action and emotional pace to lessen the distraction.

As for the scene introductions, delivered by various members of the ensemble, the less said the better. Brecht may have wanted it, but it doesn't make it any less toe-curling.

But these are details easily forgiven as Turner commands the space with her quips and bellows. Giving her plenty to play against, the other standouts here are Rick Foucheux as The Chaplain, a man who finds his identity increasingly compromised, and Jack Willis, who's worldly Cook appreciates Mother Courage, at least as far as necessity allows.

Foucheux, who recently delivered a poignantly subtle rendering of the loneliness of aging as Sorn in Woolly Mammoth's Stupid Fucking Bird, here shows his versatility in giving his Chaplain the right broad-brush combination of personable and selfish. Willis's Cook is an intriguing concoction of savvy suitor, old coot, and all-around wit, even if there isn't enough in the way of chemistry with Courage to explain his long-term interest in her.

In the non-speaking but noise-making role of Courage's mute daughter Kattrin, Erin Weaver delivers a strongly defined character and expresses well the grief of this girl's thwarted life. It is her interactions with Turner's Courage that bring the clearest glimpses of love's ambiguities in the face of crisis and speaks interestingly to the expectations all mothers grapple with when it comes to their daughters.

As the two sons Courage loses to the war, Swiss Cheese and Eilif, Nehal Joshi and Nicholas Rodriguez acquit themselves well, though the roles as written are more symbolic than emotionally engaged. Some smaller roles are given compelling color by Dan Istrate as the Sergeant and Jacobi Howard as the Recruiting Officer. Finally, mention must be made of the musicians and singers, as led by Nathan Charles Koci, for bringing much palpable joy or pathos in the musical interludes.

Still, even with these pluses, the reason to see this production remains Turner, whose hard-bitten hawker-philosopher persists in the memory and the mind's eye with the determination of the Courage eternally plying her wares in war's wasteland.

We laugh to avoid screaming. Or maybe we try therapeutic tweeting.

There were no new media to distract us in 1989. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau did a series of Doonesbury strips in which the character Andy Lippincott is diagnosed with AIDS. Andy survives on morphine and dark humor. When his doctor tells him, "You know your jammies clash with your lesions, don't you?" Andy replies, "So who are you, Ralph Lauren?" His friend Joanie Caucus asks, "Andy, how can you joke?" He replies, "How can you not?" I once watched a Gay Men's Chorus member nicknamed Stella in the ICU at Washington Hospital Center telling an elaborate joke between puffs on his oxygen mask. Grace in the face of the abyss.

Another time, another war – or wars. Activist Pam Spaulding tweeted on Sunday, "World gathers at anti-gay #Putin's #Sochi2014 #Olympics as Nigerian govt foments #LGBT genocide. NYT: http://goo.gl/pmdqbs #CheerstoSochi" During the Friday broadcast of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony, the Twitterverse flowed with snarky observations. When one giant snowflake failed to open into an Olympic ring, Broadway star Laura Benanti tweeted, "Leave off the last ring for homophobia."

Scott Gorenstein tweeted a pic of police beating gay protesters and called it "a traditional Russian greeting." John Swafford tweeted, "@CocaCola nothing says America the Beautiful like going to Russia paying for LGBT hunting and violence." Charles Butler wrote, "When I design my anti-LGBT Olympics opening, I'm going to skip the dancing men in periwinkle tuxedos." The Human Rights Campaign hung a large poster at its headquarters criticizing Putin, but then was slammed for serving Coke at its Sochi-related event. (Pity the caterer.)

The American right took no Olympics break. Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute strongly defended Russia's anti-gay "propaganda" law, saying "there is no human right to tell the gay narrative to schoolchildren." Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality denounced Coca-Cola for including same-sex parents in its "America the Beautiful" Super Bowl ad; he missed the fact that the song's author, Katherine Lee Bates, was lesbian. On National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, Feb. 7, Bryan Fischer of the Family Research Council said he opposes normalizing homosexual behavior "because I love black males." Back slowly away.

LGBT voices held their own. On Feb. 4, a group of Ugandan exiles called the Kuchu Diaspora Alliance led a protest outside the Ugandan Embassy in Washington. Also present were representatives of the Unitarian Universalist Association, HRC Global Engagement, and D.C.'s Center Global. The Ugandans, led by Victor Mukasa, called out to the embassy staff, declaring their love for their country and decrying anti-gay persecution. I stood on the sidewalk holding a large rainbow flag, and several passing drivers honked their support. Mukasa's passion was quite affecting.

On Feb. 6, President Obama made gay-inclusive remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast organized by the right-wing group The Family. David Bahati, who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan Parliament, first proposed executing gays at The Family's Uganda National Prayer Breakfast in 2008. If the president wants to attend an ecumenical prayer breakfast, can't he find a sponsoring group that doesn't export hatred? As I embraced my Ugandan friends after the embassy protest, I was glad at least that they could continue their efforts from the greater safety of Washington.

Days later, President Obama confirmed that he included gay Olympic delegation members to send a message, while Attorney General Holder told an HRC gala in New York about Justice Department efforts to protect LGBT families.

The madness never stops, but we can pull back from it on occasion to count our blessings. That is a luxury our brothers and sisters in Sochi and Lagos and Kampala might like to taste.

Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist. He can be reached at rrosendall@starpower.net.

