This is by no means a new question, but it’s still one of my favorites.*
I was 19 or thereabouts, living in the San Gabriel Valley (not even THE Valley, the OTHER valley), half-heartedly attending Christian college, when I discovered a small contingent of students who would carpool into West Hollywood most weekends. The first weekend I decided to go along — strictly for observational purposes, of course, wink wink — they went to a tiny gay dive bar on the outskirts of Pasadena that was the most terrifying place in the world. Two important things happened almost the moment I walked in the door: a butch woman all in leather began roaring AC/DC’s “Big Balls” (it was a tiny gay bar, but not too tiny for a travel-sized karaoke stage), and a bartender poured us a round of rainbow shots. I was mesmerized by the magic of rainbow shots, and bitterly disappointed when, years later, someone pointed out that there was probably just differently-colored dye at the bottom of each shot glass.
I was deeply and quietly glad when, years after that, someone showed me that it is in fact possible to make authentic rainbow shots without the use of dye. There is still magic in this world, if you know where to look.
There were more and bigger and better gay bars to come, there were girlfriends to be wooed more or less tentatively in the very near future; but the Boulevard was the first, and the Boulevard got me through the early terror. I had set foot in a gay bar and no one had called my RA to report me. No one had thrown me out.
One year later, almost to the date, I would SWEAR I had seen Kate Moennig at the Abbey. I believed it so sincerely that even now I cannot trust the memory. Would I feel so strongly about something that had really happened?
Two years later, almost to the date, I went out dancing with the girl I was soon to come out for, along with two of her very nice but decidedly not-pro-gay friends. As the night wore on and the drinks made me bolder, I eventually suggested we visit a place I’d danced at before in Silverlake. It was a gay bar. “Mallory,” one of the other girls asked after she’d unsuccessfully tried to flirt with the male bartender. “Is this a gay bar? I…kind of think this might be a gay bar.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “This definitely isn’t a gay bar.”
The next time we went to that gay bar — for Reader, a gay bar it very certainly was — it was on a double date with my roommate and her girlfriend. Reader, we had a marvelous time.
*Perhaps this question is not terribly important to you; perhaps you are very young and attractive and allergic to labels and have never been to a gay bar and find all the queer society you need on Tumblr, in which case: I honor your experience. Tell me about the first gay GIF you ever printed out and placed under your pillow.
[Image via 365daysinLA]
