« My Latest Obsession | Home | Rainy Days and Mondays »

September 1, 2003

One Button Town

At work Friday, I kept kvetching that I wanted to do something impetuous, impromptu….I wanted to get out of town, but didn’t want to spend the money it would take to go New Orleans for Southern Decadence, or Chicago, or any other traditional gay Labor Day destinations.

So…lo and behold, Saturday night, my pal Butter (we’re going way, way back with that nick-name) sends me a message:

BUTTER: HI
ME: hi doll
BUTTER: ARE U UP FOR A SCANDAL
ME: always
BUTTER: IM GOIN TO SOCO IN COLUMBIA TONIGHT
BUTTER: WANT TO GO
ME: LOL....that sounds so silly...why are you going there
ME: who are you going with?
BUTTER:BORED OF STL WANT TO SEE SOME NEW FACES

Butter

So that was it. Within an hour and a half, I was showered, shaved, and wearing my new shirt (!!!) and my bling…..we set off on an adventure to the middle of Missouri.

Columbia sits smack-dab in the middle of the state. And smack dab in the middle of this college town (88,000 residents/24,000 students) is the gay bar.

And it pretty much is THE gay bar in town. There’s an alternative night at some other location, but SoCo is essentially it. And it’s in a strip mall next to a Mexican Restaurant and Nail Salon. Right off one of the main drags in town, SoCo seems to exists in perfect harmony with frozen yogurt store, a cell phone store and numerous other retail havens in a very ordinary business development district.

Ten years ago, Kelly and I made a road trip to Columbia when I bought my 1964 Ford Fairlane. And we went to the gay bar that was there at that time. Since closed, someone told me that it’s now one of those Nueva Latin/Chipotle/Fusion kinda places.

Anyway, as the only gay bar in town, there’s an extraordinary mix of men and women. Unlike St. Louis, where the bars seem very polarized and divided by gender, age, race, and a laundry list of special interests, SoCo is the meeting place for the menz and and the womyn. I bet it was a 50/50 split.

A few random observations:

• There is a list of “Do Not Accept Checks From” posted right over the cash bar.

• The bar is really clean, but very plain in many ways. It does have a large stage and a lot of seating options. A small outdoor patio looks out onto a strip mall parking lot. It’s not a testament to interior design, but cleanliness compensates for the modest decorations.

• There is a rule that the menz must keep their shirts on – with at least one button buttoned. From what the fellas told me, womyn complained about the boyz running around with their shirts off. The fellas have to keep their six packs and nipple rings covered until the patriarchal culture allows women’s breasts to sway free. It’s a college town, after all.

I really had a great time. There were lots of things, that in retrospect contributed to the fun: being from "out of town," knowing no one, being removed from the local scandal and drama, but still doing my best to stir it up....And it was not a planned sojourn. It was very refreshing to just get up and go.....no worries.....no cares.

Folks in Columbia were very friendly and social and chatty. Butter and I kept hoping to find out about an afterhours. Someone asked me if I meant a rave.... I hadn't thought about that word in a while. It made me giggle.

The whole night did. That's the thing about going out of town. There are virtually no ramifications, well as long as you don't do something illegal, or something you wouldn't want someone else to find out about. For me it was a blast just talking to people and not wondering if they were friends of an ex, dating the ex, used to date the ex, wants to date the ex, etc. It was so enjoyable to have no connection, no association, no prior knowledge of a single solitary soul in the bar.

After having been out in St. Louis for over 14 years now, it was a breath of fresh air.