So when I was a baby gay just coming out of the closet, it seemed obvious to me that the place(s) to start figuring it all out was bars. Now I was only 21 and not a drinker, but purely by coincidence, as a grad student, I was living mere blocks from Baltimore’s cluster of gay bars, how convenient. So I treated it as an experiment and tried various bars and figured out how it worked and eventually was confident enough to talk to other guys and even approach them and, you know, events occurred and I finally got rid of that pesky virginity.

But I’ve never been a bar queen – not super comfortable in that environment, don’t drink to just drink, and there’s certainly a subtext of high school drama/mean girl cliques at certain bars. And you do have to find the right one, or the one where at least you feel the least uncomfortable.

Quick digression – when I picked up on the gay two-stepping craze that was sweeping Philadelphia in the early ’90’s, I was so effing delighted – finally, I could go to a bar and have something to do other than standing around sipping a diet Coke and hoping someone would talk to me. Two-stepping is a great way to meet guys, actually, you just go up and ask them to dance, and they know you’re not asking to marry them, it’s just a four-minute commitment. And yes, that might lead to interest and chatting and more, but it certainly doesn’t have to. My favorite thing with two-stepping was asking the scariest biker-looking dude in the room to dance and having them answer, “I only follow”. No problem, I’ll lead! I’m vers on the dance floor, at least.

Further digression – I don’t particularly like being out late, and the best two stepping time in Philly at that time was a late afternoon session at Woody’s on Sunday – and afterward, friends, or you and your new friend, could go out and grab dinner. And then maybe ‘dessert’, heh-heh-heh. Here in 2020’s NYC, we have the Big Apple Ranch once a month, and I rarely go because ‘don’t like going out late’, but I notice they’re having a Sunday tea dance on the 26th. Finally! I’ll go, and I hope they keep that up. I need to replace the cowboy/dance boots that mysteriously disappeared, should get on that.

Anyway…

So, I’ve been single (again) for coming up on four years and while I haven’t gotten myself together to actually sign up with match.com or whatever, and I really am steering clear of the hookup apps, I am in fact ready for gentlemanly companionship. And again, bars are (theoretically) an easy way to at least put yourself in the path of others looking for the same thing. But again, bars are stupid. And I don’t like going out late. And most of the interesting bars are in Manhattan, which is, you know, on another island and a distance away. (Boy, was I spoiled by the proximity in Baltimore, and even Philly wasn’t that bad.) My neighborhood in Queens actually has quite a few gay bars, but a lot of them are geared to the younger set, and/or Spanish speakers, and when I go to them in ‘prime time’, they’re often just too effing loud. But there is a bar I like, it’s called Hombres, and it’s age-appropriate for me, and it’s pretty mellow and the bartenders are really nice. I’ve had some good times and good conversations there.

The sticking point there is that it doesn’t occur to me to go except on Friday or Saturday nights. Friday they have karaoke and it’s the worse karaoke singers I’ve ever heard. Saturday is when they often have a go-go boy strutting his stuff on the bar, and while I don’t mind watching that, inevitably, the go-go boy comes down on the bar floor and schmoozes everyone individually, hoping to (I guess) get hired. Once that involved him actually whipping his rod out and smacking me gently on the thigh with it. Um… hilarious and appalling all at the same time… but not what I’m there for. (Aside from many other issues, they’re hot, but they’re children, at least as far as I’m concerned.)

So I’d kind of given up, but decided to give it another go a couple of weekends ago. I only really stayed around for one drink, but a gentleman sitting a couple of stools away (who was not inherently repulsive) made a conversational overture. So we chatted, and he was perfectly nice, but started talking about how he’d just gone to the opera at the Met and seen La Traviata and how moving it was. I perked up, “Oh, how did you like it? Who was the Violetta? Was it Lisette Oropesa?”. And he had no idea what I was talking about. And that’s when I learned when I’m looking for a man, if he’s going to discuss opera, he’d better be ready to discuss opera.

So that was a bust. Another digression: I finished up and walked up to Northern, where I gave a restaurant I’d also kind of given up on another chance. (and had a good time) I was at a little table in the corner, next to me was a middle-aged straight couple having dinner. The guy was kind of a blowhard, the sort who got chatty with the waiter, but was like, “no, don’t go away, stay there, I want to show you this video on my phone” while the poor guy was working. As I finished up my dinner, Blowhard looked at me, then at the mostly-full picture of sangria on the table that he clearly wasn’t going to finish, and asked the waiter to bring him another glass so he could give me a sangria. Oh! That was a nice thing to do.

