by Saints
I am also not proud of this: I listened to oldies when I was a kid. I had to. I needed to eat. Burton went to work with Carmen on Saturday nights (for free drinks and cheap women) so I’d walk sixty-five feet west to my Tía Juana’s house, her living room thick with the aroma of her famous enchiladas and her nephew Eloy (my second cousin), whose method of attracting females consisted of dousing himself in the Brut cologne he shoplifted from Winn-Dixie. Eloy’s father Tío Teo hadn’t been seen for a while and his mother Tía Teresa never ate. Instead she’d sit at the table with a pack of long brown More menthol cigarettes, a cordless phone, and a portable radio tuned to the local oldies station. She had three goals in life:
To put a bullet in Tío Teo’s brain;
To prevent Eloy from putting a bullet in someone’s brain; and,
To penetrate the switchboard at Solid Gold Saturday Night and request her favorite song of all time: “Love Will Keep Us Together” by the Captain and Tennille.
At press time, none of these goals has been achieved.
I once asked her why she loved that song so much. “It’s not just the music,” she said. “It’s the memories.” Tío Teo insisted that “Love Will Keep Us Together” be the first song played at her wedding reception…or so she said. I can’t remember. I was there but I was six months old. Tía Teresa owned a record player and I once asked her why she didn’t just play the song on 45 whenever she wanted. “It’s our code,” she said. “It means Teo and I still love each other.”
* * *
Fast-forwarding twenty-five years or so: Josie and I weren’t anywhere near code status.
We’d known each other less than forty-eight hours and, aside from a kiss in the turnstile at Caledonia High School’s Homecoming last night, our chemistry had always been strictly platonic. That kiss was less a profession of passion than a protest against heteronormativity—a protest she initiated, not me. Falling for her would be (and is) pointless. I’m going “home” to Austin tomorrow after I watch her do her job like I said I’d do—and after I do the job I came up north to do. My birth certificate is locked in Burton’s closet and he threatened to kill me if ever I went inside it—but he’s somewhere in the Stockyards right now trying to get laid and, as such, I’ll be popping over to chez Burton just as soon as I finish this journal entry. My therapist Dr. Woo is making me journal my feelings. It’s pointless but we often do things that are pointless. Things like falling in love with our therapists. I call it love. Dr. Woo calls it transference.
Rewinding to six this evening: I was dying. My nutritional intake in the previous forty-eight hours had consisted of one museum-café sandwich and two More menthols. I told Josie I didn’t want to get into trouble on an empty stomach as getting into trouble for me entails drinking and I do stupid things when I drink. An empty stomach gets me stupider much quicker. “Then let’s eat,” she said. “But you didn’t answer my question. Where can we get stupid around here?”
Caledonia is dry and Fort Worth wasn’t exactly the kind of place where a couple of forty-year-old lesbians could get stupid when I was a kid. “Well,” I said, “there’s always Denton.”
Denton, sweet Denton: thirty miles from Caledonia and a world away, a parallel universe populated by slackers and sinners where the drumbeat of time staggered along at half-speed like a 78 RPM record played at 33. Nobody cared in Denton. It was legal to drink alcohol on the courthouse lawn. Correction: it was illegal but the law wasn’t enforced. Nobody cared.
* * *
You can still drink on the courthouse lawn—or you can have dinner across the street at this nouveau-Southern-comfort-food place where the cornbread is locally sourced and the menu has no prices. (Think Waffle House meets Alice Waters.) Josie insisted on going inside. “This place is adorable,” she said. “This town is adorable. Honestly, this is what I thought Caledonia would be.”
Caledonia is what most people from Connecticut think Mississippi is. Denton used to be what I thought Austin would be. Austin is San Francisco—and not San Francisco in the Sixties (free love and cheap housing) but San Francisco now: tech bros and gentrification. I arrived in Austin and six hours later I wanted to leave. Twenty years later I still haven’t quite gotten around to it. I’m not in love with packing.
I’ve always been packing but, in Denton, nobody cared. “Josie, you should have seen this town way back when,” I said. “Denton was the Castro of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.”
“Oooh, tell me more.”
“Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. There was only one gay bar,” I said. “The bar was called The Industrial Zone.” I believe I started tearing up a bit.
I know I’m tearing up now. I went back to Denton…and my gay bar was gone.
* * *
Besides my best friend (and other second cousin) Otilia (and me) there were exactly two other known lesbians in Caledonia: my middle-school gym teacher Debbie Armstrong and her “roommate,” Otilia’s high-school soccer coach Rachel Martinez. Coach Martinez told Otilia she could just call her Rachel. She also told her about a place in Denton where girls and other girls were at liberty to get busy in the bathroom. The place of which she spoke was a dingy warehouse on an unpaved, unnamed gravel road across the railroad tracks from the factory that made Corn-Kits instant-cornbread mix. No sign told you it was The Industrial Zone. You just knew. You walked up to this random-looking dude blocking an unmarked door, you waved your ID, and you whispered the passphrase. You only had to do this once. Whisper it once…and you joined the club. It was a place where everyone knew your name. Not your birth name. Your real name.
Everyone who’s ever felt the need to walk into a gay bar for the first time has a story. Some say it’s like a release from prison. Others say it’s like coming home. For me, it was all these things…and more. It was like entering the promised land. The Industrial Zone was exactly as promised: dank, dark, and devoid of anything remotely resembling a heterosexual. Smoke and a mix from “Camelot” to Creedence filled the air, there was pool (not my thing) and dancing (not my thing, either), and there was exactly one bathroom which for some odd reason was always occupied. In short: it was what a gay bar is like when there’s only one gay bar in town.
But Otilia and I didn’t drive thirty miles through the land of Canaan (also known as North Texas) every weekend to go to a bar. For one: The Industrial Zone was barely a bar. There were exactly two kinds of beer—Bud and Bud Light—and only in cans. For another: I have never liked beer. But for a third: The Industrial Zone was more than a bar. It was a place to bask in the warmth of one’s kind and work through the indignities of life amongst (yet apart from) the Canaanites. It was a place to check in and check on one’s friends—and once you whispered that passphrase, you were a friend. And it was a place to take comfort. The Industrial Zone showed you there were others in this world who were thinking and feeling what you were thinking and feeling—who were going through what you were going through—who talked like you and acted like you and (even in my case) looked like you.
Except she didn’t look like me. I wouldn’t have fallen for her if she’d looked like me. I wasn’t in love with myself. I’m still not. But I was head over Keds in love with her and I went to The Industrial Zone to smoke, to admire, to worship. That bar was my one true church and I celebrated my Sundays on Saturday nights.
Her name was Lauren and she was the bartender.
She told me her story over a pack of More menthols. She’d emigrated to Denton from Baxter Springs, Kansas to study art at North Texas State. Art school hadn’t paid off—there were about ten million other BFAs in Denton—and her previous position as a security guard at the Corn-Kits mill hadn’t worked out. But she’d seen the milling about across the railroad and wondered. One night she crossed the tracks and she, too, said it was like crossing the Jordan. It just so happened that the previous bartender had quit the night before and Francine, the owner, was doling out cans of Bud her own damn self. Lauren’s job interview consisted of mixing Francine a M
anhattan. She’d been tending bar at The Industrial Zone for ten years when I first walked in the door.
Lauren was ageless, lithe and graceful, quick to crack a joke and quicker to snap you with her bar towel (her method of expressing mock displeasure). She was pharmacist, therapist, and (in my case) finishing-school madam. She was blunt. I’d been doing everything wrong: my makeup, my voice, my outfits, my shoes. But she was gracious. She liked my blonde hair, she said my hazel eyes were pretty, and she agreed with me that the best way to deflect others from the truth about one’s facial features was to wear a cute pair of glasses. But she was merciless.
She forced me to switch from Keds to stilettos and walk in circles around the bar until I could do it a hundred times without wobbling. She made me do voice exercises, right there at the bar, to pull my voice out of my chest and my Adam’s apple and up into my sinuses. And she made me talk with my hands. But I hate my big ugly man hands, I told her. “It’s not the size of your hands,” she snapped back. “It’s what you do with them.” I acquired mastery but she was honest: no matter how fabulous I looked, I was going to get dick-shamed at some point. She told me to suck it up, put up my dukes, and defend myself. She said I had it in me. I asked her once why she tried so hard with me, why she cared. “Because I love you, honey,” she said. “Also, my birth name is Lawrence.”
