Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Harvard Review

Contents:

• GAY BAR: WHY WE WENT OUT
• FOR THE LOVE OF GAY BARS
• WHY GAY BARS ARE DISAPPEARG ACROSS AMERI
• A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME
• GAY BAR: WHY WE WENT OUT
• 'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE
• GAY BAR BY JEREMY ATHERTON L – A GOG OUT MEMOIR

GAY BAR: WHY WE WENT OUT

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Harvard Review. Gay Bar: Why We Went Out. Jeremy Atherton L’s Gay Bar: Why We Went Out is a seamls batn of memoir and cultural history, orbg the yteryear of queer nightlife—a ptivatg exercise that hg on the limatns of one genre provg the necsy of the other.

The ocsn for Atherton L’s shamelsly hybrid text is the realizatn that, jt as queerns has graduated to the mastream, and cisg now primarily exists the digal sphere, so too has our qutsential gatherg space—the gay bar—lost somethg of s urgency. “Gay is an inty of longg, ” Atherton L wr, as he looks back on years spent those dark, crowd plac, “and there is a wistfulns to beholdg the form of a buildg, like how the sight of a theater stirs the imagatn.

An epigraph om filmmaker and wrer Derek Jarman, a major figure gay rights activism at the height of the AIDS crisis, opens one chapter: “When I was young the absence of the past was a terror. Siarly, the act of rememberg the way thgs once were be Gay Bar a radil necsy—and a remr that history, after all, is a privilege. Havg e out after the emergence of AZT, Atherton L acknowledg that he was once repelled by what the gay past reprented.

FOR THE LOVE OF GAY BARS

AIDS, police btaly, a history of racism and vlence—the gay bar don’t get off easy jt for beg a sometim lifavg haven for a privileged few. He scrib his early experienc as a gay man gay plac wh a tenrns for his younger self that never que veers to sentimentaly, prentg stead a hyper-ntextualized nostalgia wh well-curated dips to the historil rerd.

The gay bar I’d once ped to as a teenager, armed wh a fake ID and the need to outn the stranglehold of the closet, is now a . Atherton L wr about gay culture as havg been built on the ia of imatn, “the longg embedd feelg real—on embracg that feelg, and refg to accept realns as ’s been nstcted for .

” And if the gay bar was once a place where we hoped we uld fd ourselv—to be someone different om who we’d been before—we did so wh tentn, buildg an inty om the ground up, playg the part until we’d memorized every le.

WHY GAY BARS ARE DISAPPEARG ACROSS AMERI

Now the empty gay bars are “st-off exoskeletons, ” reprentative not of the promise of our future selv but of a time that has e and gone. And the gay bars the larger cy where I live now are often overn by straight tourists and dnken bachelorette parti, appropriatn beg a natural nsequence of beg seen.

A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME

As the remag partiers n attt, gay bars obvly still exist—“this is what we fought for, apparently”—but Atherton L mak the se for why they’ll never be the same. ” But upon reachg the wistfully movg ncln of Gay Bar, s narrator—a historian-as-participant—heads out of the bars and to the streets.

Even before I ever went si a gay bar, I was aware of the smell.

Surely if some passerby saw me even sually glance , they’d figure out I was gay.

GAY BAR: WHY WE WENT OUT

The nroticism of beg closeted is like that strs of seeg a p while you’re stoned, but 24/7, and also, you like gay turns out that Gay Bar Smell (a ee logne ia one of the Queer Eye guys should sh on) was an spic troductn for me, and an inic one at that. It’s even referred to the very first le of Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, the recently released book wrten by Jeremy Atherton L that aims to pture the trici, plitns, and fabulons of this culture. ” Y, gay bars are more than whatever batn of sweaty armps and Calv Kle Eterny the nose picks up impli.

'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE

A safe space, a therapist’s office, a dance club, a live theater, a place to get super dnk (or pleasantly tipsy), a spot to fd a hookup, an tablishment to drown sorrows, and an oasis to pe realy are jt some of the ways to scribe what queer waterg hol mean to the gay mass. Though, that absolutely happens too; nothg pairs better wh the third sp of “I Wanna Dance Wh Somebody” than a plastic cup of seltzer that tast like bbg alhol and Bar: Why We Went OutGay Bar: Why We Went OutNow 11% Off“Some people treat them jt as a bar, but to so many others ’s a muny, ” Steven McEne says.

He’s the general manager of Metropolan, a gay bar loted Brooklyn, New York. Cooley, the owner of the popular Los Angel gay bar the Abbey, tells this story: “One time a kid was put on a plane by his parents at LAX, but stead he snuck off and took a b here, ” he rells.

GAY BAR BY JEREMY ATHERTON L – A GOG OUT MEMOIR

” Simply put, Atherton L wr, “A gay bar, will be said, affords refuge. ” Before I realized the importance of havg a strong LGBTQ muny around me, gay bars were an omo mystery.

Much like genr reveal parti today, they seemed both obnox and dangero to a closeted me, ignorant of the mere ia of a gay muny. The first time I reluctantly stepped si a gay bar was at that effervcent spot around the rner om where I lived, bee a iend had ma his missn to brg me. I had never seen so many gay people one room before.

This was a facet of my gay evolutn that I was only remd of after readg Gay Bar. “You get a lot of first-time bar narrativ, pecially om olr gays, ” says Atherton L of the re of passage, as important as your first kiss, or the realizatn that “poppers” isn’t a nickname for buttered rn.