home club

[sssyn]

when i was a teen, i had scene hair, wore board shorts. i hadn't yet discovered the markers that would help me make sense of my queerness, the lipstick, the floral prints; i was just a malleable mess of baby butch putty. and when i managed to sneak out, i went to a bar called home club—softly lit with purple, peeling graffiti and white paint against the potted palm trees. my first girlfriend brought me there to watch her ex-girlfriend look up at us from under her eyelashes and smile shyly, fatally, while she sang an acoustic cover of dashboard confessional's hands down onstage. we kissed at the back of the room, directly in her line of vision. home club wasn't a gay club necessarily, in the same way that clubs weren't gay but 'indie' or 'emo' so as to avoid the pronouncements that rang loud nonetheless, in the lean slope of a regular's shoulders, her skinny tie askew and hair slicked up, not back (it was the 2000s), how her knuckles snuck over mine at the bar. like the brown wave of my bicep slipping out of a cut-off band tee to the screech of amateur guitar. the contemptuous laughter and catcalls outside. a dark cluster of motorcycles. tiger beer. "get home safe," the bartender would yell, to the sound guy, who would smile it at the bouncer, who would mutter it to us, every week; her watchful nod as we'd stumble out, a little drunk off of cider or the smell of one another. that damp kiss between neck and shoulder. "yeah, okay, get home safe."