Out In STL, Fall 2019

FALL 2019 I VOLUME 3 I ISSUE 1

OUTINSTL.COM I FREE

WHORING WITH THE CRUSADERS | GO WEST FOR QUEER YOGA | NANCY NOVAK’S LEGACY

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GutterGlitter’s ELIZABETH VAN WINKLE shines up the BDSM dungeon scene

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: A magazine exploring and celebrating the LGBTQ community in St. Louis Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Chris Andoe E D I T O R I A L Associate Editor Melissa Meinzer Director of Social Media Jolene Gosha Contributing Writers Joss Barton, Eric Berger, Patrick Collins, Seán Collins, Melinda Cooper, Sage Freeman, Nancy Fuller, Joshua Phelps, K. Templeton, Cami Thomas Editor at Large Doyle Murphy

A R T Art Director Evan Sult Contributing Photographers Theo Welling, Susan Bennet, Lindy Drew, James Griesedieck, Monica Mileur, Sharon Knotts, Jess Luther, Sara Bannoura

P R O D U C T I O N Production Manager Haimanti Germain M U LT I M E D I A A D V E R T I S I N G Advertising Director Colin Bell Senior Account Executive Cathleen Criswell Account Managers Emily Fear, Jennifer Samuel Multimedia Account Executive Jackie Mundy C I R C U L A T I O N Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner Human Resources Director Lisa Beilstein VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein Creative Director Tom Carlson www.euclidmediagroup.com N A T I O N A L A D V E R T I S I N G VMG Advertising 1-888-278-9866, www.voicemediagroup.com

Out In STL is published quarterly

by Euclid Media Group Verified Audit Member Out In STL

308 N. 21st Street, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63103 www.outinstl.com General information: 314-754-5966 Fax administrative: 314-754-5955 Fax editorial: 314-754-6416

Founded in 2017

I

CHRIS ANDOE

f you’ve been around the St. Louis scene a while, what I’m about to say might make you feel really old: Many LGBTQ twenty-somethings don’t know who Nancy Novak is. The five years she’s been in exile (or retirement) is a lifetime in the bar scene where Novak reigned. But for those of us who have been around long enough to have been invested in all the excitement and drama that surrounded her, it feels like yesterday. For better and for worse.

The catalyst for the Great Media Divorce of 2014 — when the team running our city’s oldest LGBTQ publication irrevocably split apart — was a fierce disagreement over running a feature on her. The subsequent media war divided the community for years. In the past few months I have learned the hard way that in some corners the passions around Novak are as potent as ever, and it felt history was repeating.

Threads binding our Out in STL team together were beginning to unravel as our internal debate raged. Vacations were interrupted with dire warnings that key advertisers would REFLEX PHOTOGRAPHY walk and the community would revolt if we ran a flattering piece, while others were aghast that anyone would even suggest being critical of a dying woman (Novak has announced that she has terminal cancer). Some on our team implored us to drop the piece altogether, citing “more deserving” people.

If I had to boil down this publication’s mission to one sentence, though, it would be this one: We are here to introduce our community to itself. Even if you’re just hearing of Novak, she shaped the place you live in, often when that wasn’t even her aim. To avoid bias, we assigned the feature to the illustrious Patrick Collins, who lived in Portland during Novak’s rise and fall and hasn’t patronized bars in ages.

Speaking of introductions, on our cover is GutterGlitter’s Elizabeth Van Winkle, who may be the most influential person you’ve never heard of — especially if yours is more of a mainstream, color-between-thelines existence. Associate Editor Melissa Meinzer takes us to a world most of us could never or would never access as we get a glimpse inside one of Van Winkle’s “no-men” kink events.

If you need a shot of testosterone after all this, I’ll introduce you to the rough and tumble St. Louis Crusaders rugby team, who are more than up to the task.

Enjoy this hard-fought issue, and stay tuned to find out if the dire warnings of “the Novak curse” make this our final edition.

Out in STL is available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies of the current issue may be purchased for $1.00 plus postage, payable in advance at the Out in STL office. Out in STL may be distributed only by Out in STL authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of Out in STL, take more than one copy of each Out in STL weekly issue.

The entire contents of Out in STL are copyright 2018 by Out in STL, LLC. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, including electronic retrieval systems, without the expressed written permission of the Publisher, Out in STL, 308 N. 21st Street, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63103. Please call the Out in STL office for back-issue information, 314-754-5966.

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Chris Andoe Editor in chief COVER PHOTO OF ELIZABETH VAN WINKLE BY THEO WELLING

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wellness

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rough & Tumble SITTING DOWN WITH THE ST. LOUIS CRUSADERS

BY CH R I S A N D O E

R

ugby involves a lot of whoring. In fact, the whoring is one reason there’s such a brotherhood between players across the sport. As if that weren’t intriguing enough, they even have hookers on the field (for real!), and all of this goes on under the watchful eye of “the Sir.”

OK, I may have inadvertently led you to believe rugby is like a muddier version of Caligula, so I’ll elaborate. A team always has fifteen players on the field, and if they’re short of that number — as if often the case when traveling — the other team will “whore out” a few players.

“Is that just what the gay teams call it? Or is that across the sport?” I inquire.

