To Build a Home

27 | Big City Gay Bar

The first time I went to a gay bar I was seventeen years old and visiting Pittsburgh on my own to check out the college art program. I was a senior in high school and had never left Windber––except for summers in the Outer Banks before my parents had died and a school trip to the Baltimore aquarium––let alone been to a big city. Pittsburgh seemed like a shimmering gray Oz-in-a-bottle from my seat on the bus, with skyscrapers of varying sizes and shapes packed onto a tiny triangle surrounded by rivers that could only be accessed by a bridge, dozens of them sprouting out in all directions but leading to one central place like the yellow brick road.

I'll never forget the fear when one of the art students, a third-year sculptor with dangly earrings and frosted hair, singled me out in the cafe by inviting me to join a small group that was going to a bar that night. They didn't say the word gay, but I knew, in the way they didn't say the name of the bar and the secrecy of it, like so much of my life up until that point, the unspoken promise of something sexy or thrilling, and how it seemed like they could only find what other kids on campus already had by visiting an unnamed bar.

I considered not going, turning up the volume of the television so my assigned roommate wouldn't hear the knocks at the door of his room or the calls of my name from the hallway. In my imagination, we would stay in the dorm and sit on his bean-bag chairs, watch reruns of Will and Grace, and maybe order a pizza. I looked at my outfit in the mirror, a navy shirt with a popped collar and khakis, the fashion at the time, and wondered if I would stand out or fit in. But I knew I was always going to go from the first mention of the bar.

We walked several blocks across town after sharing a bottle of rum between the six of us in the dorms beforehand. I already felt woozy and one of the college kids put his arm around my waist to steady me as we walked. They talked about a lecture on medieval art in contemporary culture, that Blake and Jordan were hooking up behind Drew's back, whoever they were, and how shitfaced they were planning on getting. They passed around a cigarette, which I declined, and asked me about the boys back at home. I told them about the trolley graveyard and the few disappointing encounters I had there with guys from the internet.

As we walked, I thought about Phil, back in Windber, and Darren, probably driving the truck around town, yelling out the window at cute girls and trying to find a bar they could sneak into. I wondered what they would think of my new friends, with their hair dye and their piercings and their ripped clothing. Most of them had bright painted nails and I was pretty sure they all, at some point, had hooked up with each other based on the jealous looks and the way they would touch each other when they talked.

Although I didn't feel like they truly saw me, not the real me, it was a glimpse of what art school and a big city could offer me. They had embraced me without question. For the first time, I was part of a group, heading out on a Friday night. All of the years in Windber and I had never felt this way. It only took a few hours to belong in Pittsburgh and I never wanted to leave.

The bar was in the middle of a city block. There were no markings outside to indicate it was a bar, but there were a few clusters of men outside smoking. They looked at us like they had overheard us say something nasty about them, but also like they didn't see us at all. We pretended the same and went inside, no one checking our IDs. I didn't notice it at first––I was too overwhelmed by the number of people and the sight of men dancing, their arms wrapped around each other, hips pushing against each other, kissing openly––but it was the first time I had ever been in a room full of only men outside a locker room, which came with its own set of anxieties.

The group walked directly to the crowded dance floor in the middle of the room. Almost as if on cue, they threw their arms in the air and started bouncing to the bass of the electronic music. I didn't know the song and I didn't know the moves, so I found a spot against a wall and watched. I took in everything: the dancing, the drinking, the young men, the older men, the shirtless men, the tattoos, the glitter, the sticky floors, the mixture of fruit punch and sweat in the air, the line for the bathroom, the stumbling kids, the ones taking shots at the bar, the collective sense of freedom, the fear, the stolen glances, the laughter, the revolving door of men, coming and going like a neverending factory line of Ken dolls.

From my spot against the wall, I noticed someone staring at me. He had dark eyes and light hair, a tight shirt, and his hands were in the pockets of his jeans. His focus was relentless. I tried to look away and find something else to distract me, but I kept landing on his dark eyes, still staring. Occasionally he bit into his lip or nodded his head, ever so subtly, and it sent a chill from my chest into my stomach, like a winter storm growing in my gut. I don't know how many songs played, but eventually, he walked through the dancing crowd, past my friends, and put his hand on the wall next to my face, leaning in close to mine. He didn't say anything. I could smell his fruity gum and see the moisture painted across his lips from licking them. A moment later he kissed me, shoved his wet tongue in my mouth, and the rest of the night was a blur. It was, like so many other moments on that trip, a first––the first time I had kissed another guy in front of other people. We weren't in the backseat of a car or against the cold metal of a trolley in the middle of the night, shuffling around quickly so we wouldn't be found. I don't remember how long the kiss lasted, but there was enough time to memorize the softness and size of his lips, the feel of his skin as my hands found their way under his shirt, my crotch busting at the seams of my denim as we pressed further and further into each other until there was nothing but the music and the darkness.

I spent the rest of my college experience the following years chasing that feeling. I went from bar to bar in Pittsburgh, quickly becoming a regular at all of the downtown spots, but I never found it. I never saw that guy again, although I'm not sure I would have recognized him if we passed each other on the street. I returned to Windber after that weekend wondering if anyone else at the high school had ever become so completely one with a stranger or knew the true depth of a kiss, the galaxy that could swallow your entire body if you closed your eyes hard enough. They had walked hand in hand around the halls at school or cuddled on the bleachers at a football game, flaunting their easy love, effortless and familiar, ever since I could remember. But they were just kids and I was an adult after that weekend. I spent the rest of my school days wondering when I would get to return to the city and live a life they never thought to dream of.

When I moved to New York after college, I went to all of the bars, the dives and the tourist traps. I watched men in cowboy boots dance on the bar and men in cages with boxing gloves. I flirted with men and they bought me drinks or I bought them drinks. Sometimes we went home together and sometimes, even, we had breakfast in the morning, a small spread in the corner of their narrow kitchen, kneeling on mismatched furniture and ignoring our morning breath. We'd always see each other on our nights out, these nameless men, and maybe we wouldn't remember exactly how we knew each other, but we'd smile with our eyes and acknowledge that somehow we were connected.

With Charlie and the boyfriends that came before him, I'd go to piano bars and sing along to show tunes or watch drag queens perform on tiny stages, their big blonde wigs touching the ceiling. In my lifetime, I had probably been to dozens of gay bars, but it wasn't until that night at Trinkle's, in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, dancing in front of Darren, that I felt a glimmer of that heat and fear and excitement that I had felt when I was seventeen years old visiting art school and making out with a stranger in a crowded city bar. Darren and I weren't even kissing and I could feel it. But the thrill didn't come from the strangeness of our bodies or the crowd around us, it came from something familiar, something that started long before I even knew it was there, and grew with every stolen glance in high school, every secret drawing in my marble notebook, every shared bath time or bedtime or dinnertime with Noah, every time he saved me and every time we looked at each other because we were the only two people who understood what Phil's absence really meant. We danced and I felt it all in that moment and I knew he did too. Then the song "Gloria" played. 

Author's Note: This was a really fun flashback chapter to write that I never planned. I hope you liked it. Thanks for reading!

Did you miss Sadie as much as I did?