by Jack McGrath
I’ve been working in a gay bar for almost a year now. A strange one really but perhaps they all are, I think that’s unavoidable. It’s a small basement, a sitting room really, some stools, some couches, one bartender – that’s all. The odd tourist will stumble in, edging down the steps,
peering slowly, in search of a dark room. And when they realise it’s just a bar – a pub practically – they’re off. I’ve about twenty regular customers, some more regular than others. Mostly men, mostly in their thirties to fifties. They’re from everywhere and I guess you could in some way call them friends but at times that label is a stretch. They’re awfully devious, all ill intent or sly remarks are filtered through me. I can’t stand him, they’ll say – he’s embarrassing, tacky really. And then they’ll all be in on Saturday evening clinging to each other like soul brothers. A year in this place and I still can’t altogether tell if I like a lot of these people.
Many infuriate me, repulse me, there are a select few that I adore and the rest I’m on the fence about – they’ve good nights and bad nights. My boss – an Englishman somewhere in his late fifties to early sixties – has never taken to me all that much. To be fair, I haven’t taken to him all that much either. But at the start it baffled me. I work well in a bar, did my job to the best of its ability, remained friendly to patrons, never stole, and closed the door behind me on my way out. I’d think up all sorts of reasons for his disdain towards me. My Irish standard of service differed heavily to that of the American bartender but I’m in no way rude or unapproachable.
One evening, ten minutes past closing in late October, my boss was still sat there, on his seventh or eighth Barcelo. The rum had loosened him up and he was more liberal in his speech. He thought of me as detached, he didn’t know what I wanted from this place. A job – is what I
wanted to reply with but it felt unsuitable to say at that time. He urged me to spend time with regulars outside of work, build a rapport with them. But I had friends, I had studies, I had much to do outside of work. I was more than happy to keep them separate.
However, I do think he was right about my sense of detachment. I denied it in the moment and walked home muttering
angrily to myself – what did he know? I had no desire to spend time with these men, even if they were nice. No desire to meet for drinks, see a movie, go on a trip. Because I was fucking twenty. I don’t think he understood that. And for a while, even I didn’t. I mean I was still a gay man right. I should be able to easily relate to others like me, level with them, possibly find comfort in their older age, their years of experience. But even the late twenties, early thirties men felt completely foreign to me. The things they said, what they did, how they acted had nothing to do with me. I felt completely foreign to them, as they did to me. There’s a multitude of reasons for this. I mean there’s always generational gaps but I think something that is not as often discussed is how peculiar of a case it is amongst queer generations.
And it was even that – the word queer. They were reviled by it, wanted nothing to do with it. This was not a queer bar, it was a gay bar, they would say. And I half understood where they were coming from. Not wanting to be branded with such a derogatory name, that
made sense to me. But they would throw around faggot like it meant nothing so that couldn’t be it. No, it was because queer is for everyone. Queer is for lesbians, for trans. Queer threatened the little world they’d created made up entirely of men and the very select women they tolerated and deemed worthy of being around. For the most part, they couldn’t stand lesbians, or any women
who came into the bar for that matter. They couldn’t stand young people either.
And if a man was in any way femme, they’d snigger, thinking he was ridiculous. I’ve have countless debates. Where were all these people, all these queers expected to go to? ‘Straight bars,’ was their answer always. Listen, it wasn’t like I expected these men to be saints, I knew the generalisations of older gays and their questionable manners but this was really the first time I was placed in such an explicitly gay environment. I couldn’t get over the extent to which these men could be awful. But I was going to be there for a while. And I’m open to different perspectives. So, I tried, I really did – tried to understand their curious ways which seemed to be the only way for them. There’s a strange sense of ownership they feel they have over you. They talk openly about other barmen, if they don’t like them. And it seems that they have the ability to get rid of these guys, to get rid of me if I behave wrongly, and don’t entertain them. Entertaining them, listening to them becomes increasingly difficult as the night goes on – they grow more and more into queens, they begin to loathe everything around them – their friends, themselves, strangers. And they take it all out on me. My face gets exhausted just from making vague, non-specific expressions that let them know I heard what they said without revealing any kind of opinion I may have about it. It’s a skillful art really.
For them, a gay bar, and by that I mean a man’s bar, is a sacred institution that they feel is being encroached upon in these trying times. God, women are coming, whatever shall they do? The biggest flip out of late was the hiring of a straight bartender which is just downright
blasphemous. They’ll keep an eye on him, they say – he won’t be around for long. Perhaps they enjoy exercising power, even if it’s on such a minuscule, pathetic scale. I imagine their youths weren’t as easy, not much power to be had in those days. But regardless of all positive progression within queer groups in recent years, they refuse to move on.
The bar has refused to move on even. Hasn’t changed since the 2000s – resembles something out of Queer as Folk to my young minded self. The smoke still clings to the walls, the guys still point out the exact couch or cubicle where so and so fucked, where a porn was filmed during covid and so on. And they want to keep it that way. I mean, they hate the place – are constantly complaining about how run-down it is, but they still come there every night for some god-forsaken reason. I think they enjoy complaining, they enjoy being the victims, the forgotten ones who were left behind whilst everything else moved on – moving towards their nightmarish ‘woke’ hell. It’s a time capsule here. These men are trapped by some mystical force. Don’t they know they’re free? Don’t they want to step outside, to go upstairs? Only for a cigarette. The bar is getting slower and slower – less people, less energy.
Because queers don’t go to gay bars these days. A gay bar, an in your face, rainbow flag, drag queen hosting, cruising for your life, stares across the room kind of bar has faded out of relevancy, has entered the world of kitsch. Yes, I think that’s it. It’s all very kitsch in here. The last ten years, over several cities, there’s been a severe disappearance of queer villages, neighbourhoods. The queers have spread their roots, dared to mingle with breeders – the queers are trendy now. They’re no longer oversexed, non-verbal, lurking
creatures. They’re taste makers, culture vultures. The twenties has been a farewell to dark rooms, to after hours dives, all-night saunas. The men have crawled out. They’ve gone upstairs. But them, these saints, the downstairs suits them fine. They’ve grown quite used to it, quite used
to all this complaining and compromise – they don’t want to leave their sheltered havens. Even if those havens are collapsing down around them. They’d rather be crushed by debris than enter a world that was denied from them for so long.
This is their epilogue, and I’m here to see it, to witness the death of a culture, of a breed of men who’ve grown cold and bitter and cynical. Don’t get me wrong, I detest their backward thought, their frozen stares but I have to acknowledge their lived experience, their lonely ways that have given me company. Often when I find myself in these ‘trendy’ bars or parties where queers have entered regular space, where queerness has become a commodity – appropriated and emulated by tiresome heterosexuals, I think of those many minded fathers, mine anyway – Genet and Jarman and Baldwin and O’Hara – and I wonder what they’d make of all this. Not much, I’d say. Have the queers sold out, are we mere assimilationists or have we just evolved past clandestine potterings. So I won’t reward these men, won’t valorise them or grant them any kind of excuse from moving on.
But I am glad that they’ve let me downstairs to sit with them, to try to understand them – even if it’s just for a while.