“It’s the term everyone uses,” the imposing Kevin Hayes Jr. replies. “And they play hard, too. You’d think they’d be pulling for their own team, but when they’re Marcus Watt, right, makes a playing with you, they breakaway while a Belleville give it their all.”

Rowdies player tries to topple him.

The hooker is the man C O U R T E S Y S T. L O U I S C R U S A D E R S in the middle of the scrum hooking for the ball, and the sir is the referee. But plenty of ink has been spilled over how rugby is played.

My goal is to better understand what it’s like to be part of the Crusaders brotherhood, so I sit down with four members of the team to discuss. In attendance were the afore-

mentioned Hayes, 34, Robert Fischer, 28, Daniel Fanning, 29, and Marcus Watt, 25.

I begin by asking what drew them to the sport.

“Boys in short shorts. What you sayin’?” Hayes quips. “The sexiness pulls you in, but we’re all just players on the field.”

Fanning, who like Hayes, has a military background, says he’s always been athletic, playing football in high school and enjoying cycling and volleyball. “I found rugby through a friend. I wanted to join to get to know more people and develop friendships through sportsmanship once I moved back to St. Louis.”

Watt moved to St. Louis from his native Chicago, where he played on a gay team. “I jumped back into it with these guys. Made it easier to meet people here.”

Fischer, unlike the others, didn’t consider himself to be athletic. “A buddy played in college, and it seemed he was always bloody, bruised and battered. I moved to L.A. for a few years, and when I returned, I was ready to try new things and came to practice. I was apprehensive at first if I could do it, but everyone was incredibly friendly, making it easier. I went

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to one practice, kept going, and then before I knew it, I was in a real game.”

The Third Half “The third half is what players call party time after the game,” Watt says. “In Chicago, I played against a mainstream team called the Chicago Riot. I loved, loved, loved playing them. Some teams don’t like playing against gay players or have issues with it, but they were always fun, always had good spirit. Even though they were straight, when we’d go to the sponsor bar afterwards, we’d have a dance off and underwear contest, and they’d bring out the Speedos and jockstraps.”

Rather than getting hotel rooms, whenever possible traveling players will stay with members of the host team. Fanning hosted four players from New Orleans, taking them on a bar crawl, beginning with Third Half at Just John and ending the night by shutting down JJ’s.

“Were you muddy all night?” I ask.

“Haha, no, we weren’t muddy at all. The ground was dry, so we were dirty at Just John but took showers before Rehab,” Fanning says.

“I picture the field being permanently muddy for some reason,” I say, laughing.

Fanning replies, “It’s nice when it is. Getting tackled on dry ground hurts more.”

Home Bar Advantage Just John is the sponsor and the home bar for the Crusaders, and the team feels they can really cut loose there. “It’s rugby

— we drink a lot, and everyone knows who we are. We go in after a game, all dirty and they’re just like, ‘There go the rugby boys.’ It’s really a family vibe there,” Fischer says.

“Traveling around, you go to some teams’ home bar and you can’t even tell it’s theirs, but Just John goes all out. We come in, and the Crusaders are all over the televisions. If James Stewart (with ball) is we throw a party, they decoknown as “Mittens.” “He is one rate for us and push it on soof our regular whores that didn’t cial media, and the staff are live in the city and recently really welcoming to the visitmoved here,” says teammate ing players. They provide our Robert Fischer. jerseys and are always checkC O U R T E S Y S T. L O U I S C R U S A D E R S ing in on us, seeing what we need,” Fischer explains.

Joining the Brotherhood The guys concede that from the outside rugby looks incredibly intimidating.

“Looks rough on the field, but we’re all queens,” Watt jokes. But they stress that they have a need and a place for all types of guys, and increasing membership is a key part of their goals in building the organization. They’ve got big guys, little guys, Trans guys, straight guys. And if you can only give a few minutes here and there, they’ll take it. “We don’t care if you’re not the most talented at rugby. If you can only play ten minutes, give us your all in those ten minutes, and we’ll make sure to put you in.” Fischer says.

“It looks rougher when you’re watching it,” Hayes says.

“Looks hard as fuck, but rugby is fucking fun.”

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culture

venus in furs INSIDE A MAN-FREE BDSM PLAY SPACE WITH GUTTERGLITTER’S ELIZABETH VAN WINKLE

BY M EL ISSA MEINZER

O

n a rain-threatening Wednesday night in August, the Crack Fox downtown has a few indicators that something unusual is happening inside. A hand-lettered sign bears the quote people posted in the ’70s supporting Angela Davis: “Sister, you are welcome in this house.” Another right by the door handle is less subtle: “No Men.” Inside, past the woman checking IDs and collecting fivers, past a sight-obscuring screen, there’s a bondage cross on the stage and a spanking bench among the booths. The people inside include cis women, trans women and non-binary people, but absolutely no men — the sign isn’t just for show.

This is Venus in Furs, a BDSM dungeon and play space where men are explicitly excluded, in order to give kinky (or kinky-curious) non-men space of their own. It’s rare in St. Louis — the only one I know about, though in fairness what I don’t know about our underground BDSM scene could presumably fill a sportsball stadium. It’s mostly a queer event, but straight women are welcome.

And it’s as safe and nurturing as a space for potentially getting your ass whooped can possibly be.

Venus in Furs is the love labor of Elizabeth Van Winkle.

