Sunday Funday
Why the Gay Bar Refuses to Die
Yesterday, my boyfriend, Jonathan, and I celebrated the fourth anniversary of our first date with a chill brunch with friends, followed by a few drinks at our corner gay bar. There has been much ink spilled over the alleged death of the gay bar; and while it is certainly true that many cherished queer watering holes have closed, or been invaded by straight girls’ bachelorette parties, or — God forbid — gone full-on hetero, gay bars continue to exist, because they still fulfill a vital social function.
As we toddled from our bougie brunch spot, fueled by overpriced eggs benedict and strawberry mimosas, we decided that weren’t in the mood to spend yet another dull afternoon languishing in our apartment; so we ducked out of the Sunday afternoon drizzle into a gay bar for a leisurely cocktail. We perched ourselves on two of the many open stools at the bar and ordered a pear martini and margarita and settled in for a little light banter with the bar staff and the few white-haired regulars. The atmosphere was a bit sleepy, so we moved on to another bar down the block that is always hopping on Sunday afternoons.
Predictably, there wasn’t a single bar stool to be had. We were forced to hover near the bar and nurse our drinks, ever vigilant and poised to pounce the second a seat became available. The longed-for moment came, and my beloved quickly inserted himself between, on one side, a raucous group of older men exchanging catty but good-natured barbs and clutching each other’s shoulders as they roared lustily, and on the other side, a thirties-something man sedately playing on his phone. An older queen who had followed us from the first bar slipped past us and greeted us chummily and then joined the cackling throng beside us. Jonathan and I then quietly returned to our drinks.
I’m an incredible extrovert, so for me, Sunday Funday at the gay bar ends up being a full-contact sport. I take a sip of my beer or my Rose Kennedy and dance and sing along to whatever queer icon’s track is playing in the background. Yesterday, it was Chappell Roan and Charli xcx. I was living my best gay, H-O-T-T-O-G-O, Brat girl summer. And then I mentioned to Jonathan that we needed to catch up on House of the Dragon; at which point, the guy on his phone perked up and informed us that he had heard the season finale was likely to be a little disappointing. From there, he and I spent the next 45 minutes debating and effervescing over Game of Thrones lore, and by the end of the afternoon, he and Jonathan were acting like the best of friends. Not that they were, of course. But, the climate of bonhomie created by the upbeat pop and dance tracks, the unrestrained laughter, and a well-mixed cosmo or two helps to feel like some kind of connection, even transitory, is possible and worth coming out of our lonely apartments for.
On any Sunday afternoon, as I scan the room from my bar stool, I can see such coincidental friendships pop up among strangers who look up from their phones long enough to share a joke or a casual observation that then turns into a connection, maybe transient, maybe long-term. I also see guys cruising for their next hook-up, flirting and shooting their shot. Sometimes that shot lands, and sometimes the shot quite clearly gets shot down. I see regulars and out-of-town queers mingle; after all fresh meat is fresh meat in any gay bar around the world. I see whole teams from the gay sports leagues descend en masse and flood the bar in their cut-off tees and crop tops and raise the ambient noise to deafening. I see friends express delight in running into each other, hugging and drawing each other near the bar to order a drink.
For all of our talk about the death of the gay bar, because of the ubiquity and transactional efficiency of hookup apps, or the resources provided by gay community centers, or the emergence of mixed and mainstream spaces for queer people to connect, it is clear that there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction in an explicitly and unreserved gay social space, of which the gay bar is the quintessential exemplar. It is no accident that even gay sports leagues always seem to connect themselves with the local gay bars as sponsors and the venues for the leagues’ sports-related social gatherings and fundraisers. Say what you will about the gay bar becoming obsolete, I don’t believe it. I don’t see it.
Beyond anything else, there are queer people for whom the gay bar is an essential outlet for seeking community. If you’ve spent any time at all in a gay bar, you cannot fail to have noticed how many people, especially older LGBTQ+ folks, arrive by themselves and sip their drinks silently at the bar, hoping that someone will strike up a conversation with them. Gay bars are havens for lonely people; and yet they can be the very spaces that sometimes reinforce people’s loneliness and amplify their sense of not belonging. Gay men, in particular, can be very cliquey; and as a result, even young gay men may feel like they’re invisible and undesirable when they can’t seem to form or break into a friend group. And for other people, the gay bar may be the only space in which they feel safe to be fully queer. Maybe they have to extinguish the flame at work, or maybe they still have a wife and kids in the suburbs, or maybe they don’t feel safe to present or dress as a trans person anywhere else.
What I’m pointing to is a gay bar ethic. The contention that the gay bar is on its way out or that it’s merely a place for people to get wasted or hook up is dismissive of its critical social function and its centrality to queer identity and culture. It’s easy to get lost in our own conversations, our own groups of friends, or our own need to blow off a little steam and fail to see what’s going on for others. It’s natural for us to make assumptions about why someone else might not find us desirable or include us in their clique’s vacation plans. The gay bar is the locus for many high-stakes gambits to which we are often oblivious. I think we need to recognize how much really goes on in that space and to learn to be sensitive and compassionate to what others may be seeking and experiencing.
Sunday Funday is a microcosm of the gay experience, if we would only look up from our phones and our vodka sodas to see.
Abundant blessings,
Fr. Ethan +