Queer AF

The mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs has reminded me of being 18 and driving with my then-boyfriend (his name was Blaine, believe it or not—what the fuck was I even thinking?) into Birmingham one Friday night to go to The Rage, which was THE preeminent gay bar in the city at that point. This was 1989. Bush The First was in office and “traditional American values” was on the menu everywhere you turned. It was the height of the AIDS crisis. I’d been out since, like, birth but I’d moved away to college and was finally meeting other gay people and doing gay things—and not just sex. And anyway, I’d been having sex already. I had a boyfriend. I wasn’t so much “newly out” as I was “making my debut in gay society.” I was really feeling myself.

The Rage was where you went to dance. But it was too early to dance, so we hit some other gay bars first. Eunice Crabtree’s Cut-Rate Delicatessen and Bait Shop first, where we drank mai tais and played pool with a drag queen named Candy. Then to Mabel’s Beauty Shop and Chainsaw Repair where Blaine seemed to know everyone and I felt weird because I didn’t know anyone and everyone kept remarking on how I was underage. Some old guy grabbed my ass. I laughed, but I didn’t like it. I also remember thinking “This is what gay people do.” So I would relax and not be too wigged out by some creepster grabbing my ass. It worked, for the most part.

I saw drag queens. I saw men in leather, just like those guys at The Blue Oyster Bar in the Police Academy movies, only these guys weren’t the butt of some straight guy’s joke. I saw lesbians who dressed like lumberjacks. I saw lesbians who looked like Cindy Crawford. I saw gay men who dressed like lumberjacks, too. And preps and jocks. Gays in camo and wife beaters, in cowboy hats, in trucker hats. A lesbian named Jan said I was pretty. I said she was, too, and everyone laughed.

A guy named Jon who was about my age and dressed like a college student asked me to go dance with him, so we danced to “Take It While It’s Hot” by Sweet Sensation. Then “Let Me Be The One” by Exposé. Then a 12-inch dance mix of “The Pleasure Principle.” Something by Madonna, I think a remix of “Like A Prayer.” We were the only two dancing. We didn’t care. Then Blaine was saying we needed to leave because the DJ at The Rage started at a certain time (was it 9 o’clock?) and we were meeting his friends Allen and Terry. Jon said he’d see us over there. I was glad, because we could dance some more. Jon was a good dancer. Or, he was good at whatever passed for dancing in a gay bar in the late 80s. I just moved with the music and Jon did, too.

At The Rage, Blaine parked in a makeshift parking lot behind a building across the street from the bar. It was under trees and there was no streetlamp or anything to light it. I grabbed his hand—because I couldn’t see and because I wanted to hold his hand. He made some comment like “Look at you” or “You’re bold.” Something to the effect of it took a lot of chutzpah to hold another man’s hand in the open in Birmingham, Alabama in 1989. I just laughed.

But as we walked across the street toward the entrance to The Rage, its purple neon sign beckoning us, a pick-up truck drove by and slowed down. Because of course it would be a fucking pick-up truck. It was crammed with what looked like a college or high school football team’s offensive line. One of them hung out the passenger’s window and asked “Is that place right there a gay bar?”

Blaine said nothing.

I, of course, said “Yeah.”

Blaine’s grip on my hand tightened, I remember that clearly, and I also remember he didn’t let go of my hand. There was a long moment or two where nothing happened. The truck didn’t move and we didn’t move off the sidewalk and no one said anything. It felt like one of those scenes in movies where the background stretches, like time and space have become distorted. Then Blaine pulled me off the sidewalk and we walked around the pick-up, which sped off, and walked into the foyer of The Rage, where a statuesque drag queen looked me up and down, scowled, and told Blaine “You’re gonna get this place shut down bringing chicken in here like this.” I’ll never forget being called “chicken.” Mainly because I had no idea what it meant at that age. Blaine laughed. I laughed. The drag queen laughed. But she let me in.

Jon was already there. The DJ was playing “Skin Deep” by Cher and the dance floor was packed. Blaine went to get drinks and I forced my way to the center of the dance floor where Jon and another guy (his name was Vance) were dancing and huffing poppers. I took a hit and liked it and kept dancing.

It was years later and I was in my early 30s before I realized I could have died that night. Just like that scene in Torch Song Trilogy where Matthew Broderick’s character gets hit from behind with a baseball bat. Those guys in that pick-up could have been there to gay bash. They weren’t—or, rather, they didn’t. Maybe they’d been there to bash queers, but they didn’t. But I didn’t know that and there I was, holding a man’s hand and walking across the street like it was what I did every day.

We didn’t have mass shootings then, either. That came ten years later with Columbine, but even then it didn’t occur to me that those guys in that pick-up could have done something like that. Maybe not with assault rifles, but they could have thrown Molotov cocktails into the bar and trapped us all inside. Or doused the place with gasoline and struck a match. Lots of things, really. They didn’t, but they could have.

I thought of that night—my first real night out at real gay bars with other, real gay people—when the Pulse nightclub massacre happened and I think of it again now that we have another mas shooting at another gay bar. Because as far as we’ve come from the Reagan and Bush eras, where they would have gladly and gleefully let AIDS take every single one of us, and since it didn’t, we now have to worry that some maniac will show up in the one safe place we have and open fire on us. Because someone told them we’re abominations and used other words to make us seem less human, less than someone who would take a rifle and kill people with it. And if that is humanity, then I don’t want it.

I fought a lot as a kid. To defend myself. Older, larger boys. Some were at school, but some were my cousins. So I’m aware that some people just fucking suck, but goddamn, I thought we’d be farther along by now. Only we just keep getting pulled back, again and again. And I guess it never ends. I tell younger LGBTQ+ that it gets better, but I’m starting to feel like I’m lying to them. And I don’t really know what else to do. Tell them it doesn't get better? Steal their hope?

I’m open to suggestions, because I’m all out of ideas.