Van Winkle, 34, has been putting on weirdo drag shows and social events for years, making space for artists who might be too edgy for brunch at a chain restaurant.

You probably follow her on social media, too — her GutterGlitter page on Facebook has more than 10,000 likes, promoting her events and posting anti-racist, anti-facist content along-

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side sexy memes about capybaras.

Her posts get her put in Facebook jail often enough that she’s got contingency plans in place for when it happens.

The most recent offense was an image of two women of color holding a sign that says “White Men with Guns are America’s Biggest Terrorists.”

Van Winkle arrived in St. Louis as a teenager, leaving behind a deeply conservative small-town upbringing. She’d hoped to find a big-city utopia.

“I was a super naive kid when I Elizabeth Van Winkle’s came to St. Louis,” she says. “I particular brand of glitter thought that there would be no classes up any gutter. racism or homophobia or THEO WELLING transphobia.”

Instead, she says she found a fractured and hierarchical scene, even among queers. Her disappointment turned out to be a galvanizing force for her.

“Whenever Ferguson happened and Michael Brown was killed, I was just appalled at drag performers who came out anti-Black Lives Matter,” Van Winkle says a few days before the party over vegetarian slices at Pizza Head in south city. “I FA L L 2 0 1 8

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was like, ‘I’m never going to another drag show again.’”

But of course, she did. She just had to make them herself, drag shows that reflected a population that’s young and radical and trans and genderfucked and full of color and nuance.

Drag shows that reflected the reality of our world. Drag shows that aren’t what you see on TV. GutterGlitter events and play spaces and parties can read as totally out there in St. Louis. On visits to San Francisco or New Orleans, though, Van Winkle sees her own vision repeated again and again in exciting, challenging, intersectional events. But don’t expect her to pull up stakes.

“The events that I throw have never ever happened here,” she says. She fears if she leaves, they’ll stop happening. She says she’s lost jobs over the events she’s produced and doesn’t want other potential producers or artists to face that fate. “It’s too risky, especially for young poor queers.”

Before the active play portion of the party Wednesday night, Van Winkle gathers the half-dozen or so early arrivals around a table for an orientation session. She’s assuming, she explains, that everyone’s knowledge level is zero — even though it’s clearly not the case — just so no one’s left behind. In oxblood boots, a chunky silver chain necklace, black tank dress and fingerless gloves, she’s va-va-voom sexy, but her earnest concern for the assembled newbies as she walks them through BDSM 101 is almost schoolmarmish.

The talk around the table is collaborative — it’s not a lecture, though Van Winkle is clearly leading the conversation.

Guests pipe up with their own, mostly terrible experiences with men in kink spaces, with more than one person talking about realizing that an uninvited man was inches away during a scene, leering.

In Van Winkle’s space, the word of the dungeon monitor is final. No appeals, no due process. If the monitor says you’re out, you’re out. Partygoers can be tossed for disrespecting their play partners, disturbing others’ scenes, crossing stated limits or messing with the vibe in general. If your behavior gives Van Winkle or another dungeon monitor the heebie-jeebies, you’re gone. In fact, she’s hoping to create what she calls a leather contingency, a kind of master list of persona non grata in play spaces that could be shared across parties and scenes citywide.

“It’s kind of easy to tell the creeps,” Van Winkle says.

That’s not to say kinksters aren’t responsible for their own happiness. Partners need to negotiate explicitly and be upfront about their own expectations and needs. So if you don’t get the aftercare you crave from your top after a scene — and you didn’t ask for it ahead of time — it’s not the monitors’ problem.

“We will keep you safe, but we will not be monitoring every moment,” Van Winkle says.

In some play spaces, alcohol is expressly forbidden. It can really muddy the waters of consent. But Venus in Furs is in a bar, and the drinks flow — though booze is not the main

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attraction. Many at the party are sticking to water.

“It’s interesting how when there’s women and non-men out together, they’re not pressuring each other to drink,” Van Winkle says. “It’s kind of like the closest thing we have to a dyke bar, because there’s no men.”

Crack Fox owner Carrie Harris characterizes it as the city’s goth and BDSM bar. For a decade, the bar has hosted the “Conspiracy” kink event, which is open to all genders and orientations. It skews a little older and has more of a swinger vibe, she says.

At Venus in Furs, Harris says, “I see women playing a whole lot more than at my other events — definitely less inhibited.”

She got to know Van Winkle through producing events, and their shared focus on creating safe, fun, kinky spaces naturally led to the Crack Fox hosting Venus in Furs on select Wednesdays and Fridays.

But back to the party: Scarlett is young and heartbreakingly beautiful. She’s wearing a black halter dress, sheer black stockings, red lipstick and leopard-print stilettos. She also says she’s super green, attending her first play party.

In almost any dungeon with straight men included, she’d be chum in a shark tank, even as a lesbian with no desire to play with men. But there are no sharks at this party, and so she’s sitting by herself watching the action onstage. It’s almost jarring to see her not getting hassled.

“I don’t know if I would have been able to [attend] if there were men,” Scarlett says.”It’s hard enough given the power structure in society, and that I’m a femme woman. I couldn’t imagine being vulnerable in a space [with men],” she says.

Scarlett turns her attention back to the stage, where Van Winkle demonstrates how to use a flogger and a riding crop.

