I'm From Driftwood

by Robert Dominguez

Club Stars was the last of the 3.2 alcohol gay teen bars in 1990, located just west of lower downtown Denver in the railroad yard just off the old 20th Street viaduct. My friend Kyle, a 24-year old blond guy that I had met at the Aurora Mall, suggested it would be a good idea for me to go there and meet some friends my age. The club itself wasn’t that spectacular. It was an old tire warehouse that had been painted all black on the inside with a dance floor at the far end and a bar, lit with Christmas lights, along one wall. Tom, the owner, was a large German man in his mid-thirties with broad shoulders, paunchy stomach and one semi-lazy eye. Situated at the cashier door, he intimidated the hell out of me with his towering ego, large crossed arms and a thick, throaty laugh.

“And just why should I let you in?” he scoffed at me as I stood in front of him in my latest rayon paisley print with black MC Hammer pants to match. I told him that I wanted to meet friends. “Friends? In here? That’s cute. Good luck.” Often, though, after I convinced him to allow me in, I would pull up a bar stool next to the cashier cage because I was too scared to venture past on my own. I tried not to disturb him too much with what I felt were stupid questions, but in some sense I thought of him like a friendly pit bull. As the night would wear on he would often give me a clue or two about the patrons that passed through the front door.

One night a large maroon Mercury stretch limo pulled up outside the door. From it emerged three very tall and glamorous looking women. I was in awe and asked Tom who the women were. “You’ve never seen drag queens?” No, I answered. “They’re not real women,” he continued in his deep voice, “they’re men dressed up like them.” With that the first of the three entered through the front door. Dressed in a blue sequin cocktail mini, adorned with large earrings, glossy lips and a mass of curly hair, she resembled something of a Diana Ross knock off. “Bitch,” said the sparkly lady to Tom, “wha cho up to?” Tom said something about business as usual. Then she turned to me, her tarantula eyelashes widened with delight. “Well hello baby,” she flirted while lightly scratching the side of my face with her long, red nail extensions. “I’m Brown Sugar.”

Completely star struck (I was after all under age in the illusionary presence of a Motown legend) I could only think of one question. “Is that your limo?” She looked at me, then Tom, and laughed. “‘course that’s mine. Why? Would you like to go for a ride?” she asked. I couldn’t contain myself. I had never been in a limousine before and I couldn’t believe that I was going to now. Boy, if the kids at school knew what I was doing on a Friday night, I thought. Having sipped down half a pitcher of beer while seated at the door, I leapt with excitement from my bar stool. I flashed Tom a big happy grin. He shot me back a silent raised eyebrow with a tilt of his head. “Girls,” said Sugar to the other two, “I’ll be right back. Come baby,” her nails now scratching the top of my head.

The driver opened the rear door and I bounded into the back seat. What few parking lot lights there were looked like muted stars against the sky through the dark, tinted glass. Brown Sugar slid into the seat next to me. Before the driver closed her door, she instructed him to take a few laps through downtown Denver and then we were sealed into the dim lit cavern. “Would you like something to drink?” she asked as the car lurched forward over and around the potholes in the parking lot. I told her no, I was fine, but the reality was I had no idea what kinds of cocktails were available. All I knew was beer. “You got the face of an angel, baby.” I smiled with embarrassment and looked out my window as the car started to weave among the streets lined with high rises. I asked her if I could open the rooftop window. She obliged and as the dark glass slid open, I noticed the black privacy window rise between us and the driver.

Instinctively I knew something wasn’t right as Brown Sugar slithered over to me and onto the floor. “Pull down your pants,” she growled. “I want to suck your cock.” All of a sudden I realized I had to pee really bad and that it wouldn’t be a good idea. Plus, she was starting to frighten me. I attempted to be coy and said something like “what about the driver, we can’t do that back here.” She laughed at my naivete and in an instant had my pants half way down around my thighs. Oh god, I thought, this can’t be good. From my crotch this mound of synthetic wavy hair started to rise and fall, but I just couldn’t get hard. My bladder started to really throb. Crap, I worried, I’m going to piss in her mouth if I strike up a boner. Several times she looked up at me with a sneer and I just sat there with a terrified toothy grin. “Why don’t you close your eyes,” she whispered. That made it even worse for me because all I could think was I didn’t want to be known as the guy who took a leak in Brown Sugar’s mouth.

After several minutes, Brown Sugar sat up in a huff and ordered me to put my pants back on. She then lowered the privacy screen and barked at the driver to return us to Stars. I sat in an awkward silence as we returned to the club. When the car slowed to a stop outside, I thanked her and exited quickly before the driver could open my door. I sped past Tom at the cashier cage to the toilet to relieve myself. When I came out of the bathroom, Brown Sugar and her groupies were seated at the bar shrieking in hysterics while they stared at me. What little self-esteem I had was shattered and I bolted out of the club and went home ashamed of myself. For the next two weekends I avoided Stars, and when I finally returned, Tom asked where I had been. I lied and said busy with school. Before we could continue anymore conversation fate would have it that the maroon Mercury limo pulled up to the door again. I panicked, but stood next to Tom as Brown Sugar and company entered.

She said hi to Tom and made sweet talk conversation as her crew hovered and passed without paying cover. Then she looked at me. “Wanna go for a ride?!” She howled and hissed in laughter. Her minions jumped in on cue and I felt the blood rush to my head. I wanted to run, but luckily they moved on into the club and I sat mortified next to Tom. After about five minutes of silence, I felt Tom’s meaty left arm weigh in across my shoulder. “Brown Booger?” he said in a low gruff with a squeeze of his elbow. “She’s a tired bitch.” Grateful for his support, I then only had to wonder what “tired” meant.

