PALM PILOTS

I recently read Gay Bar by Jeremy Atherton Lin (Back Bay Books, 2021) and several of his remarks have left me thinking about how much things have changed. It’s an app world now but do apps deprive us of experiences? Indeed, Lin asks, “Is it enough to have a gay bar in the palm of your hand?”

 

I’m an old fogey. Searching for men on Grindr or some other app feels like using the Sears catalog to pick a package of underwear or, to modernize thinks only slightly, browsing the IKEA catalog for a new living room chair. 

 

In truth, it’s rare that I shop for anything online. I don’t like Amazon. I also don’t like how things are presented, how I can’t try on an article of clothing first. (“You can just send it back,” friends say.) I’m an in-person shopper. I like the experience more. I appreciate seeing things displayed in an actual room. I like the element of surprise, finding and buying something that was not on my list. 

 

Books come to mind more than any other merchandise. I’ll sometimes order from Amazon or, when I’m feeling more righteous, directly from the publisher, when a local bookstore doesn’t carry a particular title. Typically, however, I ask the bookstore owner to order me a copy. I have a long list of BOOKS TO READ on my Notes app on my phone. (That’s an app I love as a writer!) Still, I discover new books in stores and follow instant whims, the new treasure suddenly shinier, the other titles still saved on my reading list. 

 

To be sure, there is a lot I don’t miss about gay bars. I don’t like that the space inherently fosters a drinking culture. I’ve known many gay people my age who have struggled with alcohol. If the problem didn’t start in gay bars, these places certainly didn’t make the addiction any easier to deal with. I also don’t like how I might spot a cute guy only to never establish eye contact. So often, it felt like people looked right through me or past me. 

 

Still, there was the music. I loved how people would rush the dancefloor when the deejay played Madonna’s “Vogue” or when CeCe Peniston sang “Finally.” I could freely dance on my own or drag some or all of my gang onto the floor with me. 

 

That was part of the good stuff. When we went to a gay bar it wasn’t all about picking up a guy. I learned early on the odds were much greater I’d be going home alone. A little attention might be nice but, if not, it was a social night with friends. Dancing, laughing, catching up. If I hadn’t constantly hoped for—i.e., obsessed about—a boyfriend, gay bars would have been the source of even better memories. I met some of my best friends at gay bars or made the shift from acquaintances to good friends. Something about smiling and sweating profusely together while staying on the dancefloor for a fifth song in a row—anything by the Pet Shop Boys—will bond you.

 

Lin’s question again: Is it enough to have a gay bar in the palm of your hand? 

 

Old fogey says no. It doesn’t have to be a gay bar—later I got really into a gay volleyball league—but there’s something special about actual instead of virtual queer spaces. Sure, my answer is part of a more general sentiment: “Get off your phone!” In a real queer space, you can’t curate your experience as much. And that’s a good thing. Just like I find treasures in a bookstore, you come into contact with people whose thumbnail profile pic you’d have passed over. Conversations occur for a range of purposes, not just about whether someone is hookup material or has boyfriend potential. 

 

I should point out that I’m an introvert. If I’d had an app for meeting guys back in the day, I might never have ventured to gay bars. It would have been more convenient. I’d have saved gas. I’d have been spared in-person rejection which is worse than online crickets or ghosting. I know gay bars have changed. They seem to host a lot of drag queen shows that attract straight women. I hear some of my peers complain about this, but gay bars are trying to survive and if serving brunch mimosas to Suzie and her seven besties helps pay the overhead, then bring on the drag brunch! It’s partly because so many gays are hooked on apps that gay bars have a different clientele. We’ve relinquished what was once almost exclusive territory.

 

I may be part of the problem, too. It’s not apps that are keeping me away; it’s age. I’m partnered and well-settled. I don’t need to tell a stranger my coming out story. I don’t need a ten-dollar glass of ice with a few drops of vodka. But, yes, I would still really love to dance! However, even in my heyday at the bars, sixty-year-olds were not the common patron. Gay culture has always had an ageist element. But maybe it’s the same in the general population. Sixty-year-olds aren’t the target club goer where dancing is a prime part of the entertainment.

