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GAY BAR

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by

Robert Gregory

When I was requested a few days ago by my fellow editors to write an article on the Gay Bar for this issue, it was presumably on grounds that experience qualified me to do so. This presumption was not entirely without basis. Up to about five years ago my experience with bars, gay or otherwise, had been sporadic and without interest. But at that time I reached a decision to face the issues of homosexuality with as much intellectual and moral honesty as I could muster. This led me, at first, to ally myself with the pioneering social efforts of ONE. Inc.. and, later to visit as many as possible of those places and people that are involved with the same problem.

The Gay Bar, while it by no means offers a total cross-section of the homosexual population of a city or country, nevertheless goes farther, at present, than any other single social institution in collecting together a wide variety of types and temperaments. Anyone who has "made the rounds," as they say, is readily acquainted with the milieu-the hustlers, the screaming faggots, the queens, the nice ivy-leaguers-sometimes all in easy exchange with one

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another, while at other times each isolated into groups maintaining their own classification within the bars that reflect their specific personalities. For the Gay Bars, from the melting-pot to the exclusive club are as varied as their patrons. We all know the unlimited patterns.

However, this article is not the place for detailed descriptions of the Gay Bar. Moreover any efforts on my part to evoke the atmosphere and personalities of the Gay Bar would be presumptuous, as the job has already been done excellently by others. Most recently by Helen Branson in her book Gay Bar, (Pan-Graphic Press, $3.00). Or for anyone desiring to read, in a delightful and revealing literary capsule, about the temperament and inner workings of the Gay Bar, I unhesitatingly recommend the chapter from The Gallery called "MOMMA," by author John Horne Burns, or else the book entitled 21 Variations on a Theme, by Donald W. Cory, in which "MOMMA" was lovingly excerpted. "MOMMA" is chiefly concerned with a typical evening in a gay bar in Naples during World War II, and all the personalities of the Gay Bar are there. in prototype. There are the

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