maniac ♡ e.w. oneshot

✄ - - - -   inspo track   - - - -   maniac

synopsis: lies are spewed and truths are revealed when a precarious friend group joins together once more on the 1 year anniversary of their estranged friends disappearance.

      | 𓆣 | pairing & wc: ellie williams x reader. wc: 4.4k

      | ❀ | cw: 18+ themes (MDNI), modern au, reader is referred to with she/her pronouns but other than that all descriptors are gender neutral, heavy violence blood and gore, oc deaths, drug use, homophobia (use of the word "dyke" once. i'm a lesbian so don't y'all try to cancel me), heavy language, mentions of reader having anxiety and panic attacks, lots of tension and fighting, ⭑ SMUT ⭑ ... thigh riding (r on e), dom!ellie, sub!reader, fingering (r receiving), pet names (baby, angel, etc.)

a/n: hi lovelies!! long time no see... i know this is a little different from my usual stuff but i honestly really love how it turned out. i spent a good chunk of time planning this out and then even longer writing it so i really hope y'all love it! i want this to be a fresh and exciting read for everyone. if you do end up enjoying the fic, any kind of note is greatly appreciated! ur fave tumblr writers thrive off all y'alls support! anyways, love love love you guys!!! ♡~ lola

To everyone else, it was a summer like any other. But when it came to you and your friends there was something missing this time– someone missing. This absence felt extra heavy as tomorrow would be the 1 year anniversary of August’s disappearance, and the annual camping trip was right on time with it. It had been tradition for as long as you could remember, but its memory was now tainted and left something that used to be so sure, completely up in the air…

✄ - - - -   ♡   - - - - 

The five of you squeezed into the small 4 person booth at your favorite local diner; Tj’s Eats. In one seat sat Lottie and Reid. The girl’s loose, dark curls gathered at the boy's shoulders as she snuggled into him, still clearly in the honeymoon stage of their relationship. On the other side of the white marbled table sat Xavier and Ellie, with you perched on her lap, of course, as she insisted to everyone that it was “necessity” and “there really, really was no more room”. In all actuality, all it took was an extra chair to fit the five, but she was your girlfriend, and even after years of dating you still couldn’t get enough of each other. 

“Can someone just say what we’re all thinking, please! I can’t with this tension,” Lottie complained, finally snapping out of the cuddle fest with her red-headed boyfriend.

“What are we all thinking Lottie, huh? Since you know everything,” Xavier retaliated, guising his irritation with a poorly crafted remark. 

“Don’t be fucking mean,” she said, kicking him under the table.

“Yeah seriously chill out,” Reid echoed. 

“God, enough with this shit, you guys are driving me insane!” Ellie butted in. You, however, paid no mind to this type of bullshit, as fights like this had become a frequent occurrence in your group of friends ever since that godforsaken night. So you continued to down your chocolate shake and drown out the bickering with a light hum. That is, until you were rudely interrupted by Xavier’s insulting words.

“You’re being real fucking quiet over there, Y/n. Do you really have nothing to say? You can’t just tune us out forever. We’re your fucking friends.”

You felt your hands balled into tight fists, “Fine. You want me to say something? I’ll say something–my brother is still missing and if you’re even thinking of going on that stupid fucking trip this year, you can count me out.”

“Not going on that trip isn’t gonna magically bring him back. August is gone and we can’t stop living our lives because of it,” he retorted, going just a tad bit too far. This was the last straw and quickly sent you up and out of your warm place in Ellie’s lap. She grasped at your wrist trying to pull you back into this mess of a friend group, but to no avail. 

“Now look what you’ve fucking done!” Ellie yelled at your defense as you disappeared into the bathroom.

✄ - - - -   ♡   - - - - 

Now face-to-face with your tear-stained cheeks in the mirror, your head fell down between your shoulders, slowly letting the pent up emotions roll off your back. Ever since you lost August, life had become 10 times harder. As much as your younger self would’ve hated to admit it, he was your rock–your annoying brother–but still, your rock. This confession made you feel even worse though, because deep down, there was a part of you that blamed yourself for how things happened. Maybe if you would’ve stopped fighting, or told the truth to the police, or took it easier on the booze and coke that night, August would still be here. There was nothing you could do now though. This was your reality and you had to accept it. 

