RFD 193 Spring 2023

Number 193 Spring 2023 • $11.95

Issue 194 / Fall 2023

RAINBOW FLAG

Submission Deadline: July 21, 2023

www.rfdmag.org/upload

These days, you can spy a Rainbow Flag just about anywhere: Painted on a city crosswalk, stamped on a smartphone case, tattooed on someone’s backside, hung inside a coffee-shop window and, of course, held aloft at a Pride parade. First introduced in 1978 (with eight stripes, including hot pink), it’s a symbol that’s been modified and tweaked to represent the LGBTQ+ community. But is it time for something new?

As we approach the 45th anniversary of the birth of the Rainbow Flag, we want to know what this fluttering piece of material means to you. Do you see it as a symbol of inclusion? Does its ubiquity cause you to think how far we’ve come? Or has the transformed rainbow become commodified, just another overused visual that businesses employ to make a buck? When you see it does it make you feel, well, proud? Or are you over the Rainbow?

Maybe you have a secret history with the Rainbow Flag. Maybe you’ve had sex on one or used it for post-coital cleanup. Maybe you were in San Fran when it was first unfurled. Maybe there’s a pic of you with rainbow-dyed hair. We’d love a window into the feelings that ripple through you when you gaze upon one of these rainbow wonders. Essays, fiction, poetry, artwork: If you want to express your feelings about this symbol of expression, we want to hear or see it.

Come on, cuties. Don’t hold back: Let your freaky Rainbow-Flag story fly.

Photograph by See-ming Lee via Creative Commons Attribute Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

Refills Free, Drag-queens

Vol 49 No 3 #193 Spring 2023

Between the Lines

We were hoping that this issue on gay bars and the impact on our lives would be an interesting topic, juicy, filled with halcyon nights and cautionary tales. Well, dear readers, we think the submissions for this issue will amuse you, help you reconnect with your own histories and leave a tip at the bar for the bartender.

Much of our experience is remembered and reflected in the places where we congregate together. Bar culture for the queer community has and in some places still plays a vital role in helping us come together. So it’s often a place to reflect on fun times and difficult challenges. We hope you’ll enjoy the stories, poems and images that accompany this issue.

We’re also pleased to announce that we’ve published Jim Jackson’s book, Harbinger Dreams. It’s our first book since 1999. We’ve included an interview with Jim in this issue. For those long time readers of RFD, you’ll be familiar with Jim’s work in our pages over the years. We’re finishing up work on Michael Mason’s book of poetry, long awaited and delayed, but available soon.

RFD has picked up camp and moved it’s mailing address to:

RFD Press

PMB 329

351 Pleasant St Ste B

Northampton MA 01060-3998

Please use this to be in touch as well as to renew your subscription.

Lastly, as we face a slew of anti-queer bills in state legislatures across the United States, we hope people urge friends and allies to resist such backwards laws from being enacted. Empower yourselves and engage with local and state organizers. And please stay safe.

—The RFD Collective, from the deceptive warm days of New England in March—we still suggest a scarf

Submission Deadlines

Summer–April 21, 2023

Fall–July 21, 2023

See inside covers for themes and specifics.

For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org. To read online visit www.issuu.com/rfmag.

RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volunteers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, PMB 329, 351 Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD Press, PMB 329, 351 Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press, Inc., with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $11.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive RFD four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Northampton, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press, Inc. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and associated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001.

Visual Contributors Inside This Issue

Drawing by David Wright/Street Candy

GATHERINGS

Here’s our annual list of gatherings and listings for folks to consider. Many places are still in COVID mode or have not released their gathering dates at the time of production of the magazine. We also urge folks to check up on the website for these events to see if things might have changed or to check in on what’s required to attend. Dates are often changeable and individual websites given details about the event. Many other listings we are sure are out there. If you know of something we should list in the future send us a note—submissions@rfdmag. org with details—preferably name of the event, the start and end dates, location, group organization and website to link to for more information.

We run this calendar in the spring and for late winter gatherings we list things in the winter issue. As always we thank the organizers for putting together events which we can engage and evolve in. Thanks also to the folks at www.radfae.org and www.faenet.org for the listings they share with the larger community.

We also rely on our own listing of websites which we’ve collected over the years. If your group is not listed, please be in touch. We try to update our own calendar of these events. If you want to view things there, please go to www.rfdmag.org and click on the calendar listings.

—The RFD Collective.

We are setting up the Radical Faerie Arts Festival now. And you are invited. The Festival will be May 17-21, 2023. We will occupy 11,000 square feet for gallery exhibition, salon, and workshop space during the day, and stunning performances in the evenings. You can do workshops, or show film or photography, DJ for one of our dances, show your art, perform, bring friends, be part of the opening or closing ritual, sell your art or crafts at the Saturday Bazaar, buy some art, make a financial contribution to the event, or a thousand things we have yet to think up. Email: terrypcavanagh@gmail.com for more info. www.radfaf.org.

Harbinger Dreams: Jim Jackson’s Vision

Interview with Jim Jackson – by Bambi Gauthier

Jim Jackson is a long time contributor to RFD’s pages with evocative images going back decades. Jackson’s dynamic images often reflect an emotional and intense visual palate showing sensual and psychic energy. Jim’s longtime involvement in the men’s movement, gay rights and the Radical Faeries often interacts with his images. In his new book, Harbinger Dreams, Jackson explores a series of dreams he had in relation to his taking in the realities of the AIDS crisis in its early days before lifesaving medications.

RFD Press is pleased to be able to print this wonderful document of Jackson’s art. It is our first book since publishing Franklin Abbott’s Mortal Love, a collection of poetry in 1999.

We are hoping to help explore some of the themes and ideas that came onto the page as art and text in his book so we asked Jim to answer a few questions for our readers.

RFD: This book is a reflection on a number of dreams that you recorded visually and with words. How did you come to create this work?

JIM: Expressionism is the simplest answer. I learned to make pen and ink drawings “automatically” filling many sketchbooks during the 80’s and 90’s. Black pen and ink was easier and cheaper to reproduce in those days and RFD took some. While working spontaneously images would emerge. Most of the time some sort of fanciful humanistic characters appeared (usually male, often erotic). They were fun, however, as time passed scarier, forbidding monsters started taking over. Then came AIDS nightmares and I started drawing them. It was a tough time for me emotionally and creatively with so many friends and old lovers getting sick and dying. So I went to my therapist with some freaky drawings.

RFD: Your book uses dreams as a way of delving into the fear you faced during the AIDS crisis. How did you choose to use dreams and the unconscious as a way to uncover ways through the pandemic?

JIM: It was not a conscious choice; I felt the bad dreams pushed me into working on all that anxiety. My therapist, Barbara Hollerorth, was really good at getting me to stay focused on the issues until my fears could be reigned in and made more manageable. She really valued what dream analysis and getting fully in touch with deeper often repressed feelings could do to achieve this. I think it is a good approach for dealing with pandemic fears, especially AIDS and COVID and all to come.

RFD: Politically, the Eighties and early Nineties were a time filled with homophobia and the need for the gay community to unify to respond to AIDS and homophobia; do you feel your book was a way for you in a positive way to reflect on the tension and emotional exhaustion you were facing?

JIM: Jay and I were incredibly lucky living in The People’s Republic of Cambridge, Mass during this time. It was a liberal and fairly safe place as far as homophobia went. We were very out and involved in many gay activities and helping found the first Faerie circles in the Boston area. I had done a standing room only slide lecture on “Coming Out to My Art” at the Cambridge Adult Center. All these benefits did not help much dealing with the fear of contracting and dying from AIDS. That took the special focus of turning my art and writing toward the problem with the help of therapy.

RFD: As a Radical Faerie, did those community connections influence your book?

Jim Jackson

Creative Therapy with Pen and Ink

HARBINGER DREAMS JIM JACKSON RFD PRESS

Jim Jackson with his Mama Neal on her 90th birthday,

Photo: George Teague

JIM: That’s a big yes. There are five primary dreams explored in the book. One of them concerns dreaming of a Faerie gathering in the ruins of a cathedral. Another dream actually happened during a gathering. The drawing from the final dream was done while farm sitting at Blue Heron Farm. Also, there are other drawings and references throughout inspired by the Faeries. I am very grateful for the ongoing support and encouragement of the Faerie community, which has been vital to the work in this book and to my life.

RFD: Jim you worked on this book at the beginning of the 1990s and you printed it as a small chapbook. What drew you to publish it today?

JIM: Well, I’ve reached a quite senior age and have accumulated so much art and writing that I began looking back at things to see what I feel I really want to survive and Harbinger Dreams popped up again. I tried getting it published back in the 90’s but got rejections. Getting any gay stuff published in those days was not easy. So finding the original ver-

sion I decided that I could dare with RFD’s help to make it available in the online printing realm. Also, the COVID pandemic and all the associated drama made me aware that the book just might show folks that there are creative ways to deal with all their anxiety and fear.

RFD: What work are you doing currently, what is next on your artistic journey?

JIM: These days my paintings and sculptures are often concerned with our environmental problems. I remain concerned with what I am leaving behind and one possibility is publishing a book of my out gay art focusing on some very fantastical erotic drawings. You know stuff that even RFD couldn’t dare print back in the 70’s and 80’s but seems to be ok now. Are RFD readers interested?

Jim Jackson’s Harbinger Dreams is now available from RFD Press via Amazon for $12.95, 120 pages, soft cover. https://a.co/d/2ePmYo6.

"A Toast," by Gregory T. Wilkins, a.k.a. Equus.

Moonglade

by Frank Castelluccio

“Twenty-sixyears together and you never farted in front of me. Don’t you find that strange?” The words shot out of my mouth—I had not meant to say them.

“Is that why we are breaking up? Because of my good manners?” My husband said while going through drawers pulling things out, holding them up unsure of what belonged to whom. He was packing, everything it seemed—quickly, momentum was key, I guess.

“It’s not just about manners—it’s gotta mean something,” I said, trying to find the answer to a question one rarely asks.

Our framed wedding picture which usually sat on the right side of the dresser was now faced down. The bedroom was filled with suitcases.

“You’re losing your mind,” my husband said, “you can see that right?”

He could never trust me again—ever, he said. He had overheard a silly conversation I was having on the phone with my sister about our friend—a straight friend. That’s when everything changed.

After I hung up, he attacked me. “I heard what you said. You mean that you’ve always had the hots for him? The same guy that comes to our house at least three times a week, drinks our wine and eats our food? His wife and kids were here for the holidays, for chrissakes! Isn’t he straight? Or is that not a thing anymore. I’m going to ruin your lives!”

I tried to explain that it was all nonsense. A oneway made-up fantasy. I felt really foolish, standing there, my arms rounded, fists planted on each side of my body looking like an overaged (and somewhat overweight) Superman on his way to retiring. My husband stood tall and firm, shoulders slightly back, nodding his head as he flounced out on his way to find yet another suitcase.

“Don’t you see how absurd you are being? Nothing happened, ever!” I explained astonished, how could he be jealous over something so silly and what did he mean he was going to ruin our lives?

“It was the sound of your voice, something did happen—or you had it in your head that it was going to happen and it would have because you are like a dog with a bone, you never let it go until you get what you want. It wasn’t just you being infatuated. It was clear how you felt, I know you.”

I looked at my reflection in the mirror across the room. Did he know me?

The night we met I was eyeing a tall burly guy at the bar. I was sucking the last of my drink through a tiny straw, fantasizing what I would do with this man—I wanted him to come home with me. Instead, another guy walked up to me, holding two drinks. He looked shy, the glasses trembled in his hands. I thought he was cute in a bookish, cleancut sort of way, but not my type. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I took the drink and smiled. When I looked up the burly guy on the other side of the bar was making his way out with another guy who could have been his twin. It was weird. My fantasy bubble burst. It was the same disappointment you feel when waking up from an erotic dream just as you are about to reach orgasm. I had such an amazing night in store—in my mind. I faced the nerdy boy whose eyes were now intently fixed on mine, silently insisting that I not scan the bar for anyone else. I obliged.

The race was on.

It wasn’t until the day we moved in together that the thought crossed my mind—this isn’t love, is it? Is it supposed to feel sweet? Warm? Comfortable? Like putting an old sweater on a snowy day? Where were the fireworks? Hadn’t heard any.

But before I knew it, there were the holidays and the families meeting. The looks of joy and relief that we had found each other. “They make such a beautiful couple—such decent guys.” “Bet you they’ll make great dads.” Everything planned out and on course.

Until one day you are leaning on the door frame of your bedroom, half in and half out, afraid of entering because your husband is spinning around like a tornado tossing clothes he doesn’t want on the floor while, still clearly furious, neatly folding what he is taking.

He picked up a sweater and tilting his head scanned it. He looked baffled. He didn’t recognize it.

“I like the color, must be mine,” he said, tossing it in the suitcase. I didn’t say anything. It was my sweater. I had worn it to dinner one night and asked him if he liked it. I remember him sizing it up and then taking another bite of steak and saying, “That color…a bit young for you, don’t you think?” I never

wore it again.

That’s where we were in our relationship, a jab here and a jab there. Out of the most mundane comment an argument could erupt. The only way I found to stop the inevitable was simply to not respond.

You begin to compromise when the person sitting across the dinner table looks vaguely familiar, like someone sitting across from you on a train, you’ve seen him before but you can’t quite recall where and you are afraid to say hello.

Then one night, as he is packing his suitcases to leave you, you gaze toward the bay window and notice that there is a full moon. It looks disappointed. And you feel like you’ve failed.

That moon. That damn moon.

He had rented an old lighthouse on the Hudson River, now a B&B, that’s where he’d planned to make an honest man of me. Was it late September or early October? It’s always angered my husband that I could never remember the exact date. But I do recall that it was a Saturday night, the air was crisp and the moon low and full. We sat on the dock, legs dangling trying not to spill the bottle of champagne or drop the two flutes we had found in the broom closet of all places. We sat there silently, captivated by the rhythmic waves rippling toward us.

“Picture perfect,” he said, “What?”

He took my hand, “The moonglades.”

I didn’t know what moonglades were.

“Will you marry me?” he said taking my hand. We hadn’t known each other very long—or known many other men for that matter. I should have paused, said something like, can you give me a little time to think about it? We should explore more, it’s all happening so fast! But I could see his hands trembling again and he had that look in his eyes and I am convinced that had I said anything except for yes, he would have jumped into the mighty Hudson. And then what? I couldn’t go after him, I never learned to swim. So, I timidly said, yes. Then with a bit more gusto added, I will marry you!

He kissed me and holding my face with both hands said, “We should buy a house together. Why keep paying rent when that money can go to something that will be ours?” Real estate was the best investment. We agreed.

Debauchery was what I had in mind that weekend. Instead, it ended with a marriage proposal, a list of must-haves for our soon-to-be-purchased four-bedroom love nest and learning the meaning of moonglades: the bright reflection of moonlight on a body of water.

Our life was a large puzzle, we thought all the pieces were there but we could never find that last piece to make it whole. Still, we always did the right thing by each other. We took care of one another even when we argued to the point of uncontrollable rage. One night, after I threw a bowl of salad against the kitchen wall because my husband found it “too dressed” the shit hit the fan.

“I hate you!” I yelled.

“Don’t say something you are going to regret tomorrow.” he responded.

“I just said I hate you! Isn’t that enough?”

Frustrated I left the room and went to sleep in our guest bedroom/office/television room/library. (Our must-have four bedrooms had quickly turned to two when we realized what prices were like in Manhattan.) In the morning I heard him getting ready and sent a text,

Give me five minutes

I will drive you.

No response but I knew he’d wait for me. He had an endoscopy scheduled and they would not allow him to leave on his own because of the anesthesia. “It’s all the crap you eat at night that gives you heartburn. You need to take care of yourself,” I said as he got out of the car. “I’ll wait until they call me to come and get you. Good luck.”

“Thanks for driving me,” he said without looking back.

“Of course, we made a promise, always there for you and you always there for me.”

He stopped, turned around, avoiding my eyes, he said, “We should talk…”

“We should, just go. We can talk later.”

But we never did talk. It was just another deposit in the piggy bank now chock-full of I hate you(s) – I’ve had enough(s) and you don’t love me anymore(s)…

I should have said no to that first drink. I should have hurt his feelings and gone with the burly guy that night. How can one drink change your life?

Now I could never have that burly guy. Too late. I’m not what I was twenty years ago. My selfconfidence gone, along with my hair and six pack. I wouldn’t resent any of it if only we had passion. If we were meant to be together forever then unapologetic, relentless passion should exist—forever. Making love is boring. Down and dirty sex is what makes everyone wake up smiling, feeling invincible.

Rekindling that wild side was our intention in every romantic holiday we took. We knew it must still be somewhere inside of us. But instead of ripping each other’s clothes off and swinging from chande-

liers we usually ended up gawking at younger men wanting them more than we wanted each other. The wild side was still there just not for one another.

And now here I stand still leaning on the door frame of our bedroom looking at the “love of my life” who has never farted in front of me packing suitcases because I have a silly crush.

Where do we go from here? How do you dissect and separate the lives of two people who were joined together for better or worse? Who owns what? Why should I get fifty percent of everything when it was him who brought in more money? And what of the things we both love? How do we decide who the leather reading chair and ottoman we searched for two years and finally found in a tiny antique shop in Reading, Pennsylvania goes to? We jumped around like young schoolgirls when we spotted it in the window display. That’s the chair we placed in the corner of the “library” so we could read the Sunday New York Times. But that never happened. We stopped getting the paper and instead scan the articles on our phones, usually in separate rooms. Who reads the paper anymore, anyway?

And who still says I love you? I haven’t heard those words in years. When was the last time either

of us said them? Sometimes late at night, after too many vodka martinis, I roll over to his side of the bed and whisper the words in his ear hoping he is asleep because I’m afraid that the sound of them no longer ring true.

We…I…he did it for the right reasons, it was what was expected. The right reasons. What were those reasons? I can’t recall and I don’t think he can either—could it be we wanted to prove something to our families? To ourselves?

