Might be because you’ve spent a lot of time there. It’s the right height, you can easily watch the door from there, and the bartender knows your favorites, so why not? As in the new book “Gay Bar” by Jeremy Atherton Lin, it’s one of the best places to be. Long before it was legal for him to go there, Jeremy Atherton Lin, like most teenage boys, imagined going to the bar - though in his case, Lin imagined what it was like in a gay bar. Ironically, he says, “I can’t remember my first.”Īs someone with a foot in each of two continents, he does have favorites, places that are now closed, re-named, or been moved. He’s danced in them, had sex in them, drank and moved through gay bars with his “companion, the Famous Blue Raincoat,” and anonymously, and with friends-not-friends. Some bars were carved out of a backroom or basement, or a place that used to be something else, maybe another bar. They’re cavernous or they’re small and packed with men dancing or doing more or they’re thick with bachelorette parties and tourists, to the annoyance of the gay men who’ve claimed that bar.
Those usurpers don’t know the legacy of feeling gay, but “t goes pretty deep.” Some bars have opened just for the night.
