EPISODE 921: LET'S HAVE A KIKI
What happens when a priest spends a year going to gay bars?
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi and welcome to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the newsletter that loves to keep you guessing. This week in honor of Pride Month, I thought I’d share some stories of my experiences at gay bars.
For the rest of the month I’m knocking down the price of the newsletter to $69.28—the year and date of the Stonewall riots—and opening the paywall so people who haven’t subscribed yet can see old articles, too.
Happy Pride, everybody!
Please
One of my first times at the singalong gay piano bar Marie’s Crisis, a woman about my age sidled up to me and asked me whether I had kids.
This is a weird question to ask a guy in a gay bar. “No,” I said, in that way that conveyed that, along with a certain amount of “Not down for chatting, lady.” None of which she picked up on. She started talking about her kids.
Then, out of the blue, she began putting her hand on my shoulder, my back.
I totally froze. This is the absolute last thing I expected to happen in this, or any bar.
I noticed a guy behind me watching this. “What the fuck is she doing to you?” he asked me, loud enough that she could hear him. “I have no idea,” I said. And for some reason being called out like that was enough to drive her away.
Maybe a week later I went back to Marie’s, and there she was again. As soon as I walked in, she rocketed toward me and started right back up again. This time I was prepared. (Sort of.)
“Hey, would you fuck off?” I said, in a desperate, begging way, “Please?”
Every New Yorker I tell that story to laughs and says the same thing: “Could you be more of a Midwesterner?”
De-Straight and Narrow
In my first six months of going to Marie’s, I feel like I regularly got mistook for straight. It hit me hard. It suggested that on some level I was still instinctively hiding, still trying to pass.
This makes sense. You can’t erase a lifetime of feeling like you have to look and behave “straight” by just visiting a gay bar—or writing a bunch of articles, ahem!
Some of the piano players at Marie’s wear eyeliner or nail polish. One puts on lipstick during his set, before doing “Sweet Transvestite” from Rocky Horror Picture Show. I’m never not in awe of them. Their freedom feels so courageous.
What does an uncloseted me look like?, I wonder. Sometimes I think my mantra should be, Relish the Unacceptable.
Other times I think of the manager at Marie’s, a gentle guy who exudes this loving playfulness. He’s got a sort of easy vulnerability that feels very queer to me.
I notice that trait in many of my favorite people at Marie’s. Some nights when I’m sitting on a bar stool singing with them, I ask God to help me be more like that, more vulnerable, more gentle, more playful, more free.
Appropriate
One of the strange things about Marie’s, especially on a weekend is that it often ends up filled with straight people.
It’s not actually that strange; Marie’s is a lot of fun. The staff is incredibly talented. The drinks are cheap, and there is no cover.
Also there are plenty of straight regulars who have been coming to (or working at) Marie’s for decades. They’re as much a part of the fabric and joy of the place as anyone.
The challenge is not them, but the tour buses of people who pile in around 10pm and think it’s just like every other straight bar that they visit, a place that’s supposed to follow their rules and customs. They get drunk and shout show titles at the piano player, or actively ignore them in favor of talking to each other. (One of my favorite routines at Marie’s is watching piano players dealing with that stop to say something like, “Hi, This isn’t a screen. I’m not a jukebox. I’m not in your phone.”)
Or they use Marie’s to cruise or hook up. I once watched a 20something woman next to me make out with her boyfriend. “So gross,” I kidded to my friend, clearly too loudly, as at that point the woman looked up from her guy and told us, in this very plaintive Please Like Me way, that she absolutely respected how special this space was for us as gay people, the struggles that the queer community had gone through to have such spaces. It’s just—cue tears—that she had met her boyfriend here and so she felt like this was their space, too.
So Many Johns
In the last year I’ve made a point of really getting out to different bars and meeting people. I’m actually shocked at just how much I’ve gone out; I was not a barfly in college, or really at any previous point in my life. Also, usually if I’m in a social situation by myself, I’ll just sit in a corner and wait for the ground to swallow me up.
But for some reason, I’ve really enjoyed going out on my own and meeting people. But there have been a couple really weird things. Like pretty much every guy I end up talking to ends up being Catholic. And not Went-to-Mass-as-a-kid Catholics. We’re talking “On Sunday I play the organ at my church.” (I’ve met three of those.) We’re talking “I thought about becoming a priest” Catholic. We’re talking “I’ve just come from Sunday evening Mass, wasn’t that Gospel reading crazy?”
You think I‘m joking, but this has happened more than once. I’ve even been in discussions about favorite parishes.
Also, so many of them end up named John.
I understand having a type, but Jeez.