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by Jessica Max Stein

I drove past the house this weekend. Some goateed stout guy I’d never seen before sat on the front steps nonchalantly reading a magazine. The nerve of him, the trespasser, sprawled out on our front steps like he owned the place.

But, of course, he did own the place, now. The thought was a punch in the gut.

Six months ago, my dad sold the house where I grew up. I have been surprised at the depth of my feelings of loss. I wonder how much my experience of growing up queer there intensifies the transition.

The house is a brick colonial in Rust Belt suburbia, on a street canopied by maple trees. A great place to be a kid, wearing whirligig maple keys on the end of your nose. Not such a great place to be, shall we say, a righteous babe.

In 1993, after the big gay march on Washington, some friends and I started a gay student group at Niskayuna High School, in Schenectady, New York. We called the group Visibility. Little did we realize how visible we’d be.

A lot of people gave me a hard time for being queer (gay, feminist, outspoken, what have you) in high school. There were a lot of incidents: I was name-called, prank-called, chased home, I ran away from home for three days (to New York), I violated the school attendance policy in one of my classes and was nearly held back, the principal accused me of falsifying complaints “to further your cause” – oh, I had a hell of a time. I was pretty much always scared and no one took it seriously.

Near the end of senior year, in June 1995, I was walking after dark, just a block from our house, when a car sped up and came towards me. I switched to the other side of the road, but the car swerved right at me, the guys in the car screaming at me – “DYYYKE!” I ran behind a tree, and they sped off.

I made the Great Queer Migration to New York City just two months later, or as soon as I possibly could, and have lived here ever since, ensconced in my big queer tribe.

It’s a common queer narrative, from Molly Bolt to Michael Tolliver: Queer person flees small town, migrates to big city, finds tribe. How ironic to think that in growing up small-town queer, so often in apparent isolation, we are actually participating in collective, community experience.

After my own migration, I held onto my anger for a long time. I used to wish my family would sell the house and start over in a new town. A decade ago this would have been a dream come true.

But I kept visiting. Mostly I went for my mother – for many years she struggled with breast cancer, and by 2000 it was vastly easier for me to come up than her to come down. As we kibbitzed at the kitchen table, or stood together on the back porch watching a thunderstorm, I found myself glad to be there. And when she passed away in 2003, and my father called to ask me how to use the microwave, I visited to be with him.

I started to revisit some of my old nature haunts, all within hiking distance of the house. I learned to recognize the birds – a raucous crow, a whistling chickadee – that before had been just background noise. I strolled along the Mohawk, swimming in a secret cove as New York City sweated out another record-breaking heat wave.

And I came to remember: before I hated Schenectady, I loved it. I loved it back when it was all I knew, and now I loved it knowing what else was out there. Maybe this sounds corny, but it wasn’t; it was work, and it was worth it.

And that’s what irks me about the queer migration narrative: I don’t hear any healing in it, just fleeing. What about what we leave behind, back home?

Just as I learned to love my hometown, our family left. I feel like I showed up just as the party let out – compounding the loss of the house, the memories let loose. If leaving had felt like a choice, would I have an easier time now, saying goodbye?

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by Karo

I have always been gay. I knew actresses were gay before I knew I was and before I even knew what gay was. So coming to terms with it was quite easy for me, especially considering I was growing up in the 90s, a time when lesbian relationships weren’t constantly featured on TV. But I do think, even without lots of LGBT storylines it was a good thing I had the opportunity to watch a lot of TV to make me become the open-minded person I am today.

Don’t get me wrong, my parents are not overly religious, racist, or sexist (how could they be–my father raised me as he would have raised a boy so I know how to change a flat tire and stuff, but when it came to same-sex relationships they were a chip off the old block.

You can probably imagine the horror I thought coming out would be when I was 17 and finally was able put a label to my sexuality. Because of that, I just didn’t come out to my parents at all. But when I was 20 I fell deeply and madly in love with a girl from London on the Internet and when I came back from visiting her for the first time, my father came to pick me up from the airport. I figured it had to be now or never, I just had to come out to him, but I was more afraid than I had ever been in my entire life, especially since my father had ranted about “those people” just a couple of weeks earlier.

While we were waiting for our train and I didn’t know what else to talk about, I got really brave and said to him: “You know, the girl I was visiting – we’re more than friends. I love her.” I was expecting silence, anger, denial, a sermon… But for the first time, my father really surprised me. I mean, I could have known that he would just tell a story instead of really conversing with me, because that’s just the person he is, but I didn’t expect the story to go like this. He said: “You know my one colleague from the fire fighters? She came to me two weeks ago complaining about the others. They were bullying her because she was gay. Since I was the only one who went to university, she thought I would be open-minded. So before I could tell her that I think it’s wrong and sinful, she was crying on my shoulder. All I could do was take her in my arms and tell her that everything is going to be alright. And at that point I understood that “those people” (he literally still said that) just want to be happy like everyone else. Who am I to take that away from someone?”

And that was it. We never talked about it again. More than a decade later I am still together with that girl from London and whenever I talk to my father he asks me: “Are you happy?” I answer yes and he says: “That’s all I ever wanted for you, my child.”

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