It is a windy but warm Sunday afternoon in Dallas, Texas. I am standing on the balcony of a Freudian-named bar called Moby Dick's.
The balcony is unusually crowded this afternoon, filled mostly with stocky, burly men who have come to define the "bear" contingent of our community. The gathering is a good-bye party, the last official event of this year's Texas Bear Round Up, or TBRU as it is more frequently called by bears in the know.
In the past several years, a whole string of comparable bear social events has sprung up around the country. Some are similarly acronymed with the appropriate letters, like San Francisco's IBR for International Bear Rendezvous. Others incorporate the bear moniker into their titles in some cutesy way, like HiBearNation in St. Louis, or Bear Bust in Orlando. These bear gatherings have become stand-ins for the circuit parties into which those of us who are hefty and hairy never quite felt welcomed.
Dressed in the standard-issue bear outfit of jean cut-offs, a plain white T-shirt and a leather vest, I am standing on Moby Dick's balcony with a Bud Lite, surveying the crowd.
I've taken refuge on the balcony as a respite from the oppressively packed bar, where there is more pushing than conversation. For the moment, the sport of cruising has become a bit of a chore. In such crowds, I find it difficult to catch anyone's eye in particular. In such an ocean of look-alike men, individuals almost blur into the greater picture, and as I stand there staring at all the carbon copies, it hits me that we bears are the new clones of the gay world—buzzed heads, thick beards, hairy chests, gym arms.
Only the Dallas bears stand out from the others here, distinguishable for their stiffly starched collar shirts—something foreign to most of us in the bear crowd who hail from other parts of the country. Image, some of the Dallas boys tell me, is of utmost importance in this town, something that is repeated this particular weekend with an odd mix of both disdain and elitism. They've even come up with a word for the particular brand of disposition here: they call it "Dallitude." Indeed, it is the butt of many jokes over the weekend, from Dallas residents and out-of-towners alike.
But I am soon reminded of a different kind of attitude I once learned in Dallas. One that forever altered the arc of my life as a gay man. I'd temporarily forgotten about it until this Sunday afternoon on the deck of Moby Dick's.
As more and more men come out of the bar to exchange the smoke in their lungs for a little oxygen, I get pushed further out onto the deck. Soon my body is pressing against the balcony railing. I turn around, for the first time this afternoon turning my back to the bears and instead looking out onto the street.
Moby Dick's is located in the gay section of the city known as Oak Lawn. It's seated at the intersection of Cedar Springs Road and Throckmorton Street, right smack in the heart of the "gay strip." Cedar Springs Road is dotted with gay novelty stores, restaurants, bars and sidewalk cafes. From my balcony perch, I can see into the windows of the gay stores, and watch as gaggles of gay men roam the street. It looks like a lot of gay districts that populate the major urban cities around the country, and at first, I don't give it much thought at all.
But then I notice the legions of gay men lounging along the sidewalk cafes, and a particular memory of this place is triggered.
It was July 4th weekend, 15 years ago, and I was a 22-year-old college student. Along with five other classmates, I had a summer job inspecting buildings on Army bases around the country. The six of us drove two motor homes across the country that summer, spending most of our time in desolate Army compounds hidden away in very rural settings.
My friends and family thought I'd taken that summer job because I liked to travel, and I'd get the chance to drive across the country. But the real reason was much darker. Still struggling with my homosexuality, I had found the cruisy places on campus: certain bathrooms where guys hung out during the day, thickets of bushes where you could cruise and have sex at night. Though the encounters were terrifying and made me feel dirty, I couldn't stop myself from going to them. I thought if I could just get away from those places of temptation that summer, I could kick being gay.
For a lot of the summer that worked. Holed up in close quarters with five classmates, I had neither the opportunity nor the courage to go off in search of much gay life. What I did find in rural America was just like the cruisy spots from which I was so desperately trying to escape.
But when the Fourth of July weekend presented me with four days off, I rented a car and drove from Ft. Sil, Oklahoma, down to Dallas.
Dallas was the first city where I'd found a "gay ghetto." It was the first time I saw men kiss unafraid in public, in broad daylight. It was the first time I saw pink triangles posted proudly on store windows and bumper stickers. It was the first time I felt comfortable to be gay.
Though I don't remember his name, the man I got to know that weekend in Dallas changed my life. He was a furry, mustached man about 40 years old, and a doctor. We met late one evening at a bar on the strip, and he took me back to his house, nearby in Oak Lawn. The next morning, to my surprise, he took me to breakfast at an outdoor café in the heart of the gay ghetto, where everyone could see us together. It was the first time I'd ever done anything nonsexual with a gay man in a public place. It made me realize for the first time, really, that I could be gay and normal. It's such a naïve statement, it's embarrassing today to admit it. But back then, it was an epiphany, and it was the beginning for me of a whole new outlook that would shape the rest of my life.
When I turned back around on the balcony at Moby Dick's, and looked into the crowd of bears there, I couldn't help but wonder if there was a particular Dallas doctor among them. I wanted to thank him for the new attitude he and his city showed me so long ago.
Dahir receives email at MubarakDah@aol.com