Oh, The Irony
To start with, something disturbingly normal happened today: I overslept. Until 11:30 in the morning, to be exact. This might not seem like a big deal to you, but for the past two months, going to sleep and staying asleep didn't happen, and I usually gave up between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning. Granted: I did take 1mg of Xanax before going to bed at around 1:00AM last night, but prior to last night, even that didn't help. I'd still snap awake at some ungodly hour, and be out of bed well before 6:00AM.
So: this is one of those small yet important victories. My sleep in general has improved over the past four or five days, but this...11:30 in the morning! I can now enjoy the feeling of having too much of the day gone because I'm a lazy oversleeping bastard. Happy happy joy joy!
But that's not what this collection of words is supposed to be about, that's just what happened to me a mere twenty minutes ago, and I thought I'd share it with you because I know you're all so very interested in the minutiae of my exciting and stylish life.
No, what I'm supposed to be writing about is that Santa Barbara, the "American Riviera," is actually a very Small Town, and I suddenly feel like I'm living in the outer provinces. Good weather, ocean, palm trees, and so on. But try to find a gay club. Go on, I dare you.
Can't be done. Because there aren't any. A co-worker and I were talking about that last week, and this week's Independent--the local rag with bits of news and a What's Doing In Town section--had a cover story about where to "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry." The full-page photo on the cover was decidedly full of men dancing with other men, and, sure enough, the first section of the story inside was subtitled, "Where Have All The Gay Bars Gone?" The short answer was "Away."
In fact, there is only one gay bar in the tri-country area, and it's 30 miles away in Ventura, a place called Paddy's. So, I put on my face and a decent set of clothes--not too flash, but not California casual either, because I don't do California casual--and drove down to check the place out. I decided that I would have one--count it, one--drink, and made it a gin and tonic...they never make those strong because no one really drinks them anymore.
Maybe the place picks up later in the evening. But when I arrived a bit after 9:30 there was a random queer assemblage of young men in baseball caps, old men drinking smoothies, and various gatherings of women around the bar and the pool table, with music thumping into two empty dance floors and a lot of boy booty shaking on the flat panel screens above the bar.
So, I sat at the bar and watched the video booty, sipping at my drink (not strong, as expected) and occasionally writing my impressions down in the Moleskine notebook I carry with me because I Is A Writer. After about 20 minutes, I finished said drink, got up and wandered about the place, checking out the vacant dance floors. I said hello again to a guy who probably thought I was cruising him (I most decidedly was not), and headed home.
When I was living in Jersey City and Queens--even in New Brunswick--it was easy to go where the gay was when I decided I wanted to. In fact, I think the gayest thing I ever did was grab my copy of Martin Duberman's Stonewall and head into New York to have a drink at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, the anniversary of the 1969 riots. I suppose I could've made it gayer...but was mid-afternoon and the place was mostly empty, so I just read my book about the events that happened right where I sat, drank my drink, and soaked up the history of the place.
It was the same in my early twenties in Philadelphia: find the club, go to the club, have fun. I was never a particularly cruisey type of guy, but I did enjoy the atmosphere, and yes, I did like being cruised. It's a straightforward (if I can use that term) process, very above board, and if you demur, it can turn into a fun bout of flirting. It is, in fact, my exposure to the honest, uninhibited, and unashamed pursuit of sex found within the gay community that makes what I'm discovering about the polyamory community so appealing right now. Not the "endless flow of meaningless sex" part of it, but the "direct" part of it, in this case communicated with the eyes, gestures, perhaps a touch or two. "Hey--wanna fuck? No? OK then, I'm going to take my shirt off and dance right over there, so you'll know what you're missing. Kiss!" The application of that sort of uninhibited honesty to the more intimate parts of a relationship has great appeal to me.
Unfortunately, just as I'm starting to re-explore my lavender side, I find myself in a place where the sort of atmosphere I could readily find back east isn't prevalent. I suspect that, even if Paddy's does pick up late at night,* as the only game in town it might resemble Cheers for queers more than a well-populated urban club where anonymity is yours if you want it. Not that I need to hide anything (obviously), but at a big city club you don't need to break into a clique to enjoy the place or the evening. Plenty of whatever for everybody!
At a party last Sunday I talked for awhile with S., a fellow my age who moved here from San Francisco and is a refugee from its leather/BDSM scene. He needed a place that was slower, because his social life was starting to grind him down. I need, I think, a place that's somewhere in the middle, and this town may yet provide that. S. works for the local gay services organization, and they do a monthly sunset gathering gathering atop the Hotel Andalucia, which I will attend. There are also people--mostly DJs--who organize "gay nights" at various clubs, so the scene, such as it is, may be one of rotating venues and odd nights during the week. There is, for example, Sunday night at the Wildcat Lounge, which I may float through this evening if I feel like it.
But even here in supposedly liberal California, there are issues. Some organizers complained of hostility on the part of the venues' staffs. Money is paramount: if your queer event doesn't bring in enough cashflow, you're not invited back.
It's a strange place, it really is. What I've discovered over the past six months is that if I really want something, I have the ability to make it happen. So, I'll see whether this situation in particular requires the application of that newly-found mutant power.
*I have since been told, on good authority, that it does.
