The Filter

The dark building, a suggestive name etched above the door with lights that don’t take up too much attention, just enough to obscure beyond the threshold. Posters for local drag shows on the walls summoning your attention as the door person checks your ID and belongings. Whether you’re walking into a gay bar for the first, or hundredth time, you pass through the threshold and each space has a different taste in the air, that somehow still feels familiar. You walk in and hear people midway through their conversations, laughter or reads like you’re a walk-on extra trying to find your mark and not steal the screen time. Bartenders running their well like it’s the god damn navy, and if the timing is kismet, maybe The Village People are playing on the speakers. If there’s a patio, the scent of cigarette smoke creeps in and mixes with the musk of men, leather and booze. Then there’s the televisions, your signal for what kind of territory you’ve entered. And if it’s gay pornography playing on the television, you’re not in Kansas anymore.

The screens may partly be there for entertainment. In actuality, they are doing heavier lifting than that. It could be sports, and depending on where in the season it is, it may even take over the audio. Flashy graphics that are simply there to name a party so you can focus on who is in front of you. Music videos for those that don’t want to hit the dance floor and are looking for an ice breaker to talk to the cutie you positioned yourself near. Gay porn takes the same infrastructure, and it becomes the filter. It decides who stays and who leaves. The screens are the vessel that create a safe space, the men on film serve as our guardians, despite whatever compromising position they may be in.

Gay bars have changed, there has been a behavioral shift over the years, some of them feel less like our spaces. We danced and fucked in the shadows for so long. The recent increase of mixed company in gay spaces dictates what gay men do in the presence of others. You can call it respect, you can call it code-switching, I call it a bit of both. However, that doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to long for a space where we didn’t have to negotiate existence for an outsider’s comfort. When that screen is playing something that shouldn’t be facing a window, a gay man gets to move differently. The filtration system clears the room.

The filter excludes others. I am not denying that, I will happily name what you are already thinking. Some of our spaces needed to change and become more inclusive. Making sure women, trans and gender nonconforming individuals felt part of the community, especially since they are the reason we are where we are today. I love that I can go into a local queer space down the street from my home and see every letter of the Alphabet Mafia, different skin tones, different sized bodies, different generations. Some of these spaces needed to embrace the entire LGBTQIA+ community as a whole, not just selective letters.

But every community deserves to have spaces that belong exclusively to them. The spaces born out of necessity as a response to prejudice and discrimination still have plenty of reason to exist. They hold history the rest of the world wasn’t willing to acknowledge; legacies that are only told from one generation to the next, and safety to be who they are, one among many. These spaces emerged out of a need to survive. We needed somewhere to experience joy. We still need those nights where the vessel displays those guardians. We still need to have the ability to drop into a primal version of ourselves, in a room (or a patio, or a sling) where there are no outsiders.

Some spaces are allowed to be exactly what they are. However you identify, that screen, playing those scenes, will tell you whether you are in the right place or not.