My crush on a man that I can never have and who would never have me is not the reason my husband is leaving me. It was time. We may have thought love came on a perfect night in autumn watching the moon make magic on the river, for some it may have, for us it wasn’t time. Maybe if I had had a one-nighter with the burly guy, and his twin had asked my husband home, then things may have turned out differently. Maybe we would have met again, much later, me and my husband, in another bar. A little worn, a bit dented, somewhat used and definitely more cynical, then maybe we could have fallen in love properly. And then maybe, with all that under our belts, he would have happily farted in front of me.

"Bar Melodies II," by Gordon Binder.

The Rendezvous

by Jim Van Buskirk

WhenI first moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1972, I told myself it was because I liked the cappuccino and the foreign films. I had no idea that I was one of a large wave of men immigrating to what was becoming the “gay mecca.” After briefly renting a hotel room near San Francisco’s Union Square, I moved into an apartment in Belmont, then San Jose, then Los Gatos. “At this rate,” I quipped, “I’ll be living in Santa Barbara.” Finally my brand-new boyfriend Wayne and I rented a furnished one-bedroom apartment at the Lucerne, 766 Sutter Street. Downtown San Francisco! I couldn’t quite believe I had achieved my dream. Having grown up in Southern California’s suburbs, I felt so cosmopolitan. After a few weeks, Wayne returned to his former partner, and I was left adrift in the City. Knowing no one, I was scared and lonely and excited to be independent. How would I manage to pay the rent?

I found a job two blocks away at Scott Martin Books, 527 Sutter Street, a tony little bookstore near Union Square catering to the carriage trade. Our customers included the libraries of the local private clubs —Pacific-Union, Metropolitan, Olympic—as well as many of their well-heeled members, which is why there was a copy of the Social Register adjacent every phone. The staff and the customers were all snooty; I was their token “real person. Among all the pricey hardback books I felt like a cheesy softcover. Appropriately, since I’d been hired to develop their new paperback book section. The staff was all gay men of a certain age: Grant, the snarky manager: Billy, the rotund bookkeeper; Daniel, the handsome shipping & receiving clerk; Scott, the alcoholic owner; and moi. This eclectic mix might’ve been the characters in The Boys in the Band, the movie version of which I saw at the Times cinema on Stockton Street. They became—for better or worse—my first role models, instructing me in the do’s and don’ts of urban gay life.

I had briefly lived with a couple of older gay guys who took me to my very first gay bar. I would never have known the Alley Cat existed, hidden down nondescript Elwood Street. They explained the ropes: no touching, no kissing, and if the lights went on, it meant a police raid. Now, on my own, trying to figure out how to navigate the city, as well as my blossoming sexuality, I somehow ventured into the

Rendezvous, 567 Sutter Street.

I was a nervous wreck as I climbed the steep and very narrow stairway. Not yet twenty one, I was afraid I’d be carded, but apparently some combination of my youth, my height and my looks motivated the doorman to wave me in without demanding ID. Along one wall was the bar, where I nervously ordered a beer. I then assumed a posture that I simultaneously hoped and feared indicated my availability, waiting for someone to initiate the insipid bar chat that sometimes segued to sex. Beyond the bar was a dark dance floor. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the bar was filled with what I later learned were called “sweater queens.” I felt out of my depths among all the handsome, well-groomed men. I stood around trying to look, and feel sophisticated, but I didn’t know how to pick up anyone, or even cruise. I could, however, summon the chutzpah to get myself onto the dance floor to gyrate while Barry White, Roberta Flack, Al Green, Love Unlimited, and the Bee Gees sang about love.

I referred to this limited realm as my Sutter Street Triangle: home, work, bar, and back again. Night after night, as I ascended the steep staircase to the dark bar on the third floor, the Rendezvous became my home away from home. I wasn’t looking for sex as much as love, and, the Waylon Jennings song to the contrary, I had no idea that I was looking for love in all the wrong places. Eventually I started meeting people, which is to say I occasionally got picked up. Every time I slept with someone, I thought I was in love, devastated when they didn’t call me. What was I doing wrong?

Eventually I met Greg, a caustic school teacher, with whom I went home in the Haight. I remember being awakened that first morning when one of his housemates sashayed into the bedroom carrying a tray with coffee, singing Diana Ross’s “Touch Me in the Morning”. I was totally embarrassed. How could they be so nonchalant about a sleepover? His housemates were a bunch of catty queens who referred to everyone and each other as “she” and “Mary,” while women were “fish”. What passed for campy wit smacked of misogyny to me, even in my pre-feminist days. That relationship, such as it was, pretty much ended my need to climb the stairs to the Rendezvous. I was smug in the knowledge that behind that discreet facade, lurked a den of iniquity.

Over many months, Greg and I would visit various establishments, have a drink or two, then end up— by default—spending the night together. We’d hit Sutter’s Mill and Trinity Place downtown, perhaps the Lion Pub out on Divisadero, and of course Buzzby’s on Polkstrasse. I never did really learn how to successfully navigate the bar scene, nor how to be the kind of gay man I saw all around me. I was always more comfortable dancing with my lesbian sisters at Amelia’s.

Many years later, I heard that Greg committed suicide. I eventually became more comfortable in

my gay identity and found community and eventually long-term partners. I haven’t been to a gay bar in many years. Wait, that’s not quite true. A few years ago, when a young lesbian friend turned twenty one, I invited her out for her first drink in a gay bar. I picked the Twin Peaks, there being no remaining lesbian bars in San Francisco. Sitting at that venerable venue reminded me of my many evenings at the Rendezvous. Now, fifty years later, I’m the queer elder imparting my experience of the institution of the gay bar.

Drawing by Street Candy/David Wright.

Lou’s Hideaway–Washington, DC–1965

by Murray Edelman

Ibeganto come out sexually at Lou’s Hideaway in February of 1965 in Washington DC at the age of twenty one. It was an unmarked basement bar at 9th and Pennsylvania open only when the neighborhood was deserted at night.

I had come to DC for my first adult job at the Census Bureau. I was on my own and often found myself at a dirty bookstore fixated on the men in physique magazines and skimming the only books there mentioning homosexuality, which treated it as a sexual deviance. I eventually obtained a guide to nightlife that I guessed was to this homosexual underground I had read about.

I had to find out why I was responding so much to pictures of men and ignoring those of women. Was it just a phase I had to explore? I needed to know more before I went back to pursuing my original plan to raise 2.2 children with my wife-to-be in the suburbs. This exploration entailed huge risks at that time. For example, to get my job with the government, I had to sign an affidavit stating that I was neither a communist nor a homosexual.

In addition to all this fear and uncertainty, I had to deal with the limitations posed by the blue laws at that time in DC: patrons could not walk carrying an alcoholic beverage; they could only drink at tables. And the bars had to close by midnight on Saturday.

When walking down the stairs to the Hideaway, I would find a seat, sit down, order a drink, and would sit there for the evening. Initially this was quite a challenge, given I was trying to figure out my sexuality. I could tell that I was turned on to a few of the younger guys sitting at tables across the room, while at the same time I was stuck at a table with guys who were either ignoring me, or older guys

putting the make on me. If I encouraged them, they kept after me, so I usually stayed to myself.

Conversations were often difficult. The usual, “What do you do for a living?” was quite loaded. If someone said, “I work for the government,” or if their answer was vague, that ended the small talk.

Iwascaught between the attraction I felt looking at a few of the guys and the fearful tightness I felt in my body from being objectified by those around me. It was frustrating to go there. I kept asking myself, “Was I really like them? Was I a homosexual?”Plus, it was hard to learn about this underworld. I was afraid and there was no real support for me, no one to talk to other than someone who just wanted my body. It was a great recipe for drinking. The jukebox was often playing the Supremes, who were very popular then. Whenever I hear them now, I get images of the bar and sense my body tightening a bit to protect itself.

On one Saturday night, I managed to sit next to a friendly guy who was both my age and someone I was attracted to. He lived about twenty miles away in Virginia. He talked about what it was like living there and what the rents were. I told him I was thinking of moving and would like to see his apartment; he offered to show it to me that night.

We both drove our cars to his apartment and before he finished showing me the apartment we started to make out. This was my first time with a man. I had made out with women, but never really felt much. This time, I got so quickly turned on that I had an orgasm in my pants. I freaked out and had to go. He offered to talk, but I was so overwhelmed with fear, I had to get out.

Over time, I learned how to move around the bar. If we cruised each other a while, one of us would get in the line to the toilet and, if we were lucky, the other would get directly behind and we could talk. Or if I saw someone I was attracted to, I would get in a line behind him and try to start a conversation.

There was no talk of, “Let’s get to know each other by going to a movie.” The meetings were just about sex. I wanted a real connection, but I also didn’t want to reveal too much about my personal life; it was dangerous. I also checked out the other ways to meet gay men: T-rooms (rest rooms) and cruising at a park. I found them even more alienating, offering only a momentary connection through sex. I even paid once to go to a gay private party held on Saturday night after the bars were closed. It ended with the police arresting all of us. Fortunately, they booked us as “disorderly conduct,” took our money and let us go.

As I went to the Hideaway more often, I could tell who the regulars were. And I learned they could be an asset. I could walk over to a table where there was a seat near someone I knew and say hello. And with luck there might be someone there that I was attracted to and get introduced.

I became bar friends with Doug Weigand. I was attracted to him, but it didn’t go the other way. He was in DC because he was being processed out of the Navy because he was caught in a relationship with another guy named Emerson, who I eventually met. And through him I met others that were trying to work with lawyers to get something less than a dishonorable discharge.

I had a big crush on Dickie Platt. He was around my age (twenty one) and height (5’ 10”), lanky, and very cute. I looked his way many different nights, but it was hard getting his attention. One night, I managed to sit next to him when he was drinking a good bit. We talked and we soon went to his place nearby.

It was amazing to be lying next to the naked body of a man that I found so desirable; I had a raging hard on. He wanted me to fuck him. He laid face down and I got on top of him. I had never felt such pleasure as I did being on top of him; I came before even getting close to penetration. He acted like that

was OK and fell asleep. I knew to leave.

He didn’t pay much attention to me at the bar until a few weeks later. It turned out that he saw me going home with Michael, a guy that he’d had a brief relationship with and wanted to see again. He wanted to know all about Michael and me as we drank; we went to his place again. This time he fucked me. I didn’t have to perform; I just had to relax and receive him inside of me. What a great experience. And to top it off, I could be with him naked for a while after before leaving.

My relationship with Michael ended soon after that, and Dickie seemed to disappear from the bar. A few weeks later, I saw him drinking late by himself. We talked a while, and I went home with him again. He was really drunk, but I was so turned on to his body and my fantasy of a connection that it didn’t matter. This time I got to spend the night knowing that he’d go to work early. It was wonderful to lay next to him and be able to touch him through the night.

He was gone when I woke up. As I was leaving, I noticed an open letter on the kitchen table. It was an apology to his roommate Ron. He’d written that he’d broken his commitment to cut back on his sex addiction and had brought yet another guy home that he really wasn’t interested in.

I continued going to the Hideaway, developed some friends, and eventually accepted my own sexuality. Yes, I was a gay man and would make the best of having to lead a double life in the shadows.

Five years after I first entered the Hideaway, I was a gay activist at the start of the gay liberation movement.It was thrilling to be creating an environment that made it easier for others to come into their sexuality and avoid some of what I had to go through.I became passionate about creating social alternatives to the bars.This eventually led to my involvement in the founding of the Faerie Circle that predated the Radical Faeries.

Now, as I’ve been writing this piece, 58 years after my first entrance, I feel a sense of pride and joy as I view the varieties of our meeting places and the ways that we express our sexuality and gender.I am in awe of what has been and can be possible.

Strangers in a Leather Bar

by William Demaree

Ona cold February night at Touché, only a few men, most in black leather, stood at the bar, played pool, or leaned against the bar’s black walls. I took a seat at the bar, hooked the heels of my boots into the aluminum rim at the bottom of the barstool, and ordered a Templeton on the rocks.

As I took that first joltingly strong sip of unmellowed rye, my jaw clenched in a grimace of pleasure: Smoooooth! I swirled my glass of Templeton to speed up the mellowing of the rye. I enjoyed watching the opaque ice melt into the rye while the rye’s vibrant copper slowly relaxed.

A young man was next to me drinking a beer, so I stretched out my glass and clinked his amber bottle of MGD: “Cheers!”

“Cheers!” he said. He wore a white tee, a plaid over-shirt and a red and white hoodie, rumpled jeans and work boots. He was chunky, with a prominent double chin and a layer of scruff on his cheeks. He looked like a cherub on a weekend bender.

Our conversation, like all February conversations in Chicago, turned to the weather, to the fifty below cold snap that had brought city life to a halt a week or two ago. We joked that tonight was much more comfortable—out on the street, it was a warm fifteen degrees. And streets and sidewalks were still littered with mounds of soiled snow.

Another patron drifted by and threw his arm over my friend’s shoulder. “Hamed! How have you been, man? It’s good to see you.”

“I’m doing better, thanks.” There was a hug, and then the stranger moved on to another corner of the bar.

“I met him here a few weeks ago,” said Hamed. “I was feeling really low and sitting at the bar crying.”

I had only a second to digest the incongruity: a young cherubic man sitting in a rough ‘n’ tumble leather-bar, by himself, weeping.

Hamed continued: “He saw me crying and joined me. He took me to a table, bought me a beer, and listened. He comforted me as best he could.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “He was very sweet to do that.”

I could see in his eyes that for just a moment, Hamed had withdrawn into the memory of some deep sorrow and the unexpected kindness of a stranger.

To break the uncomfortable silence, I asked, “What do you do?”

“I work as a packer in a factory. But back home in Afghanistan I was an artist.”

“Oh, how wonderful.” I was surprised. Despite the romantic stereotype, I had never met an artist in a bar before.

“I was pretty well known. I had exhibitions and interviews on television and in magazines.” He pulled out his phone. “Would you like to see one of my paintings?”

While Hamed thumbed through the gallery on his phone, I took a deep swig of Templeton: I feared that I was about to see some awful picture that would force me to grit my teeth and lie.

Hamed twirled his phone and held it a few inches from my eyes. The image came into focus, and I felt as though I had fallen through a sheet of ice. Good God! Even on this tiny flat screen, it was clear that black and red acrylics had been daubed very heavily onto paper. Thick slashes of red filled the background like streaks of blood or tongues of flame. A grotesque human figure writhed in the center. On the right side of his head was a devil’s horn; an angel’s wing, crumpled and forlorn, drooped from his left shoulder. The picture was beautiful in its darkness, stunning in its depiction of a tortured soul.

“Do you like it?”

I stammered: “Of course . . . I love it . . . I like it very much . . . Oh . . . My. This is . . . magnificent.”

“Do you really like it?” he asked.

“Yes. Very much.”

“Then I will give it to you.”

I stopped breathing for a second; a struggling artist I had known for thirty minutes had offered me, for free, an incredible work of art. Hamed’s generosity was as heartbreaking as the work itself.

“No, you will not!” I said firmly, giving his leg a swat. “This belongs in a gallery. No. Thank you. But-no. This is . . .. magnificent!”

He frowned a bit: “Let me show you some others.”

He thumbed his way through several paintings, drawings, and sculptures, each one an image of violence, or torture, or sadness, or isolation. Many pictures were just swirls of black ink on manila paper, images of human figures, either obese or twisted or demonic or grotesquely incomplete. Many faces had

eyes with no pupils. Sometimes I leaned in to see the image more carefully; sometimes I took his hand and pulled the phone closer to examine the details.

During the picture sharing, our bodies drew closely together; my hand rested on his thigh, his arm draped over the back of my bar stool. He finished and returned the phone to his pocket. For a moment we sat in silence, and on the bar, the ice melted slowly in my empty glass.

I do not remember who moved first—but we kissed. My hand rose to clutch the back of his head, gently caressing his rough, closely cropped hair. His arm left my barstool and settled around my shoulder, pulling me closer. The thrill of his kiss settled softly into the center of my chest. I do not know if the kiss was inspired by compassion, grief, or misplaced sexual longing. Or all three.

As we separated, I said, “Let me buy you another beer.”

As we drank our second drinks, Hamed told me that his family, a very prominent family, was still in Afghanistan though they had left for a while because of the civil war. I wondered what kinds of horrors Hamed had seen as a child. I thought of the images I had seen on his phone and shuddered.

Hamed told me that he had gone to art school in Iraq, had been a member of an artist’s collective in Kabul, lived for a while in Istanbul, and then six months ago, came to Chicago.

I knew the answer—I dreaded the answer--but I had to ask: “And why did you leave home to come here?”

“Because,” he said, his voice sounding as though it came from halfway around the world, “Because I’m queer.”

I hung my head in sorrow, feeling as though I were somehow responsible for the dire choices forced upon my new young friend.

“I want to go out for a cigarette,” he said, pulling a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket as he wobbled off the barstool.

“I’ll go with; I need some fresh air.”

On our way out, Hamed paused at the coat check: “You’ll need your coat,” he said, tugging at the sleeve of my black tee, covering only the top three inches of my shoulder.

“No—I want to feel the cold.”

And so I left the bar, dressed in only my short sleeve tee and jeans, and experienced a momentary shock of life. I wished it were snowing or sleeting; I wanted to feel the soft feathers of snow on my shoulders or the sharp ping of ice on my bare arms.

On the sidewalk, we joined two men in hoodies

and jackets—a black guy and a Latino--smoking on the street. The four of us instinctively formed a loose circle, a fragile cocoon to shelter us against the February winds whipping along Clark Street. I felt as though I had stepped into a bad joke: A white guy, a black guy, a Muslim, and a Latino walk into a bar . . .

The black guy stood across from me, hoodie up, shoulders hunched, his feet doing that little Christit’s-cold two-step. He stared at my bare arms. “Ain’t you cold?” His voice conveyed more attitude than concern.

“No, I’m okay.”

