My First Time

Don't Stop The Dance!

First, get your mind out of the gutter! It will get there soon enough.

I had a friend from college who was funny, personable and I honestly thought he had a crush on me. How naive I was! One Saturday night in late summer of 1982 I was working at the grocery store. I had a long line of at least 4 people with huge buggies of groceries. When I looked up there stood my friend at the end of the long line with a candy bar in his hand. There were at least a 7 or 8 other registers open with fewer customers in their lines. My friend obviously wanted me to ring up his candy bar!

Finally my friend got up to my register and wasted no time in asking me to go somewhere with him: a bar. It was the weekend so I called my folks and told them that my friend and I were going out to “get something to eat”. There were no protests from them so off we went to downtown Jackson.

We parked across the street from a place that in no way looked like any bar I'd ever been to. As I saw of the few of the people lined up to get in, I asked my friend “Is this the kind of bar I think it is?” He grinned big, came around to open my car door for me and off we went across the street to “The Other Side”.

It was the other side, all right. A side of life I had never seen up close before. Beautiful women who turned out to not be women. There were interesting looking women who actually were women. Plus the best dance music I had ever heard. We ordered cokes and headed to the packed dance floor. The beat was hypnotic and, thanks to my recent dance training as a Natural (I knew that would come in handy one day), my friend and I were burning up the floor. Another way to burn up the dance floor in a gay bar is to spill “poppers” (alkyli nitrites) and accidentally throw a lit cigarette on or near the spill. We're talking Japanese Hibatchi grill flames but very brief. It was at that point the DJ would quickly put “Burning Down the House” by “Talking Heads” on the turntable and the place went wild!

Lucky me, there was a drag show that night, starring the inimitable “Angel Austin”. She looked similar to, but more beautiful than, Pat Benatar. As the lights came up she was sitting on stage in a chair with a set of old window panes in her lap. She was looking through one of the pieces of glass as she began “singing” “We're the Kids in America” smashing the window on the dance floor in front of her as she began. Stunned and excited do not even begin to explain what I felt as I watched her show.

Yes, it was true. I had found a new favorite place to be at “The Other Side”.