There I was, drunk and on my way to a gay club. 

No, that wasn’t how I had originally planned my night, but the circumstances of the evening had necessitated such a trip. 

And I was along for the ride. 

The night started the same as any night I hung out with old college friends. Jokes. Drinking. Someone trying to get everyone to play or do something obviously no one else wanted to do but they wouldn’t stop talking about it. 

You know, the usual thing. 

However, as is often the case, someone eventually threw this out: “Hey, anybody want to go play darts?”

Now, I don’t have enough data left from that night to say with absolute certainty that person was me. But the clues are there. 

Next thing I know I’m smoking a cigarette outside of a dive bar out on Highway 31 and Somers Road. 

I remember maybe getting in a few games of darts before one of my friends, Erin, walked over to me with that look that let me know that we’ve reached the “thing nobody really wants to do” part of the night. 

“Hey, so Steve doesn’t really feel comfortable here.”

“The fuck is Steve?” I responded, looking around until I saw a skinny, 20-something man sitting next to my friends Max and Billie. 

Pointing at him, I continued, “Has he been with us this whole time?”

“Jesus, Boo. You drink way too much.”

“Fair point. So, what now?”

Erin goes on to explain that Steve doesn’t feel comfortable here, and proposes that we head out to the gay club out by the interstate. Part of me is opposed to the idea. Not out of homophobia, but because, in that moment, I realized that trying to pick up anyone would get significantly harder for me in a club where no one may be of my sexual orientation. 

“Oooh” the sound escapes my mouth before the sound of my epiphany clicking in my head has even faded.

“What?” Erin asks.

“Nothing, I just think I had a moment, and now I’d feel like an asshole if we didn’t go. I’m in.”

With me on board, Erin had easy work of convincing Max and Billie. Like me, they didn’t really care where we went as long as there was booze. 

Then, there’s Jake. 

Jake grew up in a conservative, Christian and highly-protective home. And while I had grown up the same way, unlike me, Jake stayed exactly that way all his life. So much so, that our friend group had barred me and him from ever talking about politics or religion while we were drunk. Which was a great call, honestly. 

Fortunately, for Erin and the group, though his cheeks had dropped into “I don’t want to go” bulldog jowls, he wasn’t the one who drove. And for once, he accepted defeat. 

Which brings us back to: There I was, drunk and on my way to a gay club. 

While I’m staring out the window from my seat in the back of Max’s car thinking about whether or not I’ll ever find someone who loves me as much as I do, I can hear little mutterings from Jake’s direction. Erin and Steve had driven separately, so clearly he was looking for my attention.

“Jake, what are you doing?” the words bounce off the window toward him as my eyes stay glued on the passing lights.

“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

My head whips to meet his eyes so fast that I’m certain for a second that my only response will be to throw up on Jake. Unfortunately, I don’t. 

“Dude, what?”

“What if I have to go to the bathroom? I don’t want dudes hitting on me.”

Jake – though if you’d believe it, a fairly nice yet misguided guy — was not what you’d call attractive in a mainstream sense. Jake was a balding, 300-pound man with such a loud voice that I used to find which house a party was in by standing outside and listening for him.

He deserved love, and like all of us, I believe that someday he will find it.

But he looked like Sully from Monster’s, Inc. if you took away the horns, tail and shaved off all of his fur, so I couldn’t stop myself from saying what I said next.

“Jake, girls don’t even hit on you at bars. Why would men?”

“I don’t know, because they’re … gay.”

“That … just shut up, Jake.”

We pulled into the parking lot, and I had opened my door, stepped out and lit a cigarette before the conversation could continue, positioning myself on the complete opposite side of our group standing next to Max. 

—–

Max, Billie and I met freshman year in college. While I had recently graduated after four years at this point, Max and Billie dropped out and found their own ways to work. 

I met Billie while she was sitting on the grass near Lee Hall on the campus of UW-Whitewater. I remember that I was walking by this little group and looked over. When I spotted her, I thought she looked like Lois Lane — the Erica Durance version from the show Smallville – and decided to strike up a conversation. 

A few days later, I saw Billie again. Actually, standing roughly in the same area we met. But this time, she had a breathalyzer in her mouth and opposite her was a campus officer that didn’t look like he was just “striking up a conversation”. 