Crazy Not-Boyfriends
Sometimes meeting new people has been an absolute delight. And sometimes I have literally no idea what is going on. One night I was cheating on Marie’s at another piano bar (I’m sorry!), and the place was pretty full except for a table near the piano with just one guy sitting at it. I asked if I could join him. He looked a little skeptical but said yes. And we ended up having this great conversation.
A friend saw me talking to him. “Ooh,” he said, “Look at you with John”—I’m serious, they’re all named John. And I said to my friend, "What are you talking about, we’re just having a nice conversation. “UH HUH,” my friend said.
Ten minutes later, John put his hand on leg and said, “So, are you taking me home with you?”
And I said, “Umm, no, please?”
Or there was the guy I met on a Sunday evening at a bar by the church I was going to. He had a fascinating story—he’d been an academic for 20 years, then quit in mid-life to study architecture and had spent the last 10 or 15 years designing diners. I was captivated. And he seemed pretty intrigued by my background, too.
When he left for the night we exchanged numbers. The next day I got a text from him: “So… you’re a writer. Impress me.” I had zero idea what he meant. Also I am not a dancing monkey. So I just sent a “ha ha” and “lol.”
Five minutes later he texted back, “Seriously? That’s it?”
A couple days later we actually did strike up a bit of a text conversation about a play I was going to see. When I got out he texted to ask what I thought. “It was alright,” I wrote. “A couple good songs.” Once again he texted back: “Seriously? That’s it?”
I was so weirded out, I started writing a text back saying basically, “Hey I don’t know if you realize it, but you’re kind of attacking everything I say.” Mostly I was thinking of it like a PSA for him—Hey, you might not realize it, but you’re kind of super rude.
But before I sent it I reached out to some friends for advice. They immediately wrote back: Do not engage. He crazy.
I took their advice, but I have to say, even now I think about texting him. I feel bad about simply vanishing into the ether.
Yes, seriously John, that was it.
And no, I won’t be seeing you at Mass next Sunday.
Whoop-s/ee
A while back a gay priest friend of mine came to visit. I arranged for us to meet at a gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen early on a Saturday evening. It was pretty quiet, mostly just older guys chatting and watching music videos. Which is exactly what I wanted.
An unexpected element of my current life experience: Though this guy and I are old friends, and he is very comfortable in himself, far more than me, I didn’t want to take him anywhere that might be too risqué. I wasn’t afraid of scandalizing him. I just didn’t want to put him in a situation that might be tempting. I felt like I had a duty to protect his vocation, in a way I never worried about before.
About a half hour after my friend and I arrived, an older man walked in wearing just jeans, no shirt, and sat at the bar not far from our table. It was a little odd.
About ten minutes later, my friend says to me, “Oh my God.” I turned around to see that another man had sidled up next to him and, the two of them were getting busy. Like, real busy. Everyone was staring, because this is not that kind of bar.
I tried to stammer out an apology. I was so embarrassed. But my friend just howled.
There’s Wonder All Around
Another night I was at a bar with a dance floor. It was packed with shirtless 20 somethings gyrating to a pounding beat.
None of that is really my scene. In fact I felt like a weirdo Kristen Wiig character.
Then I noticed these two guys off to the side talking. They were both probably in their 50s, and it seemed pretty clear they had only just met.
After a while one began to stroke the other’s hand. Then the other oh so gently took the man’s face in his hands, and they began to kiss. And there was none of the hunger of the room in them. It was this incredibly loving and gentle moment.
In the last year I’ve witnessed a lot of moments like this, where in the midst of a crowded bar suddenly I’m standing before something so genuine and real. Once a guy out of the blue shared about how he almost died. Another told me about finally getting his big break as an actor. As he sat there he wept.
Sometimes early in the evening at Marie’s, it’s just the regulars. And when we’re singing together, there’s such a feeling of community I get choked up myself.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a weirdo Kristen Wiig character, out of step, awkwardly dressed, unsure what I’m doing. But in those moments I’m just glad I’m there.
MOMENT OF WOW
Thanks for reading. More soon!
Not to be dramatic, but that woman at Marie’s? Jail. One thousand years.
Touching. You're a keen observer. I know well the feeling of being an observer/participant, much more comfortable with observing than participating. In a single year, in my early 20's, I met three people in bars - in NOLA, London, and NYC. They were all from California (where I lived) and two were named Mark the third was Mike. (There was something slightly off with Mike.) It was as if I were being shoe-horned by the Universe. Liberation came when I re-wrote my internal stone tablets and risked being vulnerable by just being me. It was as if I had been wearing shoes two sizes too small because it felt so good when I took them off. Sometimes context transcends content. An element of your year you captured masterfully in this piece.