July 31st - Neighbor's Pub

Friday night, we accidentally found ourselves in a gay bar. Don't get me wrong. Gay bars are nothing new to me. I've frequented various venues of the homosexual persuasion in every major city I've lived. The crowd is cool and there's no pressure on me to be any sort of way but relaxed. In New Orleans, Oz offered excellent music and dancing as well as cheap drinks. In L.A., Club Lingerie was a mixed crowd and tended to be frequented by French tourists wearing tight pants who always made for intriguing conversation. In San Francisco....well, it's San Francisco. In Las Vegas, that one spot over by The Green Door had the best cheap cocktails and not a soul bothered you plus there was a really cool improv show next door at the shop that sold BDSM gear. It's not that I hadn't planned on giving at least one gay bar a chance in Atlanta but it's just always a strange experience to find yourself in a gay bar when you're not expecting it. The vibe is just different and requires an adjustment of perspective. It's not bad. Just different.

So we had arrived too early for festivities at MJQ and we didn't want to lose our fabulous parking space. I noticed the sign for Neighbor's Pub and said, "C'mon Babe, let's grab a drink until our spot opens." We walked about fifty feet and there we were. We sat down at the bar. I looked around. Noticed a couple in the corner by the pool table and several men sitting around the bar. No big deal. There was a little table sign letting us know that they served $3 Long Island Ice Teas. Sweet. That's what I'll be drinking. The bartender was knee deep in conversation with some dirty blond chick so he didn't get over to us right away. Whatever. We had an hour to kill anyway.

I looked to the left, there was a black guy with an obsessively manicured mustache wearing a baby blue button down staring at us. Was he staring at me or more so at my man? I couldn't tell. I looked away. Some white guy wearing a baseball cap with a pair of stunner shades on top was sitting to our right and asked Love to toss a book of matches at him. He didn't use the matches. Instead, he immediately got on his cell phone. Odd. I looked back to the left. Manicured mustache still staring. Behind him was a picture of Marilyn Monroe and across from her was a rainbow clock with Jagermeister across the front. Never seen that before. Looked back to the right and there was a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. A disco ball in a bar. Novel. The bartender finally stopped talking and sashayed over to us. Gay guy with an interesting t-shirt. Cheery disposition. Cool. We ordered our drinks. There was no Bud Light on tap, so dude offered Love an American beer called Yuengling as he mixed my drink. I tasted the beer. Obama should have drank that at his racism-squashing meeting. Across the bar from us sat two thin chested white guys wearing bright green and yellow polo shirts. Their hair was cut in that way where they had to constantly brush their bangs out of their faces. An extremely large black woman wearing a wig, flower print dress and hot pink lipstick walked in. The third Prince song in a row came on the juke box.

I looked at Love and asked the question. Are we in a gay bar? To which he replied, I think we just might be. We shrugged at each other and smiled. Then a very strange thing happened.

A tall, skinny black man walked over to the bar and got extremely close to Love. He looked over at us and asked us how we were doing. Fine. Then he began to talk about how his night was faring and how he would much rather be travelling through Europe at this juncture. He commented on how the bartender talked too damn much and should have had his ass over here taking orders for drinks instead of socializing. He asked me what I was drinking. I told him. He said the price for the Long Island was unbeatable. Love looked excruciatingly uncomfortable as the stranger kept on bumping shoulders with him. The social butterfly of a bartender made his way over to us. Stranger ordered his drink and offered to buy me my next round. Not us. Just me. I told him I was fine. He insisted, persisted, got downright pushy. Love's lips got tight. I declined in the firmest voice I could muster without being unpleasant. He finally walked away. Love and I looked at each other. I rubbed his back. The bartender walked over and explained how he would have told that motherfucker to fuck off.

About ten minutes later, stranger approached again offering drinks rather forcefully. I told him that no means no. He said he liked my spunkiness. His name was Darrell and he was a manager for Pizza Hut. He explained how Pizza Hut was doing pretty well despite the economy because it was nutritious and white people loved it. It took all of my willpower to maintain a straight face and I still think I rather failed. Love, being the smart ass that he is, asked about the competition like Papa John's. This made Darell quite upset. "Fuck Papa John's!!!" Darrell exclaimed. Love grabbed my hand and squeezed. This was almost too much to bear. This guy was going to have to get the hell away from us before we peed on ourselves. Finally, he did walk away. We decided that we needed another drink. The bartender served us another round and put it on Darrell's tab. That would show Darrell's ass. We doubled our tip for the bartender and I left him an outpast30.blogspot.com calling card. Yes, this was soooo going to get blogged about.