Hey y’all—
Just wanted to give you a little short piece about Pride—on youth and age and bars and the full swirl of thoughts we have in June. I have you have fun reading it. I’ll always keep stuff free—all of it—but if you subscribe, it makes it so much easier to write short essays and fiction in between bigger zines. I promise the button is only after the piece.
Meanwhile, make sure to check out my latest essay on queer film history in Contingent and my profile with Liz in PISS Magazine. (That’s right: I’ve been covered in Piss.)
That’s all! Story below — K
Pride
Who shits in a gay bar? This isn’t a riddle. I was at the Boiler Room with my boyfriend—the new Boiler Room, the same boyfriend—after spending a couple hours watching queer performance art ranging from okay to transcendent. Pride means you buy tickets to queer events in the city and hope there’s enough good seats. Everyone was there, Joey Arias as horny as ever, Tyler Ashley dancing better than anyone I had ever seen. A trans poet interviewed a famous writer about her new book on Candy Darling and half of the audience pretended to know who that was, telling on themselves when they gasped after learning that Candy died at age 29. Pride means you sit around a lot of 25-year-olds who know nothing of time nor history but who easily project their fears of dying young. We clapped and the young people snapped and on the way to get pizza before the new Boiler Room, I told my same boyfriend how I didn’t like the poet’s stuff because it always felt like reading love letters to someone else’s friends riddled with invisible footnotes. Pride means you remember your time as a footnote-writing historian. The table next to us at the pizzeria were younger dorks but, like, hot dorks?—like dorks that would probably be down, maybe? Pride means refraining from telling some 25-year-olds you’re into their feet.
Who shits in a gay bar? Maybe this is a riddle. My boyfriend and I made it to Boiler Room and we ordered two beers at the bar, taking in the Sunday night crowd. Every gay bar has its own crew but there are typical flavors in every town, even New York. There are the bars for people under 30 who are scared of people over 30; there are bars for people over 30 scared of people under 30; those for people under 30 seeking people over 30; Black lesbian bars; secret lesbian bars; mean lesbian bars; queer bars that smell like armpits; gay bars that are actually karaoke bars; gay bars where you can fuck in the backyard on a snowy night; gay bars where you absolutely cannot on no planet fuck in the bathroom; gay bars for aspiring real estate agents. Above all ranks the townie bar—the locals bar, the truehead spot, the place straight people call “a dive” because white girls named Lauren and Danielle in this city cannot help but tell on themselves. The old Boiler Room was a gem, its atmosphere a neither-nor shade where somehow the neon beer signs had a dinge to them, sediment in the air even though nobody can remember smoking indoors, a TV always programmed to play Dynasty or an old James Bond movie: are you pissing in the broken urinal or are you just letting it go in the sink?
Who shits in a gay bar? A priest, a rabbi, and a bear are all queueing in the woods. After the first-and-a-half beers, I tell my boyfriend I have to piss. The blessing and curse of 2025 are that gay bars now have single occupancy stalls—the humanizing touch that leaves any aspiring urinator standing like an absolute dork by the pool table until one restroom or the other opens first. My eyes ping back and forth between the doors: which will it be, one or two, one or two, one or two. A couple minutes later, the second door unlocks. Out walks an absolute pocket rocket—5-foot-5, slim, maybe 25, maybe, too much beard for a twink but who is complaining with eyes like that, perfect angel curls and a pink sheepish grin. He’s dressed like a straight guy the way all young gays these days do now, now that all the straight guys stole every gay look, even the mustaches. His tan sweater is somehow boxy and flimsy, the sneakers nearly geriatric, the dad shorts at least revealing surprisingly juicy calves. He says “sorry about that” and I nod like whatever because why apologize for a bar only having two stalls but young people would apologize to the car that hit them so I shrug it off as a generational glitch and I walk in and immediately I realize he was apologizing for having just taken a gigantic shit.
Who shits in a gay bar? Well, him, clearly. Do the youth not plan ahead? Maybe he’s a top. I’m a top but I’ve never dropped a deuce at a gay bar. Every other line of business, including a poetry bookstore, sure, but never a gay bar. The room doesn’t have the sickly green reek of diarrhea, but I have to preemptively flush the toilet to even start my piss. Maybe the young people don’t hook up any more. Maybe he went on a long walk in his grampa tennis shoes with his boyfriend. Maybe he needs more fiber. All of the brown streaks on the porcelain stuck around after I flushed, along with half of the smell. The shame is that I look good enough to take a bathroom selfie in the red neon light. Maybe if the guy were taller he could have taken a mirror selfie while on the can. I pull out my phone mid-stream, keeping my aim at the bowl while I pivot toward the mirror, trying to get the camera to focus. Someone rattles the door and now I worry that they think I’m responsible for the log stink made by some carefree babyface LL Bean gay half my age named Braden or Jaden or Calyx or Braxley. Turdley, whatever. The door rattles again and I’m shaking off the final drops and I immediately realize that I do not care if the next person thinks I’ve laid a steamer if they’re shaking the handle twice within thirty seconds. I pause to take ten or fifteen more selfies, stopping only to flush. The streaks and smell remain about the same. I wash my hands and leave. The man at the door is middle-aged, in the kind of baseball cap that wouldn’t even look good in theory. “Sorry about that,” he says and then I give a pink sheepish grin.
Who shits at the gay bar? Maybe everyone, maybe we all have and I’ve forgotten what it was like to be maybe-25 at a townie bar for an hour on a Saturday night. Maybe a gay bar is a townie bar if and only if it is known that its bathrooms are a place where you can shit. If queers can’t shit at the gay bar then where the hell else can they? Maybe Candy Darling shit at the gay bar. Maybe someone was on the can when the first brick was thrown. Maybe we all need more fiber. In Hungary they filled the bridge connecting the two halves of the city, a half million people in the streets even after their potato-faced dictator banned Pride events. How many gay bars are there in Budapest? Zohran marched in New York’s official Pride Parade and my friend Selma J went to the Dyke March even after every wastoid journalist and fifth-rate pundit wants to traffic in the bigotry of Zionist pinkwashing to actually commit the double-cross of selling out trans people. Marching dykes have to shit, and Joey Arias, too. Maybe a poem can have a few footnotes after all, if it isn’t too hopeful. Take a shit, do shit, break shit, gather shit, change shit, make shit, fake shit, warp shit. Maybe we could hang out and be angry and march and protest and go to gay shows in October and February and July 7th, even the 25-year-olds, and I know maybe you know that but maybe you don’t call your friends enough and maybe you know that already, too. Maybe that dude went home after his two beers and fucked the shit out of his boyfriend. Maybe he’s a bottom after all. Pride does take nerve.
Liked this? If you subscribe I can have the means to write more essays more often. -K