A queue of taxis waited curbside for bar patrons who would soon be shambling out, needing a ride home or heading to a stranger’s bed for the night. Cars splashed their way down Clark Street, tires scraping against the built-up sludge frozen to the undercarriage. A busload of late-night commuters grumbled by, and somewhere far away, a siren screamed, alarmingly crisp and clear.

I stared at Hamed, this stranger who gave up everything for one thing: identity. I felt an irrational anger towards the people on the bus, groggy heads leaning against the cold glass of the windows; none of them, I guessed, would ever be forced to leave their homes because of their sexual identity.

But then I realized I was really angry with myself. I was angry with my long-held unwillingness to sacrifice anything for anything, especially something as intangible as identity. I was sixty and secure before I acknowledged my own queerness, and here I stood next to a man who had done so at thirty-three; and he had redrawn his life so completely that he had once cried in solitude in a gay bar, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. I felt humbled in the presence of this young man smoking a cigarette on a frigid sidewalk half a world away from home, embracing his queerness at an awful cost, a full thirty years sooner than I had found the courage to do so. My body flushed in shame and regret.

In unison, three cigarette butts hit the sidewalk, fizzling in puddles of dirty snow. “Let’s go back inside,” said the black guy, pulling his hoodie tightly around his wiry frame.

I put my bare arm around Hamed’s waist. “Before we go in, I want to shock the good people on Clark Street.” I pulled him to me and kissed him again, full on, for a long time, his lips tasting of tobacco and beer. I closed my eyes and heard, vaguely, the cars and buses rushing by less than twelve feet away. I felt myself relax into the moment, my body folding into his, my heart beating

strong, my cold bare skin enjoying the sudden warmth of Hamed’s body and knowing with great clarity: This was a kiss of rebellion; this was a kiss of communion.

We reentered the warmth of the bar, my mind muddled by emotion and too much Templeton. The

The Stud

We come here again, for what

I’d stop by to use the wifi and maybe a urinal Get over my long standing stage fright

Grimace at people lurking by Now it’s you grimacing at my steadfast refusal to buy you

A drink. I’ll buy you one at that new bar

I say I’m not paying 10 bucks here for a watery lager. The boys next door are hocking $7 IPAs and the hits

You persist- this is the last gay bar in the village- though

I don’t care to be gawked at or the realisation that I’m not.

bar was, by now, hallucinatory: a montage of ice and flannel, amber bottles and torn denim, black leather and bare chests. Hamed and I stumbled through the heat of men huddled in clusters, and as we walked, I kept my palm pressed against the small of his back—one more simple, soulful act of communion.

Waiting for someone to throw a little glance at me hold their breath at the hiked price and who knows maybe offer to buy me something to drink

Relenting, at last, ok,

let’s play a game of pool and get out of here

The last time I was here, my friend never misses the chance to remind me, I ricocheted from wall to wall swapping spit with a guy I wasn’t queer enough for His dangly earring frantic

So one game of pool and lets get out of here

I’m not eager for this place to swallow me up I swallow knowing I had thought I might belong here if nowhere else and I never did.

—Vapour phase

Photograph by Dick Mitchell.

Memphis Gay Bars

by Don Unger

Plus One

by Dale Corvino

Iwas present for much of New York’s gay bar scene from the 80’s on but lurked rather than connected—until I met Dean Johnson in the back room at the Cock. He’d positioned himself to catch the incidental light coming through the curtained entrance while the others huddled in the room’s dark corners. I was drawn to this tall, pale figure, his massive cock. As we sized each other up like competing alphas, sniffing, grunting, throwing looks in the dark, eyes in the room shifted towards us. After some groping and cock-sucking, our sex became more performance than passion. He was an exhibitionist, on that night with me and for the rest of his days, and I’d played along. Afterwards, he proposed that we go to Odessa for a latenight meal. The diner was a regular hangout for the cool crowd, who affectionately called it “slow-death-a.” I was flattered. On our way out, he turned to me, his deep and resonant voice that would rise into camp flirtation carrying over the bar noise, and said: “I have a feeling we will make better friends than lovers.” And so it would be.

I only recognized him once we were out of the dark room. That’s when I saw both stars and red flags. I’d seen him around downtown for years, a drag queen and party king with his own band. He hosted “Foxy,” on Saturday nights at the Cock, where I’d watched as guests competed for prizes by doing outlandish things for the stage show. As we slid into the booth at Odessa, he asked my birth date, and when I told him, answered, “Oh, another Gemini, I knew it. We could never be lovers.” Whether he was protecting himself from possible rejection or truly believed it, I went along. The power to shape our relationship was in his hands.

I’d moved into the city in 1982 and by the time I found my way into East Village nightlife, Dean was already a New York landmark, like a tall tower or a tourist attraction. Seeing him go-go dancing

on top of the bar at the Pyramid in his signature look—bald head, a cocktail dress short enough to display his endless legs, big sunglasses, drop earrings—was hot, confusing, and transgressive in a way I wasn’t ready for. He’d waved me through indifferently at Boybar when he worked their door. He vaguely recalled having seen me around: “I was probably on dope, but I remember your eyes.” I felt a step more connected to those stolen nights: I really was there, there’s a witness, however unreliable.

One Tuesday night on Avenue C, Dean was holding court outside a club entrance. Inside the dark, hazy club, I came across an irregular hole in a wall. I was drunk and the club’s vibe was already otherworldly, but stepping over a pile of bricks through the hole to find a raw space with a swaying chandelier felt like entering another dimension. Only later did I learn that I was at the World for Dean’s notorious ‘Rock n’Roll Fag Bar ’ party, and they had in fact broken through the party wall into the adjoining abandoned building, outlaw style.

I later attended a screening of the film Mondo New York in which he appeared with his first band, the Weenies. I found the film’s wide-eyed, sensationalist framing of New York’s underground scene tiresome freak-gawking, but Dean’s incendiary performance of the song “Fuck You” woke me right up. His appearance in the film had led to a deal with Island Records, immediately followed by a run-in with the music industry’s homophobia that he was still railing against years later when I met him. It was the open wound that drove his work, and I got behind his righteous crusade. The success he craved would be a victory for all of us.

I was newly sober when we met, and Dean wanted to get sober so I tried to support him.

Ultimately, AA was the one club he could not get into. Despite the program’s warnings about avoiding people that might lead to a relapse, I allied myself with him. My sobriety was one boundary Dean fully respected. We really bonded in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, during a summer that Mario Diaz, the owner of the Cock, had rented a house and threw inspired parties for his circle. Dean and I shared a love for naked bodysurfing. I’d cheer him on as he caught waves; he would stiffen his long body into a surfboard and rocket into shore, scraping his bald head on the sand.

I followed Dean to his next party, at a former massage parlor on the Lower East Side called Happy Endings; it was equal parts dancing and sleazy antics. One night I had a spontaneous three-way with a couple in one of the bathrooms; I’d locked the door to keep anyone else out. When we emerged from the bathroom, Dean told me that the NYPD had just conducted a raid: “They came in, turned on all the lights, and ordered everyone to remain in place while they searched for illegal activity…” I looked around to find the party getting back to full swing. “ They just left,” he said. “Well, they didn’t find us,” I replied, and we laughed over the NYPD’s incompetence. We both despised then-Mayor Giuliani for his moralistic crusades. He’d sicced the cops on venues without cabaret licenses where any dancing took place and Dean’s venues were prime targets.

Dean made me his bouncer at the Hole, a dive bar on Second Avenue. He also hired a young Australian actor named a (who would go on to win an Emmy for his ass-eating performance in The White Lotus) to work the door. Some would grumble about paying twenty dollars to get into a dive bar, but Murray was so handsome and would smile so sweetly as he took their cash they would melt. I had no training for security, but I was a big, tall guy with a crewcut who could front tough; anyway, there was hardly any need. The whole time I worked there I only had to deal with one guy who’d gotten pushy amid the packed crowd; I reached in, grabbed the back of his jacket, and guided him out the door. My real role was being Dean’s “drop.” He entrusted me with thousands in cash. I’d periodically run

stacks of bills to his lockbox, and when my work was done, I’d enjoy the party. For the first time I felt truly a part of the scene, not just a bystander.

The Hole was a narrow space and his parties would get so packed that the naked, viagrapopping go-go dancers could hardly swing around without hitting someone in the eye. Guests who’d make their way to the basement would find an active dark room reeking of empty beer kegs, sweat, ass, and cum. “I can’t believe I’m getting away with this,” he once said to me on an especially raunchy night there. I earned my cut as I watched him admiringly, raking in cash while pushing boundaries; but what really awed me about Dean was that his public spectacle of a life was wholly in service to his art.

I went with him to CBGB for a meeting with Hilly Krystal, the owner, to pitch the idea of hosting a night of queer music. In all my years going to school just a couple of blocks away, I’d been too intimidated by its fag-bashing punk vibe to venture inside. In daylight, the run-down interior seemed held together by band stickers. Hilly, who knew and had supported Dean, gave him the go-ahead with a simple, “I trust you.” I got the sense that he was open to breaking this new ground while being protective of what he’d built over the years. We returned to photograph bare-assed twinks hooking up in the club’s notoriously grubby bathroom to promote the showcase, which Dean named HomoCorps. As I was designing the print ad and flyers, I couldn’t really grasp the name. He explained: “Because the music industry is both homophobic and run by closet cases, just like the military.” Headliner Rufus Wainwright packed the place; his celebrity following garnered a lot of press. Dean appeared fronting his second band, the Velvet Mafia. HomoCorps had given me— along with a packed-in crowd—a claim on the club’s rowdy scene.

After 9/11, Dean’s activities were less scrutinized; newly elected Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD had other priorities. This was a relief to both of us, especially since I was now earning money from them, too. Dean next partnered with gay comic Jonny McGovern for a party called

Triple XXX, for which I also designed the event’s ads and flyers, including one I especially loved of a stripper standing on the bar with his white briefs around his ankles and dollar bills stuffed into his scuffed high-tops. The copy proclaimed that the party had “brought the Giuliani era to a screeching halt.”

His next party, Magnum, named for the extralarge condom, changed all that. He co-produced it with Johnny at the Park, an upscale venue in Chelsea; gossip columnist Michael Musto called it a “a raunchy gay sleaze fest.” It got wild at the opening night party: a horny and very flexible ballerino performed what I have since learned is an arabesque perché, a bent-over high leg lift, while impaled on my dick. As we closed the party out, it pained me to see that the venue’s pricey new high-concept interior had been trashed. Magnum was shut down soon after it started; the venue was summonsed for “lewd and licentious behavior,” among other offenses. Dean blasted out a goading email: “ If the police want to waste their time and money chasing naked, well-hung men around a nightclub, we are prepared to take a stand…” I cheered him on for tweaking the NYPD while quietly fearing for his safety.

Sure enough, the Magnum debacle put police scrutiny back on Dean; it was enough to run him out of nightlife. His options having narrowed, Dean shifted gears and started escorting. I myself had plunged into sex work after losing a business, a relationship, and an apartment within the space of a month; Dean had been my confidante as I’d learned the ropes. Of his late-life career change Dean said, “I used to throw parties…now I am the party.” Using the worker name ‘Big Red,’ he experienced an immediate surge of popularity. He was the new cock on the block, and his cock was even bigger than mine. He was raking in cash and used it to support his music, like he had with his earnings as a party promoter. Though the paths

that had led us each to late-in-life hustling were distinct, our bond deepened through our shared experience.

Acouple of years later, The New York Times would cover Dean’s fatal overdose under suspicious circumstances at a trick’s apartment in Washington, DC with the headline, “Disquieting Death Stills the Night Life.” I lamented my failure as Dean’s sober crutch as I mourned my friend and confidante. When he had told me about some of his wild turns as a sex worker, we’d laughed about them, but never without marveling at the odyssey of longing. Dean’s laughter was thunderous and epic and holy, and he’d kept laughing despite being on the shit end of AIDS, heroin, and Giuliani, mirthless destroyer of nightlife.

As the Times headline suggests, Dean’s 2007 death was emblematic of a loss of a certain period. Through cycles of oppression and capitalistic pressures, queer nightlife has had to thrive opportunistically, dodge scrutiny and persecution, and sometimes go underground, as Dean’s boundary-pushing trajectory illustrates. The bar scene in New York and beyond would soon face new competition: connectedness via online forums, and especially the use of GPS-enabled cruising apps like Grindr. Today, a lot of my “social interactions” that would have taken place in gay bars happen online. In my analog days, I’d often gravitated towards instigator-type figures like Dean who would pull me into their scenes. Now I’m just another solitary digital cipher, but one who bears the imprint of the bar scene. If Dean’s peripatetic career—from the Pyramid to Boybar, the Cock, the Hole, John Street, CBGB’s, Happy Endings, the Park, and many more—was a life in service to art, I was, for a time, his glorified plus one. It was a rolling riot of sexual liberation that finally liberated me, and another of his thunderous laughs at the odyssey of longing.

The Velvet Rope

by Louie Mandrapilias

Itwas my first time taking the subway. As we descended unlit stairs, I thought we were stepping onto a brown shag runner. A wavy crust of cockroaches scurried away from our footsteps. I was from the swampy South, insects a daily fact of life. But these guys were radioactive.

Govind handed me my first Metro token, pushing through the turnstile, internal metal rollers clack-clack-clacking. There weren’t many people waiting on the platform deep in the city bowels, the temperature at least ten degrees warmer than street level. A homeless man aimed against stained tile walls, adding a fresh quart to the piss-soaked sauna.

Mischievous rats ran ahead of bright lights from the oncoming Number 1 train. Discarded newspapers lifted by the wind tunnel vacuum danced clockwise above the tracks. Everywhere, decades of decay. I didn’t care. I was delighted to be in this amazing metropolis with my noble escort.

Govind covered his ears seconds before worn metal brakes seized electrified rails, producing an eardrum splitting shriek. The graffiti-covered train pulled to a stop, it’s exterior a canvas for oppressed voices. We boarded through waffling doors, too old and neglected to glide.

Inside, unflattering lighting revealed the cabin’s wear and tear. Missing advertisements in slots above, a tossed bag of McDonald’s fries scattered below, half stepped on and smeared. I couldn’t imagine sitting on the defiled benches, threadbare and stained with God knows what. We lurched forward, grabbing a vertical steel pole, clammy with nasty residue, balancing myself as the subway car veered from side to side. I scanned unsavory night passengers, assuming they were all up to no good. We looked suspiciously at one another. Street smart.

Two a.m. We escaped the underground furnace near Columbus Circle, where I had passed twelve hours before. Now in the cover of night, it felt less dangerous. An odd white building with Palazzoshaped cutouts stood out to me. Was it a daring design or bad?

We walked down Broadway and picked up our pace turning left onto East 54th, my anticipation building with my racing heart. A large crowd filling the street halted any cars from speeding through, creating a gridlock of metal and flesh. There it was: the 54 marquee in stylized Art Deco type I had seen

in magazines. I was really here, the place I had fantasized about. It was beckoning me. Mecca.

We navigated through the hopeful crowd, the pavement vibrating from the disco beat.

My God my God my God—who are they? Will I fit in? Can we get in?

It was a freak show. Half-naked men and women in outrageous glittery costumes. Regular folks in their Sunday best. Barely covered babes. Everyone desperate, shouting out to let them in. The doorman in charge of the velvet rope was sizing up the crowd to determine who was worthy.

Govind spotted his friends and led me over, jumping to head of the line, looking back at angry faces. “Guys, this is Eli. It’s his first time in the city.”

I was surprised Govind introduced me by my new name, telling a lie so easily. Convincingly. Then again, they had no idea who Louie was. Here in New York, where no one knew me or my past, I was free to be whoever I wanted to be.

“Eli! Hey, baby. I’m Dimitri.” All arms and lips, his curly black hair bounced with every move, his cigarette a baton conducting the entourage. Europeanchic, he kissed me on both cheeks. Hellenas eísai? You Greek too?”

More formal but warm, his partner, perhaps his lover, shook my hand. “Hello, darling. Taylor.” He looked like a runway model, over six feet tall, with high cheekbones and a pursed mouth. Was that his natural facial expression? “So, are you ready to have some fun?”

“Oh my God, yes! But can we get in?” It felt like a big tease, so close, music pouring out each time the door opened.

The impassive doorman, a looker himself, wasn’t in a hurry to let anyone enter. Dimitri feigns impatience—they obviously knew each other. Taking a long drag off his cigarette, he muttered under his breath, “Oh, give me a break.” In an instant, the velvet rope was raised. Dimitri grabbed my hand, adrenaline kicking into overdrive, my feet barely touching the ground as I was ushered in.

After walking through the lobby and paying our twenty dollars, we entered the main floor, breathing in rarefied air. I kept turning, from each angle, each new face more glamorous than the last. Fashions in leather, sequins, or body paint on exposed flesh. This was the place to be, a smile on everyone includ-

ing me. My senses were bombarded—sounds, sights, my skin rubbing against anyone who passed.

I knew it all: the floorplan, the infamous balcony, the dizzying lights, from People and Interview magazines. Sweaty chests glistening, an array of shirtless bartenders poured cocktails at the main bar. There across the room, Warhol and Liza held court on the sofa.

They’re really here? Where’s Halston?

I went to raise my hand and point. Govind quickly grabbed my arm and kept me from embarrassing him and myself. I was a hick—I didn’t care.

Dimitri was greeted by a few scantily dressed women, which involved digging their hands into the most private parts out in public. They were going to rape him—he didn’t mind. Wearing red satin shorts, a waiter walked up and offered a tray of shot glasses filled with clear liquid.

Dimitri’s chit chat mixed with pounding fresh tracks. “Who wants a drink?” My initial hookup with Govind was paying off in spades. We all took a glass. Dimitri and Taylor raised theirs and in unison cheered, “To Eli!”

His voice filled with pure seduction, Govind’s lips pressed against my ear: “Welcome to New York.” I really had arrived.

Holy cow, if my friends could see me now!