 

My last venture out was to a gay pub which isn’t quite the same thing. I was there to attend a memorial for a friend whom I’d met thirty years ago at, yes, a gay bar. Good times, sadly all in the past.

 

 

 

  

A MAN’S CLOSET AIN’T SO MANLY ANYMORE

I daresay, my hand is not on the pulse of current pop culture or fashion. (The use of “daresay” should be a dead giveaway, a nod to my high school days when my English teacher was on a bent, having us read all-things-Bronte. Apparently something like The Outsiders was too avant-garde. Alas, still haven’t read it.) Still, I can see how Harry Styles gracing the cover of the December issue of Vogue is a bit of a thing. First guy to appear solo. Not sure that it’s the kind of thing those men’s rights advocates living in tin roof sheds in particularly rural parts of red states will be wooting about. Frankly, it doesn’t mean all that much to me...except to the extent it does.

Harry’s got great hair and a decent body but, if I were to creepily swoon over someone half my age, Harry wouldn’t be it. The guy’s coughed up a couple of catchy songs. I don’t change the radio station on a road trip—sigh, remember those?—when his old boy band’s “Story of My Life” comes on. I’m partial to this year’s “Adore You” to the chart-topping followup, “Watermelon Sugar,” an ode to female oral sex that warrants but an eye roll compared to its contemporary, let’s-not-“sugar”-coat-anything, “WAP” by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion. (Okay, I know a teensy bit of pop culture if only because I’ve always been a Billboard music chart nerd.) Harry Styles could exist or not exist and my life would be just fine.

What I do like about this Vogue moment is Harry’s attire. Us Magazine reacted to the cover shot and the other photos included in the Styles feature as, “Gender fluidity at its best!” On the cover, Harry wears a white lace Gucci gown under a black blazer. (At first glance, I couldn’t tell from the thumbnail shots on the Twitter feed on my iPhone that it was a dress. I thought it was a stretchy, oversized t-shirt (and a hideous one at that). The cover shot isn’t as daring as it could (and should) be because it’s cropped above the knee, hiding much of the flow of the dress and the telltale hemline. This is not a Billy Porter moment. But it’s the fact that the celebrity isn’t Porter (or even Sam Smith) that makes this its own moment. Styles, by all accounts decidedly straight, is upping the bar for what is metrosexual.

The photos inside are mixed. One shows him in a black kilt which seems rather ho-hum unless you want to ogle his bare chest. A shot of him standing in front of a bike wearing a longer plaid kilt—positively skirt-like—is more of a gender bender (blender?), especially with his feet accessorized by what appear to be punkish, lacy green stockings. In my mind, the most feminine look is in a photo of Harry wearing a black suit with pronounced shoulder pads and either a to-the-ground black skirt or very flowy pants. The look is completed with what looks like the framing for three hoop dresses, topped by a sheer white tutu, belted with a bright pink bow. (Sorry if my descriptions are wonky. I’ll never have the vocabulary or the insight to be a fashion writer.) To be sure, this is not Esquire magazine. If anything, it seems as though Harry Styles crashed a Tilda Swinton photo shoot.

Of course, what we see in high fashion rarely shows up on the subway or in the sandwich line at Subway. Male models have been wearing feminine garments on catwalks for years and I haven’t caught myself glimpsing some guy wearing an Alexander McQueen runway knockoff dress while walking the seawall or brunching on the Hungry Man’s Platter on Commercial Street. Still, I’ve been amazed at how quickly times are changing and how people barely raise an eyebrow.

Sometimes it’s a young guy’s ear that I eye. Long ago, I thought I was bold when I had a simple stud in one ear—which one, I don’t remember; the punctured lobe long ago covered up all evidence. That’s, of course, nothing now in a world where people seem intent to outdo one another in terms of ink and piercings. It’s not the number but the accessorizing choice that I notice. I’ll spot a guy grabbing an oat milk latte ahead of me with a large hoop earring or something vintage from grandma’s jewelry box. Okay, much bigger statement than my wee stud of yesteryear. Nobody takes a second glance at Latte Boy’s ear, except this old guy. I’m not judging; I’m in awe.