She gives the woman on the cross several masterful smacks and whacks, and then hands each implement in turn to an increasingly less-tentative newbie. Between whimpers, the woman on the cross turns around to offer helpful hints.

Wendi and their partner have been together for a few weeks. The two sit close and occasionally nuzzle while filling out “yes no maybe” cards they brought, ranking kink and play they’d like to engage in: nipple torture is a yes, but scenes involving mental hospitals are a hard no.

“A lot of the time in kink spaces, men have a hard time with consent,” Wendi says. “I’ve only met a couple of men in the kink scene who know how to act.”

For Wendi, though, kink spaces are critical to their identity. “Kink was the thing that made me comfortable with sex.

I’m not binary,” they say. So a space with no men is a relief and a haven.

Several times throughout the night, men try to enter the space and loudly protest when they’re refused. When I head out to catch my Lyft, the “No Men” sign has been pulled off the door and is getting soggy on the sidewalk in the rain that’s finally started.

I paste it back up before heading home.

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Elizabeth Van Winkle facilitates a kinder, gentler ass-whooping.

THEO WELLING

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feature

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nailing down nancy AS NANCY NOVAK RETURNS FOR A FINAL FAREWELL, ONE WRITER SEEKS TO UNDERSTAND HER POLARIZING LEGACY

BY PAT R I CK C O LLI N S

L

////

ess than a week after I signed up to profile Nancy Novak, I realized it would be anything but reporting as usual.

For starters, there’s absolutely no need to dig for dirt or persuade sources to talk. Even five years after the last drink was poured at Novak’s Bar & Grill on Manchester in The Grove, everyone in St. Louis who so much as set foot in any of the establishments Novak operated between 1996 and 2013 seems ready to talk.

Everyone, that is, except for Novak herself.

Novak was greeted like a rock star Assuming that her words as friends packed Just John for would comprise the her event. heart and soul of the story, I pursued her. Novak is 64 and has terminal cancer. She had returned to St. Louis from her retirement in California for a reunion of sorts across the street from the building that once housed the bar that bore her name. Naturally, I wanted to sit down with her and listen to her life story in

PH OTOS BY T H EO W ELLING

her own voice, in her own words. We exchanged messages, most of them polite, and she even agreed to an interview a few times, but then, each time, withdrew her offer.

And then, on the morning of my final attempt, her words once again lit up my phone with what seemed like another rejection. But after I reread her text a few times and thought about it for a while, I realized her very brief message was actually instructive: I’m not a good interviewee, you should write what the people say.

Her fans are among the most ardent I’ve ever encountered.

At the other end of the spectrum, however, her detractors are adamant about having the last word in her story.

There’s very little middle ground. Most of the stories portray Novak in terms that are often absolute and occasionally extreme. She’s either a saintly figure who wanted nothing more than to help people, or she’s a sinister, calculating, drug- and alcohol-addled profiteer with zero business instincts who hid behind good times and good causes. The more I listened, the more drawn I became to the versions of Novak that suggest a more complex, nuanced character.

They’re harder to find, but here’s one: Novak hosted a fundraiser for the victims of the 2011 tornado that killed 161 people in Joplin. That’s a generous thing to do, I think.

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On a hot, bright afternoon at the end of July, I went to Just But the story quickly takes a turn. After the event, a photo John in The Grove. It was only my second time in the stoof the envelope, stamped and clearly addressed to the orgaried establishment (I’m old, I’ve been sober for more than a nization for which the fundraiser was held, was posted to Facebook. Ostensibly, this was to underscore Novak’s gener- decade and I lived away from St. Louis for many years). My first time at Just John was for a Claire McCaskill rally, held osity, but according to some, the move reflected a need to on the bone-deep cold Sunday afternoon in November two document the check actually being mailed because Novak days before she lost her senate seat to Josh Hawley, a Stanwasn’t to be trusted with money. “It was widely suspected ford- and Yale-educated conservative who successfully dethat she was skimming from fundraisers,” I was told by monized her as an elitist. On my return visit in July to the Harrison Roberts, who became familiar with Novak’s antics bar, Novak was the guest of honor. The event, organized by in his former job as bar manager at another prominent her friends, was meant to pay St. Louis establishment. tribute to Novak’s many conSo much of the story of tributions—“Nancy Novak Nancy Novak is stacked atop unified Midwestern queer a foundation of these types culture,” declared Out in of details: She was suspected STL’s sister publication the of saying and doing many Riverfront Times the day bethings. The specificity of fore the party — and to raise what people recall about her funds to help make her final coupled with the absence of months as comfortable and anything you might call enjoyable as possible. proof, or resolution, evoked I knew Novak had arrived in me a weird mix of reat Just John before I actually sponses. It didn’t take long saw her. She has the sort of for me to regard her and her presence that alters a space at legacy as simultaneously infuthe molecular level when she riating and intriguing. But enters it. I first caught sight of when it came to the partying, her standing beside the wellthere was no shortage of stocked buffet table, surfirsthand accounts. Not that rounded by friends. I’d come Novak ever downplayed livto the party to prepare for the ing a fast life. interview we were planning to I was told by more than a do the following week. I wantfew individuals, including ed to hear how people reformer patron Wendell Shell, called her and her bar. I wantof boozy evenings that ended with Novak passed “People told me over and over how ed to watch her reconnect and out, hoisted up and carried off the premises by much I changed their life. I didn’t interact with her old circle. members of the group of people known as her know this ... I will take those kind Since Novak and I had never entourage. Several people told me that they’d words to my grave.” met in person, one of her witnessed the spoils of the Novak empire friends introduced me to her disappearing up her nose. Former neighbor Matt as the writer from Out in STL who would be interviewing her McIntosh recalls a constant party at Novak’s Tower Grove the following week.

