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 MOMENT FOR MATTHEW

It would have been easy to drive straight from Moran, Wyoming, a stopping point between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, to Denver in a day. Evan and I took turns driving so the nine-hour day wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch, especially with extended hours of summer light. But our journey along Beartooth Highway and through Yellowstone had gotten us in the habit of making frequent stops, to snap pics for social media or, more importantly, to actually savour a moment just for the sake of it being one to share. 

 

Let it take two more days to reach Evan’s home. I wanted more leisurely stops in Grand Teton and we both enjoyed taking in the bougie cowboy vibe in Jackson. More importantly, I knew we’d be passing through Laramie, Wyoming and that was a required stop.

 

In truth, I only knew one thing about Laramie. Prior to our road trip, it was one of only four towns in the state I could name. Laramie will forever be familiar to me as the place where Matthew Shepard was attending university and where he was beaten outside of town on October 6, 1998. He died in hospital on October 12. A stop in Laramie was a must. I wanted to go to his memorial even though I didn’t know for certain that one existed or what it looked like. I just expected one.

 

Thankfully, Google and Google Maps filled in the gaps. On a quiet Sunday morning, Evan and I wound up wandering the impressive campus of the University of Wyoming, first trying a divide-and-conquer strategy for reading plaques on park benches and statues. 

 

Not Matthew. Not Matthew. Not Matthew. 

 

I felt silly and awkward. So focused was I on finding Matthew Shepard’s memorial that I didn’t care in the least about these other people who’d had a bench dedicated to them. No wink, no nod, no calculation for how long they’d lived. 

 

Sorry about that.

 

Evan used his Maps app to get us warm and then warmer. The blue dot on his phone screen took us to a treed lawn on the other side of the building we’d parked in front of. We went from “warmer” to spotting the likeliest spot, a park bench adorned with all sorts of items. As we neared, rainbow stripes came into view. 

 

Once in full view before us, Evan and I marvelled at the collection of items left as part of a makeshift tribute. Multiple paper flags representing different versions of Pride. An oil painting of the rural Wyoming landscape. Bundles of flowers, now dying. A rubber duckie (just because?). A “Say Gay” sticker. A pink unicorn. Candles. Miscellaneous items to represent et cetera.

 

Our visit was on June 22, well into Pride Month so I don’t know if all the decorations were part of marking the larger occasion or if the memorial bench is decorated with items year-round. I choose to believe the latter. I’d like to think there are others who make a point of coming here when life takes them somewhere near Laramie.   

 

While we visited Stonewall Inn in May, the Matthew Shepard memorial may have been more moving, more personally relevant. I was four at the time of the Stonewall uprising. I would have been preoccupied with spying on my sister and her friends playing with dolls (all they had to do was ask me to join) and settling for playing with a collection of animal figurines. I did not hear any news about Stonewall until well over a decade later. But I was thirty-four when Shepard was beaten and left to die. I remember the news. I recall the sadness, the anger, the revulsion. I know his death in Wyoming had a chilling effect on me 2,100 kilometres away in Vancouver. Was I being alarmist and melodramatic thinking something heinous in a small town could happen in progressive Vancouver? Not at all. Two years later, Aaron Webster was beaten to death in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. That only added to fears for my safety. Could I be openly gay anywhere?

 

1998 was a vulnerable year for me. I was becoming more and more open about being gay. For the first and ONLY time in my educational career, I was out to staff. It was not on account of bravery on my part. There were three other gay teachers at the school. Being closeted wasn’t even possible. Oh, how the freedom made for so many laughs during lunch in the staffroom! When I transferred to another school after six years, I went back to being closeted. I told myself I wasn’t hiding anything; rather, I was tired of coming out declarations. I can see now that was bullshit.

 

I can’t adequately explain the fear. It’s an accumulation of life’s experiences: of elementary and high school taunts about being a fag; of my best friend outing me in twelfth grade when I still hadn’t come to terms with sexual identity myself; of fears I’d lose my job teaching in Catholic schools if parents or the nuns found out; of more taunts from carloads of dudes cruising down gay villages because The Gays needed to feel insecure even in their own ghettos; of a total lack of bravado. What happened to Matthew Shepard stoked the fears already within me. 

