Personal gay history
I Ran From a Baseball Bat Gay Bashing Outside a Gay Bar
Portland Thugs
Being openly gay in the 1970s was dangerous. Still is in plenty of places. Back then, if you were from a small town about the only places you could let your hair down were the gay bars and drag clubs in the bigger cities. They were usually unmarked. No windows. Often the entrance was on an alley. You had to know where they were, though sometimes throbbing disco music gave them away.
I wasn’t much for the bar scene.
I’m kinda shy, not so good at small talk — like you could talk much in those places anyway. My sissy voice gets eaten up in a loud room. Still, I visited the gay bars when I could. I’d go to Portland or Seattle. I was sort of cute back then and a decent enough dancer. I might go early for an hour or two to see what would transpire. I’d have a couple of drinks, dance by myself, cruise the glistening shirtless torsos, then walk back to the friend’s house where I was staying.
One night about eleven, my friend Aaron and I stepped outside a gay bar to have a cigarette. I was ready to split. It was a cold, clear winter night in Portland. I was wearing a full length faux-mink coat, very Zsa Zsa. Aaron shivered in jeans and a t-shirt. He intended to go back in. We walked down the alley a few dozen feet and stood there dishing and laughing in the chill. We took our last drags and then hugged each other goodbye.
Over Aaron’s shoulder I saw two hulking figures standing at the far end of the alley. They were watching us. Not thinking, I gave Aaron a kiss, like I often did.
That did it.
They exploded. They started yelling, “Cock suckers, faggots, we’re gonna kill you.” Then they ran toward us at full speed. My subconscious registered that one of them had a baseball bat. We probably should have run back into the bar, but that would have meant running toward them. I grabbed Aaron’s arm and we took off out of the alley toward the street.
Panicked, I tried to think where we could run. There was an all-night quickie mart mid-block, but no guarantee it would be any safer. Aaron yelled, “My car.” It was thirty yards ahead. We reached it just as the two rednecks came tearing out of the alley. Aaron fumbled with the key. I ran to the other side of the car. He leaned over and unlocked my door as I yelled, “Hurry, hurry.” Aaron was pulling his door shut just as the guy with the bat caught up with us.
His face was distorted with rage.
He was yelling obscenities, clearly drunk. He stuck the bat in the gap so Aaron couldn’t shut his door. The two of them struggled. I manually locked all the other doors. The guy was kicking the car and screaming. We all were screaming. Aaron managed to push the bat out of the door, slam it shut, and lock it all in one swift motion. He stuck the keys in the ignition. Both thugs were on us now and they were beating the car. I was still screaming and screaming.
Traffic slowed on the street, but no one stopped to help.
Aaron peeled out, and we drove straight to the police station trying to get a hold of ourselves. I was crying. Then I noticed blood on Aaron’s arm, just a scratch. It might have been me who did it when I grabbed him out of the alley. He also had a scrape on his leg from the struggle.
We planned to tell our story to the police but realized as we talked about what we would say, that the police would do nothing. They’d say we had no clear descriptions of the attackers, no license plate, no evidence. They would likely mock us and make us feel like it was our fault.
So we went back to Aaron’s place, and I dressed his wounds. We stayed up all night trying to write a clear description of our attackers. At least Aaron could warn others at the bar. The thugs had done serious damage to his car. Fortunately, his insurance covered it. Of course, he couldn’t tell the adjustor what really happened. He claimed he’d parked downtown and returned to find it vandalized.
I didn’t go out to gay bars for months after that.
Editors note: Through the 1990s and even beyond, gay men assaulted outside gay bars and in gay neighborhoods often either feared to report attacks to the police or failed to do so out of a sense that justice would not be served. When my partner and I were attacked in Greenwich Village in 1991, we did not call the police. We were afraid to. — James Finn
