Long after the night had slipped into a state of sunder my friend pointed up to the beam above the downstairs dance floor. There against the black stuccoed surface was a mass of cables and cords attached to an industrial outlet. It was a sight I had seen countless other Saturday nights; spotlights and reflections from the half disco ball momentarily and repeatedly illuminating the electrical still life of eclipsed building codes. He leaned in to my ear as I stood, neck stretched toward the dancefloor sky and said, “That,” his face warm with drink, dance and nostalgia, “will never be again.”
It was the last Saturday night at the Roost and the overwhelming feeling I had of a world ending, collapsing in on itself, had given way to a friend’s hands on my hips as we danced to a surprisingly decent string of songs. “Here we are now, entertain us, acting stupid and contagious.” I took out my phone and snapped a photo of the cables and lights. As I look at the photo uploaded on to my computer almost a week later, I see the photo as an attempt to salvage something concrete from the night that, like the club itself, has slipped into the Bermuda pink triangle of memories.
Waiting in line to get in that night, the pads of my feet frozen, I couldn’t help shake the feeling that we were all boarding a doomed plane. As if everyone, standing there with our exhaled breath illuminated by the big red “R” and the 104th street lamps, were all in one of those ‘70s disaster flicks. The ones where the audience tries to figure out who will die first and who will survive as the characters are being introduced. The difference being that we all knew that it was the Roost that wouldn’t make it and it was us, the survivors, that were going to be left contemplating how and why the Roost matters.
As I made my way around the two dance floors, the pool tables, the concession, the different bars, up and down the stairs, I felt very strongly that I wanted to see every person that I had ever seen there before. I wanted to see them as a way of acknowledging that we had existed in the same place at the same time and had survived. It was silly and overwrought but it felt real and more important than I could understand. As I nodded or shared a smile with some of the pretty boy faces of my years in retail, and the handsome lesbians that inspire how I dress, I understood that we were each other’s witnesses and showed each other a way of being together.
Propped up against the pinball machine by the patio door in front of the backside bar was an older gentleman with spiky dyed blond hair and a handsome looking pea coat on. He was literally beside himself with a pint of beer. He got up when I did and we passed each other going in different directions. “I have been coming here since the beginning,” he said to no one/everyone/himself. I remember the first time I saw a gay man over 50 that wasn’t on the news or being supported by a laugh track, I felt lighter and instantly recognized that being gay isn’t just about pecs and cocks. It was about who I was and what I wanted to be. It wasn’t a choice and it wasn’t going to be easy but I would make it and I would be fine.
A lot of people, the Roost staff included, say that maybe the bar outlived its purpose, that because of the changes in society a club like the Roost was no longer necessary. They are wrong. You are wrong if you think this. So what if a slim-hipped, lip-pieced, pan-sexual man lady can go buy a beer at the Black Dog whenever they want. What about the older man in the pea coat? How welcome is he going to feel at the Bank? Where am I going to Vogue without abandon? Where is the small town queer that snuck away from home for the weekend going to go to get some same-sex humping? Not Oil City Road House, that’s for sure. Of course we might still have Buddies, Prism and Boots but these are specialty bars aimed at a specific demographics. When and how are we going to see each other again?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not an advocate for the gay bar as a community centre and I am the first to admit that the Roost was not an oasis of tolerance but I also understand the important role nightlife plays in our queer culture. It is under the cloak of night and the influence of shitty music and watered down drinks that many of us find ourselves ... finding ourselves.
By seeing people a lot like us, or a lot different than us we begin to see the world as bigger. Possibilities of how we can inhabit our being become vast in their scope. We try on various ways of dancing, moving, interacting and fool or no fool we are the better for it.
As we fumble towards assimilation (or worse invisibility) we will loose sight of each other. Now think of the lone half disco ball suspended above an empty darkened dance floor. Dull with nothing to reflect.
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