Her efforts were wasted. Austin didn’t just have multiple gay bars—it had dedicated lesbian bars—and six hours after I came to town I walked into one and asked for my favorite drink. The bartender comped my Smirnoff-and-tonic. “Keep on keeping Austin weird, my man,” she said. I slid off that stool, slinked out of that bar, stuffed my girl stuff into an apartment-complex dumpster, and spent the next twenty years unlearning everything Lauren ever taught me.
* * *
(In case anyone’s wondering: Josie’s birth name is Josie.)
Back in the present-day at chez Waffle, she looked up The Industrial Zone on her iPhone. “Here it is,” she said. “On Fry Street.” She showed me her phone and tittered. “Lookit, honey,” she said. “Fry Street dead-ends into Scripture Street and it’s two blocks east of Normal.”
I blanched. In my day, Fry Street was light-years from normal: hippies strumming guitars over cans of loose change, grunge people moping over pitchers of beer, and artsy types spouting philosophy over cups of coffee much better than that shit at Waffle House. And absolutely everyone was smoking. But I made the mistake this evening of driving by for old times’ sake.
Reporting damage: Fry Street is now located smack-dab in the middle of normal. Heteronormal. Frat boys and sorority girls getting shit-faced off jello shots, tech bros with MacBooks monetizing their social media presence, and exactly zero people were smoking. “You know, we could go to Dallas,” I said. “There’s tons of gay bars in Dallas.” My grandfather built one of them: a place in Oak Lawn called Daddy’s. He told me he had to dead-lock his RV every night for fear of being gang-raped by homosexuals. He insisted he was not into homosexuals. He did not use the word “homosexual.”
Josie looked up Dallas on her phone. “That’s thirty miles from here,” she said. “Thirty miles from Connecticut is New Jersey.” She signed the credit-card slip and plopped her napkin on her plate. “Come on, honey,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”
“Fine” can mean any number of things.
* * *
The doorman at the new Industrial Zone was young enough to be my kid and he made sure I knew this. “No need for ID,” he told me. “You’re good, ma’am.” At least he called me ma’am. Funny, though—he didn’t call Josie ma’am (she hates being called ma’am; it’s as if he knew her) and he carded her. She giggled when he did it. It was a bit disconcerting.
The new Industrial Zone was more than a bit disconcerting. There was nothing industrial about it. Nothing about the place said Gay Bar except the rainbow-flag theme that threaded through everything from the rainbow-encircled neon Miller Lite sign to the rainbow-outlined neon clock in the shape of Texas. And the marquee advertised live music. (“Live music” at the old Industrial Zone entailed singing along to “Greatest Love of All” at closing time.) The place was packed—but with a clientele that wouldn’t have been caught dead at the old Industrial Zone.
I saw straight people.
The Industrial Zone had been gentrified by heterosexuals: straight guys with beards who looked too mild to hate-crime me and straight ciswomen with X-ray vision out to dick-shame me. The straight guys were unobtrusive but the ciswomen congregated in a giant floating fire-ant ball of intertangled twenty-somethings in strappy sandals, skinny jeans, and matching low-cut T-shirts that (literally) said She’s Taken but I’m Available…except for the queen bee, who wore a tiara. Bachelorettes, for fuck’s sake, and they were blocking the bar. I gripped Josie’s hand. “We could go to Fort Worth,” I said. “There’s probably gay bars in Fort Worth now.”
“Fort Worth’s just as far from here as Dallas,” she said. “It’s eight o’clock already and I’ve got work tomorrow.” A song came over the PA and she put her arm around where my waist would be if I had one. “Lookit, honey,” she said. “They’re playing Cher. There’s still some gay here, yet.”
“That’s such a stereotype,” I said. “My grandfather Burton loves Cher. His favorite song is ‘Gypsys, Tramps, and Thieves.’ But it’s because he says it was written about our family. He loves Cher. But he’s way into females.”