I tossed back my drink—vodka burned my throat. Like the first time I snuck a glass of champagne at my cousin Francis’ wedding, alcohol entered my bloodstream, forgetting all my secrets and fears, replaced by a relaxed confidence.

On the dance floor, it was a celebration—no boundaries or rules, the energy, lights and colors obscuring any trace of certainty. Govind pointed up to the smiling Man in the Moon sculpture as it descended from above. A big coke spoon rose up and Mr. Moon inhaled white neon powder up his nostrils. The dance floor erupted with screaming approval as silver diamond dust dropped from the ceiling, crop-dusting us all with fake cocaine.

Is this really happening? How did I end up here? It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of.

What decadence. What freedom. A world way from Houston. No, farther.

Dimitri cracked a glass vial of pharmaceutical grade amyl nitrate and shoved it up my nose, a rush racing up my brain as eight-foot-tall flashing red cylinders of light dropped from on high. Sylvester’s operatic voice pierced the night as Govind held me from behind, grinding into my backside. Chemistry, pheromones, whatever it was, it made me feel so real. Mighty real.

We hadn’t been dancing for more than fifteen minutes when Govind pointed up to the balcony. “You want to go upstairs?” Consumed by desire, I would have followed him anywhere.

He held my hand as we darted up the back staircase—like boyfriends.

We entered the darkened space, pungent with marijuana. Wide-open platforms covered in black rubber with huge pillows had replaced proper seating. Very Joe D’Urso. I began to make out shadowy figures, almost stepping on human bodies. Flashing red lights flooded the balcony and it became evident we were in an orgiastic scene straight out of Caligula. There was no privacy, no discretion. “Govind, people are fucking.”

He pulled my shirt off and pushed me down against padded surfaces. Again, his passion for me was endless. This most spectacular man wasn’t embarrassed to be seen with me, little old Louie. I mean, Eli.

We kept kissing. Passionate kissing. Tongues, hands. Other hands reached over and touched me. First, it was another man. Then a woman. A quite gorgeous brunette, with long legs wrapped around a man’s head. From the look on her face, she was wasted or cumming or both. I reached back and copped a feel of her breast, rubbing her nipple, watching her smile and moan.

I had made out with a few girls in high school, but nothing more. Either the right opportunity hadn’t presented itself, or I was too afraid to go further with a woman.

Songs kept changing, lost in time. I needed hydration. Pulling up my pants, I searched for my shirt on the rubber floor, and walked down to the balcony’s edge, taking in the rapturous sight. Covered in silky sweet sweat, I held onto Govind’s torso.

God, I’ve been waiting to touch you for a million years.

Looking to my new friend, my sentry, perhaps the one I had been searching for, I couldn’t contain my ecstasy. “Warhol! Can you believe it?”

Govind saw my eagerness. My impressionability. “You want this?” he asked, in his deep voice.

“Every night! I’ll do anything.” I wasn’t exaggerating.

His hand on my back, fingers sliding down my spine, he firmly pushed my pelvis to the railing.

He whispered softly in my ear: “If you jump, you’ll be in all the papers tomorrow.”

What? Did you invite me to kill myself?

I already idolized this man. I had spent twelve hours divulging my deepest secrets to him. What

kind of trickery was this?

Unlike Christ in the desert, I had already succumbed to his temptation. For so many years I had been hungry for this nourishment, this companionship. I had devoured his flesh, satiating all my lust. And he had used holy teachings to confuse me about sex and God—sex is divine.

Now he was tempting me to perform some spectacular feat, to lift enthralled onlookers up to

witness my moment of glory. Here in this most sacred place, Studio 54, he invited me to leap from heavenly heights, a sacrifice in this temple of false gods. They would know who I was. They would know my name. Eli.

I looked at him and laughed at his ridiculous suggestion. Even in my altered state, I knew he was dangerous. But I was smitten. I wanted this man and this life, no matter the warning signs.

Photograph by Dick Mitchell.

Becoming Someone Who Dances With Their Shirt Off

by Roberto Alvarez Jr

Summer, 2003

I’m thirteen. After dinner, I watch TV. Since I share a room with my sister, it’s difficult to watch anything in secret. We don’t have cable in our rural South Texas home, so I’m stuck watching a lot of local stations like NBC. Will and Grace is on. My family knows what the show is about and actively avoids it. The only way I can watch it safely is to watch the show before and say I want to see the whole line-up. Even then, I can’t really enjoy it and laugh along without giving my secret away. I enjoy Will’s character. He’s handsome and clever. Is this what life as a gay man is like when you’re older? In this episode, someone pulls Jack’s pants down. My sisters are watching with me. They began to tease me, saying that I like seeing Jack in his underwear. Getting up, I storm out of the room.

A Saturday, 2005

I’m fifteen. It’s late and everyone is asleep. This is when I like to take advantage of our new cable TV service. Standing at the threshold of the living room and dining room with remote in hand, I peek my head into the hall to make sure the coast is clear. I turn the TV on confidently, knowing the volume is low because I was the last one to watch it. Flipping to Logo, I make sure the previous channel is set to Sci Fi or TV Land as a quick escape should I hear anyone coming. Queer as Folk is on. It’s the episode where Justin is telling his mom that he likes to suck cock. I’m familiar with the story, but am mostly watching it for the chance to see full frontal nudity. Nothing. Thankfully, a foreign film on IFC has an N rating. Flipping between TV Land and the foreign film, about forty minutes in, a young man pulls down his pants revealing a long and hairy dick. This is what I’ve been waiting for. I jerk off to the scene, clean up my mess, take care of any evidence indicating that I was there, and go to sleep.

A Friday Night, 2007

I’m seventeen. My older sister has left for college, leaving me her room. My other sister is staying at her friend’s place and my parents are long asleep. Tonight, I spend my night with the family com-

puter which has been conveniently placed in my room. Locking my door, I boot up the computer, plug in headphones, pull down my pants and begin searching for free internet porn. As videos load, the same ad plays over and over. It is of a drag queen performing on an outdoor stage with buff halfnaked men dancing in their underwear. They seem to be on a beach somewhere. I quit my search for porn, and instead search for men dancing in their underwear. My search returns the Club Papi gogo dancers. A group of five men are documenting their trip to Puerto Vallarta. During the day they unpack and goof around town. At night, they strip down and dance on stages. They wear only underwear. Some have sunglasses and others sweatbands or handkerchiefs. They are muscular and sweaty. With their arms above their head, they stand on a box and move their hips slowly. Suddenly, "Bad Romance" plays and one of the dancers screams at the top of their lungs how much they love that song. It’s as though something turns on inside of him. I’ve never

Photograph by Dick Mitchell.

seen anyone move like this before. I get hard again and start jerking off to the guy dancing. In the video, random men approach the dancers to touch them and put money in their underwear. So much attention on them. Attention I want.

September 4, 2011

I’m twenty one. Today is my birthday. I broke up with Richard a few weeks back. We were together for a year and half. It only takes getting hit once to convince yourself that it isn’t going to work out. The mutual friends we made are much closer to him than they were with him. The friends I made my freshman year were all gone as they all transferred to other schools at semester’s end. Reaching out to the few people I knew, I set up lunch at Chili’s. I sit alone at a table meant for seven. Every moment is excruciating. Marcela, a woman from work who reminds me of Monica from Friends, arrives with her two gay roommates. She immediately regrets asking where everyone else is. I know she meant no harm. Ditching Chili’s, we go back to her place. The four of us hung out for the rest of the day, one of the greatest days of my life.

September 16, 2011

Marcela and her roommates take me out to a local gay bar, Club 33. They gave me my first drink, a jack and coke. We dance all night. The three of them get drunk but sober up enough to drive us home safely. Staying at their place that night, the four of us sleep in one bed.

Saturday, 2012

I’m twenty-two. The four of us go to Club 33. Richard is there. They let me know that he keeps staring at me. Closing my eyes, I dance to a remix of “All The Lovers” by Kylie Minouge. Confetti falls from the ceiling and the various colorful lights flash. As everything settles, I open my eyes and Richard is gone. Closing my eyes again, I continue to dance.

March, 2013

I’m twenty three. A new bar is open in downtown McAllen, Club Envy. An ad on Facebook says they’re hiring barbacks and entertainers. The owner quickly responds to my message and tells me to meet him later that night.

It’s an odd place. Why anyone would open a gay bar in this area is beyond me as the scene is known for its straight, young Tejano crowd. The small space is basically a wide hallway. You enter on the dance floor. Around the perimeter there are built-in loung-

ing couches with a few tables. Towards the end of the space, which takes approximately fifty steps, is the bar on one end and a small raised stage on the other. The owner gives me a quick tour. A handsome fellow only a few years older than me with high hopes for the business. Not only because it was his first, but because owning a bar has been his goal. Leading me to the back room, an even tighter hall with fading white paint reveals a long built-in shelf with one cracked mirror. The entertainers room. This tight space is made tighter with the extra alcohol crates set along the opposite wall. Leading me back out, he hesitantly looks at me and asks if I want the job. When I agree, his face lights up. In total, he now has three gogo dancers. Before leaving, I take another look back at the stage.

A March Friday 2013

Slow night. The hype of a new bar is fading. The other two dancers are nowhere to be seen. Again. Visibly upset, the owner paces around the bar. He isn’t angry though. This bar means a lot to him and he wants it to succeed. I want that for him too. Staying late to help him close, he puts a hand on my shoulder and thanks me for the effort I’m putting in. Before I know it, we’re kissing. Bending me over a table, he fucks me. His dick is huge and he has only one testicle. Checking my phone before bed, I see a message from him. As great as tonight was, it would be best if it never happens again. It’s not fair to his boyfriend.

April, 2013

Hiring a DJ and local drag performers for the night is paying off. So many people are here. Some of the adventurous straight couples from other bars find their way here too. They find gogo dancers humorous. As I dance with a guy’s girlfriend, he tips me. When I dance with him, she tips me. Neither see me as a threat to their relationship.

I take two trips to the back room to deposit several bills from my briefs into my bag. The crowd is very generous tonight. My night is almost over and a final call for alcohol is made. Sitting alone on the couch is a very drunk guy around my age. He’s been sitting there alone all night. After chatting with him, it’s clear he shouldn’t drive himself home. We both agree I should take him. Thankfully, he lives close by.

The next day, he messages me to thank me for looking after him. Wanting to make it up to me, he invites me over that night for dinner. As it would turn out, he’s a chef. His name was my name too.

Before dinner, I fuck him.

May, 2013

The other two dancers no longer work here. Instead, the bar owner hires a new guy he hopes to rely on. I show him the ropes as Club Envy’s more senior entertainer. The tips are decent tonight. The owner’s boyfriend is here and drunk. A perk of being with the owner of a bar is free drinks. I realize that I’ve met his boyfriend before. He and Richard dated for a short while after we broke up.

My shift is over and I’m changing back into pedestrian clothing. From behind, a blow to my jaw staggers me. It takes a few seconds to regain balance. Turning around, the owner’s drunk boyfriend is shouting at me about how he read the bar owner’s messages and knows what we did. The drag queen is in shock, alternating glances between the two of us. The new dancer exits to get the bar owner. Upon entering, his boyfriend lunges at me. I put him in a choke hold with my left arm telling him to calm down. Instead, he sinks his teeth into my left shoulder. Something snaps inside of me. I grab him by the throat and throw his limp body against the wall. With blood dripping down my shoulder, I walk past the bar owner and tell him I won’t be working there anymore. I have a feeling this bite mark is going to scar.

A Friday, 2013

I’ve been dancing at a new bar for a few weeks now. This is one of the oldest gay bars in the Valley. It’s a huge space across the railroad tracks, next to a Dominos and the only lesbian bar in South Texas. A guy begins to approach me a few times only to turn away. Getting down from my box, I go to the table he sits at alone. He’s a handsome, tall Mexican man a few years older than myself who admits to being too shy to approach me. We can’t hear each other over the loud music, so we go to the outdoor patio to talk, just the two of us. As we talk, the bulge in his pants grows. Convincing him to pull his dick out, he jerks off for me. He doesn’t finish, but he leaves behind a mass of pre-cum.

May, 2013

My career as a gogo dancer comes to an end tonight. It’s been an eventful three months. No longer can I balance my college courses and gogo dancing. One of the other dancers takes me to Taco Palenque to tell me he has feelings for me. He wants me to know since he may never see me again. I don’t understand what it is about me he likes; we rarely

talk. I tell him as politely as I can that I don’t feel the same way.

A Friday, 2016

I’m twenty six. Sean and I go out to the strip in Dallas. To pre-game we smoke weed out of an apple core and take Adderall. He says he has a surprise for later tonight. Our night usually ends at Tin Room, a raunchy gay bar with male dancers. Tonight, there are no dancers working and the bar is all but empty. As it would turn out, Sean’s surprise is cocaine. He uses it often, but this is my first time. Going to the bathroom stall, he teaches me how to take it using the tip of his key. I say I don’t feel anything, but if I am acting anything like Sean, it has taken effect.

The bar fills with people and we’re now drunk. Tipping the DJ to play “Telephone” by Lady Gaga (Sean is a huge Gaga fan), we drunkenly wait for it to play. When it does, I remove my shirt and dance on one of the boxes. I dance like I haven’t in years. I make fifty dollars in tips and the owner offers a position to dance there as a regular. I decline. I’m too busy with graduate school.

May 27, 2017

Second night of naked yoga camp. I’ve made a few new connections so far. The loneliness or anxiety I was feeling about coming here is gone. In fact, I feel safe. Last night there was a circle jerk that evolved into an orgy. I was too afraid to participate.

Tonight feels different. Markus, an older man I quickly attach myself to, dances with me to Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend.” After, our small group goes to a sling in the woods. I take my turn and have a few of the guys fuck me in it. Several men watch. I feel neither fear nor shame. What’s happening feels right. Natural. The group finishes and we part ways. Everyone except Markus and me. I’ve quickly fallen in love with this man. He’s much older than me and lives in Montreal. It’s naive, but I’m allowing myself to feel it. We go to his tent and spend a few hours fucking. Afterwards, he tells me about his life and partner of several years. In Markus, I see a future that I want for myself. A future I have been searching for for a very long time. The following day is the last day of the camp. Hugging him, I cry and tell him goodbye.

June, 2017

I’m half way through my MFA program in dance. I’m studying various rituals of gay men in Dallas for inspiration. That’s why I’m at my first circuit party. Sitting in the back of the venue, I observe. The

event is sold out. Hundreds of men wear the same brands of underwear and harnesses, and wield large collapsible fans. Men of all ages are present, most of whom are shirtless. Bodies move to the beat of the music. The dancers’ arms are above their heads. Muscular biceps flex while other men touch each other’s bodies. Some men are on another plane of existence. I watch them closely. It’s sensual. Sexual. Not explicit sex, though, some fuck nearby. Everything is an exploration of sexuality. I am witnessing bliss. Freedom. A sensation I am not too familiar with. Joining them on the dance floor I remove my shirt and dance. My body is immediately met with other sweaty bodies dancing against mine. Dancing the only way I know how, I lift my arms, close my eyes and slowly undulate.

November 12, 2018

I’m twenty eight. I’m meeting Tim for the first time at Hound’s Tooth, a coffee shop in Dallas. He’s an artist too. His speech is articulate and deep. His beauty intoxicates me. Very quickly, we bond over our disinterest in traditional relationships. Neither of us place much value in monogamy and we both draw inspiration from gay men of the 80’s. Our short time together leaves me wanting more. We both want to see each other again.

November 22, 2018

I’m in Puerto Vallarta with Jason. Tim knows that I’m with him. I’ll be here for a week or so. I’ve met a few guys that Jason knows, though, I don’t feel as though I belong with them. We have nothing in common and I have nothing to say to them. Jason has feelings for me. Making it clear that I don’t share the same feelings is proving to be difficult.

Tonight is my first White Party. I wear a pair of small white trunks. They go well with the molly Jason brought. This is my first time taking molly and I’m hesitant. We take it as we walk to a guy’s room we met the other day. As it kicks in, I become very chatty and then horny but can’t seem to get hard. Our new friend invites us in and we end up on our knees blowing him.

October

I’m thirty one. It’s the Fall semester. Moving back to the Valley temporarily, I’m there to teach a semester of courses for an old professor of mine who is recovering from a surgical procedure. Every other weekend, I return to Dallas to visit Tim. How I miss the home we are creating together.

This weekend, the gayborhood is having its first Halloween block party post-pandemic. Saying Tim and I are dressing up is an overstatement. We barely went as the Frog brothers from The Lost Boys. We take molly which, unfortunately, kicks in while we are in line to enter the club. But the feeling is amazing. As we dance around hundreds of people, we notice others are rolling as well. We make out and touch each other’s bodies. When we aren’t kissing, I’m dancing. With my arms above my head, I close my eyes and let the music guide me. I touch my body all over and ignite my senses. I feel as though I’m transcending this plane. It’s beyond my comprehension. I don’t want sex, in the traditional sense. Instead, I feel that I am the living embodiment of sexuality. I am wholly myself and feel no shame about exploring it.

Photograph by Dick Mitchell.

Moments in the Gay Bar

by Gusty Haze

Gay bars have been many things to me over the years. They have been places of pure comfort— where human connection and camaraderie are the reason for being there.

There is also something to be said in meeting people for hook ups or dates in person, rather than on a screen (not that I hate the screen—it’s just different). Gay bars are places where I could and can be myself, without compromise. Expressing myself and my desires freely, without the outside world’s judgement. Sometimes gay bars are places of personal shame, where the judging (or perceived judging) is coming from other people at the club. Making me feel not good enough or handsome enough or muscular enough etc., etc. Gay bars can also be places of joy, where communities of people join together and truly connect. Occasionally, they can also be places of sadness, where the sometimes loneliness of being gay (queer, trans, etc.) is amplified. But there is one thing I know. I know that queer people are magic and that we have gifts to give those that aren’t. Our magic is wherever we are, but at one point, and even now gay bars were/are reservoirs where that magic could be held. Things are different now, as may gay bars and queer spaces have disappeared. I have many memories from going to them, and I’m sharing a few here. Most from the Boston area from the early 90s till about six years ago. These memories are just snippets—moments in time—capturing the beauty in all of it for me; the joy, the sadness, the loneliness, the erotic, the connection and community.