South home. “Even at 10 a.m. on a Saturday! Whenever As we shook hands briefly, two things struck me about her she’d see us, she’d yell, ‘Come on over! Have a beer! Take a physically: She has a very direct, intense gaze, and, in a way that hit!’” McIntosh recalled, and he wasn’t complaining. Others seems contrary to the scope and scale of her reputation, she’s on Wyoming Street described “shady characters” knocking short. (I had the same reaction when I met Tonya Harding.) on their doors late at night, confusing their homes for Novak’s. Employees’ paychecks reportedly bounced. Rumors On the tiered, deceptively deep patio of Just John, which swirled about how she sabotaged other bar owners by tearwas wall-to-wall lesbian that afternoon, I heard many of ing up promotional materials and making incendiary remarks on Facebook. More than once, she persuaded patrons those kind words about Novak, the details of which I jotted down in my notebook under the heading “St. Nancy.” to donate money by announcing that Novak’s Bar and Grill was on the verge of financial collapse, that matters were dire, That’s sarcasm on my part, of course, but what people shared with me was powerful: and then, cash in hand, left town to take a lavish vacation.

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Novak’s Bar and Grill was where I learned to be comfortable with myself, which was a lot harder to do back then.

Novak’s Bar and Grill was where I discovered we could band together and create our own community.

Novak’s Bar and Grill was where I learned, for the first time, that the girls I’d gone to school with in Kirkwood didn’t get to write the rules that governed my life.

I talked to one woman who worked her way through college as a Novak’s employee. She credits Novak — the establishment and the woman — with providing the stable infrastructure she needed to become an adult. She was young, new to St. Louis and often broke, she told me, and there were plenty of nights she spent at Novak’s simply because she had no place else to sleep.

When I asked her what she thought of all the negativity that seems to swirl around Novak, her response surprised me. I was expecting defensiveness, denial. Instead, she referenced football. “A star quarterback’s best plays,” she told me, “are rarely made toward the end of his career.”

A while later I chatted briefly with one of the few men at the celebration. The man, who is 30, recalled Novak’s as the place where he first witnessed lesbians and gay men getting along together, as if they were in fact playing for the same team. Away from Novak’s, he says relations between men and women in the queer community were, and sometimes still are coarse at best. Another thing about Novak’s, he added, is that the bar was a place where people who were just starting the process of coming out took the brave and frightening first steps out of the closet. That was important, he said, and I agreed. And then I left.

Unfortunately, the handshake I’d shared with Novak shortly after her arrival wasn’t just the beginning of the pleasantries between she and I but the end as well.

The first time she backed out of our interview was due to her belief that I was holding the photos taken at the party by the Out in STL photographer hostage in exchange for an interview. I explained that I had nothing to do with the photos, that I was the writer, that we’d scheduled the interview, and that I’d be happy to ask the photographer to contact her. To which she replied: I wanted a photographer not an article. Can you understand?

Then, a couple of days later, she asked if I wanted to talk at noon the following day. Yes, I replied, with guarded enthusiasm. I’d love to.

An hour or so before we were scheduled to talk, my phone came to life and Novak backed out of our interview for the third time. Her life was too short for more negativity, she wrote. She told me she couldn’t really explain why people are negative about her; it’s something she doesn’t want to know about, she explained, much less read about. She told me she considered herself lucky that she’d been so successful. I don’t want to talk about what some others think, she texted. I never did

anything wrong. Too much partying maybe yes!

She was just a few edits away from finishing her book about Novak’s, she added. What she’d really love to do is open Novak’s in the same spot to leave for everyone as she departs this earth, but she doesn’t have any money.

And, regarding the celebration at Just John, this: My fundraiser the other night was just what I needed. People told me over and over, how much I changed their life! I didn’t know this. It felt so good, and I will take all those kind words to my grave.

Like so many I know who came of age before swipes and likes became mating calls, gay bars were for me stations along the queer version of the Underground Railroad. I didn’t learn how to hold hands with other boys at high school dances or Friday night football games or at activities organized and chaperoned by a church youth group in the suburbs. Instead, I got my hands on a fake I.D. and drove with trembling knees and an accelerated heartbeat to a bar on Olive called the Upside Downtown and then, when that closed for the evening, across the river, to East St. Louis, where, as my young mind interpreted it, there were so many boys and men who had come out for the sole purpose of meeting each other that the place needed to have three levels to accommodate it all.

In a way that my pre-millennial heterosexual friends and relations will probably never understand, those bars were so much more than the sum of their parts. I spent the first twenty years of my life being told what was wrong with me; for me and so many others, these spaces where I was finally able to experience what was right with me became, in some sense, a home.

