Bars

Last night, I went into the Heights, sat at the bar and had three beers and a steak salad. Yum. Chris was bartending, yet, despite being in a crappy mood and being known to be one of the biggest sticklers, my check only showed the steak salad on it. What a sweetheart. I sat there for about an hour and a half, drinking my beers, eating my food rather slowly, and reading the last twenty pages of the "Tattooed Soldier" that I needed to finish by today.

I've been doing that a lot, lately - going to bars to sit, drink and read. Its not that it feels grown up or marks a new level of maturity, because I don't think that the way you drink alcohol connotes how "grown up" you are. I guess to me it makes me feel like I've come a long way when I think about my early drinking years, when I would sneak into bars in the Castro and dance the night away with Suzy and Nick. Or maybe the middle ages, when Amar, Dwayne and I would go to Deco (only one of us actually old enough to be there) and drinking with Ron and making out with older men on the dance floor.

Bars have been a big part of my life, now that I think about it. Growing up, our house on 60 Melra Court, the house I've lived in the longest (11 years) had a huge bar in the downstairs room. There was a light over what looked like a glass mirror in the center of the bar that would reveal a dancing naked woman when flicked on.

I had my first party, there - New Years 2000, I was fourteen. I did not get drunk (there was only soda and snacks), but my friends and I had a great time, ringing in the new millennium with yellow streamers wrapped to our wrists, running through the streets like we were boozed up.

The first time I drank was from that bar, too - two days after I came out, I grabbed a water bottle and filled it up with a bunch of shots of different liquors and Tyler Murray and I drank it in the stairways of San Francisco State. We wrestled in the dewey grass in front of a fraternity, drunk brothers with lemonade tequila-rum breath. It was the first of many times the two of us would drink together.

Deco, the Stud - then later, Apex and Jr's ... these have been major symbols in my adult gay life, but now, a good time at a bar means a book and a steak salad and a frothy brew. It has been a long ride for me.

Of course, that does not mean I won't turn down a sloppy night sweating on the dancefloor at Wonderland, so invite me along!