Some Go Hungry. J. Patrick Redmond
turn on the shower. I fantasized about joining him, but instead I chugged my beer and grabbed another from the refrigerator.
We decided to take my car. Chad directed us to a neighborhood tavern on Franklin Street, and after a few games of pool, which he won, and a couple of beers, we sat down in a booth and ordered another round.
“So are your friends meeting us here?” I asked.
“No. They’re going to the Sho-Bar around midnight. Ever been?”
“Nope. This and Chi Chi’s are pretty much it.”
“It’s a gay bar down the street. They have a drag show on Fridays starting at eleven thirty. I guess you’ve never been to one of those before.”
“No. I haven’t.” I could feel a tinge of unease rising in my chest. “I mean, I have no problem going. I just didn’t know there was a gay bar in Evansville.”
“It’s cool. You’ll like it. I mean, it’s mostly gay, but there are straight people too. Did you see A League of Their Own? You know they filmed most of it here, right? The baseball field and the play-off scenes? The little kid, Stillwell, he’s from here. They had casting calls for extras and he got the part. Tom Hanks and Madonna rented houses out near McCutchanville. Anyway, some of the cast hung out there. I saw Penny Marshall and Rosie O’Donnell a couple times. Lori Petty and Madonna spray-painted their names on the wall. I got to meet Lori. She’s pretty cool.”
“Wow, I’d love to meet Madonna or Rosie. That’s awesome. My dad told me when he was younger that Joan Crawford ate in my grandfather’s diner. She was on a press tour; the train stopped in town. Our restaurant was across from the depot.”
“Tina! Bring me the ax!” Chad said, parodying Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. “Seriously, I promise you’ll like it. The dance music is great, and the queens are a riot. I know a couple of them.” Chad picked up his beer. “Here, a toast.” I lifted mine, and we bumped the longneck bottles together with a clink.
“To your first gay bar.”
“To my first gay bar.”
Sipping my beer, I tried to mask my apprehension. My mind was racing. What if someone from Fort Sackville is there? After a couple more beers, Chad once again paid our tab, and we made our way to the gay bar.
* * *
Walking across the street from the poorly lit gravel lot to the Sho-Bar, my anxiety began to rise. The building, a grubby white two-story shotgun clapboard with a lean-to on its right side, had clearly been neglected among the post–World War homes-turned-apartments and abandoned warehouses. The neighborhood seemed to have been forgotten decades ago. A freight train rumbled through the neighborhood, seemingly anxious to leave.
It never occurred to me that other people might be fearful of recognition. Of course, I hadn’t completely made up my mind I was gay. I’d been living as I thought others expected for so long that I didn’t know how to be myself. For years I’d been a skilled chameleon. It seemed tonight, though, my courage was breaking through. I felt like I was sitting in the last car of a roller coaster, waiting to crest and begin the descent. It seemed I’d always been following the steep incline of the cars ahead. But now I was peaking; I was at the precipice.
I followed Chad to the front door and silently commanded myself to stop being so worried, to continue enjoying the evening. I could walk into a gay bar. If someone I knew saw me, I would deal with it. I was having fun with Chad; I liked him. And Chad was having fun also. It seemed he liked me too.
As we sat in a booth to the left of the dance floor, under Madonna’s fluorescent orange autograph, my attention was focused on the people in the bar. There were so many people my age and older. On Friday nights the Sho-Bar’s cheap draft beer and shot specials attracted a large college crowd. Tonight was no exception. I simultaneously felt both a sense of fear and adventure—perhaps the same adrenaline rush a soldier might feel entrenched behind enemy lines, trying to comprehend his position.
Chad was concerned. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just trying to take it all in.”
“You seem nervous. We can leave if you want.”
“No. It’s all right. I’m all right. I just didn’t expect so many people.”
“Friday nights are busy. Plus it’s the weather,” Chad said. “Everybody’s ready to get out and have some fun.”
“God knows I’m ready to have some fun,” I said.
“So you think you’ll come back here, then?” Chad asked.
“Absolutely. I have to admit, I didn’t realize there were so many gay people. I only know a few at home. They’re not open about it. Not like this,” I said.
“Probably not,” Chad replied hollowly. “I’ve met some people from Fort Sackville here. Not many though. Of course, not everybody here is gay.”
* * *
Now, tonight, driving south on Highway 41 I entered the city limits of Evansville. Local folks often referred to it at Stoplight City. I had made the trip so many times over the years I knew how to catch the lights and exactly what speed to maintain in order to make all the greens before the downtown exit to Teana Faye’s. My thoughts about Chad made the drive fly by. More than a decade had passed since that first night in my first gay bar. It seemed a whole life had been lived. Yet I still found it thrilling to drive into Evansville and spend my time with my community.
* * *
I arrived in downtown Evansville to all kinds of car and foot traffic. Some sort of holiday festival was taking place. Teana Faye’s was located on Riverside Drive, near the old Atkinson Hotel, on the banks of the Ohio River. Atkinson, I thought. I can’t get away from that goddamned name. I wondered if this Atkinson was some relation to Old Man Atkinson in Fort Sackville. He’d blow a carotid artery if he knew of my past overnight escapades at the Atkinson Hotel. It was often where I landed after a night of partying across the street at the gay bar. It was most likely where I’d end up tonight. I usually just left my car in Teana Faye’s lot and walked across to the hotel.
Teana Faye’s lot was packed. It was going to be a fun night. I suspected the place would be busy, but I had no idea the festival was taking place. That would draw a large crowd, and Teana Faye’s would be the place to be afterward. Well, for those that were gay or gay-friendly, at least.
* * *
Teana Faye’s was the gay bar that opened after Sho-Bar mysteriously burned to the ground. Prior to it being a gay bar, it had been the Kingfish Restaurant, a building originally designed to resemble a dual–paddle wheel riverboat—the kind found cruising the Mississippi in Mark Twain novels. Patrons walked the gangway near the starboard paddle wheel to enter its hostess area, which served as the bar’s ID checkpoint. There, a cover charge was collected for advertised events: special-guest drag performances, Christmas shows, and AIDS benefits. Its stern was the bar; its bow, formerly the restaurant’s dining room, was the dance lounge. From the steamboat’s empty pilothouse above the black-and-white checkered dance floor hung a mirrored disco ball and vibrantly colored spotlights that illuminated the drag stage and its glittering silver lamé curtain.
As I entered the bar, I spotted Rio sitting in a booth beside the dance floor. How is that possible? What is he doing here? Why didn’t he tell me he was coming to Indiana? I assumed he was visiting his mother for Christmas. Rio’s mother and father were married but lived separate lives: his corporate lawyer father in Miami, and his mother the only heir to her family’s wealth, farm, and grain mill located on the Ohio River in Mt. Vernon, Indiana, just thirty minutes west of Evansville. It was after Rio graduated law school that he decided to spend a year in southern Indiana learning the business end of his mother’s farm and grain mill. That was the year we met and began dating. Ours was a whirlwind romance, a year filled with zeal and passion. When Rio decided