With this week's issue, we're relaunching Nightlife Coverboy as Coverboy: Bartenders Edition. Each week, we will feature one of the gay community's most personable drink slingers. Be sure to stop by during their week and pay them a visit.

Coverboy: Bartenders Edition: Will

(Photo by Julian Vankim)

If you roll into the Green Lantern on any given night, chances are you'll encounter Will. Now residing in Arlington with his fiancé, Luke, this Midwest-raised outdoorsman first came to Washington after attending St. John's College in Annapolis. A longtime bartender at various gay bars around the city, the 31-year-old says he most enjoys "getting homosexuals drunk." Though Will was shy, quiet and, as he puts it, "boring and dull" as a youth, he's since matured into a confident, funny man armed with quick bartending hands and an even quicker wit. Although he's sometimes been embarrassed on the job, the target of some vulgar sexual offers, Will says he enjoys the job because he likes meeting and talking with new people and getting them to crack a smile.

Shot on location at The Beacon Hotel in Washington. Visit beaconhotelwdc.com.

What's on your nightstand?A lamp, an alarm clock. I wouldn't keep anything on a nightstand. I have friends come over my house. Do you want to ask me what's in the closet?

Okay, what's in the closet?A bunch of pornography, some lube and condoms, stuff I haven't used in a long time. Some dusty dildos.

What are your three favorite TV shows of all time?Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost. I can't say Battlestar Galactica three times. Well, I can. But I don't want people to think I'm crazy.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be and why?I would have the same superpower as the Scarlet Witch. She's able to affect the outcome of any probabilistic event.

If you could do any job in the world, what would it be?I would be a professor at St. John's College. I like the breadth and depth of conversations you get into when you get to talk about Aristotle and Plato and Tolstoy and Euclid, and all the sciences and mathematics.

You're stranded on a desert island with one person. Who do you pick?Bear Grylls. He could feed me and treat me right. I mean sexually, of course. He's a very attractive man.

Coverboy: Bartenders Edition: Will

(Photo by Julian Vankim)

You'd probably have to eat snails and other nasty stuff.As long as there's something on Bear I get to eat, too.

What annoys you?People who are entitled or rude in their behavior, especially at a bar.

What pleases you?People who are polite and generous in their behavior, especially at a bar.

What's your greatest fear?Spiders. Every type of spider. Oh, and bugs. Anything that has its shell on the outside. So I guess the guys from Halo, too. Anything with an exoskeleton.

Roller coasters: wooden or steel?Steel, because the wooden ones, you're just sitting in a bowl, going around. But the steel ones you get to flip, and go upside-down, and around all over the place, and there's potential you'll accidentally kick somebody's head off. Which happened one time when I was at a Six Flags.

What?They actually had to close the whole damn park. This dude lost his hat and jumped over the fence, into the "Don't Go Here" area, and when the roller coaster went by, someone's leg hit the kid's head and snapped it off.

What's your guilty pleasure?Laffy Taffy.

What turns you on?Does Laffy Taffy count? No, beards and jockstraps.

What turns you off?Glitter.

What's your idea of a romantic getaway?Camping on Assateague. Just pulling up with a tent, and some food and firewood, building a fire on the beach.

Coverboy: Bartenders Edition: Will

(Photo by Julian Vankim)

Define good in bed.Responsive and aggressive.

Can men fake it? Should they?I've spit on many a back before.

If you were a porn star, what would your name be and what would you be known for?Ty Pennington. And I would be known for Extreme Ass Makeover.

Name two people you don't ever want to picture having sex.Any priest and any child.

What's the best tip you ever got?To go back to school. I know you mean money, but money comes and goes.

What's the craziest thing someone ever ordered from you?Someone asked me to pee in a water bottle once. I didn't do it.

When you go to a bar, what do you order?Diet Coke.

Gin or Vodka?Gin.

Scotch or Bourbon?Bourbon.

Wine or Beer?Beer.

Coverboy: Bartenders Edition: Will

(Photo by Julian Vankim)

Mustard, Mayo or Ketchup?Ketchup.

Miley or Britney?That's a hard one. Britney.

What's your favorite cocktail to make?Budweiser. It is simple and easy and my fingers don't get sticky.

You become master of the world. What's your first act?To establish a committee!

Is cuddling the best, or a waste of time?The best. It is nice and calm and comfortable and easy and warm.

What are you most grateful for?Luke. My fiancé. We've been engaged for a year and together for five.

What's your motto?No le illegitimus catarate. "Don't let the bastards shit on you."

As written, Gore Vidal's The Best Man ultimately intends viewers to root for William Russell over Joseph Cantwell in their knock-down, drag-out fight to become their party's candidate for president in 1960. But as performed at Keegan Theatre, we unquestionably root for outgoing President Arthur Hockstader instead. The reason is simple: Kevin Adams plays Hockstader with such command, conviction and Bill Clinton-esque charisma, you'd love to vote for him in real life. Has Adams ever been a politician? Is he actually a Southerner? I don't know the answers, though I do know that Keegan company member Adams was equally superb and convincing a couple years back playing the Northeastern patriarch Joe Keller in Arthur Miller's All My Sons. Just chalk it up to being a first-rate actor.