Throughout my attempt to get to the core of who Nancy Novak really is, over and over, on the patio at Just John and during other conversations, I listened to perfect strangers tell me a story that was as much mine as theirs. No matter what people think of Novak’s personal or business conduct, the places she created had meaning.

For me, the sense of belonging and purpose I felt for the first time in my life in gay bars in various cities was transformational, but it was in those same gay bars that I came to associate consuming alcohol with a newfound sense of ease and comfort. As time passed, creating those warm, comfortable sensations required more and more alcohol. I’m far from alone in that experience: It’s a trap far more of us have fallen into than I would have ever imagined.

I quit, eventually, right before the election of the first president to openly declare his support for same sex marriage, but I left plenty of wreckage in my wake. And rather than take responsibility for my own conduct, I’ve harbored a usually quiet grudge during the past several years against not just the owners of gay bars but the alcohol industry’s lobbyists and marketing teams as well. In the name of liberation, they’ve poisoned so many vulnerable people and turned a nice profit in the process. Until I began chasing

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Novak down for an interview, I was bitter about that.

“We all made bad decisions,” said Karla Templeton, a former employee, who recalled being broke because of her own choices even though she earned $60,000 per year working at Novak’s, where she held a number of positions, including bar manager. “She can’t take the blame for everything.”

Templeton acknowledged that her paychecks did sometimes bounce, and that Novak was far from perfect, but these days she takes a much more holistic view. “Nancy carried the community in many ways, but as a community we are quick to place blame,” she said.

I asked Templeton how Novak carried the community.

“Whether it was Komen research for breast cancer or buying baseball jerseys, she donated tons of money and was always very supportive of the underdog,” she said. “I feel like in so many ways she was always there for people. She insisted that all of us, as employees, made sure that everyone who walked through the door felt safe, loved and welThe party became a family reunion come. She was an advofor former Novak’s employees. cate and an ally before we even knew what those terms meant, yet when she became tired and behaved like a human, we lashed out and stripped her down. Kinda like a lesbian Atlas.”

In the end, Templeton believes the collapse of Novak’s Bar & Grill was a community affair. “Everyone played a part in the demise of 4121 Manchester,” she said.

After I left Just John, I walked across the street to take a closer look at the actual building. The afternoon had started

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to fade into a comfortable, rose-hued evening of sunwarmed bricks and ripples of pleasant laughter in the near distance. Almost every aspect of living is so different today than it was in 1996, when Novak first got into “the bar biz,” as she described it in one of our early texts, that it’s hard to place her and her trajectory into a current context. My belief is that regardless of her personal strengths and weaknesses, we needed the space at 4121 Manchester and others like them. We wouldn’t have arrived where we are today — not that where we are is perfect by any means, but you cannot deny the progress that’s been made — without them.

Where else were we supposed to go? I wondered as I peered into the building, which was set to reopen soon as Ember Night Club and whose owners said they were envisioning a Vegas-style setup with St. Louis sensibilities. Church?

I wasn’t seeking spiritual guidance, at least not on a conscious level, but the morning after the party, which was a Sunday, I spoke with a pastor about the challenge of trying to write about someone as polarizing — and elusive — as Nancy Novak.

The pastor, who had also been in The Grove the previous evening at the trans prom, responded with a story of his own.

He’d performed a funeral once for a woman who owned a bar in a town of 2,000 in Wisconsin. “She lived out in the sticks, and at home she would let hunters and others come in and warm up,” the pastor told me. “Everyone was welcome, no one was a stranger.” He went on to say she was equally generous at her place of business. “At the bar, she was always helping people who were down on their luck,” he said.

“A sandwich here, a couple of bucks to sweep the floor there.”

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Because I’m interested in death in general and religious traditions in particular, I asked about the funeral service. “I talked about the ways she was living the gospel even though she never went to church,” he said.

It’s plausible, I think.

Am I suggesting that Novak is some sort of saint or quasi saint? Of course not. But she did help a lot of people, some of whom she knew, many of whom remain strangers to this day. I have no idea what she owes us for her mistakes, or what we owe her for the assumptions we’ve made about them and

The afternoon was bittersweet due to Novak’s cancer diagnosis.

about her. Because of the countless examples provided by the times we live in, my guess is that Novak is judged a little more harshly, and that her fumbles are celebrated a bit more savagely, because she is a woman.

Finally, contrary to what she texted me, I think Novak is probably an incredible interviewee, particularly if you like your interviews unpredictable and a little on the raw side, which I do. But in the end, the story of Novak and what she contributed to St. Louis is not one that will be narrated by her, at least not now. Former neighbor McIntosh said he still sees groups of familiar faces from Novak’s home and bar assembled on patios around town. “... and they still talk about it, and when they do their eyes light up. The end of Novak’s left such a hole that was never filled. It was the end of an era.”

The people whose recollective threads I find most compelling are those who conjure multi-faceted, layered and textured narratives of what Novak and the space she created meant in their lives. The story is theirs.

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travel

texas swing A QUEER TRAVELERS’ GUIDE TO AUSTIN, TEXAS

BY J OSS BARTON

S

o you want to be queer and weird in Austin, Texas? The progressive blue bubble nestled on the eastern edge of Texas hill country has cultivated many reasons for queer travelers from all sides of the rainbow to visit. Much like our beloved river city, Austin is a vibrant intersection of roots and blues music, stellar food culture, bohemian artisans, provocative queer artists and fabulous cultural and natural experiences.