Ramrod -Boston

I walk to the back and start taking my shirt off— (backroom rules: no shirt or wear leather boots) and enter the red lit glow. Men kissing men in groups of two, four, six. Bodies fading into shadows, thumping techno. I am pulled into a group of three guys, and start kissing them, all lips and scruff. Hands (theirs and mine) wandering over hairy chests, nipples and stomachs, eventually finding home in each other’s pants. We’re all searching and grabbing, as if it’s the first time.

Standing at the end of the bar, one summer night. I see Fred Schneider from the B-52s standing by himself at the other end. They were performing the next night in town. He looks a little lonely and sad.

People ignoring him. To them he was just another old queen. Or maybe they were afraid, like I was, a bit starstruck, to go talk to him. And honestly that’s all he seemed to want. So he continues to stand there, looking out into the crowd, invisible. I never get up the courage to go over. And then after some time, he walks out, alone.

Arena—Boston

The glow from the giant fish tanks cast water reflections around the ceiling. I think that there are small sharks in there. Across the room is another tank, connected by still another across the ceiling. Some are terrariums, some aquariums. The wildlife at this briefly existing club, mirrors all the queers that are there. Some brilliant in their color, some aggressive, others more timid. The plants of the terrarium are green, vibrant and full of sexual energy. Watching the fish, I can’t help but think that the owners were correct to try to connect all of us back to nature. We are magic, beautiful, alive and shimmering with possibility.

Club Cafe—Boston

The room swirls with people in sequined gowns, leather shorty-shorts, capes, wigs, masks, wings and tails. The dance floor is packed with sexy sailors, sexy ghosts, sexy monsters and sexy Disney princesses. The DJ is hitting all the right songs and the vibe is alive. There isn’t a soul not in costume. I’m laughing and enjoying the spectacle. And then it happens—I accidentally step on a mermaid’s tail. He is dressed as sexy gay Ariel. The finned tail comes ripping off, the fabric tear is louder than the music. We both look down, and see it under my boot (I’m dressed as a sexy skeleton—body suit, black boots), laying there, dead and unmoving like a fish on ice. In slow motion our heads rise up and our eyes meet. I see pure fury. I obviously didn’t mean to do it, and I feel really badly. I’m apologizing best I can, but it isn’t helping. Is he going to punch me? Instead, he picks up the severed tail and moves onto his friends, and with one glance back, I know he isn’t seeing me but is seeing his worst enemy and foe. I have become a villain worse than Ursula. I have ruined Halloween.

Paradise—Cambridge

Hard heavy snow, winter in Cambridge, somehow Paradise is open. Few people are there. A dancer, blonde, spiky hair, and all muscles and smiles. Me giving him dollar after dollar into his gold g-string. He puts his hand on mine, pulling it into his crotch and under the fabric, and I feel his balls as I tip. Every time this happens he just laughs, like it’s the best thing ever, while the snow rages outside.

119 Merrimack—Boston

Opening the door, and a wall of smoke collapses onto me (my least favorite part of going to bars then), and I see that someone has decorated the entire place with real birch trees. Walking to the bar, weaving around the trees, through the smoke— which is turning the place into a mystical gay forest. As the night wore on, we dance, drunk between the trees, drunk with the magic, within the grove, within the walls, within the city.

Northstar—Northampton, MA

Northstar is a lesbian bar/restaurant in Western MA, it’s early 90s. I arrive to take my shift as security/door person at the club. The night begins with songs by Melissa Etheridge, Sophie B. Hawkins and Indigo Girls. It’s slow, and not many people are coming in. I ask the bartender to watch the door, and I go into the kitchen. I find the sous chef closing down for the night. Everyone else has left. He and I look at each other. I nod my head to the door to the dessert pantry through the restaurant. He says “two minutes”. We’re the only gay guys that work there. And two minutes later he and I are kissing, lips and tongues connecting—finding sweetness in each other, next to the Lemon Raspberry Clouds, and the Double Chocolate Mousse cake.

Napoleon’s/Josephine’s—Boston

Climbing the steps to the brownstone, tucked away amongst other brownstones in a residential neighborhood, I hear the song "Everything’s Coming Up Roses" being sung round the piano. Napoleon’s, Boston’s piano bar was around forever (Judy Garland supposedly frequented the place whenever she was in town). Upstairs is Josephine’s a true disco that hasn’t changed since the 70s. The old fashioned lights shining between smoky glass mirrored walls. The same cast of characters are there night after night, and tonight is no exception. They too seemed lost to time. We had given them all nicknames: Gold Chain (open shirt, hairy chest, giant gold chain),

Heart Shape (jeans so tight, his ass made the shape of a heart), Office Lady (she steps in right from work in her beige two-piece and sneakers—always.). And although we were miles from the Cape, every night ends with the song Old Cape Cod, by Patti Page. And so tonight, with the music loud and the regulars ready, we all swooned and danced in pairs, in trios and sang out loud—“If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air…” a refrain that probably is still heard in the condo that the bar has become, on late nights, when the rest of the world is quiet.

Le Stock—Montreal

I fell in love with a stripper in Montreal. Really. I walk into the club, get a beer and find my way to the front tables. After the first few dancers he comes onstage. He is not too tall, not too short. Hair hanging in front of his face a bit, kind of emo, kind of punk. He starts dancing on the pole and starts flipping and spiraling, dancing and balancing—holding himself on the pole horizontal to the ground. Soon the rock band shirt comes off, then the shorts then the speedo. His chest dusted with hair, armpits full and uncut cock hard above his balls. As I go to tip him, I lean in and instead of seeing his body I am trapped by his eyes, which are so blue they’re almost translucent. Eyes that you could see the hope of tomorrow in (corny, but true). He asked me back for a private dance, hypnotized I say of course. While in the booth together, him naked and me falling down the abyss, I learned that he was the singer in a death metal band, had just broken up with his boyfriend and had two cats. He told me he was vegetarian (was definitely love by now ). At some point he starts to kiss me, I’m shocked because I didn’t think it was allowed. He told me it wasn’t but sometimes you have to make exceptions. After a minute of making out, I offer to tip him more. He says “Nah, it’s all on me”. After that, I soon had to leave, and never saw him again. But, however you define it, however transient, however fleeting—for a few brief moments one night in Montreal; I was in love.

A House—Provincetown

The buoy rings out, haunted across the town. February in P-Town. Streets are empty, cold. Storefronts black and uninviting. I find myself in the A-house, the Little Bar. There are five people total including me and the bartender. No one really talking, no music on at the moment. Mood is definitely the opposite of summer. There’s a tiny bit of sadness around the place. One of the guys gets

up and goes the jukebox across the room. After putting in his quarters and making his way back to his seat, the music starts loud and vibrant with a strong disco beat. Within seconds Grace Jones starts belting out Annie’s theme—“The sun will come out—tomorrow, tomorrow—bet your bottom dollar there’ll be sun…” For her part, Grace takes full command and ownership of this classic; and just for a few moments we’re all back to brighter days. Lightness, warmth, sun and grace all fill the room. The five of us smile. And then the song ends, people go back to staring at their drinks. We can hear the buoy clang, out in the harbor.

47 Central—Lynn, MA

“It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie” I hear as I lean against the bar at 47 Central, Lynn’s long standing gay bar for many, many years. The cliental is 90% Lynn locals. And each of them a bit odder than the next. But in a good way. The man telling me it’s only a movie has said the same thing to me, every time I’m there. He is always at the same seat, watching. Observing. There’s lube wrestling that night, and as one skinny and one bearish guy—both young—get into the inflatable pool filled with lube the crowd cheers. The song "Absolutely Not" by Deborah Cox starts playing (side note: this song happened to be the unofficial “anthem” of 47 Central and some nights they would even play it twice. The lube wresting has begun. The skinny guy seems to be winning. Asses and cocks showing wet through their tighty whities. The skinny guy gets the bearish guy pinned down. As slippery as it is, he’s holding him. He holds for the ten count. Both guys get up, arms up, both happy with the fight, regardless of the winner. And I hear a slow whisper directly in my ear, ”It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie.”

Eagle—Boston

If you lived in Boston in the 90s-00s (or 80s or 70s) you probably spent some weekend night arriving at the Eagle somewhere between midnight and 1:30 AM just as things were getting hopping. You might have arrived from another club or made your way there first, pre-sidewalk sale (the “sale” being—post last call, but the sidewalk is filled with last minute searches for hookups). And when you arrived you most likely would have been served by Jack, the sharp-witted owner, bar tender, and overseer of all things Eagle. He had been running the place for a hundred years, give or take. Jack could be many things, and often all at once. He could be a friendly face and ear to tell stories to; a bitchy queen

cutting down anyone who slighted him somehow (a misplaced beer bottle could set him off ); a good listener; an angry bouncer; a kind aunt; a vicious villain. One night, probably about ten years ago, I arrived late, and to a mostly empty bar. Maybe because it was summer and people were away; or maybe because the Eagle just didn’t make it onto anyone’s agenda that evening. Jack sees me come in and slightly smiles (at least I knew who I was getting for the moment). He got me a Rolling Rock (which he still remembered was what I drank there all through the 90s.) No chit-chat tonight. And then I look at him and saw something was a bit off. I asked how he was and he said to the few of us sitting at the bar “Mamma’s tired boys, mamma’s real tired.” Recently, while in Boston I was on Tremont street and I saw that the Eagle was gone and something else was in it’s place. And since, I’ve learned that Jack has passed away…

Saving this memory for last. Summer '96. The memory and reality are tangled with complexities, side routes and characters also involved at the time. Leaving them out for the sake of the story is best, because the essence, after everything else is removed, is the key to this memory. I am in the bathroom at the Eagle and if you had ever been there, I’m sure you can instantly recall what that means. Closet sized, side by side urinals, sticky floors, and a tiny bar covered window—open—allowing the slightest trickle of non-helpful air into the permapiss-stenched room. I had just finished washing my hands. I turn and head out the door, and as I leave, someone is coming in. We both freeze. We don’t move. We just stare. I’ve turned into a statue and all I see is neon green lightning. Slowly my body starts up again and I say “excuse me” and start to move by, but not taking my eyes off his. He doesn’t look away either. Finally, we move on, time starts up again. Jump ahead an hour and we’re talking and sharing mutual connections. Jump ahead five hours and we’re in bed together. Jump ahead eight months later and we’re living together. Jump ahead twenty six years and I’m still crazy in love with the person who stopped time for me, one late summer night, in the door to the bathroom at the Boston Eagle.

Manhattan Scene—1970s

by John Orlando aka UpbeatJohn

Fifty-five years ago, during my junior and senior year of college, many an evening I lied to my parents that I was off to the library to study, but instead I did my homework while on the bus from New Jersey to New York City to see my boyfriend. I came out when I was nineteen years old, back when the drinking age in New York was eighteen.

The first gay bar I ever visited was The Stonewall. I remember, after passing the sleaze ball bouncer at the door, there were two rooms, one just a bar, while another had a good-sized dance floor. I laugh now about being younger than the go-go boys. We had heard about the riots, so my friends and I made our way down to Sheridan Square and gawked behind the police barricades that were up for a couple of

days. Mind blowing, it was happening all at once— Judy Garland had just died and we were sending a man to the moon. Tremendous changes were clearly in the wind.

I remember the underground Snake Pit in Greenwich Village. It was an after hours bar, which meant it was illegal for that reason and also because of the gay, eclectic clientele. It was quite small, and in a basement of an apartment building on West 10th Street. We walked down a flight of stairs and knocked on the door. Someone opened a little hatch window in the door and eyed us suspiciously. Then we said that we knew Schatzi. Moments later, a mysterious man named Schatzi sized us up and down through the window, and let us in. I think they call

"The Stonewall Inn," photograph by Robert Giard (copyright Estate of Robert Giard).

that a speakeasy. The club had a sunken bar in the middle of the room, and had an eclectic clientele and late night mystique. Word spread around after it was raided in 1970 and numerous patrons were arrested. One patron while trying to escape from the police station was impaled on a fence after jumping from a third story window, resulting in protests by the newly formed Gay Activist Alliance. Gay news spread mostly by word of mouth.

I ventured to Fire Island for the first time around 1970. I was with my boyfriend in the Ice Palace having a drink and dancing. There was a juke box back then, no DJ’s yet. A slow song came on, so my boyfriend and I started to slow, touch dance together. Politely, but discomforting, someone from the staff separated us. Two men were not allowed to slow dance yet on Fire Island. That all changed quickly after Stonewall and the work of the gay activist movement. In my youth, I did my best to become part of the new liberation. I burned a lot of youthful energy bumping and grinding at tea dances at the Ice Palace. The hotel it was part of actually had drag queens (Billy and Tiffany) serving tea and little finger foods. The times were changing quickly. Disco music came to the Ice Palace with the introduction of Barry White’s “Love Song”, truly one of the first and best disco ballroom songs. Back then, most disco songs had real drummers, but with the thumping, mechanical beat, and a symphony of violins in the background.

Another fun place was The Gold Bug on West 4th in Greenwich Village. The bar was downstairs, in the basement. The building was a historic landmark. Edgar Alan Poe had lived in the building, and The Gold Bug was the name of one of his short stories. Slow and fast songs on the jukebox lubricated the dance floor making meeting hot guys easy.

Being twenty two years old might have helped.

In the early 70’s, the GAA, or Gay Activist Alliance, rented an outrageous firehouse in Soho near my apartment. Friends stopped by my place and smoked a doobie before heading over to The Firehouse. We paid a few dollars donation to get in, and all the beer was free. It seemed that half the beer covered the floor with spills and sloshing. There was a DJ, but the music wasn’t disco yet, but Rolling Stones and soulful songs. Disco music was still not as prevalent. The authentic firehouse had a real fire pole with a spiral staircase around the pole. Up and down the stairs everyone paraded all night, glancing down at the people dancing. On the top floor was a room with couches and places to sit. Rather cozy for a firehouse beer bust, and the breeding grounds of the gay rights movement.

DJ’s were becoming a thing, I don’t know where the first DJ spun his discs. The first DJ I remember was in 1970 at the DOK, a famous gay club in Amsterdam. “The Sanctuary”, a church converted to a gay bar in NYC also had a DJ. It felt decadent and sacrilegious dancing in a church, but of course, that was half the fun.

I like to reminisce about The Limelight on 7th Avenue in the Village, which was one of the first gay, dance palaces. My boyfriend and I went every hump day and Saturday night. The club could have held me captive in NYC forever, but it didn’t.

In 1974, I joined the gay migration to San Francisco, where I often reminisce about the Harvey Milk era along with The San Francisco Gay Marching band in which I played percussion. I still long for the incredible I-Beam where I truly left my heart along with quite a few handsome, twinkling dance partners. Another story of another era.

"Boys in Green," by Gordon Binder.

South Broome

It is Monday, ten pm; I sit on a black wooden stool in a Lesbian bar far away from the nuances and predictabilities of the heterosexual world. I am thinking about us— when times were happier.

Our passions are now quashed but I continue to think. My thoughts keep flashing like a constant pressure upon a shutter; a long-playing record stuck in a groove.

They keep skipping and droning—do you remember when?

I wash down these images with cola. Some taste sugary, some are bubbly and some sting the delicate lining of my throat. Love is oft like that, sweet when it is found, sour as when it has gone bad; bitter as when it is lost— my visions of you dissipate.

The Indigo Girls blare from a jukebox. They are singing, “There is life down below me.” I think about the verse as pool sticks and stools are pushed aside.

Couples are hurrying to the already crowded dance floor.

A Stone Butch in a green and white striped shirt saunters towards me gently stretching her hand in my direction she is the reminder of why I am so proud to be the Dyke that I am!

She is proof love exists—

Love—when it finds me, will take me home. It is Monday, ten pm, I sit on a black wooden stool.

—Rita 'Rusty' Rose

Make It Public, the More Public the Better

An introduction to the queer bar Bei Cosy in Munich

by Philipp Gufler

The lesbian artist Cosy Pièro (*1937) opened the bar Bei Cosy in Munich in West Germany in 1962, which attracted an unprecedentedly tolerant mix of artists, straight, gay, lesbian, transgender and queer people. After various years living and working as an artist abroad, Cosy Pièro moved back to Germany and founded the legendary queer bar to make a living as a single mother. She never wanted to open an exclusively lesbian bar, but a place “where all existences mixed, felt comfortable with each other, got to know each other and tolerated each other. That was something new to begin with.”1 Every two months she organized a big party where everyone would dressed up to a specific theme. She also invited drag queens and drag kings to perform in Munich’s first drag shows at Bei Cosy. To ensure that the bar would be crowded on Sunday evenings, Cosy composed the chanson songs "Babettchen, Haben Sie das auch?" and "Raunz nicht," which she performed together with Meike Illig on piano.2 Bei Cosy was frequently visited by Klaus Lemke, Uschi Obermaier, Hildegard Knef, Glorida von Thurn und Taxis and by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his crew.

Bars that are run and designed by artists and function as social meeting places are not uncommon in the history of art. Cosy also worked as an artist during her bar career: “I was a bar owner and an artist at the same time. For me, they always belonged together.”3 At Bei Cosy and other queer bars, she exhibited her infamous series of drawings which showed, for example, cats with women’s heads and huge breasts performing various acts with each other. In her erotic drawings one sees even stronger Surrealist influences than in her later work. In particular, the

sensual, often homoerotic depictions of women in this phase, freed from sexual constraints, seem surprising at a time when the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s portrayed female sexuality

in a less open or mostly lacklustre way.

