On slate.com this morning, I read an article about "first gay bar" experiences written by prominent members of the LGBT community. It got me thinking of mine.
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Though I came out early, I was something of a dormant homosexual until I got to college. I had danced with a boy at a high school dance, had briefly dated someone in the months before I left for UC Davis, but I would say that it took college to really jump start my life as a gay man. And it possibly began on the night I went to the Powerhouse.
Weeks into my freshman year, I met Everett at a "kiss-in" event in the main quad of campus. I don't remember if we kissed or not (probably did), just that we became fast friends. And less than a month later, a few of his friends drove up from the Central Valley to visit him, and we all decided to go to San Francisco for the night.
Everett's friends knew San Francisco like a map, but only if that map consisted of nothing but gay bars. They laid out a simple agenda: drive to the City, go to the Powerhouse, come home.
The Powerhouse was described to me as a leather bar, and without further knowledge, I had no expectations, nor did I have a valid ID, which they all assured would be no problem. I sat in the back seat of a stranger's car with a friend I had only begun to know and wondered to myself, "What am I doing here?" all the way down I-80 and across the Bay Bridge.
By the time we found parking under an orange streetlight in an alley littered with trash and shopping carts, I wanted to go home. The neighborhood was miles away from the suburban cul-de-sacs I was used to, and I kept thinking that tomorrow would be Wednesday, and I had an 8:00 class in the morning, and this was not the kind of place I would like my body to be discovered.
(Ironically, Sam and I now live within blocks of this location.)
We walked a few minutes before reaching the Powerhouse. On the drive down, Everett had tutored me to act like I belonged there and to avoid all eye contact until we were away from the front door. But all we had to do was push through two heavy curtains, and we found ourselves inside. No security, no questions, just a sparsely populated bar, sticky floors, and porn playing on every TV in sight. We walked past the bartop and into a larger room near the back with a larger screen. A dimly lit doorway leading further back stood conspicuously in the corner.
Everett knew what was back there. His friends knew. I, however, did not, and naively followed them through the doorway, down a handful of steps, and into a narrow hall that reeked of smoke and echoed with the sounds of men.
I may have been naive, and possibly even a tiny bit stupid, but I wasn't clueless. When my eyes adjusted, I saw the rabbit hole for what it was: a space that bent all expectations I ever could have had on what happens in public and what does not. In my sheltered existence, I knew that what I saw should not be happening, could not be happening, yet there they were, and there I was.
I did not turn back, nor did I want to. I stumbled further, past men who leaned with their backs to the wall. I felt hands on me as I brushed past the bodies to which they were attached, but I still forged ahead. I did not know where I was going, and I had already lost Everett to a shirtless man near the entrance.
At this point, I probably stood no more than five or 10 steps deep, but I had clearly left all traces of myself far behind. Only when I felt someone firmly grab my arm did I turn around.
I don't remember much about him but two things: his breath, which smelled not unpleasantly like cigarette smoke, and the firmness of his chest when I put my hand on it.
But he knocked me out of this dream and made it real. No longer was it a pantomime of intimacy that played itself out before me; this man was real, rough, ready, and I was not.
I nodded at him, pried my arm out of his grip and walked back up the stairs, back to reality, or a reasonable facsimile of it given the circumstances, and stood in the larger back room as I processed what just happened, what could have happened, what did not.
In the other corner stood a man, probably in his 30s, wearing nothing but a neon-green jockstrap with a body that begged to be touched. And people did. Men, leery-eyed and far less attractive, molested him in unseemly ways, and I felt unseemly watching, even if he didn't seem to mind, me or them.
By the time Everett and company appeared out of the back alley, I had debated backwards and forwards, held caucuses with myself to try and muster up the courage to say something to this Adonis that stood before me, the likes of which I had never seen before, and never to such a degree of openness.
Everett asked if I was ready to go home, and though I was, tired and overwhelmed, I told him that I needed just one more second. Nothing would be lost if I made a fool out of myself, but how it would have haunted me had I not taken the chance. So I waited for an opening, walked up to this man in all his (more or less) naked glory with a list of things I'd say, from how I just wanted to say hello, didn't want to seem rude by staring, to how I hoped he was having a good time. All to what end, I still couldn't say.
I put my hand on his shoulder. It was warm to the touch, and taut, like palming a basketball. He turned to me, but he didn't really see me. I completely forgot my script, opened my mouth, and said, "You are really beautiful." Those were my exact words, I still remember, and I'd like to think that right then, he did see me, really looked at me when he smiled and said, "Thanks."
On the drive home, Everett's friend pulled onto Treasure Island so I could pee. I stood on the rocks against the water; it must have been two in the morning by then. I peed off the edge and looked out across the bay toward the City, home to my first gay bar. I could still smell the smoke on the man's breath in the back alley, hear his voice when he said, "Hey," gutteral and resonant. And memories of that lime green jockstrap took me all the way home and into my bed deep in the morning, where I proceeded to lay there, exhausted but unable to rest, until the sun seeped through my window.
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