West Texas Gay Bar

I came out to West Texas for the first time a year ago chasing a ghost, whatever traces could be found of the original Midnight Cowboy. After seeing the film and then reading the book I was obsessed with the landscape, the people, the timeless quality I expected West Texas to have. On a Friday evening around 5:30 it was late November and the sun was in my eyes and my windshield was covered with the splattered bugs of a five hour drive from Dallas and there, in the lunar landscape of the western edge of the reddest state in the union I found myself in something unexpected: a traffic jam on I-20 between Midland and Odessa. The sky was filled with flames: the sun setting ahead of me and the miles and miles of fiery refineries that hug the highway. I’ve traveled through most of the country and many parts of the world but on that Friday evening, crawling through traffic, needing to pee, I realized I was somewhere I’d never been before, that, as far as my eye could see, the landscape was a mess of smoke, flame, the flickering brake lights of the cars in front of me, trucks and semis covered in dust. When I found an exit and went into the gas station it felt the same, the roughnecks dressed in coveralls slick with oil and grime wearing baseball caps and cowboy boots and playful expressions and talking to each other over the candy aisle about the bars and the Hooters and the Twin Peaks they’d visit later that night.

Midnight Cowboy, it seemed, couldn’t be found. Stopping at a liquor store in Big Spring, Texas, where the film was made I showed the owner some stills from the movie on my phone. She nodded at each one, telling me how to find them and, later, finding them all, it was clear it wasn’t as “timeless” out here as I’d thought.

Dennis Elam, columnist
The Odessa American

“Well, here’s an interesting story in action, which you might find someone else to talk to who knew them better than I did, but there were a couple of guys, Hector Bellini and I believe the other guy’s first name was Steve Thompson, Bellini and Thompson. They showed up in, of all places, Odessa, and this would’ve been in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, when they got started, and there was a little coffee shop in a strip center there on 42nd street, and the coffee shop was open in the afternoon, and these two guys come in, and run the restaurant at night, except it wasn’t in the coffee shop, you actually had to walk through the back of the building in what would’ve been in the loading dock. If you wanted a bottle of wine or beer you had to bring that with you because they didn’t have a wine license. And these guys opened a gourmet restaurant. Thompson was the chef and Hector who’s from Argentina was the waiter. And, almost immediately, gathered a great following, I mean you had to call and get a reservation, I mean it wasn’t a real big place, and each evening they’d have you know three or four entrees you could choose from, and everybody loved it. Well, these fellows you know lived together and were of the gay persuasion but for somebody who can cook like that, who cares? . . . we were eating at Bellini and Thompson’s one night and after his failed attempt- at that time Bush W. had run for Congress out there and lost — but he and Laura happened to be eating there, they had come over from Midland and were eating there that night and you know walked over and you know said hello to us and all that, but I mean that, that gives you an idea just how popular these guys were.”

Mary Ann,
Odessa resident,
SinCiti patron
When he came in, he hit me. Everything was pitch black, I remember I was holding Stephanie in my arms, and he swung at me, and says “you don’t EVER do that” and well, I knocked out, I went unconscious, and then I felt like I was coming back, I remember he was on the phone, he was crying to his Dad, and he was telling his dad that he had killed me and the baby.

(our food arrives)

Do you want to pray over the meal?

(I said OK; I prayed)

I never filed charges on him, the one who filed charges on him was his dad, but I loved his family, me and his brother, we were like best friends in high school, and I could tell his brother anything, and David would tell his brother, “hey, you need to chill out.”

When the cops showed up, they did arrest him and his dad filed charges. They found the baby, Stephanie, she was on the opposite of the bed, where the bassinet was flipped over her, protecting her.

I got beat when I was pregnant with my third, and I tried so hard to forgive him, and I realized he was never going to be honest with me, and I finally decided to leave.

One winter, it was snowy pitch white, and I told him I’m leaving, and he said “fine, get in the van, I’ll take you to your mother” and I said “yes, please, leave me at my mom’s house.” When we got maybe 2 or 3 blocks from my mom’s house he was trying to shove us out in the snow and the girls all had nothing but little PJs and then he took us back home and said “if you’re going back to your mom’s house you’re gonna walk” and he left us outside in the cold. I ran down to the neighbors and called my parents.

So when I did finally muster up the courage to leave him, I had a restraining order on him.

We attended this church for about five years, like I said, we did street ministry. It was non-denominational, it’s Agape Dream Center. They do a lot of street ministry. They built homes, they’re almost close to Team Challenge [rehab]. Of course, my husband was in Team Challenge. Yeh, Agape is pretty much what stands for love, we reach out to people in need, food on Thanksgiving, we have street parties, with bounce houses, we set up little booths for kids, on the south side of Odessa, that’s where most of the drug dealers live. That’s the kind of thing I like doing, I feel good about myself, trying to serve others, helping others. I stayed with that church for a long time and Jimmy Dennis, the preacher, he’s a very good friend of my ex-husband.