According to the author and historian Hans Joachim Schoeps, the Third Reich was not yet over for queer people at the beginning of the 1960s, as Paragraph 175 continued to be applied in West Germany in the form written by the Nazis. The queer scene remained socially invisible and relegated to the private sphere. Despite

the danger of persecution, a second German LGBTIQ+ movement emerged and the first bars gradually appeared next to Bei Cosy. The most famous and elegant gay bar at the time was the Sansibar. After the defusing of Paragraph 175 in 1969, Bei Cosy continued to exist as a queer scene bar. Even though Paragraph 175 only criminalised same-sex love between men in Germany, lesbian love was also suppressed and made invisible by patriarchal social structures. Therefore it is not surprising that Cosy Piero had problems when first

the police.

At the beginning of the 1980s, after twenty years of running the bar, Cosy handed it over to her partner at the time and again concentrated exclusively on her art.4 Her work from this period makes it clear that she had a lot of catching up to do as an artist. Today especially a young generation of queer artists can identify with her courage and her maxim: “Make it public, the more public the better.” Together with artist Public Universal Frxnd (formally known as Richard John Jones) I decided to reopen Bei Cosy in 2015 at the art space FLORIDA Lothringer13 in Munich and in 2017 at Rongwrong in Amsterdam as temporary queer bars. These new Bei Cosy’s were intended to critically address the role social spaces play in our social, sexual, artistic and political lives – creating a new context for particular histories and archival material to emerge amongst new works and an intergenerational community of artists. The invited artists to the exhibition were asked to respond to the lost works of Cosy as a gesture of solidarity, while reinventing and reinterpreting these works from their own perspective.

1 Bei Cosy, by Cosy Pièro, announcement text of the temporary bar at Rongwrong in Amsterdam, 2017.

2 Live recordings of Cosy Pièro songs can be found on the Vimeo page of the Forum Queeres Archiv München: https://vimeo.com/showcase/8212529

3 “Cosy Pièro erhält den Kunstpreis der Stadt für ihr Engagement ‒ So

getting a licence for Bei Cosy after rumours about the opening of a lesbian bar were passed on to the authorities. In 1963 her erotic drawing at the bar were confiscated and Cosy had to pay a fine. After various searches in police archives in Munich I could not locate the drawings. Unfortunately I was denied access to many files due to a mould infestation. Most likely the drawings were destroyed by

prägte sie München in den 60ern und 70ern” (Engl.: Cosy Pièro receives the city’s art award for her commitment—this is how she shaped Munich in the 60s and 70s), by Daniela Borsutzky, Hallo München, Sept. 21, 2022.

4 For more information about her art works during and after the bar see also: Cosy bei Cosy, by Jan Erbelding, Phillipp Gufler, Leo Heinik and Maria VMier, Munich: Ruine München and Hammann von Mier, 2023.

Image credits (in order of appearance, from p. 40):

1) The first drag shows in Munich took place at Bei Cosy, 1962-1982, Photo: Cosy Pièro, Scan: Colin Djukic for FLORIDA Lothringer 13, courtesy: archive Cosy Pièro

2) Cosy Pièro performing her self-written chanson songs at Bei Cosy, 1962-1982, Photo: N.N., Scan: Colin Djukic for FLORIDA Lothringer 13, courtesy: archive Cosy Pièro

3) Cosy Pièro with guests at Bei Cosy, 1962-1982, Photo: N.N., Scan: Colin Djukic for FLORIDA Lothringer 13, courtesy: archive Cosy Pièro

4) Cosy Pièro, untitled, 1976, drawing on paper, 38 × 30 cm, private collection Ulla Jarusch, courtesy: Cosy Pièro

5) Cosy Pièro, untitled, 1977, drawing on paper, 40 × 30 cm, private collection Ulla Jarusch, courtesy: Cosy Pièro

6) Installation view Bei Cosy at Rongwrong Amsterdam,

2017, with (from left to right) Publik Universal Frxnd: All Closing And Dyke Bar And Everything and not and Death to the Ahistoric Vacuum, 2015, video installation; Philipp Gufler: Menu Bei Cosy 1963, 2017, silkscreen print on leather, zipper, 50 x 40 cm; Cosy Pièro: Vielleicht Haben Wir Solch Grosse Sehnsucht Ja Verdient?! (English: Maybe We Have Deserved Such Great Longing ?!), 2009-17, chalk on board, 50 x 330 cm. Photo: Inga Danysz, courtesy: Rongwrong, Amsterdam

7) Philipp Gufler, Menu Bei Cosy 1963, 2017, silkscreen print on leather, 50 x 40 cm. Photo: Inga Danysz, courtesy: Philipp Gufler and BQ, Berlin

8) Philipp Gufler, Quilt #09 (Bei Cosy), 2015, silkscreen print on fabric, 90 x 180 cm. Photo: Roman März, courtesy: Philipp Gufler and BQ, Berlin

That Night at The Capri

by Wes Hartley

Istill remember every detail of that San Francisco night at The Capri on Grant Street. It was December 30th, 1970, the night before New Year’s Eve, and the revolutionary vibe in North Beach was tangible. On the first day of the month I had witnessed (and taken part in) the anti-war protest and riot in front of the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. No-nonsense militants in the Haight-Ashbury commune where I’d been a transient visitor since August had led the charge against the presence of the Vietnamese puppet Nguyen Cao Ky (now safely dead and forgotten) who had come cap-in-hand to suckhole the Puppet Masters for more handouts. Thirty days later, the lingering energy of that righteous resistance was still in the air. (In the air I was breathing anyway.) On that memorable night at The Capri there was talk of little else, but not yet any mention of how repressed we all still were, how angry we all were, or how despised we were by the pig minions of the local socalled law-and-order industry and the local gentry. As an after-hours club or bar (or whatever it was) The Capri was a tiny venue. It was all dance floor. The handful of tables were pushed against two walls, the lights were theatrical amber and pink and dialed down low, the dance music was cranked to the max, the dance floor was packed with giddy sweaty boys, and there was a line-up on the sidewalk outside. When two guys would leave, the muscle-bound bouncer at the door would let two guys in.

I found out much later that the proprietor’s name was Arlene. In order to keep on keeping on she paid off the dirty cops, like the owners of The Stonewall Inn in New York had been forced to do up until the Stonewall riots in the summer of Sixty-Nine. Arlene had no cabaret license, and the evil Mafioso Mayor Alioto (now safely dead and forgotten) and his bureaucratic and police state enforcers intended to keep it that way.

Ihadintroduced myself to the extra-humpy hottie who shared our crowded table, Steve from New Jersey, twenty-one, barely legal, and definitely my type of sporty archangel. We were to hook up that night, and when I jetted back to my Canadian refuge in Vancouver, BC, where I’d spent the summer and fall of 1969, infatuated Steve would follow in the late spring. After several years of adventuring in the hippy BC wilds, Steve returned to the US East Coast,

leaving at least one genetic replica (a daughter) in his busy wake. But, that’s another hippy communal saga best narrated by the guilty parties.

On that fated late December night in 1970 our queer New Year reverie was interrupted and derailed by the unwelcome incursion of a trio of uniform rookie pigs (twenty-something police officers or cops to you) eager to throw their monkey wrench into our year end celebration, which is what they proceeded to do.

The bright lights went on, the music was shut down, and the dancing boys were roughly separated. To these macho boys in blue we were criminal suspects in an unlicensed venue, likely guilty of countless offenses, city, state, and federal. In those dark days, anything queer was illegal, except quiche. We were all suddenly suspects and likely chronic reoffending recidivists. As difficult as it might be for a with-it modern queer person of whatever gender to imagine, our collective reputed queerness was still repressed and closeted. Any desire to protest or resist would be met with billy clubs and jail time and we all knew it. An eerie hush descended on the celebrants. A silencing muzzle had been put on The Capri.

A certain now highly-politicized pig-hating Haight-Ashbury commune queer radical (Yours Truly) decided to take the initiative. I was still seated with New Jersey Steve and his cohort at our cozy table. I proceeded to duck my head and torso under our table out of sight, and shout in my most hopefully threatening and masculine-aggressive voice, “Fucken Pigs, Get Out Now!”

Thismilitant affront to our rookie captor’s game plan got an immediate “Who Said That?” response, and three rookie pig trigger fingers suddenly got itchy. One of the gnarly little boys in blue persecutors raised his voice above the hubbub my action had occasioned, ordering everybody out onto the wet December sidewalk where one-byone we were pushed up against the brick wall and roughly frisked, after which having passed the piggy muster, Steve and I and I suppose his roommates were bundled into a van and taken uptown to someone’s recording studio where he and I spent the night snuggling (and other stuff) on a pallet. My politic reaction that night had been just a passing

phase occasioned by my intimate connection with the communal Haight-Ashbury “revolutionaries,” a spur-of-the-moment response to the ongoing hate and oppression. Politically speaking, I’d always thought of myself as a mugwump, an Iroquois term from colonial days meaning a political independent man, and denoting “a Great Chief.”

On that fateful night Steve decided (and who was I to say him nay) that I was a romantically dangerous radical-type who would brook no politic or police anything. In that he wasn’t wrong. He and I became an item for a short while here in Maple Leaf Land. And the rest is my own colorful queer history.

"PARTY," by Victorien Biet, Model @oscamadeus

The Mod Scene

By Ed, Of All People

Imet my second boyfriend Alan in St. Vincent’s hospital in 1973. He’d broken his ankle in a bar room brawl in a club he was about to open called The Mod Scene, which was on New York City’s historic Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. I’d gone to the hospital to visit Ed, my first ex-boyfriend, who, while working for Con Ed, had stepped into an open manhole and broken his leg in three places. They shared a room on the ortho wing at the hospital and Ed’s fiancée, a young woman named Roberta, called and asked me to go visit him. He and I had ended badly and hadn’t been in contact for two years, but I told her I’d go, and was glad I did as he was happily surprised to see me. He was still so handsome and charming and even though he’d given up on manholes (and only fell through them now) we had a pretty nice visit, except for the constant interruption of a loud booming voice from the other side of the room.

There was a curtain pulled around the bed next to Ed’s and I could hear a doctor trying to talk to the patient, but he couldn’t finish a sentence without being interrupted. The physician finally pulled the curtain back, leaving the room in a huff, and there was Alan, propped up on his pillows, his leg in traction, gesturing angrily with a cigarette and yelling.

“You come back here . . . immediately!”

Ed rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Drama queen,” he silently mouthed and I could have heeded that warning I guess, but didn’t. One glance at Alan, who looked like Omar Sharif, the stunning Egyptian actor from “Lawrence of Arabia,” and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He dialed a number on his bedside phone, and started ordering supplies for the bar he was trying to open, his cigarette dangling from his lip, his left hand gesturing wildly, his strong confident voice filling the room. I

was hypnotized and only stopped staring when Ed reached out and touched my hand.

“Hey,” he smiled, with a flash of that old twinkle in his eye.

“No way,” I thought, and turned back to stare at Alan, knowing what I wanted to happen next.

And it did.

It’s another story for another time, how I followed Alan home from the hospital and became his boyfriend, working with him and his crew to open The Mod Scene in time for Valentine’s Day, which we did, with smashing success. I actually didn’t like going to bars as I was always the tallest person in them, towering over everyone with my terribly crooked buck teeth, cigarette smoke burning my eyes, the music and shouting so loud I could barely hear anyone. I also didn’t drink alcohol very often. My first two attempts at getting drunk had ended in blackouts, where I was told afterwards about everything I’d said and done while stumbling around, none of which I remembered, and I realized then it was better for me to not pursue that specific kind of substance use.

But working in a bar was different. There I had a role and a purpose, sometimes bar back, sometimes waiter, sometimes doorman, though Alan, who changed his name to Alex to irritate his father, was most often both doorman and bouncer, sitting in the entrance on a bar stool because his busted ankle never healed properly. He was a fierce gay man, long before the word fierce had become an overused cliché to describe strong-willed homosexuals. He had a sharp wit and spoke with confidence to all the customers the same way, with a wry sense of humor, and an overall “don’t fuck with me” attitude. And whether they were the queens off Christopher Street, the leather crowd from Hudson Street, or the Bridge and Tunnels (called B&Ts) from Jersey, they all enjoyed his biggerthan-life persona.

The Mod Scene had a small stage and dance floor, and hosted local bands who did impressive covers of “Alligator Rock,” “Me and Mrs. Jones,” and “Joy to the World,” and joyous it could be inside, all the gays and straights and punks in leather drinking together while grooving to the music and checking each other out, either standing at the bar or sitting at one of the small tables in the dark smoky areas on either side of the dance floor.

I’d been to most of the bars in the West Village already with my college friends. We’d go out to Peter Rabbit’s, Julius, the Mine Shaft, Boots and Saddles, One Potato, The Roundhouse, the

Cockring, Keller’s, the Underground, the Toilet, the Anvil and The International Stud. I had a major crush on Danny, the bartender at the International, but I only drank the occasional Dewar’s and soda, so didn’t interact with him very often. When he was in the right mood, he’d ask one of his customers to put a quarter in the juke and he’d lyp-synch Shirley Bassey’s “What Did I Have?”

“What did he like, that I’m not like? What was the charm, that I’ve run dry of? What would I give if my old know how Still knew how?”

He was like the other talented bartenders of that time; part emcee, part performer, part ringmaster, so handsome and charismatic, aware that we were all watching, none of us believing he could ever really run dry of anything. No, not Danny. The bartenders were a big part of the scene and one of the reasons to go out because if you didn’t connect with anyone else, you could smile at him and if you were lucky he’d smile back as he took your money and smile again if you left your change on the bar.

Alan had worked for years as the coat check at the infamous Gold Bug Club, which was mafia owned and the ‘in’ spot during the early preStonewall years. He told me he was just a kid then, and would draw a beauty mark to the right of his mouth when he went to work and pull a black beret over his flawless head of hair to look younger and gayer. He made a fortune in tips there and got to know everyone who was anyone, connections that came in handy when it was time to open his own club. The mafiosos he met at the Gold Bug kept coming around when he was struggling to keep the Mod Scene afloat, always reminding him to come to them first if he needed money, something he didn’t want to do but ultimately did, with dangerous consequences. But that’s another story too.

Alan was fond of quoting Auntie Mame with great flair: “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death,” and he wanted The Mod Scene to be welcoming to everyone. He booked the famous Cameroonian jazz artist Manu Dibango, who was travelling across the United States with his smash hit, “Soul Makossa,” which had brought him global popularity. Manu’s was the biggest act Alan ever brought to The Mod Scene and a long line ran all the way around the corner onto Thompson Street towards Washington Square. Most of the customers came down

from Harlem and Alan had gone over to the East Village to buy the biggest Afro wig he could find the day before. The night of the show he boldly wore it as he sat in the doorway collecting the five buck cover charge. The vibe was jazzy and soulful, with several hundred people crammed into the bar, pressed up against the stage, swaying rhythmically with the African music, dancing sexily in the shadows.

When he realized that lesbians weren’t coming to The Mod Scene, Alan dug out his old beret, draw that beauty mark just to the right of his mouth, and took me to Bonnie and Clyde, and exclusively all woman’s bar just behind NYU on West Third. Even I knew that men weren’t welcome there, but he said to just follow him. A handsome dyke stood up quickly as we entered the dark interior and Alan called out, “Darling!” and hugged her with great panache. She smiled and told us to come on in and they drank and reminisced about the old Gold Bug days while I looked back at the women sitting at numerous small tables, tinted glass lamps on each one, looking like a speakeasy from the 40s, which many of the gay bars had been at one time.

My old college crowd had told me how fabulous Le Jardin, the new gay discotheque in midtown was, and I told Alan we needed to go. He grumbled all the way, saying he never went above 14th Street, but I assured him he’d have a good time. He didn’t, and wasn’t impressed by any of it. There were two separate dance floors, one in the basement and one in the penthouse, both incredibly lit so you could both see and be seen. The elevators that brought you up and then back down again were glamourous parties all unto themselves. The waiters wore roller skates and the bartenders, like the rest of the staff, were all dressed in basketball uniforms. There were bowls of fruit and cheese on the tables, which Alan thought was pretentious, and the drinks were complicated and expensive. He hated it all and just wanted to get back below

14th Street, where the beers were fifty cents and the bars were dark and smoky.

But I could see the power that the disco dance floor held, where everyone could come together: The Village crowd, the leather men from Hudson

Street, the B&Ts from Jersey, the Uptown Harlem set, the downtown dykes, the sweater queens, the upper eastside socialites, the misfits, the rebels, the outsiders, the famous and the unknown, all dancing together in ever widening spirals, drawing everyone in, eventually even Alan, with his cane and bad ankle, dancing and spinning and twirling to “Love Train” by the O’Jays.

People all over the world

Join hands

Start a love train, love train

People all over the world

Join hands

Start a love train, love train

And yes, of course, it all changed, like everything changes, for Alan and I and all the others, but that is yet another story for another time.

The Fanciful Clock

Driven from the serenity of his black forest home to a murky perch in a Gotham jungle inn his two-note trill resonates in the charged neon air as wings, underbelly and beak compliment humdrum jukebox tunes

Only one patron is attentive to his eccentric bellow she is the most elegant of all club queens

Allyson a flaxen beauty is demurely attired in peach swing dress long matching evening gloves nylons and kitty heels

on a barstool throne her honey-glossed lips wrap around a Tom Collins

She sips and hums a refrain of Where the Boys Are along with the tireless melody of her cuckoo friend as eligible young men flock and beg favor

Imperial Queen of loveliness with a flick of her wrist she dismisses advances alone she sits waiting for the hourly chime from within the woodland chalet

Her feathery friend will soon emerge together they will exchange pleasantries break into song

It is midnight the clock strikes hand-carved doors open the curious bird is attired in a Krypton dyed psychedelic tuxedo his sweet croon reunites him with his favorite lady

Feather and finger; they flutter out of the dank Stonewall coop over the Manhattan skyline soaring steadily into the future holding secrets within each everlasting memory

—Rita 'Rusty' Rose

What’s the Name of That Bar?

by Eddie Walker

Iwasriding with Uncle Eric in his car leaving downtown Canton at the edge of downtown. I watched a thirty-something white guy walk into an unassuming business. No signage or windows.