The Best Man

By contrast, both Colin Smith and Keegan founder and artistic director Mark Rhea stumble in their flat portrayals of the opportunist Cantwell and the principled Russell, respectively. Rhea, in particular, doesn't project or enunciate well enough, causing us to miss out on some of Russell's choice retorts. Fortunately, as integral as the two lead roles are to the story, there's enough in the play to chew on, to savor, and directors Christina A. Coakley and Timothy H. Lunch even make up for their miscast leads by lining up an otherwise strong ensemble for this production. Besides Adams, Sheri Herren as Alice Russell, and especially Susan Marie Rhea as Mabel Cantwell, deserve special mention for their studious portrayals of political wives; as does Rena Cherry Brown for her spot-on portrayal of mid-century female party boss Sue-Ellen Gamadge, and Stan Shulman as Russell's savvy campaign manager.

This is yet another Keegan production in which a large cast -- in this case a total of 16 actors -- fills the small stage space, allowing its veteran stage manager Megan Thrift to show off her dexterity as the theatrical equivalent of a station agent at a busy train terminal. Although she may be a bit too good at the job in this case: The Best Man is meant to emulate the raucous goings-on at a political convention in Philadelphia. Thrift's Keegan Station is a little too ho-hum to sub as that city's 30th Street Station. And Dan Deiter's sound effects of shouting delegates, heard every so often when the candidates' hotel suite doors are opened, are a little too canned to be convincing.

Keegan's set operation is headed by Michael Innocenti, who does double duty, also playing the small role of Sheldon Marcus, who accuses Cantwell of homosexual activity, years earlier when the two served in the Army. This is intended as a retaliatory move by Russell to impugn Cantwell, who is working to smear Russell's good name with evidence of his medically documented bouts with mental illness. Even if these dirty tactics aren't as surefire campaign decimators today, The Best Man still holds up as an incisive account of the game that is American politics. And the dirty tactics aren't the only things that have slightly changed over time. The late bisexual writer Vidal was a lifelong Democrat, even a wannabe politician, and The Best Man was originally written as veiled commentary on his party, criticizing the rise of John F. Kennedy over Adlai Stevenson, of populism over principles. But more than a half century later, The Best Man -- which assiduously avoids any mention of a specific party -- seems more like a critique of today's Republican party.

Regardless of party, so much of politics is about keeping the worst at bay -- the worst impulses, the worst activities, the worst candidate. So much boils down to voting, or campaigning, for the least-bad option.

The best man doesn't always -- maybe not even often -- win.

Leave it to Virginia to throw a wrench in my wedding plans.

This was to be the year that my husband, Cavin, and I took the final step of legalizing it — getting an official license that will be recognized by the federal government and provide us with some much-needed security on issues that our legally married friends have stopped stressing over.

This can be confusing as we use the word ''husband'' when referring to each other. We got married in 2007, Virginia having then recently enacted a statue that constitutionally refused to recognize big, gay, Buddhist wedding ceremonies. When D.C. offered official knot-tying services, we held off because for the most part in Virginia — or Kentucky, when traveling home for the holidays — a legal marriage would be as invisible as our real marriage. But with Windsor pressing the issue and federal retirement benefits on the line, 2014 was the time for us to make honest men of each other by making the short trek to the D.C. courthouse.

The plan is to get married on our anniversary, May 5, so we can celebrate the same date — it feels too retro to have all the old gay anniversaries for first met, first date, first sex (if different from first met), first co-signed lease, etc. It's a new world of one-and-done simplicity for our relationships.

But with Virginia finding its anti-gay marriage law struck down far sooner than I expected, yet also under a stay for appeals, everything's up in the air. I'd really prefer to get married where I live and we are rapidly approaching the point in history where we can no longer be among the first to crowd our way into a county clerk's office for a marriage license. Will the Old Dominion be ready when we are? Will the delay in implementing what everyone knows is coming force me into a winter wedding?

Now that I've thoroughly examined this particular gift horse's mouth, I should say I do recognize how thrilling all this is. And it has been for a while — even as Virginia remained retrograde in Richmond, closer to home we've had few problems being recognized as a couple. It's radical how differently Cavin and I are treated as a couple now than we were 10 years ago.

My only fear is that the rapid pace of change and success will lull too many of us into complacency. I don't say that in an effort to buttress our community infrastructure — it's obvious that our ''movement'' will go through many changes over the next decade, scaling back on some fronts as we refocus on others. But the work that remains will be as difficult as what has already been done.

As a case in point from our everyday lives, waiters are nearly universal in treating Cavin and me as a couple. They are also nearly universal in how they handle the check: They hand it to me. When Cavin pays, which is often, they still come back to me, the white guy, for the signature. It's a subtle form of privilege that I hadn't even noticed for too long. The waiters aren't racist, they're just acting on unexamined assumptions.

There's a wide swath of America that wants to believe that because we're less racist as country that racism is over. But that's just not true, whether we're talking about minor things like the unearned deference I receive or major things like white fear of young black men. A situation that gets better is not automatically a situation that gets solved.

I bring this up as a parallel, not an equivalence. But as we rightly celebrate our rapid success in marriage and other issues, we can't forget that we're moving from the political to the pernicious. There is no license to guarantee our equality.

Sean Bugg is editor emeritus of Metro Weekly. He can be reached at seanbugg@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @seanbugg.

One of the knocks on the door last Halloween was not trick nor treat. It was a representative from the Humane Society holding the downstairs neighbor's cat in outstretched arms.