En Route We recommend scouting the end of summer airline sales and snagging a flight from St. Louis Lambert International Airport to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Oneway, mid-week flights can be found for as cheap as $106.

Save the checked luggage for more exotic locations. Austin has a down-home, casual and funky culture, so pack the weekender with your favorite shoes, some dark denim, a threadbare tee, sunglasses and your favorite vintage statement piece. Book a room in the luxury Austin Motel, a kitschy retro-inspired property complete with a 1,100-square-foot, kidney-shaped pool, a continental taco breakfast and two on-site bars.

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Festival Facetime Austin City Limits and SXSW may be two of Austin’s leading cultural and live-music festivals, but you are a St. Louisan, and St. Louisans don’t need to stand in line for two hours to Though Austin has some buy $10 beers. (We have Busch notable festivals, the gay Stadium for that). Instead, community knows how to keep make plans for some of Austhe party going year round. tin’s LGBTQ-centered festivals FLICKR/ALEXANDER SHENKAR like OUTsider Festival, a fiveday immersive indie queer arts and transmedia festival dedicated to uncensored, raw and provocative queer artists, or get your full henny on at the FA L L 2 0 1 8

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Austin International Drag Festival with workshops, panels, meet and greets, performances and all the wigs your heart could ask for! If you are a queer athlete or philanthropist Fed by natural springs, traveler, consider registering Barton Springs Pool is one of for the AIDS Walk Austin or Austin’s crown jewels.

Hill Country Ride for AIDS FLICKR/LARS PLOUGMANN to connect with local activists and to benefit local HIV/AIDS care organizations. And for the queer cinephiles, Contrast Film Fest and aGLIFF bring some of the year’s most anticipated queer films, documentaries, art-house shorts and foreign films to Austin.

Gays Be Shopping Austin also offers amazing retail therapy for queer travelers searching for exclusive boutiques, vintage treasures, unique crafts and artisanal finds. For curated femme vintage, sift through the racks at Charm School Vintage and Feathers Boutique, or find your next mid-century modern collector’s item at Room Service Vintage. If you are more of an antique mall rat, check out the flea markets at Uncommon Objects for

taxidermy and Texas memorabilia or the Austin Antique Mall for aisles of kitsch, jewelry, pottery and collectables. Butch and masc-of-center queer travelers can also find the perfect retro-classic selections at Best Made Co. and Stag Provisions.

Selfies or It Didn’t Happen Dust off that favorite fanny pack, make sure your camera is fully charged and channel your inner norm-core dad for some of Austin’s iconic landmarks. Barton Springs Pool is one of Austin’s crown jewels. Fed by underground spring waters, the pool’s water temperature hovers between 68 and 70 degrees year-round and serves as a refreshing reprieve for swimmers escaping the summer heat. Located within Zilker Metropolitan Park, the pool joins other local attractions to make Zilker its own tourist destination. The park houses the Zilker Botanical Gardens, Austin Nature and Science Center and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, which features more than 200 touchable works from American sculptor Charles Umlauf’s collection. But a massive bat colony may actually be Austin’s most iconic and awe-inspiring natural attraction. The Mexican free-tailed bat colony numbers

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It’s WAY better than a photo booth!

®

Weddings, B’nai Mitzvah, School Dances, Graduation Parties, Lock-Ins, University Events, Corporate Parties, Brand Activations, Conventions, Fundraisers, Festivals, and More!

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the 28th annual whitaker

St. Louis international

film festival

2019 November 7-17

M I S S O U R I H I STO RY M US E U M | P L A ZA F R O NT E N AC | T H E STAG E AT KD H X ST. LO U I S P U B L I C L I B RARY | T H E T I VO L I | WAS H I N GTO N U. | W E B ST E R U. C I N E M A S T LO U I S . O RG

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about one and a half million, all living, breeding and hunting from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge along the Colorado River. Arrive early as spectators line the bridge and crowd the nearby Statesman Bat Observation Center for the best spots to catch the colony taking their dusk hunting flights. And pack some garlic, just in case.

Poppers & Potions Bar life isn’t always on the top of every queer traveler’s agenda, but for the explorers who prefer a kiki and a stiff cocktail with the locals, we suggest holding court at some of Austin’s favorite queer bars and dives. Cheer Up Charlies is a vegan music venue and club apt to host everything from a Rihanna tribute dance party to a queer-indie punk show or a full on electronic-house rave. The interior is narrow and small, but that means you get the chance to chat with a diverse range of Austin culture makers, queer glitterati, offshift industry folks and college students.

For a more traditional take on gay club life, hop in line at the Highland Lounge, where the dance party never stops.

Three stories of music and dancing and an open-sky patio

draw a heavy gay bar crowd. Come for drag bingo on an easy-sipping weeknight or go all in for the main Friday “Tucked” showcase. Saturdays bring resident house Congress Avenue Bridge is home and electronica DJs to the to one of the world’s largest bad basement bar, so make colonies, and they take flight every sure to pack a fresh bottle evening at dusk. of poppers or twerk to the FLICKR/EARL MCGEHEE rap and hip-hop heavy rotations on the upper levels.