 

Being gay was unsafe, be it in the form of a certain voice inflection, a limp wrist (both of which were natural mannerisms for me) or when expressed through holding the hand of a boyfriend. Aside from a six-year career blip, being fully out has only been a relatively recent thing. I knew not to dare express myself freely. Twenty-seven years after Matthew Shepard was murdered, I’m letting down my guard, most of that thanks to Evan who has long refused to suppress or edit himself. 

 

I am thankful my visit to the Matthew Shepard memorial was with Evan by my side. We held hands. We hugged. I liked that. I think Matthew would have, too. He’d brought us to the University of Wyoming in a state that, due to lack of familiarity, probably has a lower tolerance for queer identities than the national average. But I’d like to think that, over time, Matthew has come to empower and embolden us. 

 

Like Stonewall. We will not be silenced. To remain more fearful would only be a nod to the people who killed Matthew, instead of a tribute to him.

 

 

 

  

AD APPEAL

I’m not a TV watcher. Not having a television will do that. The old habit is gone. When I check in to a hotel, it doesn’t even occur to me to turn on the flatscreen. Thus, I’m not up to date on all the latest TV commercials. Does that insurance company still use the gecko mascot? What’s the latest McDonald’s jingle? What is the most commonly advertised prescription drug in the U.S. and which side effects sound the worst? 

 

These are not burning questions.

 

Nowadays, my ads are limited to the annoying interruptions on YouTube. I abhor the bank ads. I quickly close the informercial that villainizes bananas. And I will never ever have anything to do with Grammarly due to their overly long ads. (What could they possibly teach me about editing?)  

 

It would be odd to say I miss commercials. Still, I can look back and recall some memorable ones. As a kid, I liked the seasonal Coke commercials that included the song “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” The animated Tang commercials with Martians spark nostalgia. As well, the Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” commercials with Clara Peller were amusing.  

 

Some commercials caught my eye because of the guy featured in them. A dozen years ago, I blogged about how I crushed on David Naughton when he was the dancing-singing spokesperson in Dr. Pepper’s “Be a Pepper” ads. More than that, I ogled Lucky Vanous in the Diet Coke commercials at least as much as the women who objectified him. 

 

In the late ’80s/early ’90s, another series of commercials proved ogle-worthy due to the models in them. The ads for C & R Clothiers, primarily a men’s suit chain, were must-see worthy. Typically, they featured impossibly hot men, the kind with chiseled faces and bodies that were GQ cover-worthy (before the magazine went with celebrities). As the song “What a Difference a Day Makes” played, a model would be featured first in a work uniform or casual attire looking sumptuous enough. Then, he’d don a suit, supposedly looking hotter as a well-dressed man. 

 

The ads may have been thirst traps but they didn’t seem to help C & R’s business which went into bankruptcy, then folded as some stores were taken over by Men’s Wearhouse. How could the ads have not led men to go into a suit-buying frenzy? How could C & R have not overtaken Brooks Brothers? 

 

I would posit that C & R had the wrong target audience. Sure, gay men like me took notice when the commercial aired but the ad would have otherwise appealed to women. A hot man like Lucky Vanous might boost diet soda sales as women are more prone (and pressured) to try diet products, but the homoerotic suit dudes may have, in fact, turned men away from C & R. I suspect that another problem was that the models looked equally hot in the “before” (non-suited) image. Hot “before,” then hot “after” shots just meant the featured dude was a hot guy. A guy watching at home in an undershirt, boxers and flip flops would have enough sense to know that wearing a suit would have inherent limitations in improving his appearance. While ZZ Top might be right that “every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man,” a C & R suit would have no greater impact than a suit from any other men’s store.

 

Alas, the ads are long gone, along with the company. How nice that I can still find them on YouTube… after I close that dang Grammarly ad.