One Sunday afternoon in late winter, I went out drinking with my friend Ted. We had meet several months before, both recent transplants to Minnesota, both of us outsiders. He was from Wisconsin, I was from Illinois, and he became my closest friend while living in Minnesota.
We were approached to join a gay softball team. Given my lifelong aversion to participating in sports, my interest in joining was primarily to support the athletes rather than being one. Still, I was less than enthusiastic about making the commitment. With reassurance from alcohol and encouragement from Ted, I acquiesced and joined the team. For the first time in my life, I did sports drag.
My softball team was all gay men. And just like that, my day of rest was once again occupied in fellowship with an assembly of God’s people. I had a place to go on Sundays that I enjoyed and welcomed. There was no judgment because I was gay—everyone was gay. Like the Flintstones, we had a gay old time.
While some of us dated and had boyfriends, including myself, for the most part we lived like frat boys. We drank heavily on the weekends. Tomcats on the prowl for, well, you know. I was living a hedonistic lifestyle even Augustine and Tolstoy could not confess to knowing. As a twenty-some year-old Don, I had no concern for my future. I fully believed I would never live into my fifties. That future was beyond my comprehension or desire to comprehend.
I played softball for five seasons, starting in right field and quickly understood my team’s rationale for assigning me that position. Everything changed when I missed a fly ball with my mitt but stopped it with my nose. Happily, the left-handed batter of that bloody softball was a nurse. My primary injury was my pride. Even as a gay man, I needed to express my masculine machismo.
Each season Ted and I expanded our network of relations, some platonic and some Dionysian. Eventually recruiting a team of friends, we spent time together on and off the softball field, creating our own little gay posse. In addition to Ted, there was Dave, Bob, Dan, Scott, Steve, two Brians, Gary, Mark, Patrick, CJ, and others faded from my mind by time and alcohol.
Jim, my manager from work, met my softball buddies only one time. It was on a wintery Saturday night sometime between the months of November and April, always one long frozen blur when living in a Minnesota marshmallow world. My friends and I were barhopping. We stopped at the Brass Rail Lounge, a sad little dim bar, whose floor wobbled when you walked on it, especially if the crowd was plus-sized (not uncommon in the Midwest). During the day this was a place for the old men who had retired from life, spending the remainder of their days drinking twelve o’clock tales year-round in the dark. They left before the nightly, generational shift change. Those who did not go gently into that good night and lived to see the next day would return for the day shift, repeating another circadian rotation.
This particular night, the bar was hosting a fundraiser for a gay dance group. Square dancing or country western dancing, I don’t recall the specifics. I was more interested in flirting with one of the bartenders. My friends grabbed a table as I lingered at the bar trying to seduce the barkeeper.
During my hormonal dalliance, a man in drag tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hi Don.” I was astonished. I didn’t know any drag queens, and here we were, already on a first-name basis. No doubt my face was a mix of confused confusion and a touch of terror. My newfound lady-friend introduced herself. “It’s me, Jim.” I immediately stopped flirting with the bartender who was staring at me like he had caught me having an affair with another man. I mean, woman. I mean—I don’t know.
I tried to focus my slightly inebriated eyes to determine if this person was indeed Jim. He was, and he wasn’t. He embodied the persona of Trixie Trailer Park. As with all drag, feminine or masculine, Jim’s appearance was exaggerated from head to toe, or in this case, wig to heels and everything in between.
He was there for the fundraiser. My friends noticed my interaction with Trixie, and they were deliberately astonished and definitely amused. I introduced Jim to them as my manager, making clear the boundaries of our relationship, as I finished my beer. No longer interested in flirting with my jilted bartender or talking with Trixie, I motioned to my friends, and we left for our intended destination to join the club kids.
When Jim and I saw each other on Monday, he said, “It was nice to meet your friends.” I asked him if the fundraiser was successful. That was the extent of our acknowledgement of our shared moment. One advantage of being a Midwesterner is never having to acknowledge more than you’re comfortable. Jim and I are very good Midwesterners.
Peace. God loves you.
This story is an excerpt from Finding God in Vegas: A Gen X Spiritual Awakening, available on Amazon and across all platforms in print or electronic or audio.