''Is this your cat?''

Jitters

(Photo by Will O'Bryan)

While, no, it was not our cat, the visit was still relevant, as the Humane Society rep explained that the organization had fielded some complaints about feral cats in the neighborhood and was setting out traps.

Husband Fernando and I slapped our faces and exclaimed, ''Oh, no! Jitters!'' The neighbor's cat the Humane Society guy presented us might not have been ours, but we felt some responsibility for Jitters, who was out there on the street somewhere.

Jitters is a feral cat. At least, she was. She crossed our paths in early spring of 2013, if memory serves. We assumed she was being cared for by someone who allowed her to be an outdoor cat. Why else would she be so sociable, regularly trailing us down the sidewalk? But the ''ear-tip'' confirmed that she was ''trapped-neutered-returned.''

Out of pity, my husband began feeding Jitters on the front stoop. He even gave her that name, which fit perfectly, as she would get close – but not too close.

Then came this warning of the traps, and a new strategy. We needed to get Jitters inside. Did we want a cat? Not really. Regardless, the traps were coming. So was winter. Fernando began putting Jitters's dish just inside the house, leaving the door open. She would take a few steps in for Friskies, but she'd bolt if anyone got close. Eventually, we were able to close the door behind her.

In the seemingly secure backyard, where she was allowed in hopes that it would satisfy her craving for the great outdoors, I watched her turn the barbecue hood into a cat perch. Then I watched her tiny body spring the 10 feet to the garage roof. She pulled herself up, strutted away and disappeared into the alley.

Three days later, Jitters returned, and we tried again. This time, success. Within a couple days, she was litter trained. Not long after, she was on her back, exposing her belly and willing us to rub it. The only remaining hurdle is being able to pick her up.

With so many of our gay friends adopting kids, you'd think our experience with Jitters would give us some tiny insight into that. Granted, raising a child is in a league far beyond owning a pet. Instead, I'm feeling a bit more empathy for those parents who decide to give up a child for the sake of improving that child's future. Because that's what we're doing – at least at a cat level.

Jitters's latest lessons have revolved around feeling comfortable with her new pet carrier. She's been a quick study with everything else, and the carrier has been no exception. That's great, because I'm hoping she'll experience as little trauma as possible as she relocates to her new home. It's a home with one very dedicated human who's been looking for a cat companion for some time. She was even permitted a belly rub within minutes of meeting Jitters. And why not? She's the sort of person who will encourage Jitters to climb up on her bed and snuggle next to her on the sofa. We, on the other hand, discourage those behaviors.

We love Jitters, and giving her up will be sad. But we know that we're giving her a better life with a woman who can give her so much more. As I look at my gay pals and their kids, I'll probably always see those mothers who made tough choices on the children's behalf. And, at least from what I've seen, I wish I could tell them that those kids are doing as wonderfully as I'm sure Jitters will.

Will O'Bryan is Metro Weekly's managing editor. Email him at wobryan@MetroWeekly.com. Follow him @wobryan.

The Pets Issue

Hunting for a HomeFor a lifetime of creature comforts and companionship, it just takes a few good homes

Felines on the FringeWelcome or not, feral cat colonies are a D.C. creature feature

Daytime Paws-abilitiesWhile the human runs the rat race, services step in for dog daycare

Pet SpreeShopping for your furry family members

Opinion: rom Feral to ForeverThe experience of fostering offers its own special insights

Greg Zehnacker, co-owner of the gay bar Green Lantern and a longtime fixture in the D.C. area's nightlife scene, died in his sleep Tuesday morning, Feb. 18, according to a statement issued by the Thomas Circle venue.

Starting in the mid-1970s, Zehnacker began working in local nightlife and restaurant establishments, first as a coat check person at Rascals, later working at Lost and Found, Pier 9, Badlands and Peppers in a variety of roles, including lighting assistant, bartender and general manager. Zehnacker also worked in real estate.

Greg Zehnacker

While acting as general manager at Peppers in 1995, Zehnacker met John Colameco, who later became his business partner when the two bought the Green Lantern in 2001.

''He was the face, the driving force behind the Green Lantern,'' says Colameco. ''He was 'Mr. Green Lantern.' He made it from nothing into what it is today.''

Zehnacker used his position as co-owner of the Green Lantern to host several fundraisers and other events for local charities and community organizations, including The DC Center's HIV/AIDS Prevention Working Group and its weekly condom kit ''packing parties,'' the Centaur MC, the Washington Scandals Rugby Club, and the Green Lantern's annual Employee Turnabout Show featuring employees in drag performances to raise money for HIV/AIDS organizations. Zehnacker's drag personality, Miss Tokyo Rose, made a farewell appearance in the 2006 show. Zehnacker also volunteered his space for meetings of the DC Bear Club (DCBC), of which he was a founding member.

Tom Huster, a member of DCBC, met Zehnacker a month after the club launched, in January 1995. Zehnacker was active in the club, taking charge of its ''Friends in Need'' fund, supporting local LGBT- or AIDS-related organizations. Zehnacker also sat on the DCBC committee for Bear Invasion, the club's annual charity-fundraising weekend.

''He was a generous person,'' Huster says of Zehnacker. ''He would host bar nights at the Green Lantern to help us raise money. He was always helpful, outgoing, the kind of person who you'd like to be around.''

