This has been happening for a while, but I think we’ve reached a tipping point where few folks blink if you mention you’re gay. And since lesbian bars tend to absorb all the queers who aren’t gay men, and since more people than ever before are identifying as L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+, don’t you think it’s kind of weird there are so few bars? Lesbian bars are dropping faster than drag queens on a slippery stage. Where are the queer hangouts to set my inner homing device to? It makes me feel out of place, like a really gay goose who just wants to flap her wings to some Robyn and Missy Elliott but finds herself in a pub in Wrigleyville on a Cubs game day. Dedicated queer bars, especially spaces for lesbians, female-identified queers and trans and genderqueer people, are vanishing. It goes against the natural order of things, like RuPaul without big hair or Sean Spicer giving a calm and informed news conference.
She came back with our drinks, and I inhaled mine, eyes wide in a silent scream.Īside from having their basic human and civil rights taken away, nothing makes homos more nervous than an empty dance floor at a gay bar. I scurried over to stand at a table and watch music videos by Madonna and Rihanna. Well, there was a bartender, who smiled at us as we froze in embarrassed horror in the doorway. We were about to meet our new community, a whole sea of queers who had never had any dealings with me or my exes! Nervous sweat trickled down my sides in the unrelenting humidity that I didn’t yet recognize as a defining characteristic of Chicago summers.
Two hours later, we stood outside the first search result, hesitating. I had just moved to Chicago, and the second my girlfriend and I unloaded the U-Haul (yes! clichés are fun), I sat down on a box in our new apartment and Googled “lesbian bar Chicago.” It was a late Saturday night in August 2010.