The majority of people around here are non-denominational. You don’t want people judging you. Whoever comes to the house, I’m not here to judge you.

Gay friends? They’re family. I see people for who they are, not for what they are. I go to the heart.

I went through a lot of hardship. I can understand when someone just needs someone to listen. I know what it’s like to struggle.

God has given me the heart that I wanted, to be able to be out there for people. I’ve been where they are. I’ve struggled. It’s just that love of people that God has, that I pray every day that he will give me, and I think he’s giving me that love.

God’s made us all in his image, the way I see it.

There’s a purpose for your life. Who’s to say that because who we are, down the line, you’re not teaching somebody else. There’s always a purpose.

You know the feeling when you love somebody. You know how it feels when you’re doing something right or wrong. It’s the same thing.

from Craigslist:
Stuck in traffic — m4m
“We were stuck on I-20 east of Big Spring because of a wreck. You were going to work on a rig around Pecos. Would like to talk more. Contact me.”

Juan Carlos prefers “Carlos” because “Juan sounds so fucking Mexican.” He drives a Hummer and he’s an uncut top, two facts he revealed in stages. Article one: while putting on drag in front of us all in Mary Ann’s living room he took everything off first, unabashed, and then, slowly, began to transform. In the photo he’s wearing faux belly skin but we dissuaded him: he shaved his chest instead and Ladi Chimay helped him with his makeup. The next day on Facebook he posted “so send me some pix bois” as his new status and, later, showed me the 30 some odd messages he received in his inbox, filled with pix of young men in various stages of bending over: article two.

Pastor Jimmy Dennis of the Agape Dream Center told me he is following in the footsteps of David Wilkerson, a street preacher best known for his 1962 “The Cross and the Switchblade.” His church on the south side of the train tracks is surrounded by empty lots, tumbleweeds, pawnshops, liquor stores, a cemetery: “I’m not looking for the people who already have a church. I don’t want churchgoers. I’m a streetpreacher — I’m on the street finding the people who don’t have people and inviting them in telling them, ‘church is a place where you can find a home.’” His ministry includes housing for men who have been in prison, a food pantry, and drug rehab counseling services. Asked if and how he ministers to gay people he told me: “I think they see on TV that it’s alright to be gay and so they come out, here, right here in West Texas and, well, this is not a television. A lot of ‘em are kicked out right then and there, teenagers, high school kids, you know, they don’t have anywhere to go. If I find them I take them in. They’re part of what I’m called to do. They’re broken, but it’s the broken who are the apple of God’s eye.”

After the show, 3 a.m., Lady Shamu,
seeing as the waiter was overwhelmed, took the orders.
“And what will Jesus be bringing you tonight?”

Steven,
the only gay bartender at Sinciti,
has lived in Midland most of his life.
Works in construction during the week,
45 minutes away.

“Uncle M.” would rather not have his name out in the open but he was willing to tell me a few things here and there. In the distance beyond his dollar bill is Showtyme; he came out to support her in the show. Originally of Shawnee, Oklahoma, Uncle M has lived in Midland, Texas, for the last 20 years and has, he told me, slept with most of the drag queens in Odessa, sometimes bailing them out of jail or visiting them in the hospital or taking them home after the show, depending. He’s bi, said he likes to “fuck everything that walks.” He insisted on buying me a drink too, and leaned into my shoulder at one point, and it was nice, and I could see why, at his age, he still gets around. To look at him from a distance he’s just a regular guy; a paunch, not much hair, inviting smile.

According to the Odessa American, Sable is one of the reasons Passions closed down and SinCiti became more popular a few years ago. According to Uncle M., she’s the “mother hen” of the West Texas drag queens. According to several bar patrons, Sable is “past her prime and needs to give it up.” In the background is one of the 2, sometimes 3 SinCiti bouncers who continually circle the bar, policing the crowd in a not friendly manner. SinCiti is owned and policed by large straight men and on Facebook refers to itself as “Sin,” the patrons as “Sinners.” There is only one gay bartender and SinCiti does not feel like “family” and it is not billed as a gay or lesbian bar; Friday night is for drag shows but Saturday night is a contest for the best dressed young lady. About a third of the patrons are straight and the rest, various degrees of queer. It feels like a third of the men, at any given time, are dressed in drag.

I was told there’s a girl in West Texas who thinks it’s
not worthwhile to come out.
She’s teaching as a man, near retirement.

When I drove west looking for Midnight Cowboy I realized: even in Big Spring, population 2000, where the film took place, gentrification and urban renewal had prettied up the original locations until the buildings probably look newer today than they did the day they were built. So I drove an hour further west to the only gay bar for a hundred miles and there, at least, the midnight cowboys haven’t changed a whit.