Chris Wilkins, another DCBC colleague, remembers Zehnacker as an instrumental part of DCBC from the start. He also fondly remembers spending time at Zehnacker's house in Lewes, Del., with other DCBC members.

''Greg was always full of energy, a very nice guy,'' says Wilkins. ''He had a quick wit about him, he was personable, and accommodating to anything we wanted to do for the club. He was very always smiling, friendly, and well-liked by everyone who met him.''

Employees and party promoters who worked with Zehnacker point particularly to his friendliness and willingness to help so many in need.

''Greg did as many things as he possibly could for the [LGBT] community,'' says Jeramy Scovell, manager of the Green Lantern. ''He will be missed. He was one of the nicest bosses we've worked for. That's why our turnover here has been so low compared to other bars.''

Mikey Adolphson, a DJ and party promoter who worked with Zehnacker on multiple events, posted a moving tribute to Zehnacker on his Facebook wall.

''Greg was a tremendous colleague, wonderful person and a truly integral part of my success in D.C. nightlife,'' wrote Adolphson wrote, who has since relocated to Chicago. ''Mostly, though, he was a phenomenal friend to catch up with every time I visited. Always wise, upbeat and unwavering. … To everyone at the Green Lantern, his partner and those in the D.C. nightlife scene – a wonderful light just went out.''

Zehnacker was 55 years old. He is survived by his partner of 18 years, Thomas Tarantino; his parents, Raymond and Charlotte; his brother Mike; and sister-in-law Carol. Details for a memorial and funeral service should be released soon.

''Greg loved bringing together people from all walks of life and ensuring they had a good time under Green Lantern's roof,'' reads the tribute to Zehnacker on the Green Lantern's Facebook page. ''In that spirit, and as a way of honoring Greg, we will be open during this difficult time and encourage all to come in, raise a glass to Greg, and share your favorite memories of our friend and colleague.''

[Editor's note: Staff writer John Riley was employed by the Green Lantern between 2009 and 2011.]

Some might argue that animals don't belong in close confines with humans, that the wild is more suitable for paws, fins, beaks and claws. While we're not about to defend cages and captivity, we will proudly celebrate lives shared with animals that become part of our families. These are the animals we talk to, even when we know they cannot comprehend our language – aside from the brightest the animal kingdom has to offer, of course. These are the animals that bond to us and seek comfort from us, just as we seek comfort from them. These are the animals that remind us that affection is a basic need that requires no apology. These animals, unintentionally yet powerfully, also remind us of the responsibility we as humans, with our big ol' brains, have for the entire planet; the power we have to ruin environments or to save them. How we care for the animals we love can be evidence of how we care – or don't – for the world around us.

In turn, these animals often show us how the world can love us back. They show us that when we've had a rotten day, and are being rotten as a result, they may still crave our company. Remarkably, they get to know us and they still love us. It's no wonder our longtime companions are not exclusively fellow humans.

To celebrate the best of the bond between humans and other animals, particularly those with whom we share our homes and our hearts, Metro Weekly is offering its first annual Pets Issue. But that's not all. The Pets Issue also kicks off an ongoing Pets section in the magazine and online, where we'll continue the love affair weekly. We hope you'll join the pack, too, by submitting photos of your own beastly buddies. Or simply participate in spirit, with ''growls'' and ''woofs'' as you see fit.

The Pets Issue

Hunting for a HomeFor a lifetime of creature comforts and companionship, it just takes a few good homes

Felines on the FringeWelcome or not, feral cat colonies are a D.C. creature feature

Daytime Paws-abilitiesWhile the human runs the rat race, services step in for dog daycare

Pet SpreeShopping for your furry family members

Opinion: From Feral to ForeverThe experience of fostering offers its own special insights

Through her love of cats, Laura Goodman found the love of her life.

''I fell in love with my partner [Rita Schoch] when she came to the door to adopt a cat from me,'' says Goodman, who a few years earlier, in 1995, co-founded the Feline Foundation of Greater Washington Inc.

This boutique, all-volunteer, cat-rescue organization in suburban Loudoun County, Va., provides ''optimal medical care'' to help rehabilitate previously homeless felines. The ultimate goal is to find each cat's ''perfect person,'' with Goodman assisting as matchmaker by drawing from the organization's pool of approved adopters-to-be.

(Photo by Illustration by Christopher Cunetto)

And that, of course, is the focus of all who work in pet rescue and adoption. This predominantly nonprofit sector of a booming pet industry is particularly strong and supportive in the Washington region. ''There are a lot of people doing a lot of really great work in our area,'' says Goodman, noting that she knows of at least 20 other rescue groups in Northern Virginia alone. Included in that bunch is the large Arlington-based Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation.

''We are fortunate that we live in an area where people love and value rescue animals, and we can place them into really great homes,'' says Colleen Learch, a volunteer board member at the foundation. Typically, the organization finds homes for more than 50 rescue dogs and cats every weekend through multiple adoption events at venues including the PetSmart in Alexandria's Potomac Yards shopping center. The number of possible dog adoptions any given weekend is directly tied to the number of volunteers the organization has working the events. ''The more volunteers we have, the more dogs and cats that get adopted,'' Learch explains. ''We bring one dog for every volunteer that we have at any of our events. If we bring five volunteers, we can only bring five dogs.'' Because they're in cages, cats are less dependent on the number of volunteers.

