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Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

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Jeremy Atherton Lin

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“People who think that queer life consists of sex without intimacy are usually seeing only a tiny part of the picture, and seeing it through homophobic stereotype. The most fleeting sexual encounter is, in its way intimate. And in the way many gay men and lesbians live, quite casual sexual relations can develop into powerful and enduring friendships. Friendships, in turn, can cross into sexual relations and back. Because gay social life is not as ritualized and institutionalized as straight life, each relation is an adventure in nearly un-charted territory—whether it is between two gay men, or two lesbians, or a gay man and a lesbian, or among three or more queers, or between gay men and the straight women whose commitment to queer culture brings them the punishment of the "fag hag" label. There are almost as many kinds of relationship as there are people in combination. Where there are -patterns, we learn them from other queers, not from our-parents or schools or the state. Between tricks and lovers and exes and friends and fuckbuddies and bar friends and bar friends' tricks and tricks' bar friends and gal pals and companions "in the life," queers have an astonishing range of intimacies. Most have no labels. Most receive no public recognition. Many of these relations are difficult because the rules have to be invented as we go along. Often desire and unease add to their intensity, and their unpredictability. They can be complex and bewildering, in a way that arouses fear among many gay people, and tremendous resistance and resentment from many straight people. Who among us would give them up? Try standing at a party of queer friends and charting all the histories, sexual and nonsexual, among the people in the room. (In some circles this is a common party sport already.) You will realize that only a fine and rapidly shifting line separates sexual culture from many other relations of durability and care. The impoverished vocabulary of straight culture tells us that people should be either husbands and wives or (nonsexual) friends. Marriage marks that line. It is not the way many queers live. If there is such a thing as a gay way of life, it consists in these relations, a welter of intimacies outside the framework of professions and institutions and ordinary social obligations. Straight culture has much to learn from it, and in many ways has already begun to learn from it. Queers should be insisting on teaching these lessons. Instead, the marriage issue, as currently framed, seems to be a way of denying recognition to these relations, of streamlining queer relations into the much less troubling division of couples from friends.”

QueerQueer TheoryQueer Politics
Book:The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life
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“You really believe all that? About how there’s only one end in sight for people like you?” Amity said, tipping her chin back toward the sky and pulling her hat partway down her face, so only her nose and mouth were visible. “Horseshit. You only think that because you’ve never seen different.” Esther started to reply, but Amity held up a still-bloody finger. “Don’t interrupt me, pup. You know I’m right. You’re a woman and you love people who aren’t men, is that right?” Esther hesitated to make sure she wasn’t interrupting. “That’s right,” she said, “but—” “No but, it’s just true,” Amity said, proving that her rule about interruptions only ran in one direction. “And you’ve only ever read stories about people like you, right? You’ve never met one of your kind before now. Well, except for Beatriz,” she added. “Ain’t that so?” “Yeah,” Esther answered reluctantly. She sensed a trap coming, but she couldn’t figure out how to step around it. “All those stories you’ve read,” Amity said softly, pulling her hat back off her eyes by a few degrees. “Who gave ’em to you?”

Queer Politics
Book:Upright Women Wanted
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“Perhaps the most radical aspect of queer politics was its claim not only to transcend the homo/hetero boundary but to do so in such a way as to challenge the sexual regulation and repression of heterosexual desire, above all female desire. Queer politics, it was claimed, had a lot to teach those accustomed to the narrow confines of ‘male’ and ‘female’ heterosexual roles in relationships. The re-working of notions of monogamy and the send-up of marriage through queer weddings, the greater sexual adventurism, the rejection of the concept of gay men and lesbians as ‘victims’ in favour of assertiveness and redefinition, and the emphasis on the creation of more egalitarian relationships in the domestic, sexual and social spheres, were all cited as examples of how queer could contribute to a new sexual agenda of empowerment.”

QueerQueer TheoryQueer Politics
Book:Sexual Politics: An Introduction
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“A man I used to love died in a hospital alone. We had grown apart and lost touch. I met a common friend one day at a bar and he told me about my ex-lover. Nobody claimed the body for two weeks: His parents refused, his only sister could not be found, and the hospital was certainly not going to release the body to his AA sponsor. So after two weeks they cremated him like all the other unclaimed bodies, put his ashes into a jar, and then allowed anyone to take it. But no one did. He was buried by the municipality in an unmarked grave. I drove to the cemetery. He was buried in Lot 12, Block 86, Section D. Incredibly precise locations for a person who is nothing but ashes unclaimed.”

DeathAnonymityQueer Politics
Book:Burden of Ashes
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“I've had my heart broken too many times to think that visibility means everything. I don't think it changes who steps up and who stands back. [...] For some people visibility is about saving a life, and for other people it's about making things more comfortable. But again my dears, it's not about comfort. Safety, yes please. But comfort, comfort is overrated. As far as I'm concerned, life is about being alive and being connected to our fellow creatures. Full stop. And you're generation is making it worse with your serious faces and safe spaces and goddamn trigger warnings... Hello my darlings, loosen up! Live a little. Such a dick. Tell a joke. Fall in love. Show up to start trouble when it's necessary and don't whine when the world doesn't hold your hand.”

RepresentationVisibilityQueer PoliticsQueer Youth
Book:Sasha Masha
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