With that you reached into the pocket of Ellie’s varsity jacket that engulfed your figure, hoping to find a tissue to blot away your tears and smeared mascara. Instead, you were met with a small polaroid. You flipped it over to reveal a bewildering picture of Xavier and August from the last night he was seen. Their arms were swung around each other’s necks, both flashing toothy smiles at the camera and you could recall being the one to take this photo. The one thing you didn’t remember is the black sharpie captioning the bottom of the image. It read “don’t believe his lies”. Your head began to race with countless questions and zero answers. The biggest one being, what the fuck was Xavier lying about?

The wet bathroom countertop dug into the palms of your hands as you took a second to decide the best course of action, but all you could come up with was shutting the fuck up and pretending it never happened. You weren’t ready to relive last year all over again. Not yet–not ever. So you paraded back into the dining room, eyes still damp and hands still shaking. Ellie felt your energy immediately and knew it was time to go.

She glanced at you for confirmation and then turned to address the group, “I think it’s time for me and Y/N to head out. Sorry guys.” Xavier shot a look of discontent and Ellie mouthed something along the lines of “I’m sorry, I’ll talk to her I promise”, which seemed to slightly ease the tension he was previously carrying in his shoulders. She then slid out from the booth, slipped her left hand into the pocket of your denim shorts, and ushered you outside to her red convertible.

The drive back was silent but as Ellie’s hand gently stroked the flesh of your thighs and the other steered you knew there was no way she could have anything to do with that polaroid. But you had to find out who did. Just as you were nearing your house though, Ellie’s gentle touch quickly shifted to a handsier approach and it was clear she had other plans for the night. 

“Els?” is all you had to say before she quickly pulled over and jumped to the backseat, pulling you along with her. She positioned herself in the middle seat opening up her legs in a dominating stance resembling a manspread. You eagerly climbed atop her lap, placing soft kisses up her veiny neck and extending them to her defining jawline. This was just what you needed to release the tension that had racked up from tonight's events. The moon was hitting your face just right and Ellie felt so lucky to have you in that moment.

“You’re so goddamn beautiful” she murmured, slightly breathless from the overwhelming touch of your lips. You smiled against the crook of her neck and dove into the girl's mouth for a deep and passionate kiss. She returned the exchange with even more fire, graciously slipping her tongue into your entrance. With each second things got messier and your hips got looser, slowly grinding into Ellie’s denim clad thighs. She couldn’t help but chuckle just a little at your desperation, to which you buried your head back into her shoulder, encasing her in your arms for better traction. Ellie’s hands swiftly found the curves of your hips and rocked them back forth to aid you in your journey towards climax. That is until your anxiety got the best of you at the sound of rustling coming from outside the car.

“Ellie?”

“What does it not feel good?” she questioned.

“No, no– It’s just… I swear I just heard something coming from behind the car.”

“I mean… we are parked by the woods. It’s probably just some animal or the wind.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes babe, I’m sure.” she assured you with a firm squeeze to your thigh and you let your worries go. This time Ellie was on top, laying you down across the seats to hover over you alluringly. Your lips found hers once again as she slipped a hand down your shorts and past your panties to meet the slick that had been piling up the whole drive. You let out a strangled moan into Ellie’s mouth as her rough digits met the throbbing bud of nerves. She took that as a sign to speed up the pace and slip in a curved finger to hit that perfect spot. You jerked in pleasure, eyes closed, almost reaching your climax from just those few movements. Ellie felt as your walls tightened around her and knew you were close.

“Look at me baby. I wanna see your eye’s when you cum all over my fingers.” she cooed. You obeyed and parted your lids open to reveal a disturbing image followed by a frightened scream escaping your puffy lips. Ellie jumped back at the clearly non-orgasmic exclamation, letting out a string of concerned “what? What??”’s. All you could do is point your shaky hand towards the message written in the condensation of the back windshield. 