And of course then we chatted, which really mean Blowhard monologued and his mousy wife sometimes chimed in and I nodded and said “uh huh”. They were both Dominican, but he’d grown up in Jackson Heights and still had family there. But he’s in “real estate” and now they lived out on Long Island on the water, and he was a big success. (as I was describing this to my buddy Renee at brunch the next day, she said it’s definitely a cultural thing among some Latin men to broadcast how much money they make. And it probably puzzled Blowhard that I didn’t respond with, “oh, well I have this big apartment and make a ton of money….” myself.) But he actually wasn’t really listening to much other than his own voice.

He then told a story about how he didn’t go to this other local restaurant (which I know and love) because he was ‘disrespected’ and told me the whole yarn, while I smiled and nodded and thought, “remember this, use it in your work“. And we all wrapped it up and they left and then I did. So that was an evening of interesting, if not fruitful, encounters with Real Actual People, good for my as-I-call-it Human Practice. (like, you know, piano practice)

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Anyway, I have been making it more of a point to go out on a Saturday night, and will continue to do so. This Saturday, I’d gotten a ping from my buddy Marisa that a young college-age friend of ours, who’d been in our shows in England last summer, was in town. We were to meet at a Mexican restaurant near Hunter College. She’d given me the name and address – it hadn’t rung a bell – but it sure did when I walked in. It’s Tacombi, a funky no-frills taco place that’s just a step over takeout, but has really good food. But the reason I ‘flashed’ when I walked in is there’s also one in Forest Hills. I had lunch there one day after an eye doctor appointment, but then hurried home because C, recovering from surgery, wanted help taking a shower. And that was the event sequence that… well, let’s just say that I remember the day and the date very clearly. And have not been to Tacombi in FH again.

But yeah, I wasn’t traumatized, and the three of us had a really nice dinner (although what they advertised as a quesadilla was not what I think of as one – it was basically a large taco, so I ate it as one). Got caught up on Melinda’s fabulous college life and the doings of the University of Michigan Gilbert & Sullivan society. And then we left and parted ways.

Me: you’re going to the subway? I’ll say goodbye here.

Marisa: you’re taking a cab?

Me: no…. I’m going somewhere else.

Where I was going was The Townhouse, an upscale gay bar a walkable distance away. It’s notorious for being the sort of place where rich and often closeted older gay men meet younger hungry sugar-baby types. But it’s also a piano bar, and although I’ve been there a couple of times recently for happy hour (_{no I’m not looking for a sugar-baby. The very idea! Not even if they whack their whacker on my thigh}) , I hadn’t been there during prime time when the piano bar is open. So I’d done a bit of planning and dressed a little more nicely than I normally would.

Anyway, I had a great time. Mostly because, unusually, I felt comfortable and confident. I didn’t have a goal other than to see if it was worth my time. It was. Like Hombres, it was mostly age-appropriate – plenty of men my age and I was Not at All the least attractive man there. Fun people-watching. The piano bar itself wasn’t that great – I can (and will) probably get a better piano bar experience at Uncle Charlie’s or The Monster or (best yet) Marie’s Crisis. There were your straight-from-central-casting fag hags around the piano occasionally grabbing the mike and doing (a bad) “Ladies Who Lunch”. There were the older dumpy guy sitting with and groping the hot boyfriend, who found all sorts of excuses to get up and walk away for a while. There were several guys who looked oddly familiar, and I suspect they are Broadway royalty (not actors, but movers and shakers). But I stood my ground (“don’t be afraid to take up space”), sipping my way through two pinot grigio’s, and projecting an air of ‘I exist and I’m fine with what I am and if you’re intrigued, make yourself known’. I got some bzzz’s of interest, nothing that panned out, but enough to say, yes, this would be a fun place to return to – particularly if I thought of it as not specifically about Finding a Man and more about, as I said, Human Practice.

So…. good for me! I think I will actually make this sort of thing more of a habit, but pick different bars (the above piano bars, for instance). Good for me and, yes, getting myself Out There.