The foundation makes it easy to say yes, offering a lifetime return policy. In fact, if within the first two weeks the adoption isn't working out, the foundation will refund its application fees, which range from $150 for one cat to $375 for a puppy. ''We want everyone to be happy,'' Learch promises. ''At any point in the animal's life, if the adopter can't care for that animal, they can come back to us and we'll find them another home.'' She says this is ''one of the ways we have of making sure that we're doing our part to make sure more animals don't end up in shelters.''

While a shelter is rarely optimal, it may also be a good place to start the adoption process.

''A lot of times people think the shelter is a scary or a sad place for animals,'' says Marika Bell of the Washington Humane Society. ''I think the biggest fear people have with animals from us is that they're worried that the animal has been abused and might have health or behavioral issues because of that. Honestly, we don't see that many abused animals. Generally we see animals that have been loved, but that the person just couldn't care for anymore. And there's really nothing wrong with them.''

There are also misconceptions, largely based on outdated practices and policies, about the Washington Humane Society itself. In recent years the organization has had ''an entire staff turnover,'' according to Bell, who is in her second year as director of behavior and ''rehoming,'' aka adoptions. For one thing, the organization does not set a time limit for animals in its two D.C. shelters. ''They aren't with us for a certain period of time and then they get euthanized,'' Bell says. ''Visitors don't have to feel sad when they come into the adoption center.''

The WHS has not yet attained status as a ''no-kill shelter,'' though. ''The generally accepted definition of 'no-kill,''' explains Bell, ''is when a shelter has a live-release rate of over 90 percent: Of the animals that come in, 90 percent find homes or are sent to other rescues.'' (The remaining portion are deemed unadoptable, generally because of dangerous behavior or late-stage terminal illness, and are euthanized.) Still, WHS has made great strides on this front. Seven years ago, when Lisa LaFontaine became WHS president and CEO, the live-release rate hovered around 30 percent. The most recent rate was 80 percent, according to Bell, who says the goal is to get to 95 percent. The path to getting there is through strong complementary programs, from fostering to off-site adoption events. At WHS, these types of programs, according to Bell, ''are so new that there is room for growth within them, which is exciting.'' WHS has also revamped its adoption policies in the last couple years, ''getting rid of the roadblocks that have traditionally been in the way,'' to the point that it now offers same-day adoptions. Previously it usually took a week or more to get through the system. ''We're also trying really hard to make good matches,'' says Bell, who is the first director at WHS to oversee both behavioral practices, such as counseling and training, and adoptions.

And making good matches is what motivates those working in the rescue and adoption field. ''We're all doing this for the same reason,'' as the Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation's Learch puts it. ''We want dogs and cats to have great homes. We don't want them to be abused. We want their lives valued. And we don't want to have to rescue them off the street in a terrible situation, because they deserve better than that.''

For more information about the Feline Foundation of Greater Washington, call 703-920-8665 or visit ffgw.org. For the Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation, call 703-295-DOGS or visit lostdogrescue.org. For the Washington Humane Society, call 202-576-6664 or visit washhumane.org.

The Pets Issue

Hunting for a HomeFor a lifetime of creature comforts and companionship, it just takes a few good homes

Felines on the FringeWelcome or not, feral cat colonies are a D.C. creature feature

Daytime Paws-abilitiesWhile the human runs the rat race, services step in for dog daycare

Pet SpreeShopping for your furry family members

Opinion: From Feral to ForeverThe experience of fostering offers its own special insights

Washington has always been a city in transition and likely always will be. And alley cats will probably continue to bear witness. They certainly had a front-row seat for the U Street corridor's turn-of-the century changes.

''I live near 13th and U,'' says David Bryant. ''When I moved there in 2001, there were still a lot of feral cats – probably 50 – in the area. I was seeing cats and kittens right there in my neighborhood and I wanted to help them. At the time, Metro Ferals was the local group doing that. Most of the shelters were doing euthanasia.''

(Illustration by Christopher Cunetto)

The alternative, Bryant explains, is ''trap-neuter-return,'' aka TNR.

''I've always had an appreciation for animals,'' he says. ''When TNR became popular, I thought, 'At least we can do that.'''

And so he – and many others – do. Today, that's largely through the Washington Humane Society, with its Cat Neighborhood Partnership Program, with the cute acronym CatNiPP.

''CatNiPP works with residents and volunteers to Trap, Neuter and Return (TNR) cats in order to get to the root of the problem – reproduction,'' reads the Humane Society's description. ''TNR is the most humane, practical and effective long-term strategy and its use is promoted by the D.C. government. We depend on the participation of community members, as WHS does not currently have the resources to trap all of the cats in need on our own.''

Bryant is one of those volunteers, as Metro Ferals lends plenty of hands at the CatNiPP clinic and elsewhere. At the monthly clinic – though twice in February, marking World Spay Day with a special Feb. 23 clinic – held at the Humane Society's National Capital Area Spay and Neuter Center, a feral cat is spayed or neutered and vaccinated for rabies and other viruses. A cat's ear is also ''tipped,'' meaning the tip of one ear is removed, ''the universal sign of a spayed or neutered free-roaming cat.'' The cats are generally returned to the area where they were trapped. If kittens are spotted early enough, they can be conditioned for adoption.

