That really is a pen in your pocket, isn't it?

Hubba-hubba.

Saturday night I danced at a gay bar in Boston until 2am, throwing around words like “best train ever” (and not talking conga lines).

Sunday night I donned a black vest and served as volunteer at the Portsmouth Music Hall, a small local theater, during the evening performance of the Holiday Pops.

So hungover my usher flashlight felt heavy, I had to laugh as I sat among a staff of mostly senior-citizen volunteers and watched a tall blond woman in a long red gown belt out an aria-style “White Christmas” and thought about how less than 24 hours before I was up on a club stage in a Santa hat belonging to one of a trio of Santas who stormed the bar and belly-bounced me between their stuffed red coats.

It was an interesting juxtaposition of evenings; one night I’m tangoing with a gay boy from Egypt named Hazem and the next Doris is telling me about her grandchildren while orienting me with theater seat numbers.

Though The Holiday Pops was a sweet show, Café Club was a far superior experience. (I hardly think Doris, Priscilla and Lorraine would have ended the evening on stage with me pulsing spastically to “Proud Mary” as my Mattie, Hazem and a bobbed blond girl had done the night before.)

Not that my going-out experience is so vast, but over the years the nights I’ve spent with Mattie dancing at gay bars ‘til the wee hours are among the best of my life. (I’m reminded of another lovely evening in NYC spent at a quaint little drinkery called “The Hole.”) For a married lady looking for a night of crazy, sweaty dancing there is no better place to be than in the midst of a crowd of gorgeous, sexy gay men. It is fun in its purest form because the dynamic between the men and women is such that we’re not trying to get into each other’s pants. It’s youthful fun. It’s boys and girls playing together without the divisiveness of cultural restrictions and hormones. We can dance---even dirty dance---and it’s still just dancing. At a “straight bar” feeling a bulge in my back makes me an adulterer. At a gay bar, a cock in the back is benign!

(When I explained this to Dan, he asked me, “What’s keeping straight guys from going to gay bars and pretending they're gay just to get close to the girls?”

“Um, having to go to gay bars and pretend they're gay,” I said.

Plus, in my experience, there’s no shortage of ass-to-crotch contact at any bars or dance clubs these days.)

To me, gay bars feel safe. There is no self-consciousness because nobody sees me. The gay men are looking at the gay men, the gay women are looking at the gay women (somewhat to my chagrin, gay women have never been into me) and I just get to dance around like a fool and ask the guys who they’re into. I don’t register sexually and thus barely register at all (unless someone wants to ask me about Mattie which is often the case). I’m not saying that it is usually my daunting plight to be ogled by straight men at bars. This is not, nor has ever been, my reality. I’m just saying that to be invisible is to be invincible. It’s empowering and freeing to be at a bar in which the man/woman tension is completely absent. (Plus, one guy said to me, “You’re super hot...and I’m gay,” and that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I’ve certainly never been called “super hot” at a “straight bar” before. Or anywhere else. Ever. I told him he had just in that moment improved my self esteem.)

My first time at a gay bar was in NYC, again with Mattie, where I found myself a groupie of one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen; a transgendered goddess named Candis Cayne. I stood amidst her large following of adoring boys, worshipping at her feet as she sang and danced at a Greenwich Village bar. I was enamored, amazed and in love; she was more woman than I will ever be. After the show all these boys waited their turn to tell her how much she meant to them; she was their Rosie.(That's her in the header pic---surprised?)

The best part of that night? Being christened by the fellas with my own Steel Magnolias nickname. They called me Miss Truvy after Dolly Parton’s character (Bliss!) and we spent the night dancing and do dramatic reenactments from the movie.

“...I’m fine! I'm fine! I can jog all the way to Texas and back, but my daughter can't! She never could!”

And I knew then that I was home.

Sadly, such nights out are somewhat limited because (surprise) New Hampshire is not quite the epicenter of the gay nightclub scene that one might think. No White Mountman Inn that I know of. Too bad,I would like to enjoy their version of Holiday Pops...in the back.

Or. (It's like Choose Your Own Adventure here at The Spew.)

Too bad, I think Doris would love it.

Or.

I suppose I should be grateful...I might have to start looking for Dan there.