I'm a bad lesbian. I rarely go to gay pride events, I've only seen one episode of The L Word, you couldn't get me anywhere near Lilith Fair. And I hardly ever hit the Valley's gay and lesbian clubs anymore.

There are a few reasons for this: There's too much she said-she said drama in the small scene. The music (mostly Top 40 and hip-hop) isn't my bag. And the women in lesbian clubs tend to not be as hot as the women in straight clubs.

I also don't have a lot of lesbian friends. Most of my female friends are either straight or consider themselves bisexual. So when I go out with them, we usually hit rock clubs, metrosexual dance nights like Tranzylvania at Palazzo and French Kiss at Burn, or fetish events.

I've had some really great nights at places like NYC's Clit Club and London's Candy Bar in Soho. What made those places so much fun were the reputations that preceded them — they had distinct identities that drew people in. Clit Club lived up to its rep as the hottest lesbian night with the hottest women and the hottest music in the East Village (until the clubs that hosted it closed). And Candy Bar has the distinction of serving several signature shots you won't find anywhere else and attracting celebs like Martina Navratilova, Naomi Campbell, and Belinda Carlisle.

Most important, both places had hordes of hot women, which — let's face it — is the one thing you gotta have to bring in the lesbians. Glamour is not just the domain of gay men. It takes more than a pitcher of beer and a pool table to get some of us to stick around.

I can't totally tear down Phoenix's gay and lesbian bar scene. The sheer number of lesbian and gay clubs alone deserves some props (31 at last count). Then again, I'm from Indiana, which has more KKK chapters than it ever will gay clubs. Still, without a constant influx of celebrities or big-city hotties, our Sapphic nightspots here in the Valley suffer from a serious case of sameness. One lesbian bar is as good (or bad) as another. Everything's so subjective when it comes to clubs, anyway. What really makes one bar better than another?

Having a good time is what counts, no matter where you are, and the key to a good time is not necessarily a nightclub. In my opinion, it's about having great friends and making your own fun, whether you're drinking Cosmos and doing the electric slide in the bar bathroom, or acting stupid at the Filiberto's drive-thru speaker at 3 a.m.

In Phoenix, you can't count on the lesbian clubs to have the party — you gotta be ready to bring the party.

Since several of our city's lesbian clubs are clustered in central Phoenix, club-hopping is pretty convenient. And on a recent Friday night, that's exactly what my girlfriend CooKie and I decided to do. There's this new weekly at Club Vibe called "Boobie" that we wanted to check out. The flier promised "AZ's finest ladies every Friday night," and a music mix of reggaeton and Spanish pop. We decided to make Boobie our last stop of the night because it looked like it might have the most action. And though things didn't really turn out as planned, I ended up having more fun in Phoenix on a way too hot summer night than I did at Clit Club or Candy Bar.

When I met CooKie at a fetish event in Tucson almost two years ago, I had no idea what was in store. She kept talking about "her girls" (as in the Pussy Posse Girls, the edgy burlesque troupe), and all these crazy things she'd done with them. CooKie is the leader of the Posse and a prominent figure in the Phoenix fetish scene; she's got a reputation for getting wild with several women at once. She quickly showed me that she doesn't have to do anything but send a mass text message to surround herself with sexy ladies.

In the two years I've known CooKie, I've met more hot, horny women than I did during nine years of clubbing. And since CooKie and I are both commitment-phobic, we have an open relationship. Basically, that means we're "together" but we both casually date other people, and picking up chicks is a team effort when we're out.

Tonight, CooKie's agreed to come with me on the condition that she can bring squirt guns. She's looking for trouble.

CooKie will definitely get attention this evening — at almost 6 feet in her elevated shoes, with an assortment of tattoos, brandings, and implants (most recently, a set of high-end hooters from a Scottsdale plastic surgeon), she stands out.

After taking in some country music and watching women with mullets line dance at the Cash Inn, we swing by the pitch-black Incognito on Thomas, which (surprise!) isn't open.

CooKie keeps sending text messages to the Posse Girls, trying to get them to meet up with us at some of these places. Nobody seems interested in anything but Boobie, but CooKie and I are saving that for later because we want to get there when everybody's drunk and bumpin'.

Boobie needs more foreplay.

So we head for zGirl Club, where two of the Pussy Posse Girls, Playa and Punk, have agreed to meet us. The club sits on a stretch of 7th Avenue, just north of Indian School Road, that's dominated by gay clubs and businesses. There are several gay-owned vintage shops on the strip and zGirl is a very short walk from another well-known lesbian club, e-Lounge — which is where we park for zGirl, as its own minuscule lot is already crammed full of cars.

Playa's waiting at the club when we arrive around 10 p.m., and all three of us are pleased with the scene here. I used to come here every so often for the drag king shows when zGirl Club was called Misty's, but I never came here to hook up because the crowd was mostly composed of mullet-wearin' mamas who danced in Dockers to old Janet Jackson tunes.

But it seems as if a lot has changed since the Misty's days. Tonight, zGirl Club is full of females of every type. There are still some mullets, but the majority of the women here are fucking hot. There's a young lady dressed in a cop costume that I can't stop staring at; a beautiful Asian woman with a Mohawk whose date is a tall, lanky, bald babe with some beautiful tats; a gorgeous black woman with bone structure to die for (hello, Iman!); and a Latina waitress with long, luxurious locks who keeps dancing around and grinding up on CooKie. The music is much better than it used to be, too, partly thanks to DJ Domenica, a longtime spinner at lesbian clubs, who's bumpin' hot hip-hop hits tonight that actually pack the dance floor.

CooKie gives Playa a squirt gun (she's brought a small arsenal), and they head for the bathroom to load up. I have opted not to participate in any water wars, but Playa, a cute, little punk rock chick from Cali who digs all things Alice in Wonderland and works as a Volkswagen mechanic, is totally down for some shenanigans.

On the dance floor, CooKie celebrates our arrival by pulling out her purple plastic gun and squirting Playa in the face with a stream of sink water.

Playa fires back, and suddenly, it's all-out war, with both of them shooting and running relentlessly. CooKie ducks behind other dames as Playa jockeys for position near the stripper pole. The water in the squirt guns is cold, and other patrons scream and gasp with surprise when some wayward water splashes across their backs. After 30 seconds of chaos, the big bouncer woman walks up to CooKie and politely but sternly says, "Don't do that in here."

So the melee spills into the zGirl parking lot, where CooKie and Playa empty their squirt guns onto each other (and me). They go back inside to refill, and we start walking toward e-Lounge. All three of us are wet now. (read entire article)