So, when LGBT people talk about gay pride, it is to this first threshold crossed, this first idea of a shared space, they mentally return. Because it is essentially a mating ground, it can be cruel and pernicious, but that hardness is dealt out on equal terms. After the coat-check, you are the majority, not the minority. It is the first time those funny tics that are idiosyncratically, perhaps even noticeably gay about you begin coalescing as a chorus of calming white noise, gently adding richness to the experience beyond the sound system. The Orlando massacre terrorist will fail.
Suddenly, there is a body of people that understand shallow preoccupations such as a new TV pinup, and important ones such as the availability of PreP. There is a shared vocabulary, built partly around disposition but also the raw necessity to pass on the things that school couldn’t teach you and that church refuses to.
The gay disco has its own ecosystem, a pyramid structure that begins with the owner and waterfalls down through the DJs, security staff, the barman who will give you a free can for a smile, the promoter who chose the picture for the flyer. It is the first place you recognise someone at the back of the room and pretend you haven’t seen them, as they pretend they haven’t seen you, until you share the absurdity of keeping something as essential as your sexuality secret, then laugh about both being in the same place. It is a halfway house, a leap towards building the home that you calls you, a little but not much different from the one you came from. The local gay disco is the place where you stop being the odd one out.
It is not just about learning the real name of a drag queen or who remixed what neither is it how to politely bat off the lad with the wandering hands and invite the one you really want to wander somewhere with. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardianīecause it is a minority rite of passage, the unsung gay disco is a special space, furnished with magic beyond the lighting rig and the drinks specials. Slowly, that feeling of being yourself fans out and becomes infectious. You go to an unheralded place such as Pulse not to change the world, but to change your own, in incremental steps.
Omar Mateen’s gun is pointed directly at the experiences that make us us. They are part of the latticework of personal experiences that moves nations toward acceptance. The reason you don’t know them is because you aren’t supposed to. Bennets in Glasgow, Cruz 101 in Manchester, Flamingos in Blackpool, Garlands in Liverpool, small, significant strips in Cardiff, Brighton and Newcastle. The neighbourhood gay disco is the foot-soldier that puts in the groundwork for these marquee events to exist. In the freedom and liberation floating through the air, there is something even to be a little envied. We stop being something to be pitied, chastised, ostracised or othered and we turn into a party that everyone wants to go to. Sink the Pink, London Photograph: are key moments in the fortification of the gay experience. Maybe that’s why news bulletins about the dead and wounded, our spiritual allies, hit LGBT viewers as a personal affront, and provoked a militant anger. But not everyone is privy to the triumph of the neighbourhood gay disco. When the severity of the bloodbath at Pulse in Orlando emerged, many could have imagined what clubbing on a Saturday night feels like, too. We know first hand the significant communion of attending a gig and the sanctity of being in church. In front of the bar, I flinched, said “no” (a lie) and carried on taking in every detail of this new life.Ĭollectively, we know the familiar mundanity of being in a workplace, on public transport, at school. That night, I begged, borrowed and eventually stole a chunky Ralph Lauren pullover from my big brother, not thinking that in a city that frequently entertained entire dancefloors of men wearing cagoules, it would be any reason for concern. I was 16, at sixth-form college a couple of miles down the road in Rusholme. It was 1987, the summer before Clause 28. It was run by a chirpy, resilient fellow named Bubbles. T he first time I went to a gay club, a stranger looked over his shoulder and said: “Aren’t you hot in that?” It was a Thursday night at the Number One, a small underground box tucked behind Bootle Street police station, Manchester, with a ludicrous corner VIP area where you would occasionally see Coronation Street actors.