For St. Louis travelers who lament the bygone culture of go-go dancers, head to Oilcan Harry’s and tip the cowboy-themed dancers as they prove to you that the disco balls and the trade is bigger in Texas!

And of course, no queer voyage could be complete without a trip to the local bear bar. The Iron Bear is the local watering hole for Austin’s cubby cuties and the site for monthly leather and fetish events, but if you can, polish the harness and come for the Sunday beer bust. Stick around for karaoke.

Remember, a trip to Austin should be as queer and weird as you want it to be!

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welcome Flow THE BEE’S KNEES OFFERS ACCESSIBLE, INCLUSIVE AND TRAUMA-SENSITIVE YOGA IN O’FALLON

Y

BY ME L I SSA M E I N Z E R

oga has come a long way from its origins in centuries-ago India.

No longer solely the purview of impossibly twisty young boys bound for the meditative life, it’s moved into something else, and that something — skinny cisgender white ladies in $90 pants, for instance — may not be an improvement.

But one woman in O’Fallon aims to reclaim the magic of the practice for everyone — not just the small, Lululemon-clad segment of humanity she saw represented and idealized in classes she attended as a student.

“Yoga spaces were not being very accessible or inclusive to anybody who was not in that cis-normative body goal,” says Nichole DiGiuseppi, founder of The Bee’s Knees Yoga, which opened August 3. “That’s a lot of people! There were so many yoga studios catering to that one group — what about everybody else?”

DiGiuseppi has been a yoga teacher for five years and a practitioner for many years before that. The inspiration for the studio came from noticing herself as every class’s “only.”

“First, of course, we always recognize our own Angel and Nichole DiGiuseppi of community. I identify as a The Bee’s Knees are queering up lesbian, so I noticed that O’Fallon’s yoga scene. first — I was usually the COURTESY NICHOLE DIGIUSEPPI only gay person in the room. I was fine, whatever. My wife, though — she would never come to classes with me, not even once. I can pass for straight. She gets misgendered more often, and I totally got it.”

When DiGiuseppi first thought of creating an

LGBTQIA-specific yoga class, she figured it had to be old news — one had to exist somewhere close by, right?

Nope.

The odd studio might hold a single class during Pride month, she found, but there was no consistent, standing class for the community. So she created what she needed, and she guards it — lovingly, but fiercely.

“I had some allies ask if they could come, and I very politely thanked them. I love them, and I said no,” she says. “I just said no, I just want to keep it for the community.”

Allies are welcomed with open arms at every other class on the schedule, she’s quick to clarify. But she’s adamant about maintaining a space for queer yogis.

The studio holds space for lots of other underserved populations, too. In the days following our chat, The Bee’s Knees was set to welcome a teacher with MS who planned a class specifically for those living with the disorder. A yogi who is a veteran will teach a class for those dealing with PTSD and combat trauma. And next spring, the studio hosts a class and workshop led

by Amber Karnes, the founder of Body Positive Yoga.

But what about the nuts and bolts of a yoga practice?

Downward-facing-dog is downward-facing-dog and “namaste” is universal, right?

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Not so fast, says DiGiuseppi.

First of all, gendered language is out, and body positivity is in. You’ll never hear a teacher start off a class with a chipper “Hey, ladies!” or talk about getting those bikini bodies ready for summer.

Also, teachers demonstrate modifications for every level of ability, and they don’t impose a hierarchy. The “best” version of pretzelasana isn’t the one where a student’s leg is behind their head and their full body weight is supported on one toe — that’s just one version of the pose, and another version where the student makes the shape with their leg moving toward their head with their weight fully supported by a chair is simply another version, not a lesser one.

A huge part of classes at Bee’s Knees is consent, too. Each student has a consent card that informs the teacher if they are OK with touch or not, and the student can change their mind and flip the card at any point in class.

“We have a lot of responsibility as teachers to give that control back to the student,” DiGiuseppi says.

And if a student does consent to contact, it’s really low-key.

“I’m not going to come up to you and shove you into a shape,” DiGiuseppi says. “The touching thing is more like if I wanted to come up and help you get the bolster under your legs.”

Another big part of BKY’s ethos is being trauma sensitive. Trauma-sensitive yoga works to remove triggering environmental circumstances. A pose some classes would call “hands and knees” is known as “tabletop” because “hands and knees” could read as sexualized to a person with trauma. The pose called “happy baby” involves lying on your back, legs wide — even for a person without trauma, it’s a very exposing pose. In DiGiuseppi’s classes, students can get the same effect curled around a bolster. And the ever-famous downward facing dog can be modified into something called “puppy pose,” which keeps a students’ eyes up and forward and cuts down on the presentation aspect of down dog.

There’s no need to mention trauma or call it out in offering the alternate poses, she says.

“I just offer it without explanation,” she says. “People just kind of go with what feels good to them.”

The driving force of all this thought and sensitivity, DiGiuseppi explains, is her notion that no one should be denied the benefits of yoga, no matter what they’ve been through or what kind of body they move through life in.

“The magical part of yoga is where you use the tools, the poses, that help you connect to your breath,” DiGiuseppi says. “We disconnect from our bodies all the time — we’re walking around in our heads. Yoga is for me figuring out how to connect to my body. I feel like everybody deserves that. I don’t care how much money you make or what you look like or what gender you are or what gender you identify with. Everybody deserves that.”

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