“I know about last summer…” Ellie read out, voice as shaky as your extremities. Both of your fight or flight responses were triggered; you choosing flight and her of course choosing fight. The door to the cherry red car flung open and Ellie climbed over and out of her seat to trail the perimeter. You cowered down, eye’s filled with tears as Ellie recklessly yelled out to whoever wrote the message.

“Hello? Anybody out there?”, she kicked at the rocks in frustration, “Seriously who the fuck are you? This isnt fucking funny!”

“Ellie, will you please just get back in the car? They’re gone!” you pleaded. She eventually returned from her fit and came to console you. You were a mess and you were scared. 

“Hey, hey, it’s probably some prank. Let’s just take a breath, babe. In and out. Nice and slow.” she coached and you followed.

“But- what if it’s not though… what if this isn’t the first time something like this has happened…”

“Wha-what do you mean?” she asked.

You pulled out the polaroid and handed it to Ellie, “I- I found this in your jacket.”

“Y/n I swear I didn't put that there. I have no idea where it came from. Please, please believe me.”

“I do, I do. But that means someone else put it there, and they probably wrote that message too.”

Her head fell into her hands as she let out a sigh, “Fuck. We’re so fucked.”

“So what do we do?” 

“We go on that camping trip and keep our mouths shut till we know more.” 

“Seriously? What is camping gonna help? I already said I’m not going!” you yelled.

“Like hell you are! You’re insane if you think staying in the same town with the psycho freak who's borderline blackmailing us is gonna solve shit! If we’re in the woods they can’t get to us.” Ellie argued, face turning red with insistence.

“Fuck. I guess you’re kinda right. I’ll go.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you sleep over tonight though? I’m scared Els. I don’t even wanna think about being alone after tonight.”

She gave you a kiss on the forehead, “Of course I’ll stay the night. We’re in this together, okay?”

“Okay.”

✄ - - - -   ♡   - - - - 

The next morning Reid came barreling over in his beat up white van. He haphazardly whipped into the driveway of your two story home that looked straight out of suburbia. Ellie stood at the top of the concrete hill holding your pink duffle and her navy blue one on the dip of her shoulder. Xavier swung open the sliding door and the both of you climbed in as you were practically slapped in the face with the smell of old bong water and way too many Little Trees air fresheners that somehow made the smell worse.

“Fuckk Reid, you’ve gotta get rid of this kidnapper van.” Ellie remarked, holding her nose and pretending to gag a couple times.

“Fuck off Ellie, you should be thanking me for driving you bums around.”

She just rolled her eyes, “Righttt… Right…” 

The van quickly took to the road again, heading straight for the forest where it all happened just 1 year ago.

“It’s too quiet in here. Can we please put on some music?” Lottie asked about 30 minutes into the drive. 

“Yeah sure. I have a few tapes in the console right there if you wanna put one in.” Reid gestured to the compartment on the passenger side and Lottie reached in, pulling out the first tape she could find. It was in a small plastic case with no writing or cover to indicate what it was, but it sparked an intrigue, so she popped it into the car's sound system anyways. To Lottie and everyone else’s surprise, music didn’t start playing. All that came through the speakers was a muffled recording of two voices arguing. 

“Shut the fuck up August you’re just jealous!”

“You’re gonna regret this Reid.”

“Are you threatening me right now?”

“You’re the one who-”

Before the tape could finish Reid ripped it out of the player, slamming it into the dashboard and destroying the possible evidence.

“How the fuck did you get this Lottie?! Where’d you find this, seriously?” he screamed as his frantic girlfriend tried to explain.

“It was just in the console I swear!”

“Don’t fucking lie to me! I’ve never seen that tape, let alone put it in my car!”

Tears welled in her eyes, “I’m not lying Reid!”

The bickering continued as you, Ellie, and Xavier sat in the back, jaws dropped in utter shock. You felt yourself shutting down at this new found information. Did Reid have something to do with August disappearing? What were they even fighting about? Suddenly breathing felt impossible and the world went silent as panic set it. You only snapped back to Earth when you heard the sound of Ellie screaming.

“FUCK REID LOOK OUT!” It was too late though and the thud of a full size deer flipping over the hood is what finally shut everyone up. 

