#43 I was fortunate to have a large and diverse group of friends to hang out with during what would eventually be my last few years living in Eugene. I would hang out with Heather, Jason and Heathers boyfriend, Chris, and wed smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. I would hang out with Carl and wed smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. And I would hang out with Brent, and Id smoke cigarettes and wed drink coffee. In those days, every restaurant had a smoking section. If I wasnt at work at the mall, I could be found at some food joint specializing in breakfast, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and bullshitting with my friends. Brent was great because he would regale me with tales of old punk rock shows back in the early days, and then either loan me music or take me to a local punk show. Heather, Jason and Chris were great because Jason and Chris were both angry and slightly scary, and we would sit around talking smack and making people slightly uncomfortable. Carl was amazing because he was a cynical, judgmental, asshole who had tremendous heart and an innate ability to screw things up. Carl hated anything that even remotely resembled normalcy. He had a low opinion of anything that hinted at being the status quo. At the same time, he had a number of friends from all walks of life. With Carl, I met my first openly gay man: a guy who happened to be a fantastic artist that was also dying of AIDS. Growing up in a conservative home in North Eugene, moving to an extremely conservative home outside of Springfield, and joining a fanatical church with a decisively hardcore anti-gay agenda and living a spirit filled life according to how others felt I should live, I was a little shocked to find that this gay guy was actually a decent human being. More so, this openly gay guy held no judgment of me whatsoever or about anything in my past. To say that my eyes were opened would be a vast understatement. I was suddenly faced with the idea that I was nothing but a bigot. The notion of judge not, lest ye be judged meant relatively little to me up until that point. I took my best shot of at least changing some of my ideals and was rewarded by finding out that an old friend of mine from the church was gay while sitting in a gay bar hanging out with other gays. Eugenes nightlife wasnt all it was cracked up to be. There were plenty of bars near the college, but most of them were filled with your run of the mill assortment of college meat heads and awkward college kids. There were even fewer bars that catered to the punk rock crowd and nothing that really felt like a good home. So, Carl and I tried out something new... the citys gay friendly dance club. Club Arena, a little dance bar below Perrys Bar in downtown Eugene, was a disco that catered to the LGBT community. Carl and I went down there with one of his friends once to check it out and we quickly discovered that there were a number of single girls that went there to dance. I enjoyed cutting a rug (and probably looked pretty hilarious doing so) and I was always looking for an excuse to meet girls, so Carl and I made a point to hang out there once a week to see if we could get out the door with a least a phone number or two. We didnt, but we had fun anyway and I got to dance with some ladies who probably thought it was cute that I was trying to convince them that I really was straight and really wanted their phone number so I could take them out. Considering that my hair was long in the front, short in the back, and curly because I mistakenly got a perm thinking it would make my straight hair look wavy and attractive, I can hardly blame them for thinking otherwise. For me, it was cool to be in an environment that was so very far out of my comfort zone that it made it easy to relax and not be to worried about what other people thought. Hanging out with a bunch of gay people actually turned out to be harmless and quite the learning experience for me; and when the music changed from Dancing Queen and We Are Family, to Smells Like Teen Spirit and Head Like a Hole, Carl and I would slam dance in the middle of the dance floor scattering gays, lesbians and single girls alike, while we jumped around like the meat heads we kinda were. Head Like a Hole - Nine Inch Nails youtube/watch?v=ao-Sahfy7Hg
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 08:26:16 +0000
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