I love going to any event that will allow me to be surrounded by beautiful gay boys. I also love me some gay bars, especially on Show Nights. I could watch those divas all night, prancing around in their skin-tight outfits, looking so much better than I ever could dream of, lip-syncing to everything from the classics: Patti LaBelle, Aretha, Tina Turner; to more modern stuff: Britney, Mariah, and the occasional Alanis Morisette. I love giving them tips, standing on the edge of the stage waiting patiently to hand them my dollar, walking away with “I’m A Hooker Red” lip prints on my cheek.

Occasionally the clubs make the mistake of including male strippers in the shows, if for no other reason than to fill time so the girls have extra time to fix their chicken cutlet breasts and reapply lip gloss. It is during this part of the show that I move either to the bar for a refill on cranberry juice or walk around seeing if any of my ex-boyfriends have “come out” (because, inevitably, if I dated and broke up with them, they are now gay). On one particular night, I decided to take a seat near the entrance, as far away from the stage as I could get so as not to take the chance of having oily, limp penis shoved in my face by the strange stripper in a farmer’s hat and overalls. As I glanced absentmindedly around me, a man walked by and grabbed my left hand for a second. I figured he was checking for an armband and stamp since there were people walking around with free test tubes of completely toxic liquor. At first look, I thought he was a “Friend of Dorothy”, as he was dressed in a fitted ribbed gray t-shirt, expensive looking tailored pants that broke at just the right place on his shined black loafers, and had just come out of a lengthy embrace with a very hot man next to the door.

He walked on and I continued to sit there, not really thinking any more about it until he walked back past me. He took my left hand again and I said, “Hi, I don’t have an armband, just a stamp, but I’m fine with just my juice, so thanks anyway.” He pulled up a chair and sat facing me, holding my hand the whole time. After he sat there for about a full minute without saying anything, I broke the silence. “Can I have my hand back? I know I have beautiful soft skin and I completely understand why you want to keep touching it, but maybe you should tell me your name before this goes any further and you get the idea in your head that you should, I don’t know, rub my arm to see if I moisturize it as diligently as I do my hands.” He looked up, his reverie broken, almost startled that I was speaking to him, that the hand was attached to a person. He apologized, sorry if he seemed rude, but it was just that he couldn’t believe there wasn’t a wedding band or a diamond or anything on my left ring finger, because he saw me when he walked in and was sure I was there with someone, or had someone waiting for me at home. I said, “How do you know I’m not a lesbian that’s just here trying to pick up girls?” Because lesbians were only as pretty as me in porn, not in real life, and definitely not in Panama City gay bars, he said.

He called me pretty. I think that was the first time any guy, not related to me or out of feelings of obligation, had used that word to describe me. Especially considering I was at the tail-end of my nerd stage, wearing glasses and a shirt that was more appropriate for dinner with my mom than clubbing. He called me pretty, and I didn’t care that he may have been completely drunk at this point (which I later found out that he actually never drank, due to his family history of alcoholism) or that the background noise included horny gay men screaming, “Bring that dick over here, honey, so I can stuff a dollar in your sock!”  He called me pretty.

We moved out to the back deck where we could almost hear ourselves think, and made small talk until I heard the announcer booming “And let’s give a warm welcome to our Resident Princess, Rebecca Ritz DeCarlo!” I couldn’t miss her, she was the entire reason I was here for the 1 o’clock show. That was my baby, the first gay man I truly loved and would have had children for. I asked if he minded us going back inside. Of course he didn’t. He would follow my great ass anywhere.

Once Rebecca was offstage and I had screamed for her until I was hoarse and desperately in need of water, we made our way to the front bar, him leading the way, holding my hand and caressing it in such a way that made me wonder what it would feel like to have his hands running over my body. Why was I thinking like this already? I barely knew the guy, I wasn’t even sure if I had caught his name, but I wanted him. Amazing what being surrounded by about 100 men, all searching for someone to take them home, can do for a girl’s hormones.

At the bar we found two empty stools and ordered club sodas with lime. I asked him a few questions, the most important being, “What’s an attractive straight man like you doing in a gay bar like this?” Turns out, he got a tip from a few of his gay friends that these bars were always crowded with straight women who couldn’t stand the pressure of the usual bar scene. I nodded in agreement because that was one of three reasons I was there, the first being my loyalty to Rebecca’s performances, and the second being that since I knew Rebecca she put me on the list and I never paid cover. I had tired easily of the PC bar scene, and I wasn’t ever into serious clubbing at the “super clubs” on the beach, so once I hooked up with my new favorite drag queen it just seemed natural to hang out there.

The subject of me not having an armband came up. He wanted to know how old I was and I wanted to lie, but instead sheepishly said, “Eighteen.” He looked absolutely shocked and I then said, “Why, how old are you?” Thirty, he said. Thirty? Thirty. That’s interesting. Is this something I wanted to try? Is this something that would make him feel like a dirty-old-man? What would my mother say? She would be pissed off and completely against it. Well, that settled it. Why the hell not?

I asked him if my age changed anything, because his age didn’t change anything for me. I still thought he was an interesting person, not to mention the fact that he was slightly hot in a “shaved head, almost midlife crisis” sort of way. I rambled on about the fact that I have always thought that age shouldn’t really mean anything. He just kept staring at me while I spoke, specifically at my mouth, and it was beginning to make me a little more than self-conscious. I could feel my cheeks heating up as I continued to blabber on until finally he said, “I’m not trying to interrupt, but I just have to kiss you. Would you mind?” I responded by leaning forward, awaiting his lips touching mine, but instead he kissed me right beneath my ear and worked his way along my jaw line until he finally reached my lips. His lips were soft, in that weird older man way. (This observation was not something I immediately made, since he was the oldest man I had kissed, but I did date others in the future that were older than him, and they all have the same lips. Soft, but firm and kind of wrinkly. Almost like kissing a gummy worm. I don’t know, I guess it’s harder to explain then it is to experience.) The kiss was nice and a little more intimate then one might expect considering our surroundings.

After a few more kisses, he was curious as to whether I would consider coming back to his place. I was a little skittish, mainly because I had never left a bar with someone I had just met and gone back to their place. Who am I kidding? I had never been back to a guy’s place, period. Do you think I was going to tell him that, though? No way, Pedro. This guy was nice, and he had called me pretty, and he was a good kisser and had incredible hands. Not to mention the fact that being 18 and a virgin was getting old fast. I protested at first, not wanting to seem like an eager slut who did this sort of thing all the time. Eventually, he convinced me that we could just go back and hang out, that nothing had to happen, that he just wanted to be able to talk to me without the thumping of bass drowning out our voices. For some reason I really believed him. He totally wouldn’t make a move on me; maybe we would just make out, or stay up for the rest of the night talking.

I didn’t dare to leave my car there and have to rely on him to take me back to it in the morning because it needed to be in the driveway before my parents woke up. I followed his maroon Civic back across the bridge and to his apartment, the whole way wondering if I really knew what I was getting myself into and whether I should just turn off at my neighborhood to go to bed. But something propelled me to follow this man I had met only a few hours ago.