“Oh my god…” you shuddered at the smear of thick crimson blood across the dirty windshield. It didn’t matter if it was an animal, Reid had just taken a life and you were basically an accomplice. Your heart broke and the pit of your stomach swirled with sickness thinking of the likely decapitated body splattered just behind the van. Ellie wrapped you in her arms, as if to shield you from the horror of not only the poor deer, but the realization that any one of your friends could be the reason your brother was missing. 

Xavier finally broke the jarring lull in speech, “I- I think we should take a pit stop.”

“Yeah…” Ellie agreed.

✄ - - - -   ♡   - - - -

A few miles down the road was a small gas station where Reid pulled over for everyone to recollect themselves. Lottie scrubbed mindlessly at the deer carnage with the murky gas station water and squeegee she found beside the gas pump. Xavier paced in the parking lot like he was off one but it was the pure anxiety and adrenaline that had him tweaking so much. Reid on the other hand was still stuck at the wheel, slouching in the driver's seat, and not making a single move since he put the van into park. Even his deep green eyes remained motionless, they seemed to be locked onto absolutely nothing, just staring into the void. Everyone was a fucking mess. The only people who seemed to be somewhat on this planet still were you and Ellie.

“I think I might gouge my eye’s out if I don’t eat some Swedish Fish and drink a Yerb as soon as possible.” you professed, walking inside the little convenience store with a ring of a bell.

“I think I need a fucking cigarette.” Ellie said in a joking tone, but candidly, these past few days had her seriously considering picking the old habit back up.

“I think everybody does. I’m tired of shit like this happening and then everyone shoving it under the rug cause we’re all still ashamed about last year. I mean, I know I am, but we have to talk about it eventually.”

“You’re right, but even if we did, what is there to say? We were all so fucked up the whole night’s just a blurry mess. Like, did you see Reid's face when that tape came on? It looked like he was hearing the conversation for the first time just like the rest of us.”

“This sucks Ellie” you groaned as you opened up the glass door to retrieve your drink. Ellie approached from behind, slithering her hands from your sides to your naval and giving you a squeeze. 

She planted a soft kiss to the top of your head, “This does suck, but I love you and we’re gonna be alright. You gonna be okay for the rest of the drive?” She flipped you around to face her and you gave an assuring nod in response. Ellie always knew just what to say to ease that panicky feeling that was constantly bubbling up in your chest. The girl then took your hand and led you to the counter where a gruff looking cashier checked you out. He slowly scanned each item at an agonizing pace; Hot fries, Swedish Fish, a Yerba Mate, Chex Mix, and a Fanta Orange. 

“Total is $13.78” he mumbled as Ellie swiped her card and you gathered up the snacks. The clerk's eyes seemed to get meaner and meaner each second you waited for your receipt– until he finally cracked. “You know you’re going to hell for what you did.” 

Ellie backed away, “Excuse me?” Had he overheard something? Did he know about August? Who the fuck was this guy?

“I don’t need any dykes shoving their sins all in my face in my own damn store!” he grunted. Oh, he’s just homophobic. Right. That was y’alls que to get back on the road and out of the middle of nowhere immediately.

✄ - - - -   ♡   - - - -

After an excruciatingly mute hour stuck in the “kidnapper van” you finally arrived at the forest where you’d be spending the night. The silence looked to have eased some of the tension though as conversation grew a little more lax around the campfire. 

“Yo Lottie do you have the bud? We should roll up.” Xavier suggested. You nodded fervently in agreement, a joint was exactly what you needed. Lottie seemed to have made up with Reid as she was hanging all over him not hearing a word Xavier said.

With a few calls of her name she finally looked up, “Huh?”

“The weed Lottie.” Ellie said.

“Yeah it’s in a little pouch in my tent if someone wants to grab it.” Xavier got up from his spot on a mossy log and ventured into the purple tent hitched by a tree. In just 30 seconds flat he came storming back out, face completely red and a beaded bracelet dangling from his right fist. 

“What the fuck is this Lottie!? How do you have this?” 

She pulled back from her steamy kiss with Reid to answer, “Oh my god what Xavier? You’re being sooo goddamn annoying today.”

