Of course, in recent years, I’ve mostly been fine by mostly staying as far away from the dance floor as possible. Later on, a clued-up lesbian classmate gave me the best dancing lesson I’ve ever gotten: Jeff, just make sure that everything you do goes to the beat of the music and you’ll be fine. They were a hyper-kinetic cry for help rather than anything that belonged under a disco ball. They (along with anyone else who happened to be looking) could sure see I wasn’t there because I “just liked to dance”. Maybe they could see I was a nerdy kid from far away just trying to fit in. I’m not exactly sure why they were so friendly to me. I knew them a little from the local Wawa where they worked.
I’ll tell you something I do remember though: a group of young lesbians who hung around the dance floor with tambourines, poppers, and whistles. And I can’t remember all the friendships I started there –(a fair number of them lasted for longer than a night a couple of them look like they’ll be around for last call). I don’t remember when exactly in the fall of 1976, my freshman year, that I got up the nerve to go to my local gay bar, a place close to campus called Partners. (There’s another formula that’s changed, I think.) And it welcomed everyone else too, including the boys who said they were there because they “just liked to dance” - though I have to tell you, we often thought of the boys who were there because they “just liked to dance” the same way we did the ones who told us they were bisexual: guys who just hadn’t gotten around to coming out yet. There was room there for anyone who was “Queer,” though we didn’t use that word back then. That local gay bar was a big and noisy tent. (The shapes and size of those sticks and stones have changed some in shape and size since I felt them, but they haven’t lost any of their power to draw blood, real and metaphorical.)
In my youth, your local gay bar was a place you could go if you were gay or lesbian of any size or shape and wanted to feel safe from the various kinds of sticks and stones that came for you then. For all I know, the formula for that bar has been so diluted and displaced by all the apps, that the local gay bar I knew doesn’t even exist anymore. I don’t get out much anymore, so for all I know, the same may be true about the place where I was introduced to them: my local gay bar. My best friend tells me that the formula for them has changed, and that what’s available now is a pale substitute for what we used back in the day. Also, they may not be as much fun as they used to be. I don’t think that poppers are probably very good for you. I got all my sisters with me (Sister Sledge)