I GOT 2 PHONES ONE FOR THE BITCHES HOW TO

Some of us were masked, but most people werenвЂ™t, and, eventually, an unmasked Black dude grabbed the barstool beside me. At one bar, some guys modelled by the windows, and a handful of white вЂњdaddysвЂќ in polos and khakis shared drinks with immaculately dressed younger Black men.

But it was a Wednesday, and the scene was muted. Atlanta is one of the SouthвЂ™s queer meccas, especially for Black folks. The next evening, I did my own lap around the area. Our waiter was a cub-ish Latinx guy, and when I stepped inside to ask for more syrup he asked if IвЂ™d always been a sugar queen. They sprayed everything down with sanitizer. She told me that the gays were great about masks. After weвЂ™d spent the day shuffling from the very happening (queer) gym to the very happening (queer) diner to the only slightly less bustling (queer) tailor, I asked my mom how her neighborhood had seemed the previous few months. Her place is around Piedmont, a nexus of the cityвЂ™s very crowded queer scene. In the spring, I flew to Atlanta to visit my mom. Now I wanted to see how they were faring themselves.

I GOT 2 PHONES ONE FOR THE BITCHES HOW TO

TheyвЂ™d taught me how to make a way in the world. I worried about how the pandemicвЂ™s upheaval would affect these bars, and other queer spaces writ large. IвЂ™ve learned more about myself, and found more comfort, spending time in them than just about anywhere else. I never went inside, but the proximity felt important. Its streets house most of the cityвЂ™s gay bars-some of them were closed, others open intermittently. The neighborhood is the nucleus of TexasвЂ™s queer scene. In Houston, while ambulance sirens blared at all hours, I occasionally spent my afternoons walking up and down the roads of our own local gayborhood, Montrose. As ever, queer establishments were particularly vulnerable, whether the handful of surviving lesbian bars throughout the nation or the sole queer outposts in deeply conservative regions (to say nothing of the absolute paucity of trans-friendly spaces). Last year, the pandemic shuttered more than a hundred thousand bars across the United States. Then he added, Maybe IвЂ™m just not that comfortable yet-being hereвЂ™s more than enough. When Boots clunked away, I asked my New Friend why he hadnвЂ™t seemed interested.

He told my New Friend that he was very handsome, and my New Friend thanked him, grinning, before turning back to his phone. A moment later, a hulking whiteboy in boots wedged himself between us. We agreed that the weather felt entirely unseasonable (Global warming, my New Friend smiled), and he told me that heвЂ™d been coming out to the bars ever since the COVID shutdowns had lifted. I sat next to another Black guy, one of the roomвЂ™s few masked patrons, and soon enough we struck up a conversation. The sidewalks were dimly lit, and I glided from light to light through the deeply balmy evening, and beyond the patio I found a pandemic-era simulacrum of a Texas gay barвЂ™s usual weekday crowd: a few (white) guys watching sports on their phones, a (white) man talking to the bartender, alongside a handful of skinny (white) dudes looking to get laid. On my first evening in town, after pretending to write but mostly crying over K-dramas, I headed out to Oak Lawn, the cityвЂ™s gayborhood.

IвЂ™d driven to the city for a research trip, from my home in Houston. The first gay bar that I passed through this year was in Dallas, Texas.

I got 2 phones one for the bitches