“Could you maybe stop grinding on your boyfriend for 5 fucking seconds and look at what I found in your bag?!” he yelled back. After a closer look the small beads began to look eerily familiar. This wasn’t just any bracelet, this was August’s bracelet. The one he had on the last night he was seen, and all of the sudden Lottie’s loud mouth seemed to shut right up.

“I- I- Xavier believe me I didn’t put that there.”

His voice broke with pain and fury, “Oh really?? Then who did ‘Miss innocent’?”

“I don’t fucking know but it wasn’t me!”

“Fuck you!” he screamed, dashing off into the dark woods. Everyone tried to yell at him to come back but it was no use. He was too angry to listen to anyone but himself.

That being said, hypervigilant Reid stood up to follow, “I’m gonna go find him guys. He shouldn’t be out there alone. Not after…” His voice trailed off but everyone knew exactly what he was alluding to.

“I really didn’t put that there you know” Lottie said.

You and Ellie shared a glance, “We know.”

A puzzled look spread across her face, “what do you mean you know?”

“We think someone’s orchestrating all this,” Ellie said.

“Like blackmail?”

You nodded, “exactly like blackmail. It’s happened to me and Ellie too. Once with a lost polaroid photo and another time with a message written on her car.” You then pulled out the photo to show to Lottie.

She read it aloud, “Don’t believe his lies? Like… Xavier?” Ellie twiddled with her fingers, looking down at the dirt before saying what you and Lottie were both thinking.

“I mean, I don’t want to point fingers because this is a fucked up situation, but how have we all been framed except him?”

Lottie smoothed back the sweaty bangs stuck to her temples, “Fuckkkk. He probably had the bracelet from the start too, he seemed sooo damn eager to go dig through my shit.” 

“So, what do we do?” you asked.

Xavier suddenly appeared out of thin air, “What do we do about what?” Lottie practically jumped out of her spot.

“Fuck Xavier you scared me. Wait… Wh- where’s Reid?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he left to look for you.”

“I never saw him.”

Lottie began to scream and call for her missing boyfriend and without a second thought went straight for the forest like an idiot.

“Lottie fuck come back!” Ellie yelled out. It wasn’t long before she was running right back to you though. A blood curdling scream dampening any sounds of nature and sending a parade of chills up everyone’s backs.

“IT’S REID Y/N! IT’S REID! HE- HE- HE’S DEAD!” Lottie collapsed into your arms dry heaving from the overwhelming amount of tears, pain, and betrayal. “IT WAS YOU! IT WAS FUCKING YOU XAVIER!” You and Ellie worked to hold her back as he denied every claim.

“Lottie you’re acting fucking crazy! I didn’t do shit!”

“Even if you didn’t, you're not helping! But to me, it looks like you have guilty written all over you!” Ellie spat back.

“Fuck you guys! This isn’t fucking funny! I didn’t do it! Please, is this some kind of-” His words were cut short along with his head by the swing of a large machete right through his neck, sending a spray of fresh blood into the air and across your face. It took a solid 15 seconds before any of you could even let out a scream, but when you did, it was pure terror.  

“RUN! JUST RUN!” you yelled. Ellie grabbed your wrist in one hand and Lottie’s in the other, sprinting away with little discretion. A hooded figure trailed close behind, dirt and rocks flying into the air upon each kick of their sneakers. Air caught in your lungs with no release, all you could do was put one foot in front of the other which was a struggle in itself.

Lottie got brave though and took one single look behind her following immediate regret. A rock caught her pink converse just right, throwing her across the dirty ground and setting her feet back from the rest. And as this hooded figure caught up, the moon casting its light through the trees and across his face, it all began to make sense.

Lottie struggled backwards through the dirt with a scream, “IT’S AUGUST! IT’S FUCKING AUGUST!” Ellie halted in an attempt to pull the fallen girl back up and running but she was frozen in disbelief, in horror, in complete and utter fear. There was no choice but to leave her there and as the both of you turned to run, all you needed to hear was her earth shattering shriek to know exactly what happened.

Tears streamed down your face, “Els, Ellie I- I can’t.”

“Yes you can. Just keep running baby please.” And you did for another couple feet until fate had other plans. A hunting trap violently swept you up into a tree, encasing you in a thick net. 

