Thoughts inspired by Pride month.
The Stonewall riots happened the summer after I graduated high school, before I started college. Nobody was “out” when I was in high school, though homophobic slurs were a bit less common among the hippies and theater kids I hung out with. Three of my new college friends came out that very first semester, so it was easy to fall into being an ”ally” because these were already my friends. Later I found out a couple of guys I knew in high school had come out after graduation.
That first wave was mostly guys, it was a few years before I encountered “out” lesbians. After college, I worked for a few years as a bartender in a rock club. One of my jobs there was Sunday night bartender. Sundays were fairly quiet, all the rock-n-rollers having gotten their week’s worth Friday and Saturday. So the owner booked an assortment of different kinds of music for Sundays. One month he booked Cris Williamson for the whole month. She was sort of a founding mother of “Womyn’s Music,” and the place would fill up with lesbians every Sunday. They were so much less obnoxious than the rock-n-roll crowd.
I remember the bus boy was a very hetero young dude, and he came up to me that first Sunday with a shocked look on his face and said “There are two women kissing in that booth over there!” I just answered “Well, did you get the dirty glasses out of their way?” So, for four Sundays in a row I was the bartender in a lesbian bar, and I loved it. I remember one of Williamson’s crowd pleasers was a cover of the Everly Brothers song “All I Have To Do Is Dream,” and it was beautiful. The whole place singing along with chorus, including me.
I feel lucky to have dodged the homophobia bullet.
Love is love.
Happy Pride Month.