''I worked in an alley on Chapin Street,'' shares Bryant, whose TNR efforts have been featured by China Central Television. ''I rescued 21 kittens and got every one adopted. And we neutered a dozen adults.''

Notably, there is some debate when it comes to feral cats. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), for example, considers it ''rarely humane'' to allow cats to ''continue their daily struggle for survival in a hostile environment.'' Alley Cat Allies, a national organization based in Bethesda, counters, ''Feral cats – who are not socialized to people, and therefore cannot be adopted – have been living outdoors, in close proximity to humans, for nearly 10,000 years. … Feral cats are part of our community. They always have been, and they always will be.''

For those preferring Bryant's TNR-style approach, the Humane Society of Washington has plenty of opportunities to help. There is a need for volunteers to trap cats, to transport cats, to help with community outreach or at the clinic, or to foster feral kittens. Of course, donations are always welcome, too.

To learn more about the Washington Humane Society's Community Cat Programs (CatNiPP), call 202-608-1356, email CatNiPP@washhumane.org or visit washhumane.org.

The Pets Issue

Hunting for a HomeFor a lifetime of creature comforts and companionship, it just takes a few good homes

Felines on the FringeWelcome or not, feral cat colonies are a D.C. creature feature

Daytime Paws-abilitiesWhile the human runs the rat race, services step in for dog daycare

Pet SpreeShopping for your furry family members

Opinion: From Feral to ForeverThe experience of fostering offers its own special insights

High power, high pressure, long days at the office. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but many D.C. residents seem to find this a normal way of life. Many of them even commit to throwing a dog companion into that go-go-go mix.

''We have the 'Wagmobile,' because some of our clients don't even have time to drop off,'' says Lisa Schreiber, owner of Wagtime, which offers dog daycare – to the point of picking up and dropping off canine clients from their homes – among other services. ''A lot of people want dogs. Most of our clients are people who don't have kids, who work long hours. And you can't leave your dog alone for 10, 12 hours.''

(Photo by courtesy Wagtime)

Thankfully, there are various options for dog-owning guys and gals on the go.

Wagtime, with locations in Shaw and near the Navy Yard in Southeast, offers daycare for dogs, for example, as well as added ''power walks.'' Similarly, City Dogs in Adams Morgan offers dog daycare, with the option of including a midday walk. Notably, both make mention that dogs need to be able to socialize well with their fellow canine clients.

City Dogs co-owner Dave Liedman says people shouldn't be too concerned about that requirement, explaining that there's a pretty good chance a daycare hopeful will be a good fit. "Over 90 percent [fit in]," he says. It's not a high-pressure examination for the dog owners, either, who simply drop their dogs off. If Rover isn't a good fit, owners will be advised later. Says Liedman, ''We don't make them wait around for the verdict.''

If a dog isn't a good fit, that doesn't mean Rover is out of options. Some dogs simply don't socialize well with other dogs for any number of reasons. Pet Peeps might be able to help.

''We do individual service,'' says Gus Elfving, founder and ''top dawg'' at Pet Peeps, which is not a bricks and mortar operation, but comes to the clients, and features one-on-one dog walks. ''We do individual service," say Elfving. "I think it's safer, more serene. If you have six dogs on a leash, and one of them finds a 'street treat'….''

(Photo by courtesy Wagtime)

While Elfving paints the picture of no walker being able to control the frenzy that might ensue if his charges happen upon some tasty, smelly, possibly dangerous discards – chicken bones, perhaps – he adds that some celebrate the group walks as a way to better socialize dogs. He grants that may be of benefit, but with one important caveat: ''Often, the walker is not the leader of the pack.'' In other words, Cesar Millan, famous for his Dog Whisperer show, is not at the end of every pack's leashes, and there may be little training taking place.

Elfving advises dog owners to look at their budgets, at their dogs' dispositions and available options, and then make a reasonable outlay for some sort of dog care during the day.

''A lot of people work through guilt and overdo it,'' he says.

Schrieber has a more forceful counter to those who would argue that people who don't have the time to fully care for a dog shouldn't have one in the first place.

''People have to work. Why should they not be able to have a dog, too? Why not give a dog a home?'' she asks, pointing out that shelters are full of dogs in need of human companionship. ''We send our kids to daycare, to school. They're still your kids. And it's still your dog.''

For more information about City Dogs, call 202-234-WAGS (9247) or visit city-dogs.com; for Pet Peeps, call 202-232-PETS (7387) or visit petpeeps.biz; and for Wagtime, call 202-789-0870 or visit wagtimedc.com.

The Pets Issue

Hunting for a HomeFor a lifetime of creature comforts and companionship, it just takes a few good homes

Felines on the FringeWelcome or not, feral cat colonies are a D.C. creature feature

Daytime Paws-abilitiesWhile the human runs the rat race, services step in for dog daycare

Pet SpreeShopping for your furry family members

Opinion: From Feral to ForeverThe experience of fostering offers its own special insights

There's no denying we love our pets. They weave their way into the fabric of daily life, cementing their place as the furriest member of the family. As owners, we want to make their lives as comfortable as possible, which, inevitably, leads to presents, toys and little additions that make their time in our homes that much more special. And picking the perfect gift for your pet needn't be stressful. Which is why we've visited some D.C. pet spots to bring you six gifts we think every pampered pooch and coddled cat will love.