“ELLIE HELP!” you screamed. She pulled and pulled at the rope creating lacerations across her palms and fingers but to no avail. 

“Do you trust me Y/n?” 

Through tears and strings of snot you shook your head, “Yes Ellie, I trust you.” Your girlfriend then took off, leaving you dangling in the air with no protection. It was just you and August now. And with a single swipe of his weapon you tumbled to the ground, twisting your ankle at the fall.

He gave a sinister smile, “hello sister.” You scrambled in the opposite direction, hands grasping at the soil below but never getting far with your limp foot. 

“August please. You don’t have to do this. It’s me! It’s Y/n!”

“STOP IT! You’re not gonna change my mind about this. I’ve waited long enough!” Your heart beats from your chest. What the fuck were you going to do to survive this?

“We’re fucking family August! I’m your sister. You’re my little brother!”

“‘Family’, ‘little brother’,” he mocked, “you haven’t changed a bit.”

“Wha- what do you mean?”

“I’m not living in your shadow anymore Y/n. I’m done being the sidekick to you and all of your stupid friends!”

“They’re your friends too!”

He began inching closer and closer, “No they fucking aren’t! Friends don’t do what you guys did to me. Lying to the police, seriously? Acting like you had no idea what happened? I disappeared and none of you even gave a fuck till the cops started asking questions!”

“That’s not true August,” you broke down into tears once more, “I missed you every fucking day!”

“Clearly not enough.” He slowly lifted his arms, gripping the bloody machete with both hands. There was no escaping at this point. You just clenched your eye’s shut and braced for the end. 

“NOOO!” The sound of a gunshot rang through your ears and instead of the feeling of cold metal slicing through you, you were met with the warm embrace of your girlfriend. You broke.

“Ellie. Oh my god Ellie.”

“I’m right here baby. Never leaving. I promise.” She just held you and held you, rocking back and forth till your breaths got less shaky.

“H-How?”

“A cabin. I found an empty cabin with a shotgun hanging right on the wall.”

“God, I love you.” Ellie smoothed back your hair and gave you a kiss.

“I love you too, angel.” 

✄ - - - -   ♡   - - - -

After that night things were never the same. It was just you and Ellie now. But together you would heal. Somehow, despite all the pain and loss, there was a glimmer of hope. Deep down you both knew things would be okay. And they were.

✄ - - - -   masterlist   - - - -   ♡

taglist...

@endureher @gold-dustwomxn @alexpritch @4rt3m1ss @robinismywifee @sophlovesbooks @97cityy

(taglist is for all callmelola111 works, if you'd like to be removed just kindly lmk)

I’m tired of flag discourse. My hot take is we should stop crediting people for making flags. Stop giving people ammo to harass someone and look at them under a microscope for any wrong move to cancel an entire flag for an entire minority group. Once a flag is made, it belongs to the group it represents. It doesn’t reflect the creator.

Emily what’s-her-face should not matter. The fact that she says the word dyke should not fucking matter. She’s just a random-ass lesbian just like the rest of us.

And the labrys flag wasn’t “made by a nazi” for fuck’s sake, that is the worst game of telephone I have ever seen next to “fruit is toxic to ND people.” But even if it WAS made by a nazi, it now belongs to my jewish dyke ass and said nazi can do jack shit about it.

Sorry for talking about four year old discourse but

Now that I’m on the topic of the old as fuck tommyinnit lesbian discourse and I went back and rewatched the clips and almost all of them are literally just like.

