nick benton

the same old game

The first time I ever knowingly walked into a gay bar was about two years ago. It happened to be one of the most popular gay bars in San Francisco, where there are over sixty such places. It was the Rendezvous, famous for its clientele of handsome young college types, a discotheque with dancing and a then rigidly enforced “no contact” rule. After working up the nerve to walk in (sure that everyone I knew would see me, and that my career in the ministry would be ruined), and wiping the sweat off my palms as I slowly climbed the stairs, I stood at the top, gazing into the dimly lit room.

“Why, this is the place,” I thought, with a rush of unexpected joy. It was so much like everything else I had become used to in my twenty-five years of growing up male—and liberal. It felt comfortable. It was like a high school dance or college pub. People seemed to be acting about the same too; no one (or very few, at least) looked outlandish. It did look a little funny to see only men on the dance floor, and apparently in couples, even though there was this no-touch rule. But most of my life had been spent in places where there were only men—Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, baseball teams, basketball teams, press boxes, barber shops, nights out with “the boys.”

The only thing different about the Rendezvous was the object of the game. No—the only thing different was the name of the game.

It’s like the difference between football and baseball. The object is the same—to win. You score in different ways, so the games have different names.

The name of the game in the Rendezvous was homosexuality. But the object was the same as any game—to win, to score. Only instead of crossing a goal line with a pigskin tucked under your arm, you scored by getting asked to go home with the right person, or by getting the right person to go home with you.

It didn’t take me long to size up the rules.

I’d been groomed all my life on how to play games.

And mind you, I grew up straight.

Like most games, there is an offense and a defense. There’s a sparring going on, and you’d better learn how to protect your goal line while moving ahead to the other team’s. Timing was important, too. And position. You don’t want to move in too soon—you have to be shrewd and wait for the right opening. You can’t look too long at the person you want to score on, or your defense will be weakened. It’s a real game, and you have to be up for it, or you will lose.

These were all the things I was sizing up my first nights in the bar.

And all the time, of course, my body was filled with the same horror that had filled it all my life. The horror that I knew I wasn’t good enough for the game, that it would wipe me out.

I saw the glum uglies standing slump-shouldered in dark corners. I saw the older men with their alcoholic red eyes and pink faces guzzling bourbon at the back bar. I saw the fatties and the horse-faced with their flashy clothes, their “We Try Harder” smiles.

They were all me.

I got damned depressed my first nights in that first gay bar.

They used to call me horse-face when I was in high school.