“What’s that building on the corner?”, I asked. Without looking at me, he said, “Weirdos go there.”

I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I knew what he meant. Gay men.

That happened when I was in the eighth grade in the mid-1980s. I knew I was gay but had not come out yet. Every time we drove by this place after that, I looked for gay men. I was fascinated by the place. It would be six years before I entered that bar. It was called the 540 Club because the address was 540 Cherry Avenue. It wasn’t my first gay bar.

I went to my first gay bar at age twenty with a fake ID. I was a freshman at Akron University. That first bar wasn’t in Canton or Akron. I had too many family members who lived in these cities. I was afraid one of them would see me going into one of these gay places. My secret would be out.

Luckily, my dorm roommate at Akron turned out to be gay. I found out after a night of drinking. We ended up sucking each other’s dicks. Randy was his name.

“Do you know of any gay bars that aren’t in the Akron or Canton?”

Randy was also twenty. He had never gone to a gay bar either, but he knew of one in Youngstown where he was from.

That bar was, The Exchange. I went by myself, driving 76 West, forty five minutes from Akron, just to go to a gay bar without fear of being seen by someone who knew me. The Exchange was right off the highway in the semi-industrial area.

The first time I went there was a weekday. The place was mostly empty. There was one other guy and the bartender. I ended up going home with that one guy. We had a brief fling.

I continued to go to The Exchange for a couple of years until I finally had the courage to go out in town; mostly because I got tired of commuting to get laid. I started at the 540 Club in Canton. There was a very small community at the 540 Club and very white. Gay men and lesbians but no other black people. I was usually the only black person, except for a black lesbian who was with a white girl.

Although I embraced being gay, I always felt gay was not part of black culture. That was the reason, to me, why there were so few of us in the gay bars. That was fine with me. I grew up in a black community where there were usually no more than five whites in a class at school. To me, white people were exotic, and I was attracted to them.

I eventually outgrew the 540 Club and started to go to the Interbelt in Akron. It was a nice dance club that had drag shows and bigger crowds. I picked up many guys there.

As I got comfortable being gay, I started going to different gay bars in different cities. I remember going to U4IA in Cleveland. That was my first multilevel gay club. I imagine U4IA was what the disco clubs were like back in the day. The club was packed every weekend.

Cleveland is also where I went to my first black gay bar, Dominoes. It was a small hole-in-the-wall bar, but everyone was black. It was pleasantly shocking to know there were more gay people of color in the world.

I found there were even more of us than I could have ever imagined when I went to my first Black Gay Pride event in D.C. It blew my mind that the black men were so beautiful. They were muscled, well-dressed, masculine, macho city men, not country boys.

There were a lot of gay bars in D.C. The Eagle, of course, which seems to be in most major cities. Another, “Casa De Scandalous” was a Hispanic bar where I remember one night, me and my friends, Eric and Chris, all found tricks to go home with. My guy was French and drove an open-air Jeep.

Same sort of thing in San Francisco, Dallas, Toronto.

When I graduated from college in 1998, I had to decide where I was going to move. I was not staying in Ohio. During spring-breaks, I visited San Francisco, Dallas, and Toronto. I realized there is so much more than Ohio for gay men. In the end I decided to move to Seattle. The Damron, a paperback national gay bar directory, showed me there were quite a few gay bars in Seattle. I hit them all.

There was R-Place, a three-floor bar. And Neighbors, a young person dance club. There was CCs, The Timberline, and the Cuff.

Most of my life-time relationships started in

Seattle gay bars. It wasn’t until I was forty when I stopped going to the bars as much. I had moved to the suburbs in West Seattle. I had a live-in pseudoboyfriend, and I was starting to get bored with the bar scene.

I remember some friends telling me they stopped going to bars when they got older because they felt invisible, which is understandable. Although, I never felt that way; I can pick up a guy at any age. However, the only people you found at the bar were drunk and loud. I was too old for that scene.

With the evolution of the dating and hook-up websites and apps, you no longer need to go to the bars to meet gay people. I’ve watched as the gay bars slowly started to close, one after the other. I watched as the crowds in the bars dwindled.

The COVID pandemic also had major effects on the gay community and the bar scene. Unlike the AIDS epidemic that took so many of our lives, the COVID pandemic took our bars, our communities, and our lives as we once knew them. Luckily, there

are still some bars left.

I still like to go out to some favorite bars and dance once and a while now, despite the risks. In 2016, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando was shot up by a religious fanatic. In 2022, The Q night club in Colorado Springs was shot up by a troubled white boy, who I think needed a target to hate more than he hated himself. He was radicalized by far-right wing media. Also, in 2022 a gay bar in my neighborhood in West Seattle, The Lumberyard, was destroyed by an arsonist.

Despite these attacks, I refuse to let it scare me into not going. Those running the bars are putting themselves at risk simply by existing. They provide gays a place to gather and be in community. The least we can do is support them.

But I will also never sit with my back to the door in these places, and I always know where the exists are.

That is sad.

"Julius' Bar, NYC, Man in the Doorway," photograph by Robert Giard (copyright Estate of Robert Giard).

Bathhouse Quilts: Confessions of a Towel Hag

by Philip Hare

It started in a cage. That’s what we called it, “the cage,” the hub of my workplace, The Barracks, a very old-school denim and leather bathhouse that stood at 56 Widmer Street in Toronto until 2005. I was fortunate to work there in the late 1990’s—fortunate, like it’s fortunate we have chemotherapy. Like chemotherapy, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

The repetitiveness of being a bathhouse attendant (or “towel hag” as my dear friend, Robert so lovingly named us) was soul-destroying. I had legs like Catherine Zeta-Jones from running up and down those ancient stairs and the lungs of a Cape Breton coal miner from the cigarette smoke and various toxic inhalants that hung in the air. As they checked in, each regular customer—and believe me, they were almost all regulars—would ask for a specific room. If it was occupied they would begin a countdown of favourite rooms. By the time they would get to the seventh or eighth option I’d be ready to reach through the bars of the cage and throttle them.

The Bum Washer. Swampy. Lacey With The Golden Smile. Thing One and Thing Two. Where’s Waldo? We had names for all the regulars. Some came twice a day. Their patterns became so predictable. It was like working on an assembly line, only you could smoke... oh, and have sex with the customers on occasion (discreetly, of course). Hey, the manager’s office didn’t have a queen-size bed in it because he worked late.

The twelve-hour shifts seemed endless, every one a life sentence. So to pass the time I made paper cutouts. Dozens and dozens of them. Customers kept asking me if I’d gone starkers. “Packet of lube

please. What’s that? Paper dolls, eh? Ha, ha, this place has finally got to you, eh? Ha, ha.” Or, “Someone’s shit in the sauna. Oh, paper dolls I see. Finally lost it, eh? Ha, ha.” As time slipped away I snipped away—legions of little men, flying penises, shooting stars, crowned princes with dangling wieners, angels dancing with devils, a kaleidoscope of faeries and phalli. All unfolding and interconnected.

Those lacy little patterns were my salvation. It was all about the patterns. Consider the hundreds of times I ran up and down the stairs of the Barracks like a rat on a rope, the whole time trying not to slap the customers and not to think about how much my life sucked.

Believe it or not, I’m an advocate of bathhouses. Baths are truly magical places. I met some of my closest friends there, including my husband. I’ve had truly ecstatic experiences with a multitude of men. I had poetry read to me while a man was being fisted in the next room. I played pool with my best friend, the two of us wearing only boots and jockstraps. I watched many stunning sunrises while downing endless cups of bad coffee. And I had a fungus grow on my shoulders from the Barracks’ crumbling basement ceiling that leaked water from the douche shower above. Ah, memories.

So, a decade after I checked in my last customer, I decided to transform some of my cutouts into something that speaks of communion and commemoration. After all, they helped me transform myself. So I turned them into quilts—not the traditional pieced together variety, but quilts divided into cubicles, like a bathhouse.

TRACKS – Washington, D.C.

by Gregory T. Wilkins, a.k.a. Equus

Iwas twenty three and moved to Washington, D.C. for a job at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1990. The United States Congress’ Culture War on the National Endowment for the Arts was raging as it attacked the Free Speech of Karen Finley, Robert Mapplethorpe, Holly Hughes, Andres Serrano and other contemporary artists. I was living through my first pandemic, HIV/AIDS. ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was my form of political protest as we gathered for die-ins, kiss-ins, and protest marches at the White House, in Dupont Circle, and across the Nation’s Capitol. I volunteered with Whitman-Walker Clinic caring for my first PWAs (People with AIDS) and hosting hot, erotic, safer sex education classes for inner-city youth and young adult men as well as assisting the Human Rights Campaign and the Victory Fund to advocate for Queer rights and legislation. I had just pledged with Delta Lambda Phi, the first cultural interest fraternity in the United States for gay, bisexual, transgender, and progressive men. I asked a man on a date for the first time. I was living my best life—authentic, out, and proud as a gay man.

Young, handsome, and inexperienced in Queer life, I was ready to explore and spread my wings. Gay life in those days was on the edge of being out and in the closet depending on what social circles one was engaged. Washington, D.C. was/is a very Queer place to live—outwardly conservative and with under currents of liberal and progressive vibes. Learning to navigate the system, one learned how, where, and when to push an agenda, focus one’s strength, and to engage with allies and others to bring awareness and social justice to the forefront.

In those days, D.C. had its fair share of clubs, a bath house, coffee shops, and a Queer bookstore (Earth Works). I would slowly walk by, linger in the shadows, and glance across the void hoping to catch an engaging eye. Most times I was left empty and wanting more. When my fraternity brothers shared they were going to a gay bar in Southeast D.C., my ears perked up, and I was raring to go. Safety in numbers, we tumbled into a half broken down car and made our way to TRACKS at 80 M Street, SE. My heart raced as we got out of the car and began walking to the

club. My brain conjured up fantasies of debauchery and naughtiness not knowing what I was going to experience.

Arriving before cover charge was taken at the door, I had enough money for a cocktail—a Cape Cod, vodka cranberry with a twist of lime. Swarms of men flocked into the space on Friday and Saturday nights, as I was transported to Valhalla. The massively, large sound speakers at TRACKS pulsated with a deep bass as shirtless, sweaty men, and enough eye candy to fill a store for miles danced the night away. I found my “family”. I was in paradise.

The bar had multiple dance floors. In the front was a smaller dance space for punk and new wave music, a bar, and lounging. Next to it was an outdoor dance floor with a sand volleyball court and another bar. The main attraction was this cavernous dance hall that played the hottest tunes of the time—Gloria Gaynor, Erasure, Madonna, and many more. Clean-cut, shirtless men with arms outstretched to the heavens begged me to join in the frivolity.

Marty Chernoff created TRACKS, and it was the hottest dance club in D.C. Every weekend it was filled gay men and lesbians of every color, creed, and political affiliation. It was a cornucopia of movers and shakers, wannabees, drag queens, homeless youth, and drug dealers. It was a place closet queens could be themselves, and a community that lifted everyone up. Chernoff had a similar club in Denver, Colorado and he saw an opportunity when visiting D.C. in 1984 for a club in the Nation’s Capitol. 21,000 square feet of space each weekend was filled with two thousand plus bodies gyrating and fully engaged with other Queer minded people. Fifteen years later, TRACKS closed its doors as gay life became more accepting in wider circles and the internet exploded as the Queer community found each other by other means.

TRACKS will be forever legendary and heralded as my first gay bar. I am thankful.

Club Park Avenue Trip Report—a Psylocibin Story

by Paul Minor

Tallahassee is in the Deep South. It’s the capital of Florida—the largest employer in town is the State government. It’s also the home of Florida State University and Florida A&M. In the late 1980s, the town held about hundred thousand people with half of them being university students. Set in rural Leon County in the north part of the state near the base of the panhandle, the area has more in common with south Georgia and Alabama than the rest of Florida.

The city and surrounding area contain rolling hills, pine forests, and enormous Live Oak trees with Spanish moss dripping from their branches. A drive on Miccosukee road northeast out of town will take you beneath overhanging Live Oak branches so thick it blots the sky, creating a tunnel effect. Antebellum homes, with stately columns, dot the surrounding towns.

Bumper stickers you might have seen on the streets of Tallahassee could be everything from “Save the Whales” to the Confederate battle flag proclaiming “The South Shall Rise Again”. The accents varied from the sugary southern molasses spoken by my landlord with gentile languidness to the brassy staccato of a Cuban American friend from South Florida.

Zonians, such as me, who grew up in the Panama Canal Zone, were considered Florida residents for university tuition purposes. Which is why I studied at Florida State University in Tallahassee. It was the summer of 1988. I was twenty-one. I’ll call it the Summer of Awe.

I had been at FSU long enough to recover from the culture shock of fellow students having no idea what the Canal Zone was. Or where Panamá was located. Or that, as a Zonian, I was a returning colonial from an American enclave twelve years away from its final handoff to the Republic of Panamá. For a large section of the FSU student population, campus social life centered on fraternity and sorority parties. And football.

And then there was me.

During my first year, my friends included a Jewish girl from Tampa who spent her high school years fending off Christian classmates intent on saving her eternal soul, the guy from Alabama whose parents (Pentecostal) put him through a multiday exorcism to rid him of possession by a homosexual demon,

a tall German guy from Berlin whose high school graduation gift from his parents was to fulfill his dream of spending a year studying in the USA but who folks at the dormitory nicknamed “Nazi” - I still cringe when I think of that.

Stamatis came from the Greek island of Samos. Keep in mind that famous Samians include philosophers and other bedrocks of Western Civilization such as Pythagoras, Aesop, Epicurus, and Herodotus. Stamatis studied philosophy, of all things, and refused to shower. He grew smellier and smellier until I staged an intervention with several other friends to urge him to bathe.

Additional characters included a lesbian from Chile who was in Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC), the stoner Cuban-American from Miami who always offered a toke, the Basque woman who I shared an apartment with for several months and who constantly fought with her Costa Rican boyfriend who delivered pizzas.

By the second year, I had found my tribe of special misfits—Tallahassee’s colorful community of LBGT+ denizens. “We are family” wasn’t just a disco anthem, it was a way of life. And so, it was in the Summer of Awe that four of us gay men shared a three-bedroom apartment close to FSU campus. Close enough to ride bikes to class.

In between classes, I worked at Strozier Library, a utilitarian multi-story box in a campus full of historic and stately red brick and gabled buildings. Palm trees and live oak greened the grounds. My job couldn’t have been drearier, stuck in the windowless room on the first floor where several of us would package and address books to be mailed to other universities as part of an inter-library loan program.

On an outer wall of the mail room hung a big steel roll-up door. A van would arrive every day and the driver would lift the door to deliver books and collect the ones ready to mail. The glimpse of the outside blue skies and waving foliage when the door opened provided one of the three main highlights for each of my four-hour work shifts.

The second highlight was an occasional fascinating escape into the content of a book I should have been packing instead of reading.

And the third highlight was a visit by another student assistant who would roll a big cart into the room with new books to pack. He always found

time to hangout and chat for a bit. I’ll call him Alex.

Alex and I shared something in common: the perspective of Americans who grew up in another country with parents who were of different nationalities. His dad was a US military service member stationed in Germany. His mom, a German. Alex spent most of his high school years in Germany. He stood as tall as a basketball player and had black curly hair and caramel-colored skin.

In my case, Dad was in the US Air Force and

capable of generating non-ordinary states of consciousness.

“Where do you get the mushrooms?” I asked.

“They grow on cow shit. My roommates go into the farmland north of town and come back with garbage bags full of ‘shrooms. We boil them up into a tea. This will be the second summer we do this.”

“Sounds like a Tallahassee tradition.”

He laughed. “There will be a lot of people there. Here’s the address.” He scribbled on the back of a packing slip and handed it to me. “It’s close by. See, I drew a map. Drop by after work on Friday. Oh, one of my roommates is Ms. Daisy, do you know who she is?”

“The drag performer at Club Park Avenue?”

“That’s the one!”

stationed at Albrook Air Force Station in Panamá where he met Mom, a Panamanian citizen working as an administrative assistant on base. My mixed heritage is not obvious, Dad’s Irish genes won out over Mom’s Panamanian ones — at least when it comes to skin color.

One day, during one of his visits to my book-packing sweatshop, Alex offloaded books from his cart onto my worktable while I leaned back in my chair to stretch. We settled into our customary chit-chat.

“Hey, my roommates and I are having a mushroom tea party at the house on Friday. You should come by. It’ll be a blast.”

By “mushroom” he meant magic mushrooms

My Friday nights consisted of going out with my three roommates to Club Park Avenue, a gay bar featuring a midnight drag show. Ms. Daisy’s signature performance in my mind — a blonde bombshell strolling about the stage wearing cowboy boots and Daisy Dukes with her butt cheeks hanging below its frayed edges. Her mid-riff exposed below a tied-up plaid shirt through which a generous amount of cleavage strained to spill out between buttons. She would beam an innocent smile and lip-synch Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’” while squashing bugs on the stage with her heel—“one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you”.

If one of his roommates was Ms. Daisy, then the party was sure to be fun.

“I’m going out with my roommates to Club Park Avenue Friday night. Maybe I’ll come by for some tea beforehand,” I said while looking up at the ceiling, imagining the possibilities.

Tripping at Club Park Avenue, or “CPA” as we usually called it, was bound to be a pinnacle psilocybin experience—complete with dance music I

Photograph by Astro (Princess of Axolotls).

loved, a friendly atmosphere, and buddies to banter with. And then there was the drag show that, on ‘shrooms, promised to amplify the campy humor I’d grown to love. At that point in my life, Club Park Avenue felt like home—I was there every weekend as a safe place to dance the night away and be among my tribe; to celebrate our very existence in the face of a hostile government, bigots, religious extremists, family rejection, and a deadly plague.

