Remembering dark places...

The old saying goes, “You can never go home again.” The idea being that once you have seen the larger world, that place you called home will never seem the same. This idea is one of the two main themes of the musical, Into the Woods. In the show, each character takes a trip ‘into the woods’ (out into the world) to get their wish (grow, evolve, change). In the process of getting their wish, they themselves are changed. The world teaches them things that they never knew before. And, when they go back to their lives (back home), they bring back with them their changed selves and the consequences of what they have learned. And, their home (village, castle) is then lost. Destroyed as a consequence of the very growth that taught them so much.

Life is never as simple as the fairy tales, and happily ever after can be harder than it looks. One of my ‘homes’ is the gay dance club. As a college student, my friends and I would pile into cars and head down to Portland to go to The Underground, the one gay dance club in reasonable driving distance of our small liberal arts college in Maine. We called ourselves the GoGo’s, because the group coalesced at a GoGo’s concert that most of us attended together. There we were, a bunch of 18 &19 year old gay boys dancing in a circle to We Got the Beat, demanding our space on the Civic Center floor. And, somewhere along the line the dozen of us decided that we should all have drag names – and the Bowdoin GoGo’s were born. At The Underground, there was nothing better than five or six of us dancing, with various boyfriends, pick-ups, and potentials in tow. These were great nights of fun and community. After college I found another gay dance club, The Haymarket in Boston. I went a couple of times a week. Some of the Bowdoin GoGo’s had moved to Boston as well, and along with all the friends, boyfriends, and tricks we were each making, we made The Haymarket our new home. The Haymarket was trashy and wonderful. Amateur strip nights, seedy hustlers, and the best dance music in Boston, the place was packed and just about as diverse as any club in Boston. I reveled in the attention of black gay men who would say to me as I got off the dance floor, “Big girl can move.” And, for awhile, I dated the most beautiful black man in Boston. The Haymarket was a community that kept me going, when all around there was death. But, as I got older and got in a relationship, and focused more on my work (in all its forms), the clubs became less and less a focus of my life. And, when at 30 I decided to stop drinking, the clubs seemed even more superfluous. I looked back fondly at that home, where I had been held as I became myself, but I stopped going to the bars. I had been ‘to the woods’ and the clubs couldn’t be my home anymore.

One night shortly after I turned 41, I went on a trip through time. I went to Faces in East St. Louis. It was an 18+ night, and a number of my students from Webster decided to go. And, there I was back in the home of my youth. A gay dance club filled with young gay boys and dykelets flirting, dancing, giggling, and finding themselves at home. The music was 80s – it literally was a trip through time. The drag show included Kitty Litter – a big girl who can really move.

And, there were wolves and dangers and dark places. But there was also laughter and connection, and that feeling of community. Faces is gone now. I was glad I got to experience before it closed.