Morris Day Photo: Mike Jones

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I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It's not a place, you can imagine, particularly suited for someone interested in hearing live music. Important or current touring shows rarely make the dogleg off I-40 to make a stop here; as a result, to stay updated as an observer of musical culture I have to rely on: a) making the hour-long trip down to Albuquerque, where a number of touring bands actually do stop, to catch live bands; b) watching a lot of MTV; and c) trekking out to the many Indian casinos that circle the city, and which host a hodgepodge of lesser-knowns, has-beens and comeback bidders.

It can be a struggle, but the casino trips offer a unique opportunity. For one thing, the pueblo lands on which the casinos reside are, quite frankly, poor, and populated with people of color: Native Americans, Latinos or a mixture of the two. In contrast, much of Santa Fe is white and privileged. When the two cultures mix, there's a lot of weird tension, and as queer woman, it's noticeable how the race and class issues contexualize gender and sexuality in a relief as startling as the dry, raw northern New Mexico landscape.

It's this landscape that zips by me as I head off to the Ohkay Casino, located on the San Juan Pueblo, a few miles north of Santa Fe, to see the comeback bid of Morris Day and the Time. And it's these issues that come quickly to mind as I enter the casino to pick up my tickets. Indian casinos aren't like that glitzy ones in Las Vegas. Nope, the world of gambling at the pueblo involves low ceilings, thick cigarette smoke and a seriously defeated atmosphere, one that immediately instills a familiar white-bread guilt. Here, amidst the glaring lights and incessant clanging of slot machines, I am hyper aware that I am white, relatively well-off and very queer.

The music venue is actually a quarter-mile walk from the main casino across a dirt parking lot, and I walk outside with my friends to make the trek. At first we can't see where we're headed, but then someone says, "There it is", and points to a shadowed, creepy, closed tent-like structure in the distance. The structure less resembles a rockin' auditorium than an apiary where the government performs secret experiments with specially trained killer bees. Inside, it's even more surreal, like the interior of, I don't know, a haunted Vietnam veteran's mind, or maybe that of a deranged clown: dark, echoing cobwebbed. The casino folks, bless their hearts, try their best. With gleaming, genuine smiles and tiny flashlights, they escort us to our seats, which are folding chairs with numbers taped to the back.

The crowd is small -- there were more people at my high school prom -- but, despite the atmosphere, damn they're enthusiastic. Everyone scoots about with huge grins, Bud light in hand, dressed in what I call "concert best": Men in cheap leather jackets, white shirts and tight, tight jeans; women in cheap fringed leather jackets, white tank tops and short skirts. I feel out of place in my ratty t-shirt and boyish pants that call my gender into question.

Regardless, the crowd's enthusiasm, it turns out, is not unwarranted. As Day takes the stage with his trademark swagger (he hasn't aged a bit), white suit and hip swivel, a little twinge of adrenaline trickles through my belly. Not only is my gender externally called into question, but, internally, my sexuality is. I dig the ladies, but, God, I can't help feeling my libido stir at the sight of the Time busting through their choreographed dance moves, pelvic thrusts and hot, sexually-charged guitar-based R&B. Jungle love, chile sauce, Jerome, bring me the mirror! Who knew heterosexuality could be so much fun?

And then, for better or worse, comes the defining moment of the night. Jerome makes his way out into the crowd, seemingly oblivious to the flecks of what I'm guessing to be asbestos floating through the spotlight, to choose some fine ladies to join the band on stage for a grand group grind session. The women -- about 20 in all, most of them Hispanic -- are not shy, clamoring and clawing, until Day is surrounded onstage by a sea of camel toes and short skirts. Their level of brazenness varies; some of the ladies hang back and dance an insecure shuffle. Others go for it, simulating oral sex on Day, rubbing their booties up against various band members, shaking out their best stripper moves. It is an awkward, cartoonish, debasing 12 minutes of surrealism, all housed in a ramshackle husk of a building.

But I find myself, as a dyke, compelled, cautiously turned on and confused. I'm standing next to my friend Rubén Martínez, a Chicano writer and activist who strives to dismantle the stereotypes of Hispanic culture, especially here in New Mexico, where often the demographic is saddled erroneously with an image of impoverished trashiness. Martínez is having what I think is the appropriate reaction: His mouth is agape. He has stopped dancing with his wife to stare, shocked, at the stage. He is horrified. But I am digging it. I would like to have some moral fortitude, some adherence to my own activist opinions. I would like to say, "This is completely demeaning! These women are being degraded in some desperate clinging to a bygone era and this should be stopped immediately!" But I'm subsumed by the total bizarreness of the situation. It is a classist, racist, heterosexist minstrel show, and I'm buying every minute of it. Not only that, I want to be up there too! Pick me!

Such, I think, is the conundrum we're faced with when it comes to music. As a young teenager, I was deeply offended by the sexist lyrics of the Beastie Boys' License to Ill. But I wore out my cassette tape of it, I knew every word of that album and in fact sung it, rapped it, badly, it with glee. Followed by guilt. Followed by more glee. The contradictory question has stuck with me ever since: What happens when your rock -- or your rap, or your R&B -- does what it's supposed to do, which is make your booty shake and turn you on, but at a price?