Plus, I’d be with my roommate family. If I was going to experience a psychedelic adventure, it might as well be the full version of it. Kind of like me jumping from not having a bicycle to riding across Spain on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.

“Cool then. Drop by on Friday,” Alex said and waved goodbye, wheeling the cart around and pushing it out of the room and toward the elevators.

That night, I held a household meeting and shared my plan for an adventure in consciousness with my roommates. None of them wanted to join me. Marc, the Jewish Grandmother of the household who cooked dinner for us every night, had a friend who was a ‘shrooming aficionado and the closest thing to an expert we could identify from among our circle of contacts.

Marc called the mushroom expert, Pete, on the phone and introduced us. I asked him about his experiences. Pete was also a philosophy grad student, which meant having him around to chat with could be an amazing opportunity to process philosophical or metaphysical insights that might emerge while in mushroom space. I invited him to join us at Club Park Avenue on Friday night. Pete, a straight guy, had never been to a gay bar before.

I held the phone out to Marc, and said “he says he’s never been to a gay bar.”

Marc took the phone. “There’s a first time for everything, Pete.”

And that’s all the convincing it took to get Pete enrolled in being my mushroom trip wingman at Club Park Avenue on a crowded Friday night with a midnight drag show.

The next day I arrived at the library early to do a bit of research before work. No internet back then. I set myself up at a table with a stack of books related to psychedelics.

I learned about humanity’s rich cultural history with altered states of consciousness. Like the Eleusinian Mysteries in Ancient Greece, initiation ceremonies associated with Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and agriculture, and her daughter Persephone, queen of the underworld. The details of these secret rites are not known, but ancient writers

pointed to their transformative effects.

For among the many excellent and indeed divine institutions which your Athens has brought forth and contributed to human life, none, in my opinion, is better than those mysteries. For by their means we have been brought out of our barbarous and savage mode of life and educated and refined to a state of civilization; and as the rites are called “initiations,” so in very truth we have learned from them the beginnings of life, and have gained the power not only to live happily, but also to die with a better hope.

—Cicero, Laws II, xiv, 36

Morewas known about the use of Peyote. Peyote is a cactus containing a powerful chemical called mescaline that, when consumed, serves as a doorway into other realms explored by indigenous peoples of the north American desserts in special ceremonies. In the Nahuatl language “peyote” means “Divine Messenger”.

It seemed experiencing other states of consciousness for healing and learning has been a shamanic practice common to many cultures since ancient times. And who is to say these divine drugs didn’t precipitate the leap in consciousness and symbolic meaning-making that set Homo on its way to becoming Sapiens?

Research into psychedelic substances for medical applications came to a stop in the wake of the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. I’m sure those in power were shocked by the youth counterculture leading rapid social change for women’s liberation, gay liberation, civil rights movement, environmental consciousness, social justice, the anti-war movement, interracial marriages, and hippies sticking flowers in the gun muzzles of national guards on American college campuses. Psychedelics were seen as a national security threat and mortally dangerous to the status quo. The authorities censured their study as potential medicine. It wouldn’t be until the 2020s before a new era of psychedelic research would appear to be underway.

Everything I read inspired my curiosity, triggering the explorer within. I wanted to have a mystical experience. One that wouldn’t take years of meditation to achieve. Or require fasting in the desert. No. My mystical experience would come via a tea party.

In those days, I rode back and forth between my apartment and campus on a beach cruiser bicycle. This bike had a big cushy seat and six gears. I don’t remember what happened to it but I wouldn’t own another bike until my Montague Paratrooper “Mili-

tary Technology” folding bike two decades later.

After work at the library on Friday night, I jumped on the bike and cruised to Alex’s house. I rode west across campus to a neighborhood, behind the stadium, with leafy residential streets and older single-story homes shaded by oak trees. The yards darkened with oncoming dusk. I dismounted in front of my destination, a quiet-looking brick house with a screened porch. I made some mental notes about how to get home in case I became impaired. When I leave, just head north until I cross Tennessee Street and then west to the apartment complex. I walked the bike to the doorway and rang.

Alex answered the doorbell, holding the screen door open and standing aside to let me through.

“You made it!” he said with a grin, his pupils big as saucers. He motioned me in, pointing to where I could prop the bike inside the porch.

“The foraging trip was successful?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. Follow me.”

I followed him through the front door and into the living room. Fresh marijuana smoke hung in the air. The ashtray on the coffee table overflowed with cigarette butts. Beer cans cluttered flat surfaces— the top of a speaker, an end table. A red lava lamp blobbed on the fireplace mantle. We passed through a beaded curtain and into the kitchen. Under a sterile overhead florescent light, three guys bustled about. Two large punch bowls sat on the counter, one of them full of a reddish liquid. Clouds of water vapor streamed from a pot boiling on the gas stove.

The three college guys took turns hovering over the pot, stirring and talking—it reminded me of the three witches in Macbeth: “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.” My eighthgrade class produced and performed Macbeth on a stage above the St. Mary’s Church in Balboa, Republic of Panamá. As McDuff, I had to utter my least favorite line of the play: “Horror! Horror! Horror!” Which I imagined always sounded like “whore, whore, whore”.

“Looks like you’re still cooking,” I said.

“I’ve already had some. It takes about forty five minutes to kick in. I should be peaking by the time we have a crowd. Let me get you a glass.”

“Ok. But then I’ve got to bolt. I want to get home before it kicks in. I’m heading to CPA tonight with my roomies.”

“You’re in for a real treat.” He laughed as he opened a bag of clear plastic cups, pulled one out, and dipped it into the punch bowl. I took the cup from him.

“Not the tastiest thing in the world,” he said.

He laughed when I tasted the tea and wrinkled my nose and face in an exaggerated display of disgust. I quickly chugged most of it.

“Yuck,” I said and retrieved a piece of ice from the cup to chew on. I suddenly remembered, with a pinch of panic, the story I’d read about the discovery of LSD’s properties. A Swiss chemist, Albert Hoffman, accidentally dosed himself through transdermal contact with a compound he had synthesized. The chemical he synthesized came from ergot, a fungus that infects rye. He called the chemical “LSD-25”. This was in 1943. He first noticed the effects on his bicycle ride home from the lab. It was to be the most extraordinary (and perhaps, scary) bicycle ride of his life.

“Ok, I better get going before I start tripping,” I said.

“Have fun, man. Let me know how it went next week,” he said with a grin that wouldn’t stop.

“I’ll give you a full trip report. Enjoy the party!”

I practically ran out the front door.

On the bike, I pedaled fast, anxious to make it home before my short ride turned into an all-night odyssey complete with sirens, cyclops, and lotuseaters.

I reached home within fifteen minutes. It was a non-descript student apartment building located off the main road that ran by campus. I walked by the trash dumpster in the parking lot, through the common laundry room area, and hefted the bike to my shoulder before climbing the steps to the second floor.

Upstairs, I walked along the outside walkway to our apartment door. The sun began to set and as I looked over the full parking lot, the cars looked shinier than usual. Like they’d all been recently cleaned.

I rattled my key in the apartment door lock. Marc swung open the door from the inside like he had been waiting there. Marc is stocky and shorter than me, with thick muscular legs, strawberry hair, freckles, and just a hint of color in his eyelashes.

“How are you feeling?” he said with a smile. His eyes twinkled as they searched mine for signs of intelligent life.

“All good. I had a cup of tea and came right home. No effects yet.” I breathed hard from the frantic race home. And I felt anxiety. I imagined astronauts might feel similarly on the launchpad as the countdown winds down to the barely controlled explosion that would blast them into space.

“There’s plenty of pasta left over on the stove if you want some,” he said as he took my arm and

guided me to the stove as if I might get lost or distracted along the way. I laughed, feeling a release of tension. I was with chosen family. Safe.

“Thank you, sweetness,” I said and leaned in to give him a peck on the cheek. Marc cooked for us every night.

“Did you drink the cool aid?” asked Ned, my other roommate. He and Marc were a couple—and still are, decades later. Ned stood shirtless in the hallway with one towel around his waist and another towel wrapped into a turban to dry his blond hair. He had a swimmer’s build. And, at the moment, carried a disapproving tone to his demeanor.

“Not cool aid, tea. And yes, I had a glass. It’s supposed to take forty five minutes to kick in,” I said.

“Oh Jesus H. Christ,” he said as he rolled his eyes.

The doorbell rang and Marc opened it. It was Pete, Mark’s straight philosophy student friend and now my mushroom trip wingman.

After primping for the night out, the five of us headed to the apartment parking lot to cram into Marc’s old suburban for the outing. Ned glanced over at me, looking concerned and searching for signs of intoxication. I smiled innocently back at him, imagining a halo over my head.

Marc drove. I rolled down the window on the door beside me and felt the rush of air through my hair. It felt like fingers lightly kneaded my scalp, sending honey through my system. A sweep of euphoria tingled every cell in my body. Jeffrey sat next to me. I turned to look at him.

“I think I’m feeling something now,” I said with a silly grin.

“I feel it too,” he said. We both laughed. Jeffrey had the ability to get a “contact buzz” in which he said he acquired a certain level of intoxication simply by being around people who were intoxicated.

By the time we reached the club, the euphoria had turned into a sickeningly sweet nausea.

With a sigh, he headed into his room to get dressed. My third roommate, Jeffrey came out of his room holding a brush in his hands. “How do you feel?” he asked.

I heard this question repeatedly that night. Jeffrey spoke with an Appalachian drawl. He had ended up in Tallahassee when his car broke down on his way from West Virginia to south Florida where he had planned to live with a friend and have an artistic and creative beach life. After being stranded in Tallahassee, he worked in a beauty salon and was the only one of us not a student at FSU. His tall and slender figure, pale eyes, and a nose upturned slightly, reminded me of Peter Pan. Jeffrey moved with the grace of a ballet dancer and had occasionally performed in the drag show at CPA as Lady Gabriela, a beautiful blonde and leggy creature in a gown made of black Glad garbage bags who’d lip synch to Nina Hagen songs on stage.

“Nothing different yet. Maybe I didn’t have enough tea?”

“You better hurry up and eat and get ready,” Marc said to me.

I wolfed down some pasta and marinara sauce while standing in the kitchen.

“That’s common,” said Pete. “The mushroom fibers are stomach irritants. You’ll feel better after throwing up.”

I scurried across Park Avenue from the club and into the green space consisting of a chain of historic parks that stretch along Park Avenue for several blocks of downtown Tallahassee. I walked under the soaring limbs of a live oak. The canopy blocked out streetlights, shrouding the area in a cocoon of darkness.

In a clearing, a large camellia bush appeared with white flowers that seemed to glow in the night. I threw up behind the camellia. Immediately, the nausea disappeared. I felt clean and with no ill aftereffects. Almost like I’d simply imagined being nauseous and vomiting.

“Are you ok?” said Ned when I reappeared from behind the bush.

“Much better after throwing up,” I said cheerfully, after the most civilized vomiting experience of my life.

“Jesus Christ!”

Every aspect of Ned’s expression seemed cartoonish in its dimensions and with the exaggerated melodrama of a Charlie Chaplin. I burst out laughing. Jeffrey, because of his “contact high”

superpower, joined my laughing fit. Tears streamed down our faces.

“Ok, time to go inside,” said Marc, looking around. We queued to get inside the club. The line stretched on the sidewalk halfway down the block. The rate of admittance appeared choreographed to maintain a wait long enough to generate FOMO (fear of missing out) but too short to be boring. I felt the thump of dance music on the sidewalk. CPA served as the nightlife oasis in the area.

We arrived at the entrance and the cashier checked IDs, took cover charges, and issued the appropriate wristbands to authorize booze. I stepped inside Club Park Avenue.

And into a whirlpool of sensory stimulation. I swam through the neon mist of Drakkar cologne toward the bar counter nearest to the door. Disco lights above the dance floor threw spinning trails across the bar. My route took me through the distinct neo-reality of various characters along the way - a gaggle of twinky queens, a straight girl with her gay, an older professor-looking guy in a beard, a couple dudes wearing cowboy boots and tight jeans, someone in a “save South Africa” anti-apartheid T-shirt, etcetera. By the time I made it to the bar to order a rum and coke, I felt like I’d been on a yearslong anthropological tour of humanity.

Drink in hand, I felt a desire to reduce stimulation and worked my way up narrow steps to the second floor open-aired patio. I found a bench next to a banana tree growing from a large container. It felt like a natural home base for me - we had banana trees in our yard growing up in Panamá. I sat down. Stars shone in the sky above. I felt breezes eddy down to me from cross winds ricocheting off the walls that enclosed the patio. I was alone.

I crossed my legs on the bench, and listened to the muffled beat of dance music and hoots from the crowd watching the drag show which must have begun. I wore shorts. A freckle on one of my legs caught my attention. I inspected my leg as if seeing it for the first time, examining the skin and hair. Some of the hair follicles had two hairs coming out of it. I tested the elasticity and sensitivity of the skin when pressed, felt the individual hairs when I blew on it. Such a wonder of evolution of matter from the most primordial element, hydrogen. Hydrogen, which coalesced out of hot plasma as the universe inflated from a singularity, generating spacetime in its wake.

Quantum fluctuations created an uneven distribution of the hydrogen. The mysterious force of gravity drew these minute clumps into gigantic

clouds until the clouds got so dense they collapsed into spinning balls and ignited into life. Hydrogen fused into helium and bathed the surrounding space in electromagnetic radiation. The void came alive with light pulsing from new stars igniting across the cosmos. These were the first generation.

Subsequent generations grew from the ashes of the first generation to create new and heavier variations of matter which blew out into the cosmos to reincarnate in successive generations creating even heavier matter—sometimes in violent explosions that outshone the entire galaxy.

Newly formed atoms spewed into space when a star died. They collected in a cloud of gas and dust, gathering into a spinning disk of material around a particular newly born star. The spinning matter gradually clumped into planets and calcium and carbon joined other elements to form a ball of chemicals not far from the new star.

The same atoms in my knee may have floated in Earth’s newly formed oceans, the atmosphere, perhaps been in the shells of sea creatures, the trunks of trees, the bones of dinosaurs. These elements have been compacted by sediment, exploded by volcanoes, lifted by continental plates, buried and re-used repeatedly over millions of years. I came to consume some of this material as food. Material that now contributed to a structure called my right knee.

I looked deeply into my knee and saw countless other types of atoms forming molecules that allow me to stand tall, to propel myself forward, to dance, to sit on a bench in the patio of a nightclub under stars that were my most intimate and elemental ancestors, to contemplate my wondrous existence and connection to it all.

“We’ve been looking for you…JESUS! What did you do to your leg?” said Ned. His face telegraphed fear and concern.

I looked up from my knee, where I had been inspecting the skin, hair, a freckle, and countless other miracles. Marc stood next to Ned. Both stared at me waiting for an answer. How do I explain? I simply stared back.

Marc relaxed and smiled. “Nothing’s wrong with his leg,” he said. “He’s just enraptured by its marvelous creation.”

I could not have said it better. I could not have said it. Period.

The Bartender

Dark bar, back of the counter, Bud Light, black light, draft, the bare back of the bartender, the golden hair on the back of the bartender spreading out like wings over his shoulderblades, and when he turns, leans forward, all incubus and bicep and tough, lovely eyes, you breathe, craftily, carefully, “Are you touchable, or untouchable?” Which throws him which is good. But he feints with “What do you want?” and a half grin, steadily, unblinking, ringlets and pathways in the wind-swept grass of his chest weakening all bravado. You open your mouth, your wallet, “I’ll have a light.”

But he strikes a match and holds it to your twenty to which you reply “It’s your tip going up in smoke.” And no one moves. And no one speaks. And who is captor and who is caged? Your eyes. His eyes. The burning match.

—Wonderful

This poem originally appeared in The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, vol. 16, no.

Photograph by Dick Mitchell.

Silver Tray

The vodka with a twist —no anodyne for a flickering dream too troubled to ignore— inspires the dance on a floor where shadows combine among shrill laughter and the speaker’s roar. The young, smooth-shaven faces, mask-like, sign each other with a glance’s semaphore. A stranger’s stare unzips a thrill down your spine and yet somehow a thrill unlike before (too shy to swallow the hook at the end of the line) when first you set out dying to explore this pleasure dome beneath the moon’s decline. You’d hold out for a lover, so you swore. A1, you joked. With whom do you recline? Don’t answer. Snort some poppers. Fuck till sore wherever love’s illusion might incline. Those vows (to pick one person to adore), now tarnished like a silver tray, resign you to a nightclub where you’ll cruise and score or loiter drunk, as chances may assign.

—Ken Anderson

QUEER MENTAL HEALTH

Submission Deadline: October 21, 2023

www.rfdmag.org/upload

Our queer selves have always been weighed against the idea of being unstable, unwell, mad. Some of that has always been the projection of a heteronormative culture seeking to control our lives by medicalizing our lived experiences. But we also face the challenge of oppression, the difficulty of living in the “crazy world” and some of us in reality face mental health challenges not because of who we are but merely “because.”

We’re asking our readers to consider the ways we face mental health issues in our GLBTQ community. We’ve come a long way from being oppressed because of mental health professionals labeling us as “sick” but now we make up a piece of the mental health and helping professions in a more holistic way. We have come to understand our mental health is actually important and that we at times need support—from friends and family, work places, and mostly deeply ourselves. So we’re asking readers to consider sharing stories about yourselves as people facing mental health issues, people working to help people facing challenges as well as friends and partners who’ve dealth with someone in their lives facing mental health issues.

The language of mental health is couched in a lot of negative language and we’re also hoping to learn ways of speaking about issues like depression, emotional trauma, suicidal thought as way of being more gentle to ourselves in facing something that in often intangible,

unknowing and often unique to that person in a given moment, a period of one’s life or as part of one’s life journey. Please consider sharing your stories and resources for helping our community be more out about their emotional and psychic health.

Image (cropped): David Bushnell, Ken Westover and Roger Kornberg, Stanford University via Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 2.0).

a reader-created gay quarterly celebrating queer diversity