Yes they’re jokes but they’re all jokes about questioning one’s gender and sexuality and finding solidarity and community among queer people, and while, yes, they are most likely just jokes there are also moments in them that feel genuine, in the first one where his chat calls him a lesbian and he pauses for a second before deciding not to follow that train of thought on stream he seems to be seriously considering it for a moment before saying “no, let’s not think about that on stream”, another quote he was cancelled for was (verbatim) “I don’t know if I’m a lesbian, I know it comes with time and you have to figure it all out but I don’t know if I could be, if I qualify, I sure hope I do”, and in the “I get lesbians” clip he immediately follows it up with “I love ‘em and I understand them”

Honestly from my perspective as a lesbian the latter two are really sweet sentiments to me and felt relatable

I want to make it clear I will never be a truther for any content creator I’m just saying this to make a point but if he had actually been questioning his identity like he jokingly implied through these clips what a fucking way to ensure someone never so much as thinks about coming out of the closet again, in that moment where he got that message in his chat calling him a lesbian something seemed to click for him, even if it was a joke or he played it off as one he was suddenly confronted with the possibility that he could just be a lesbian only to immediately be confronted later that day with thousands of people telling him he’s a terrible person for being a man and so much as thinking he could maybe be a lesbian. What if it had turned out that these weren’t jokes? What if in those moments he had actually genuinely questioned his identity, even if it was just for a moment?

We’ll probably never know but regardless the response to these moments are almost exactly the same as why I hid parts of my identity in queer spaces, for the longest time I hid my pronouns and gender identity on twitter and tiktok especially because you’re “not allowed” to be a lesbian and identify with boyhood or he/him pronouns, or further back I hid my lesbianism all together because lesbians and asexuals are opposites

There’s also something to say about how people in theory believe that you shouldn’t assume someone’s gender/sexuality, yet the possibility of a person online who isn’t open about their sexuality potentially being queer is a fundamental impossibility for them

Idk, I’m probably thinking far too much into this but the tl;dr is I don’t think we should be harassing boys en masse for wondering if they could maybe be dykes

If you can, could you change the lesbian flag in your pfp to the peach or sorbet versions /lh? The one you used is now outdated because the creator said the d slur multiple times

respectfully are you fucking stupid. "the creator said the d slur" you mean the slur against lesbians. the slur that lesbians can reclaim. fuck off

I saw that peach lesbian flag in the wild while it was first making its rounds and it’s ridiculous how these kids instead of saying “I’m not a fan of the current flag so I made my own” they’ll come in with the most outlandish shit to make the old flag seem problematic it’s fucking wild

yeah i worry that the internet is creating this space for lgbtq+ youth where you have to police the behavior of yourself and everyone else to an unhealthy level.

i don't want to sound like a boomer whining about 'cancel culture' because like, 99% of complaints about cancel culture are just privileged conservative people whinging about publicly facing fucking mild social repercussions (and nothing else) for a shitty thing they absolutely did. because that's a whole separate thing. if you (for example) are a popular movie star and spread prejudice, the least of what you deserve is a bunch of people recognizing it and pointing it out.

no; i worry that we've created this air that like, social conflict on even the smallest minutiae has inherited the way we investigate and substantiate big issues like actual allegations of wrongdoing and abuse on the web. like, even the smallest conflicts now carry the weight of gossip turned into a witch hunt; wherein someone sees a pride flag and their friend is like 'oh didn't you hear? we can't use it anymore because the creator uses the word dyke for themself and that's bad.'

i think you hit the nail on the head that young people can't just say they don't like a thing because it's not woke enough they have to back it up with some wrongdoing or misconduct. how lonely, how neurotic, how intensely isolating it must feel to police yourself and everyone else like this! it sounds like an awful atmosphere to grow up in, to try and find your identity in. how exhausting must it be to have to back up every preference with proof of purity, or to have to abandon every thing that's tainted by like, ordinary nuance.

like, yeah people who do shitty things should face repercussions, but it's taken on this maddeningly small scale where every little preference has to be righteous and justified or abandoned for a new one.

it's ridiculous when it's small things like pride flags and low stakes social beefs but it's created this constant bickering that drives me up the wall. this pride month, if you're a young person reading this, remember that being a part of lgbtq+ activism is about doing the right thing a million times moreover than it is about saying the right thing. stop drawing lines in the sand. stop searching every person and every thing for a reason to disavow them and withdraw your support. people are messy, and you'll always find a reason not to listen if you're looking for it. how would anything ever get done if we all lived like that?

Some Stuff(tm) about the MOGAI Wiki but not what you're expecting

(I was not involved in... whatever the fuck Kris did and left before that happened, I am bewildered.)

Hi! I’m not sharing my name, though you might be able to guess. Refer to me as "butch" or "dyke" and use it/its pronouns.

