Sitting in the middle of the Southern Californian desert, a few hours drive out of L.A., Palm Springs is a strange town. Back in its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, it was a hangout for movie stars, and still to this day, half the streets in the town are named after celebrities like Ginger Rogers and Frank Sinatra, and all the architecture is straight out of a Rat Pack movie. Now, after a slump in the 70s, Palm Springs has undergone a strange revival as a lesbian and gay travel destination.

On the Greyhound to Palm Springs, I meet a bunch of lesbians heading to the party also. “It’s like being on Mars,” says Lauren, 27, a “soft butch” from San Diego, “everyone – and I mean everyone – who comes to Palm Springs, who isn’t retired, is gay.”

We are all on our way to the biggest lesbian gathering in the world, the Dinah Shore Weekend. Every year, as an annual pilgrimage, tens of thousands of lesbians from all over the world descend upon Palm Springs for a long weekend of debauchery. Taking over entire hotels and resorts, the girls get together for all-day pool parties, and late-night dance parties.

Ironically, this all started with a golf tournament. Dinah Shore was actually a Southern-born straight, conservative television star from the 50s who once dated Burt Reynolds and apparently had affairs with Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart. Born in Tennessee, she lived in Palm Springs, and was a proud supporter of ladies’ golf. In the late 70s, the annual LPGA golf tournament, and the golf course on which it is held just outside of Palm Springs was named in her honour. Sometime in the 80s, lesbians began coming to Palm Springs to watch the golf, and every year they just kept coming. Eventually, lesbian party promoters began throwing all-girl parties, and pretty soon the Dinah Shore Weekend was more famous as a lesbian fuck-fest than a golf tournament. (Still today, Dinah Shore Weekend is held on the same weekend as the LPGA tournament, but the organisers have tried to distance themselves from its Sapphic associations, changing its name to the Kraft Nabisco Championship.)

When I tell straight people I’m going to spend four days hanging out in the desert with 20,000 lesbians, it sounds like something out of a Girls Gone Wild or a porn fantasy. Like most lesbians, ever since I came out at 22, I had always heard stories of the Dinah which made it sound like a lesbian Mecca.

The reality, I discovered, is somewhat different. Apart from the jelly wrestling, the wet t-shirt competitions, the sex toy demonstrations and the meet-and-greets with porn stars, I still spent a lot of time watching middle-aged butch dykes from the Mid-West wearing tee-shirts saying “I Heart Crotch” dirty-dancing together to Katy Perry singing “I Kissed A Girl”.

“Dinah Shore gives us a chance to be ourselves, and let our hair down without being hassled by homophobes and straight guys,” explains T.J., 28, who grew up in Georgia before moving to San Francisco after college.

Funnily enough, it seems that when you leave lesbians in a place with no men around, they start to behave, well, a lot like men. Back in one of the hotel rooms, I hang out with T.J and her friends, mostly lawyers from San Francisco and Boston, while we drink beer and watch a girl-on-girl porn film I got given by India Summer, a married bisexual porn star who is here at Dinah Shore publicising her films.

“God, if I had a dollar for every time a straight guy asked me how lesbians have sex, or told me that lesbian sex isn’t really sex, I’d quit my job,” says T.J.

All of her friends all laugh in agreement. “It’s like they can’t even imagine fucking without a cock involved,” says April, 27. “Lesbian sex is nothing like it is in porn with two straight girls going gay for pay. Fucking is about more than just a cock. Women can work wonders with their hands, and their mouths, and there’s always strap-ons.”

Later that night, I meet Belle, a 23-year-old femme from San Francisco on the dancefloor. As we share a cigarette, she explains, “Dinah Shore is not about gay pride. It’s like Spring Break for lesbians.” In other words, it’s four days of getting wasted, getting high, and getting laid. “I wouldn’t come here if I wasn’t single,” she says, “Last time, I came here with a girlfriend, and we just fought the whole time.” Just at that moment, a girl comes to drag her back onto the dancefloor.

I wonder what Dinah Shore would think about all of this. Belle looks at me blankly. “Who is Dinah Shore anyway?”

Somewhere in the desert, where her ashes are buried at Forest Hill Cemetery just a few miles away, you can almost hear Dinah Shore turning in her grave.

ANNA WHITELAW

Sidebar: A Guide To Lesbianism

For the uninitiated straight or “het” male, here are a few handy definitions:

Femme

“Femme is what straight people would define as a lipstick lesbian, a femme is a girl who doesn’t look stereotypically gay, and who plays up her feminine side,” says Belle. Femmes may have long hair, wear makeup, even high heels, and are generally hard to pick out of a crowd.

Butch

A butch or stone butch is generally are masculine, or at least androgynous. Soft butch often dress in an androgynous way, but aren’t totally butch.

Vanilla

Conservative in bed. “If a girl is vanilla, it means she won’t do anything kinky,” says April.

Dyke drama

General term for lesbian romantic entanglements.

Dykon

A lesbian icon, whether she is gay or straight. Think Pink, Ruby Rose, Tegan & Sara, Portia & Ellen.

The L word

“What did lesbians do before the L word came along?” asks one girl rhetorically, while her friends are discussing which character on the show they’d most like to sleep with. The television show revolving around the lives of lesbians in West Hollywood is to lesbians what Sex & The City was to single, thirtysomething straight women everywhere.

Lesbian bed death

When a lesbian couple’s sex life fades in a long-term relationship, it is often called lesbian bed death.

Spaghetti bends

Used to describe bi or curious girls who might be “turned”. As in spaghetti bends when it gets hot.

Scene Queen

A girl who is known for spending a lot of her time in the lesbian “scene”.

Tops & Bottoms

Borrowed from the term gay men sometimes use to describe their sexual roles, tops are dominant in bed, bottoms are usually submissive.