Dem Bones

$5.99-$19.99Howl To The Chief733 8th St. SE202-544-8710howltothechief.com

Dogs are seldom happier than when munching away on a bone -- so why not give them a real treat? Howl To The Chief has an incredible range of bones, with beef, venison, bison, lamb and elk all on offer for your dog's delectation. Available in a multitude of shapes, sizes and cuts -- from Superior Farm's lamb femur to Tucker's Raw Frozen bison bones -- you'll be hard-pressed to find something your pup won't love.

SmartCat Bootsie's Bunk Bed and Playroom

SmartCat Bootsie's Bunk Bed and Playroom

$39.99Howl To the Chief

This one box has everything a cat could possibly want. If it dispensed food and water, it would be heaven for them. Offering a dark hideaway for secret snoozing, a plush upper-bunk for relaxing, toys to be swatted and plenty of scratching surface, it's an all-in-one pleasure center for your feline.

Aussie Naturals Toys

Aussie Naturals Toys

Pineapple $10.49, Tex $12.99The Big Bad Woof117 Carroll St. NW202-291-2404thebigbadwoof.com

These chew toys are a great mix of environmentally friendly and just plain ol' fun! Pineapple and Tex both feature a recycled water bottle to give them that addictive "crinkle" sound when gnawed, which can be swapped out as required, and are made from 100 percent natural and sustainable materials. Aussie Naturals tests its products on rescue animals, so every time you buy a toy you know a pup in need has had great fun making sure your dog will love it, too.

Michael's Soul Stew

Michael's Soul Stew

$3.99-$7.99, 16 or 32 oz.Howl To The Chief

If you're at all concerned about the quality of the food your dogs are consuming, then you may want to take a look at Michael's Soul Stew. Made in Pennsylvania, it prides itself on being prepared from restaurant-grade, American ingredients free from the unnatural additions used to bulk out many other brands. Take the venison: Its three ingredients are water, venison and yams. That's it. Free-range, farm-raised venison, at that. Available in beef, chicken and turkey as well, it's a great way to care for your dog's health.

Sisal Scratchers

Sisal Scratchers

Door hanger, $11.99Curved scratchpad, $18.99The Big Bad Woof

These two scratchers are ideal for housebound felines. Throw the hanger over a door handle and your cat will have something to jump against and keep those claws in check -- freeing your sofa from use as a substitute. For less agile cats, or for an additional scratching surface, the curved scratcher is great for placing flat or upright as another multi-dimensional scratching surface. You'll thank us next time your cat jumps onto your lap and doesn't immediately dig its claws in.

Bauer Pottery Food Bowls

Bauer Pottery Food Bowls

$24.99-38.99The Big Bad Woof

Okay, your pet isn't really going to care what its food comes in, but that doesn't mean you don't. Offering a break from staid stainless steel, these bowls by Bauer Pottery in L.A. are guaranteed to brighten up every mealtime and will look great on any surface. Color-coordinate your kitchen or just add a vibrant splash to a room -- either way, this is one gift that isn't just for your pet, and we think you deserve it.

The Pets Issue

Hunting for a HomeFor a lifetime of creature comforts and companionship, it just takes a few good homes

Felines on the FringeWelcome or not, feral cat colonies are a D.C. creature feature

Daytime Paws-abilitiesWhile the human runs the rat race, services step in for dog daycare

Pet SpreeShopping for your furry family members

Opinion: From Feral to ForeverThe experience of fostering offers its own special insights

''I don't do realism well, but I do magic realism very well,'' theater director Jose Carrasquillo says, by way of touting his latest show, The Girl from Tacna, now at GALA Theatre. ''It's really worth seeing because of that: Whether you like this play or not, visually it's very impressive.''

The play, written by Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, is a somewhat surreal, time-shifting exploration into one Peruvian family's rich history. ''It's a memory play,'' Carrasquillo says, ''and the way it's written, it really summons up a lot of stunning images that you have to do onstage.'' The play focuses on a writer's work in telling his family's story over several generations. ''As memories come to him, they three-dimensionalize onstage,'' he explains.

La Señorita de Tacna at GALA

(Photo by Lonnie Tague)

Performed at GALA in Spanish, with English surtitles, the play is in a largely unstructured style, featuring no discrete scenes and an intentionally blurry sense of time and place. It sounds confusing, even overambitious, and it was -- on paper.

''I read it a dozen times [and] I still wasn't certain what the play was about,'' Carrasquillo concedes, noting that it took him nearly three weeks to solve its storytelling puzzle as well as the theatrical challenge in presenting it. ''It's really cohesive,'' he says about the staged result. ''It's not like it's choppy or anything. It just comes together and people get it.''

Carrasquillo, who also runs a guesthouse with his partner in his native Puerto Rico, is currently focused on helping produce a major, month-long, national Latino theater festival launching this fall in Los Angeles. Over the past couple decades Carrasquillo has directed for most of D.C.'s major theater companies, from the Kennedy Center to Signature Theatre to Woolly Mammoth.

But The Young Lady from Tacna is his first show in a while. ''I actually took a little sabbatical for two years,'' he says, a time to recharge, read and travel, checking off things on his bucket list, including hiking Machu Picchu and going to Spain. '

The Girl from Tacna runs to March 9 at GALA Theatre at Tivoli Square, 3333 14th St. NW. Tickets are $38 to $42. Performed in Spanish with English surtitles. Call 202-234-7174 or visit galatheatre.org