Being the curious person I am, I decided to light up a cigarette and stand within ear shot by one of the residence hall doors. Because if you’re smoking a cigarette, people are less likely to realize that you’re just listening in and focusing entirely on what they’re doing. 

They just think you’re taking a smoke break. 

When I looked over at the other side of the door, there was another guy with red hair; a chin strap beard with a mustache; baggy clothes; and a gold chain hanging over a white T-shirt. 

I don’t remember how the conversation started. And still to this day, I don’t really think either of us remembers what the first words we said to each other were. But, we clicked when we realized that both of us were doing the same thing: monitoring Billie’s situation. 

Max had seen the cop roll up on Billie and try to get her for public intoxication. See, Billie had decided to pledge at a sorority located in a cluster of student housing off-campus. Which was all well and good. But, unfortunately for Billie, the house sat on the complete opposite side of campus from our residence hall. 

So any time she drank there — she was 18 at the time — she had the choice of either walking entirely around campus on city streets and cutting in the side entrance of the hall, which would take much longer, or simply cutting through campus and risking the ticket. 

That night, she gambled and lost. 

By the time the officer had finished writing Billie’s ticket and walked away, a small gaggle of spectators had formed around the entrance, just “hanging out”. Once the officer was completely gone, we descended on Billie like a pack of wolves. 

Soon, our entire group was standing on the “shroom” — a circular, maybe 6-by-6 cement structure that stood about two feet off the ground on the east side of the residence hall.  

Max leaned in and whispered to me, “Hey, I got two handles of vodka in my room.”

“Let’s go,” the words escaped my mouth with an expediency that shocked both of our feet into movement before I stopped dead in my tracks. “Wait, we have to grab Billie.”

I moved carefully back to the shroom and got Billie’s attention.

“Hey. You want to drink with me and Max in his room?” I whispered. 

“Hell yeah.”

Soon, the three of us were quietly sneaking away from the group, giddily stepping towards the doors as we thought about how much we would drink — this was back in the days where it was still somewhat new and exciting. 

Then, it happened. 

“Hey! Where are they going? Follow them!”

Sure enough, the entire group — about 15 strong — cramped ourselves into Max’s tiny dorm room. I wound up in the opposite corner of Max and Billie initially before writhing my way through the sweaty, loud mass that is drunk college kids of any time period and slipped into the small pocket in front of Max and Billie, forming a sort of triangle out of us. 

Actually, it was the exact same configuration we’d stand in when I officiated their wedding years later. 

But that night, standing in that corner with them was the start of a friendship better than any I’d ever known. Still to this day. 

Later on, Max would introduce me to Jake, his best friend since high school. 

Erin was Billie’s best friend. 

————

As we stepped into the club, Max and I immediately scoped where the nearest bar was that had a spot open to grab a drink while Jake followed closely behind us like a kid in a haunted house. 

We found Erin and Billie at a small bar set up in a back hallway, and all of us took a few shots together and ordered drinks before we did what we always did best: Lose each other in the bar. 

I came to sit near a man/trans-woman in a red dress. To be completely honest, I wasn’t really paying much attention to where I was going when I was looking for a spot, and I only remember maybe three specific faces from that night because of that.

But I remember them, because of the look in their eyes as I was about to pass by and find a different spot. 

That look asking, “Is this okay? Is it okay for me to be the real me?”

And I’m sure they saw the same thing in mine. 

So, I sat down and shared a smile, to say “yes”, for both of us — though we didn’t ever speak a word to each other. 

Next thing, I felt a tap on my shoulder. 

Jake had somehow navigated the crowd on his own. 

“Will you go to the bathroom with me?”

Drunk me, historically far less patient than sober me, actually responded differently than even I thought I would. 

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just to make sure.”

I felt a slight smile crease across my face as I decided that I was going to make him say it out loud. 

“To make sure of what, my friend?”

His eyes stare daggers at me as I smile back at him, knowing that he’s mad but that he also won’t draw attention to himself when he’s this uncomfortable. 

“To make sure no one hits on me or looks at my dick,” the words flowed out of his mouth like he was Twista. 

For a second I considered whether I was going to act like I didn’t understand him and make him say it again slower before my own bladder told me to let it go. 

“Fine,” I said, getting up from the cozy spot I wouldn’t return to that night. “But I’m going to look at your dick.”