“That’s the grandfather who’s hiding your birth certificate in his closet?”
“The same.”
Josie giggled. “When you finally get in there…let me know what else he’s hiding.”
I got her drift. “Not possible,” I said. “He called me the f-word so much, I thought it was my birth name.”
“Again…let me know what he’s hiding.”
We were unable to breach the line of bachelorettes so instead we found an empty two-top and a waiter with a beard informed us that the new Industrial Zone featured 37 beers on draft.
I’ve never liked beer and I was the designated driver so I asked for a Coke. Josie finally decided on one of the 37 beers and signaled her disapproval of my drink choice. “Smirnoff and tonic for her,” she said. She knew my favorite drink. It was a bit disconcerting.
What I saw next transcended disconcerting. “Look over there,” I said. “In the corner.”
She looked. “A piano,” she said. “So what?”
“This place is now a piano bar.” I shook my head sadly. “Give a bar a piano,” I said, “and that piano will need someone to play it. That someone will be forced to play ‘Piano Man’ at least ten times a night. Don’t get me wrong. Billy Joel’s great. I mean, ‘Allentown’ is why I started playing the piano. I heard it on the radio when I was five years old and I said to myself: I have got to make that music. But…forgive me, Reverend, but I fucking hate ‘Piano Man.’”
“You’re forgiven.” She reverted to her typical role in our relationship: that of my therapist. “I feel like this is coming from somewhere deep,” she said.
“Very deep.” I lowered my head. “I worked in a piano bar,” I said. “Ike’s Ivory Bar. Across the street from the Austin Convention Center. I am not proud of this.” I buried my face in my hands.
She unburied them. “Wow,” she said. “I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be.” The waiter brought our drinks. Josie sipped her beer. I downed half my Smirnoff-and-tonic in one gulp. “It paid for architecture school…until it didn’t,” I said. “One night these tech bros came in. There were eight of them. That’s key here. Anyway: you didn’t just shout out a request. Ike had a system: you got a laminated card with a list of songs, you marked it up with a china marker, and you gave it to your server. Ike would tally up the requests then give me a list of songs to play. Well, tech bros are into disruption and these tech bros disrupted the system. They started shouting, ‘We got a request! We got a request!’ I kept playing. But they kept shouting. Started yelling. Finally, Ike came out of the
office and tapped me on the shoulder. I stopped playing. ‘These gentlemen have a request,’ he said. I was like: whatever. I leaned into the mike and more said than asked: uh, what’s your request. They rose, as one, and held up their cards, each of which featured but one single letter, which spelled out a word. Correction: two words. Eight letters. You do the punchline.”
“‘Piano Man!’”
“Bingo. So I played ‘Piano Man.’ Except I didn’t play ‘Piano Man.’”
“What’d you play?”
I giggled. “‘Allentown.’”
“How’d that go down?”
“This might surprise you, but tech bros aren’t in love with songs about the human impact of economic disruption,” I said. “I damn near started a riot. Ike fired me on the spot.” I knocked back the rest of my drink.
“That’s too bad.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “I played covers to drunk people for tips. You, on the other hand: you sing opera. Opera. Now that’s what I call music.”
“I don’t sing opera. I sang opera. Until I had to wear pants while singing it.”
“I’m not in love with singing in pants, either,” I said. “Or doing anything else in pants.”
Josie took a rather large sip. “So, I’m a contralto,” she said. “There’s a saying in opera: contraltos get stuck playing witches, bitches, and britches. I was a witch in Macbeth and a bitch in Aïda. Then along came The Marriage of Figaro. I was like: oh, fuck, here come the britches. And here they came. I wanted to be Cherubina. But they wanted me to be Cherubino.” She took another considerable sip. “It wasn’t like it was some last-straw moment,” she said. “I’d already decided to become a priest. And opera wasn’t all I knew how to sing.” She giggled. “I didn’t have the world’s most active social life in high school,” she said. “Let’s just say I had my weekend evenings all to myself. I used to lock myself in my bedroom with the radio and listen to—I can’t believe I’m telling you this—Solid Gold Saturday Night. Pathetic, right?”