To Build a Home

26 | Small Town Gay Bar

From far away, Trinkle's was a small box tucked into a hill surrounded by large rocks. You wouldn't even know it was a bar but for the way the building pulsed with music. We could feel the vibration as Sadie parked the truck, like the box would burst at the seams at any moment, the rocks rattling against each other and the side of the bar, the percussion of the evening landscape flirting with the electronic dance music inside.

Sadie shut off the ignition and turned to me in the passenger seat. She looked at me up and down. "What are we going to do with you?" she said, not really to me, but to herself. "Take off your shirt."

"What?" I asked, chuckling.

"You can't walk in there looking like that. They'll eat you alive." She lifted herself off the seat and untied the flannel shirt from around her waist. Before handing it to me she sniffed it. Pleased with its cleanliness, she handed it over.

I held it at a distance, unsure of her standards. "You really think this is going to make a difference?"

"Ryan, listen to me. Are you listening? These queens haven't seen any metropolitan meat since the summer of '14 when some unsuspecting Pittsburgh gays took a pit stop on their way to Philly for Barbra Streisand's farewell tour. Do you really want to be the first twink they see under the disco ball? With your slim fit v-neck and mouth full of teeth."

"Ok, ok." I said, slipping on Sadie's flannel shirt over my own and buttoning it. "Jeeze, Sadie, you're scaring me. What's it going to be like in there?"

Trinkle's was just as small inside as it had appeared in the parking lot. It wasn't very clear what the name meant from the interior, whether Trinkle was a person or a feeling or both. I was expecting something whimsical and colorful like a Katy Perry music video, but everything was black, not in a gothic way, more like the bar, and everything in it––the pub tables, the jukebox, the stage––had been left on the grill too long at a neighborhood barbeque and instead of taking it off or starting from scratch, they just continued to turn it over and over again above the fire, hoping that eventually it would turn into something good. It looked like someone's basement.

I tried not to make eye contact with any of the men smoking or drinking at the pub tables scattered around the room after Sadie's sales pitch in the truck, so we beelined to the bar in the corner. I ordered a vodka soda––"Make it a double!"––which caused Sadie to roll her eyes, and then she told the bartender to give us two shots of tequila instead and a couple of IPAs. The bartender was the first man I managed to look at, probably in his forties, with a gray beard and leather harness strapped over his bare, hairy chest. His nipples were pierced, and I wasn't sure, but I thought I saw a tongue piercing, too, when he took our order.

When he turned his back, Sadie and I looked at each other with wide eyes and giggled. "So Trinkle's is like The Eagle?" I yelled over the Donna Summer song playing from every speaker mounted on the walls like something out of RadioShack.

"Trinkle isn't a bird," she yelled back at me over the music, taking our drinks from the bartender.

"The Eagle. It's a bar in Chelsea. You know, leather, nudity, guys blowing each other on the roof."

"Jesus Christ, are you going to talk about New York all night? Because I'm going to need another shot first." She raised her hand for a drink like a student with an answer to the math question.

The bartender came back asking for cash or a card. Sadie and I fought over who was going to pay, but I was ultimately the winner, citing the fact that she drove and lent me the clothes off her...waist. Then he told me the total. "$12 for four drinks?" I shouted. "I would have let you pay if I had known they were so cheap!" I said to Sadie. "We're definitely not in New York."