More often, though, I’m drawn to a man’s hands. Not out of some pervy idea that I can size up a guy’s crotch. (I’ll leave that to Trump’s fascination with Marco Rubio.) I’m looking at fingernails. Sometimes it’s just one nail painted in Neon orange or hot pink; other times it’s all the nails covered in one hue of polish or sporting a mix-and-match mosaic. As far as I can tell, these aren’t Goth or punk looks, intended to jar fuddy-duddy onlookers. Whether it’s one nail or ten, I’m empowered by their freedom of expression, I’m heartened by the fact that what once would have been so bold and so risky in terms of personal safety, is now so accepted. A guys painted nails elicit no more reaction than someone opting to wear brown shoes instead of black. We’re that much closer to letting people just be.

And to think there were days I thought my purple Converse were too much. As I laced them up, I played out the day ahead in my mind. Would I have to wander down some alley, risking being called “girly” or “faggot” just because my footwear drifted too far from It’s-a-boy blue toward It’s-a-girl pink?

I’ve seen men walk through Vancouver’s mutt-mix scene on Granville Street and stroll down trendy Robson Street in leather jackets and skirts or shapeless dresses reminiscent of my mom’s 70s muumuus. I’ve heard no whistles or taunts. If anything, I was the most inclined to stare—not to gawk but to take it in and maybe laugh at myself for once worrying that my disco era platform shoes in eighth grade looked too much like high heels. I have a floral patterned (birds of paradise?) Ted Baxter shirt that only needs to be dry cleaned because the shoulders have gathered dust in my closet.

Oh, we’ve come a long way. Just this morning, while researching a writing project, I watched a silent film from 1915, with a Laurel and Hardy-type duo hamming things up with now-dated slapstick—lots of pratfalls and kicking and bopping one another (Why waste a good brick?). To take the guffaws to another level, the larger man (naturally) pops in a used clothing store and comes out donning a dress and wig, a heavy veil drawn over his scruffy face. Anything for a laugh. Milton Berle, “Some Like It Hot,” Flip Wilson’s Geraldine and Tom Hanks’ “Bosom Buddies” followed in this comedy genre. Male femininity was a sight gag, not a fashion statement or matter of true self-expression.

Can guys really wear anything they want now? In 2007—not so long ago—a ninth grader in Nova Scotia got bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school. Have we evolved that much?

I have no doubt that today’s younger men with nail polish and skirts have heard a few derisive laughs and putdowns. For every fashion-forward male, there’s a dude who thinks men peaked as Neanderthals. I’m embarrassed to admit that, while I applaud greater choices today, I can still get judgy or uncomfortable myself. When I was dating Daniel in the spring, he wouldn’t go anywhere without draping the strap of his small carrying bag over his head and one shoulder. Sure, it looked a little boxy, but I always had to swat away the thought that it looked like a purse. I believe they called it a murse (man + purse) on “Seinfeld”. (“Friends” had a thing about a “man bag,” too. It’s a rare occasion when the show feels dated.)

Repeatedly, I told myself that Daniel could wear whatever he wanted, but it’s the first word of this sentence that reflects so poorly on me.

One Sunday morning, as we set out for Daniel’s favorite cafe, a guy in a car full of guys—they always need an audience of their peers—rolled down his window and yelled, “Nice purse, faggot!” Daniel, who never seemed phased by anyone, to the point where I thought it might be part of some sort of clinical diagnosis, walked on with me, continuing his thought. Two blocks later, however, he muttered something minor about his “purse,” a sign he’d been rattled. (A week later, he bought a new carrying bag in manly gray with a hipster Herschel label; still rather murse-like.)

Maybe I can appreciate all this progress better from a little distance. It’s a sign of age that I’m seeing some changes, however wonderful, as for a younger generation. I had my time, my pierced ear drawing its share of knowing grins and frowns. Gosh, for a time I even wore purple jeans. I’m not yet ready to be put out to pasture in a Bermuda shirt, Dockers shorts, knee-high brown socks and sandals, but I won’t be making space in my closet for tutus. Over to you, guys. Please do carry on!