a writing assignment for an old class.
“Take me to the Gay Bar!”
When asked to write about an experience going to a gay club, I laughed to myself. I can understand why this would be a very provocative and interesting assignment for a student who has never been to a gay club. However, I spent 4 years practically living in the local gay and lesbian clubs and bars in the Cincinnati area. I have lived that life for so long I didn’t think I’d be able to write about it from an objective view. That, and when I go to the bars, I am in my own world, filled with its own complicated drama and escapades. But I thought I’d give it a shot one Thursday night in Northside at Club Bronz (formally known as Jacob’s on the Avenue). I had spent much of my past in this bar so I was weary of being able to look at the experience through a virgin pair of eyes, but once I arrived, I found out it was relatively easy. Thursday being Ladies Night meant cheap drinks, which subsequently meant it was fairly crowded. Furthermore, it was crowded with a lot of people I knew, which surprisingly enough, didn’t hinder my objectivity much.
Since it was Ladies Night, and Bronz is a queer bar, the majority of the numerous patrons were women. It was then that it hit me that this is probably not a normal aspect of every day straight bars, and was something that I had apparently gotten used to and come to expect at this particular bar on this particular night of the week. I suddenly realized just how few resources queer people have for meeting one another. Heterosexual people don’t have as much of a problem because it is expected by the majority of society that everyone is straight unless proven otherwise. There are few instances in which the reverse is true, expect in the bar scene.
As I stood in the corners sipping my drink and watching my surroundings it jumped out at me how separated the people were, while at the same time being intermingled. There were definite groups that had been formed prior to my arrival: there were the flaming gay boys surrounded by (presumably) straight women, the “sporty” butch and femme looking lesbians in their cargo pants and ball caps, the preppy femme lesbians with their hip hugging jeans and popped collared shirts, the older gay men sitting at the bar talking amongst themselves, the “artistic/goth/alternative” crowd which had the greatest mix of genders, and those who were somewhere in between. While the space was sectioned off into what many would describe as cliques, I noticed that the groups intermingled freely. It wasn’t like highschool where different groups were forbidden to interact with one another. The young “sporty” women would stand and talk to the older gay men at the bar, the preppy women and somewhere in the middle women would dance together, and the straight women would be fawning over the occasional drag queen that walked by. I saw every different combination of groups interact with one another in a plethora of different ways. And everybody sang karaoke. It was as if regardless of the fact people were categorized by similar physical aspects of themselves, it was an unspoken feeling that everybody there shared a common bond: we are all queer, or at the very least love and respect them.
Aside from the feeling of overall togetherness I was sensing, and the disproportionate number of women there, it seemed like any average straight bar I had been to that gets a lot of business. There was that one incredibly drunk girl who was falling over on everybody and making a general ass out of herself. There was that one really drunk guy who was loud and obnoxious. There were couples hooking up for the first time, exchanges of phone numbers, and couples that looked as if they’d been together for years. There was constant gossip happening within groups. There was that one person who was running around from group to group trying to find out all the gossip. There was that one person who was crying in the bathroom being consoled by friends because their ex was here with somebody else. There were drunken heated arguments that could have turned into a braw. Someone would sing a song on karaoke that everybody on the patio would sing along to. People danced until last call. People bought shots and took them together in big groups. It was the same stuff that you would see if you went to any area where a lot of people and alcohol was involved.
I think out of anything, this similarity is what surprised me the most. When I used to be a barfly, I felt as if my queer bars were so incredibly different than the straight bars I would frequent with my co-workers. People were crazier, danced more, drank more, and had more drama. But looking at it from an objective stance instead of being immersed in the experience, and comparing it with my nights spent with straight friends on their turf, there really isn’t much difference in what actually takes place. Granted while the atmosphere is more accepting, and everything seems slightly more exaggerated than it should in real life, essentially I found that all people go through the same types of experiences when it comes to the club scene regardless of sexual orientation.
