A Place For Us:
G ay Bars
b y Lee Lynch
A few weeks ago m y lover said, im petu
ously, enthusiastically, "I want to go to a gay
b a r!" I felt her urge throb in m y veins, too. It
had been a long tim e since I’d sat am ong m y
own people and watched ou r rites and
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m ysteries unfold in a dim , sm oke-filled room .
N ot long after this we traveled to Eugene to
hear Gerd Brantenberg read from Egalia s
Daughters, and we joined the crowd that
afterw ard dispersed, then regrouped, at a bar
affectionately called “ The Riv,” right in
Eugene’s dow ntow n m all.
A new gay bar is always exciting to me,
tho ug h so often the same as every other. This
one was large, w ith a long bar at one side o f
an open space, and an equally large if empty,
dance flo o r on its other side. B linking lights
outlined the ceiling over the dance floor and
seem ed to pulse to the beat o f loud, unintel
ligible m usic. There were a few tables across
fro m the bar, as well as a pool table, and
several dykes in wheelchairs conversed there
w ith others on straight-backed bar chairs. We
clim bed som e steps to overlook the scene
fro m a raised platform w hich held still more
tables.
It was a bare place, with nothing to deco
rate it but the patrons: wom en in baggy west
ern casual, m en in crisper togs. There was a
sm ell o f cigarette sm oke everywhere. 1 tasted
o f it and nothing else fo r hours. O ur voices
grew hoarse with it and with the increasingly
raucous m usic.
My visit led me to th in k o f Bonnie Zim
m erm an’s work. She’s a teacher o f lesbian
literature and w om en’s studies at the Univer
sity o f California. One them e she’s identified
in o u r books is the search fo r haven, for what
she, along w ith Isabel M iller, calls “A Place For
Gs" (the original title o f Patience and Sarah).
I can’t th in k o f a truer exam ple o f life m irrored
in literature.
M ost young people, uncertain o f their
identities o r goals, and rejecting arrange
m ents the w orld has made fo r them , under
take such a search. B ut m ost young people,
grow ing older, settle into the very worlds
they’ve fled, o r at m ost, stretch them , subtly
rearrange them , till they can com fortably nest
w ithin — and w ith o u t before the eyes o f the
w orld.
Gay people — well, we may even relish the
th o u g h t o f adapting to the cozy old world o f
o u r fam ilies, o f the generations w hich have
produced us, but we trip on the very doorstep
that we’d enter. The m ost conservative o f us
— w ho look rig h t act rig h t move about with
the telltale lover — carries he r/his difference
w ithin. And that difference som etim e, som e
how, w ill always flash inadvertently, when
least expected, before the w orst possible au
dience. I th in k back to Sherwood Anderson’s
story “ Hands." The hands in the piece belong
to a gay man, and betray him finally, because
in them — their gestures, their energy, their
fo rm — he carried and expressed w ithout
Just Out, M ay 1986
design, all he was.
W here w ould such hands go unrem arked
except fo r their beauty? W here would Hall’s
Stephen G ordon dance w ithout notice in her
severe and m asculine skirted suits? Where
w ould M oll Cutpurse drink and brawl, fight
over a fem m e with Bee bo Brinker? Where
cou ld Patience and Sarah "m e lt" unobtru
sively into a com er?
There is no place on earth we’d all fit but,
drinkers o r not, in a gay bar. And I suspect
there is no place on earth one can wander
w ithout finding The Riv under a thousand
different neon-lit names.
My first gay bar was called the Swing
Rendezvous. The tradition that shortened the
Riv’s real title transform ed m ine to The Swing
or The Sw ing-a-long. (And this liberty with
given names is certainly a queer tradition.)
The bar was in Greenwich Village, sm ack in
the m idst o f the thriving folk scene where
B ob Dylan and Joan Baez were beginning to
attract national attention. Inside The Swing
we knew little o f all th a t
This insular w orld o f The Swing was m uch
sm aller, physically, than The Riv. Up some
steps, you'd enter the barroom itself, with a
juke box and an old wooden phone booth
cram m ed along the opposite wall. I sm oked
then, so sm elled only the perfum es of
fem m es, the hair tonic and after shave o f
butches, the sting o f spilled alcohol, the reek
o f beery breaths. It was a lesbian bar, fo r the
m ost p a rt and the regulars, the cruisers, the
strangers who stum bled in, perched on stools
to watch new entries in the gold-flecked m ir
ro r behind the bar. A tin y back room was lined
. w ith tables, and offered a dance flo o r so tig ht
you cou ldn’t be sure w ho your partner was,
unless the song was a slow one, and you were
doing the “ bum p and grind.” D oing it that is,
at least until the waitress with the im pressive
nicknam e “ Chopsy” to ld you the bartender
wanted you to stop. It was illegal to dance so
close, o r was it illegal to dance at all? Different
bars seemed to interpret the laws differently.
“ D ’youse," Chopsy would ask, "want the place
closed down?" Heck, no. It was a place for us.
At the Music Box around the com er I was
m ore likely to find a hom ogeneous, rather
than a hom osexual, mix. An interracial
straight couple. Two older gay men. Some
very young lesbian couples w ithout I.D.’s
darting looks shyly at everyone, like kids at
the circus fo r the first tim e. Kids w ho’d been
well trained to keep their enthusiasm s under
cover.
We didn’t dance at the Box at all. The pre
sence o f straights inhibited us. This place was
ours only in geography and am biguity. O bvi
ously they’d take anyone’s m oney in hopes o f
catching on with som e free-drinking crowd.
We probably would have been safer dancing
there, where they were as uncertain o f their
fortunes as we were o f ours, and because it
w ou ldn’t be as m uch o f a target fo r gay busts
as a Swing. But we were young, we were
alone in ou r w onderland (as Johnny Mathis
assured us on every juke box), and we were
students o f The Life.
The Life. Another popular song back then
was "The Good Life,” sung by Andy W illiam s.
It was im m ediately adopted as a sweet-sour
anthem by gays. How The Life “ seemed to be
the ideal.” How it "le t you hide all the sadness
you fe e l. . . " B ut I always m arvelled when I
learned that the phrase The Life was not used
exclusively by gays, but shared with prosti
tutes. And I suspect with as m uch pride by
both. The pride o f outlaws claim ing som e
th in g o f their own. S om ething d ifficu lt to
nam e: “ the love that dare not speak its
nam e," in Radclyffe Hall’s words.
B oth groups were sexual outlaws: neither
w ith a place o f o u r own anywhere but the
underside o f society where, hidden by the
shade o f night and secrecy, those living in the
lig h t could and did v is it whether to vent their
rage or take their pleasure, and then steal
away. Steal ou r excitem ent our strange con
fined freedom , then deny it and, doing so,
enforce our denial, too.
A lone in ou r W onderland. For twenty years
I th o u g h t I, o r the couple I was in, was the only
one alone. That there was som e connection
between underw orld people that kept me sit
tin g at tables fo r two while they pushed a
half-dozen together and still overflowed
them . A t The Riv last night I watched an
isolated couple pretend not to watch the rest
o f us, bravely dance on an em pty floor, elbow
th e ir way to the bar to order m ore, probably
unwanted, drinks. They d o n 't know yet what I
so lately learned, that being alone is like being
w ithout a place. There is no one, nor is there
anyplace, but what we take, o r make, for
ourselves.
H istory has given us the gay bars. My lov
e r’s urge to visit one was a call o f the blood.
The Riv. The Sw ing-a-long, The Box. are rich
w ith generations o f our lives, and I'll always
return, now and then, till there’s another
place fo r us where I can be with m y own and
get what I need.
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