Finding God in a Gay Bar

          Like most children, my least favorite part of church was having to sit still. And because I went to a Catholic school that had not yet learned the beauty of upholstery, twice a week, I was forced to sit in a stiff wooden pew—quiet, back straight, and hands placed neatly in my lap. When I was six, I had a friend who was chronically sitting out of recess on Mass days because she liked to dance during the songs in church. She would shriek when her favorite hymnal was going to be played and wriggle in our teacher’s arms, who was trying to hold her still with her arms crossed over her chest. Her presence unnerved the straight-backed, stiff-lipped parishioners and disrupted the atmosphere of stillness, so we got weekly reminders that sitting quietly was the best way to connect with God. 

When I was younger, all the elementary school students, including myself, would gather every other week for something we called “Little Church.” These biweekly gatherings were really just glorified storytimes and sing-alongs, but, unlike regular Mass, we were not confined to the pews, and no one was told to be quiet. Every meeting ended with the whole group singing “This Little Light of Mine.” I would always cover my ears once we got to the lyric “Hide it under a bushel?” because, without fail, every student would yell “NO!”

As I got older, the tenet of quietness only grew in importance. Once I entered middle school, “little church” was replaced with the Adoration of the Holy Eucharist—a practice done only by the most faithful. I, and the other twenty or so sixth graders, would sit silently for about an hour in the small soundproof room with floor-to-ceiling windows, which was normally reserved for mothers with children who cry during Mass. In front of us was the tabernacle, an ornate gold container that stored the Eucharist, which was opened specially for us to feel the presence of God. Though I can’t say I was ever successful in contacting God during Adoration. I spent most of the hour focusing on sitting up straight and contorting my face to appear concentrated and pious. The whole practice felt unnatural.

I stopped going to church by the time I was fifteen. It was only slightly coincidental that I realized I was queer around the same time. In all honesty, it was likely because I had moved from Arizona to Maryland, leaving my Catholic school for the secular utopia of public school. Or where “children’s faith goes to die,” as my religious education teacher once said during a conversation on the word “God” being excluded in the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. 

My family and I tried to keep up with going to Sunday Mass for a while, but it was strange to start over. The parishioners of my old church had watched me grow up, and I didn’t see how I could feel that same sense of community with people I had no history with. The distance between us and the rest of the congregation felt too wide to remedy. We stopped going after a few weeks.

Away from the echo chamber and the required communal silent time, it was easier to feel the weight of the issues I had with the Catholic Church. The inconsistencies I had repressed in order to be a good Catholic were now impossible to ignore. For a while, I basked in my newfound godlessness. I no longer had to worry about how devoted I seemed; parishioners were not asking me to babysit their kids, and I had no obligations on Sundays.

By the time I was eighteen, though, I missed church. Not the actual place, but I missed the routines—the familiar faces, the shared stories, and the ritual of gathering together.  So, I filled my time by reading about people losing their religion, trying to find if any of them had figured it out. What I learned from this is that I was not alone in the disillusionment I felt about organized religion. I read an article about people no longer feeling connected to church, but still wishing they had a community like it. Some people tried reconnecting with nature. Others went to group exercise classes. Yet, all felt that these activities were not suitable replacements for the community they got in a church. You can’t exactly ask the lady next to you in SoulCycle to babysit your kid. 

It became clear that just as much as church is about God, it is about social networks. In religious communities, interpersonal connections were easy to create and maintain, and shared experiences often fostered lifelong friendships. As I moved into adulthood, I found myself drifting through various spiritual practices, searching for that elusive connection. The only thing I seemed to get from this was how to do tarot readings. 

***

A few months after I turned twenty-one, I went to my first gay bar. My friends and I had been researching gay bars in our area in preparation for our twenty-first birthdays. We had decided on one in Adams Morgan, not too far from the Washington, D.C. suburb we lived in, named after a queer-coded baseball movie from the 1990s. My friend’s father dropped us off at the end of the street, and we walked towards the building with rainbow-lined windows.

After fumbling with my wallet when the bouncer asked to see my ID, we walked into the first floor. The room was narrow and congested with people moving between the bar and the dance floor upstairs, the music was disorienting, and we were too sober.

We found seats at a table in the corner. After a few rounds of drinks and many uneasy glances around the room, my friend heard one of her favorite songs playing, and she pulled us away from our seats—our small haven in the crowded room—toward the dance floor.

Once we made our way to the dance floor, we heard what sounded like every person in the room screaming the song.

God, what have you done?

You're a pink pony girl

And you dance at the club

And I was screaming with them. The lyrics came as easily to my mind as the hymns I sang every Sunday. 

Oh mama, I'm just having fun

On the stage in my heels

It's where I belong down at the

Pink Pony Club

As I felt the beat reverberate in my chest and saw the colorful lights illuminate the untroubled faces on the dance floor, I felt this overwhelming sense of belonging.

After we left, my friend Leah, who was not particularly religious and had only been to church twice in her life, said, “Guys, I literally saw God in there.” At the time, we laughed at her vodka-fueled admission, but she verbalized something that I had also felt. In that space—the laughter and joy and dancing—we felt a kind of collective effervescence, reminiscent of the bonds I had missed from church. 

Leah’s comment reminded me of research I did in a sociology class on the !Kung people in Botswana. Researchers were interested in the !Kung people, because until the past few decades, they operated in a hunter-gatherer system. I was interested in the !Kung people because socializing, particularly through dance, was the center of their lives. Dance was both a social and a spiritual ritual because they believed there cannot be one without the other; whether by fire or by flashing lights, humans have long danced in the dark together.

It was in those moments, dancing on the sticky floor with my friends, that I realized the spiritual connection I had longed for could be found away from those wooden pews. It was alive in the music and movement of the bar, a rediscovered form of worship where the divine was manifested through our shared humanity. And it all felt so natural.

This feeling of spiritual fulfillment and belonging only grew as we began to frequent the bar. I found it on the dance floor, singing loudly to a song and making eye contact with someone across the room who is singing it just as loudly. I found it with the bartender, who made fun of my drink of choice. I found it in the women’s bathroom, where I swapped secrets with people I had never met before. 

***

There were people I met who had been frequenting lesbian and gay bars in DC for over 40 years. Joey, a butch lesbian in her 60s with a somewhat snobbish taste in beer, told me she met most of her friends sitting at a bar. Though it was not the one we were sitting in. Phase 1, usually called The Phase by its patrons, was a lesbian bar near Eastern Market in Southeast DC that had opened in 1970. The Phase was renowned for a number of reasons. It was the oldest continually operating bar in the United States. It was also located on a strip of 8th Street with so many LGBTQ+ establishments that it was nicknamed the “Gay Way.” Most importantly, it was the best place to meet women, according to Joey, who specified she was mostly talking about friends. 

Phase 1 became their meeting place—a sanctuary where they could express themselves freely and dance without fear. After Phase 1 closed in 2016, Joey and her friends started coming to the bar where we first met. Joey told me stories about what it was like when The Phase was the only place they felt truly comfortable. Even though this wasn’t the case anymore, they still came to the bar. Every few weeks, they would gather to catch up, sharing stories over their favorite drinks. She described it as “a kind of ritual.”