The Baby Showers

The 1980s stripping and investment scene in San Francisco

Debi Sundahl, the founder of On Our Backs, threw the first baby shower I ever attended, in 1983. She also invited me to the last one I’d attend, when I myself got pregnant in 1990.

I can’t believe our lesbian guerrilla operation was bracketed by babies, but maybe many women’s adventures are like that.

© Honey Lee Cottrell, Susie pregnant and Lulu Belliveau, among the nasturtiums on the On Our Back office rooftop, 1990

I hadn’t attended feminine rituals like baby showers before. I was twenty-three and I’d never been to a wedding. My mom didn’t go for that sort of thing— I only observed the sit-com versions. I had no idea what to expect.

Debi’s shower in the Haight Ashbury had all the requisite parlor games, pastel wrapping paper, and little plastic baby shoes as party favors. Plus a houseful of strippers, most of them just coming off their shift. They all worked at a peepshow called “The Lusty Lady,” in North Beach.

My timing in ’83 couldn’t have been better. I’d been re-reading the admir…