Small Town Gay Bar
28/03/08 15:29
Gallery Above is surprisingly spacious considering how small the entrance is. It is right there on the main street, but you will have to know what you are looking for to find it. It does not have a shop front or anything, just a colorful flight of stairs crammed in between two stores. Arriving at the top, you find yourself in a large room that extends all the way to the back of the building. The main exhibition section is reserved for a local artist who paints a kind of mythological pop culture icons on small pieces of wood. Going through them I find everything from portraits of William S. Burroughs and Rasputin to Jonah in the whale and your great Lovecraftian god Cthulhu. The style is a mixture of traditional and modern. Native Americana, I guess you might call it.
After being introduced around to the local gay community of writers, surfers, farmhands, and Uzbek dissidents (!), we grab a seat and settle down for tonight's movie. Small Town Gay Bar turns out to be a documentary about the hardships of being gay in rural Mississippi. It tells the story of the rise and fall of gay bars throughout the area, and makes sure to include all possible extremist points of views. A Baptist preacher forgets about forgiveness, and openly condemns the whole lot to hell, while a 300 pound lesbian tells people who do not like her to go fuck themselves.
I am a little surprised at how everybody in the movie seems to be bogged down in what I thought to be the civil rights conflicts of the 1960s - but apparently even reforms tend to slow down in the blistering heat of the Southern sun. This point is only made all too clear in the story of a young man who was brutally murdered for being gay by three kids his own age. They tied him to a chair in his own trailer home, and spend several hours torturing him before partly decapitating and then burning him. Even though we are in Florida, I begin to wonder if I should be more paranoid about spending time with gay people. Of course, I decide not to, but just the fact that the thought somehow had to cross my mind gives me the creeps.
Horror stories aside, the evening ends in good cheer. I practically have not eaten all day, and I am starting to get a kick out of it. My head is buzzing, my feet are numb, and my whole body seems to be spinning around the vortex gnawing away at my stomach. I am sure a beer or two would have sent me straight out of orbit, but unfortunately they only serve soft drinks at the gallery. Instead I just talk my head off, and even promise to return the next day, and buy one of the Native Americana icons. Well, that day has come, and I have actually ended up buying three. I still really have not eaten anything yet, so I had better get down to some lunch business before I spent more of the money I have not got. Not that I worry about it, though. Not after watching Small Town Gay Bar, anyway.
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