Standing next to another man in a urinal has never been my favorite thing. I don’t know if it’s the social anxiety of feeling like they’re about to say something to me or just thinking about how weird the whole experience of shared bathrooms are, but I’ll avoid it at all costs if I can. 

But standing there next to Jake, for the first time, I was having fun. 

I could feel his eyes darting around the room at all the other men, this illogical anxiety oozing off of him with a thickness I swear I could feel. 

Just when I knew that I had finished and either he had also finished or his anxiety wouldn’t let him keep going, I turned to him and said these words: “Dude, your dick looks so gay in this light.”

Giggling, having thoroughly amused myself with the “witty” comment, I turned and walked out of the bathroom as Jake huffed behind me, both of us making it all the way to the dance floor near the main entrance. 

I had reached the “let’s find our better friends” part of the night. 

Now, I want you to know at this point in the story that I had every intention of sincerely helping Jake scan the crowd for our friends — and Steve, apparently. 

However, I got caught up in watching a dancing man in sequin short shorts wearing butterfly wings just straight up getting it in the cage on the left side of the dance floor before he got out and ran up on the stage — where he continued to get it in a way that I’ve never got it in my entire life. 

While I was absolutely enthralled by this man’s energy, I heard this “ugh” sound to my right. 

Snapping out of my sequin daydream, I turned my head to Jake, whose eyes were transfixed on something to the right of the dance floor. 

Standing in the middle of a bunch of people dancing and grinding and laughing and drinking were two men. These two men – both seemingly the same age as I was at the time, early 20s — were locked in making out in such a way that I am sure they didn’t care if it led to anything that would catch them a public indecency charge. 

While I felt Jake’s eyes burning a hole in my face — most likely waiting for me to make some joke or somehow make him feel better about his biased view of the situation ⏤ I just stood there. 

And I said nothing. 

Because at that moment, all of my thoughts on love and relationships and romance at the time connected in these two. Beneath the bravado and quips, it connected to my desire to have someone love me with complete abandon. 

Someone who’d make out with me in the middle of a dance floor.

Someone who wants people to know how they feel about me. 

Someone who’s just simply not ashamed that it’s me they love.

At that moment, somehow, I felt something beautiful again after so many years of ugliness and deferred dreams. 

Then, the man on the left side of the lip-locked duo raised his hand to the other’s face, muffed him hard as shit and walked away without looking back. 

“What the fuck did he do?” The words involuntarily left my mouth with such volume that even Jake gave me a look of, “Jesus, dude, calm down.”

“I … I need a cigarette,” I muttered as I walked out of the club visibly shaken.

Within a few minutes, Max, Billie and Jake found me outside, and we stumbled like actors auditioning for some zombie version of The Wizard of Oz back to Max’s car. 

As was tradition, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Sam Cooke and Motown oldies blasted over Max’s radio as he drove us back to my house. I was still caught up in thinking about the two men on the dance floor and wondering what the full story was there when I picked up on something Billie said to Max: “Yeah, he has a boyfriend.”

My drunk mind slowly connected dots as I tapped Billie.

“What did you just say?”

“You know Steve? Erin’s friend? The whole reason we went there tonight?”

“Yes, I am aware of Steve.”

“He has a boyfriend. This whole time he had a boyfriend and just wanted to cheat on him.”

This is the reason why I barely mention Steve, the whole MacGuffin of this little tale. Because at that moment, I decided I didn’t like the person he was and never would. 

“How did you find that out?” I asked. “Did he tell you?”. 

“No,” Billie said. “Erin told me. Apparently she knew the whole time.”

And this is why I don’t mention Erin a lot either. Given our history, she knows how much I hate it when people do that. 

After we pulled onto my street and they all gave me assurances they’d get home safely, we said our goodbyes, and I clunkily made my way inside and up to bed before falling into my sheets with my clothes and shoes still on. 

“What did he do?”

The question still bothers me to this day, because I’ll never know. There is no answer to it that I will ever find in this life. 

But on that night years ago now, in that moment of dissatisfaction with my conclusion, I turned myself on my back and stared up watching my fan as I often did while I assessed whether I would fall asleep or throw up. 

And just in that small window when the spins violently shaking me towards vomiting slowed to that gentle twirling that always filled me with nostalgia for the playgrounds of my childhood, my mind let out one last thought, one intact boat gliding peacefully along the sea of chaotic elements that had been my mind all night in order to lull me sleep:

“I guess love’s the same for all of us.” 

---

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