At ManRay, a Cambridge club that skewed toward underground goth and fetish crowds, I learned to let my guard down and celebrate every stripe of freak and geek. They opened the doors to a whole new world. More than anything else, that’s what Boston’s gay bars represented to me. I didn’t struggle specifically with my sexuality, but I felt lonely and stifled, and wondered if I’d ever find a place where I would feel plugged in to a larger universe of exciting possibilities. I remember it sounded suspiciously like what I grew up booming in my bedroom in a one-stoplight rural town, down the street from a dairy farm, as I stared into the eye of a Spencer Gifts strobe light and imagined what it felt like in the Real World, where attempts at normal human intimacy didn’t have to start in an AOL chatroom and end in a parking garage by the mall. We didn’t know Buzz was a gay club, but the writhing bare torsos, smell of sexed-up sweat, and anthemic music quickly clued us in. I first entered one by accident as a freshman at Boston College, when a party bus dropped us off in the Theater District for a first weekend out, and we eagerly shuffled our circa-2000 dancing shoes into the nearest place blasting music. Gay bars have given me quite an education.