I used to be a MOGAI coiner, centering on pagan, lesbian, and Latin identity. I also used to be an extremely prolific editor for what is now the Mogai Wiki (the Ezgender Wiki, when I was an editor), writing 40+ full pages and editing possibly 200+. And I left because of transmisogyny. Fun.

At the time, the wiki & Discord didn’t have a single active transfem mod. The only mod who is maybe transfem was extremely inactive to the point I’d never seen them post anything in the server. This remains the case, apparently. (Can't say I'm shocked the owner left due to being overly defensive given the incident this post is about.)

The server was also very, very absent of transfems. I think there were maybe three of us total that I saw.

So, the incident that caused me to leave:

One of the (at the time) admins messaged in a chat asking if it was okay to identify as [transmisogynistic slur]. Said admin was transmasculine. A member (who is prominent in the MOGAI community) linked a Wiki page I wrote on the term, that explained extremely clearly with sources why [slur] should not be used by non-transfems. And was seemingly used to say “yes, it’s cool.”

I entered the conversation and politely asked if they actually read the article. They had.

I then said that, since they knew better—and since their first time fully deciding to use the term was after knowing better—using it would be extremely transmisogynistic.

They did not like that.

I was accused of erasing gay male history. They tried to convince me that I was wrong about the term’s origins. They refused to even at least censor the word on request if they were going to continue saying it. When I said I was the only transfem present and was being ignored which, bad look, [prominent community member] said I wasn’t. I… definitely was. I knew all the people involved were transmasc or transneutral, because I knew them personally. I was told I was doing “discourse” and ordered to stop speaking on the issue by (again, transmasc) mods.

So I muted the server for a few days, because that experience was fucking degrading.

When I finally looked back on it, i found [different transmasc admin] had pulled me in a ticket, and warned me for “biased articles” and “hateful language.”

The biased articles? [Slur]. Obviously. And one article on the black triangle that was at worst biased towards not erasing Roma experiences regarding the Holocaust, which had been up for months (and read by mods) with no prior issue. That article was from November. This issue was in January.

The hateful language? A message from the week before reading “cis people are cancelled, men are cancelled, transmascs are cancelled, this is so transmisogynistic” when explicitly speaking about transmisogny regarding [slur] a week prior. Which, I’m so sorry that I hurt your feelings by generalizing when calling out bigotry that you immediately turned around and perpetuated. Point proven for me, though. (If you “not all men me” on this I swear I will bite your legs off.)

I then found that [transmasc owner] had rewritten the entire page to almost entirely be about gay and trans men. They removed my transfem primary sources. They removed the definition’s source and didn’t bother sourcing a new one. They watered down every place I mentioned it was a transmisogynistic slur to downplay or fully erase the term’s history as one. The majority of historical context I provided was deleted without replacement. To be clear: [slur] is an equivalent slur to tr-p. Like. 100%. Which is part of what my sources discussed.

The only transfem sources they included? Naturally, transfems saying it was totally okay because “we all experience transphobia” and “the gay and transfem community are really close,” which is just… extremely ignorant of history and also definitely a minority opinion in the transfeminine community. The slur is transmisogynistic. Not transphobic, not homophobic, not femmephobic. It is a slur against specifically AMAB transfems & trans women.

So, naturally, I was fucking pissed.

I may have written a very long, very angry reply, as one does when implicitly accused of ‘tranmisandry’ for calling out transmisogyny by a transmasc. Essentially, it was pointing out the issues I said above. Then I left.

For a few days I did not unfriend the moderators. I never blocked them, and they can easily find my Discord and Tumblr. It’s been four months with no message or apology, and last I checked the page is still what the former owner "corrected" it to, so I don’t see how I could be expected to believe the wiki or people involved changed.

Currently, only two mods for the wiki were there when I was a member. Only one of said mods was involved in the issue. So I’ll give the new mods benefit of the doubt.

But yeah, you guys wonder why you don’t see a lot of transfems active in the MOGAI community? Why every wiki seems so devoid of us? This shit is why.

You all are only against your idea of transmisogyny, not committed to protecting transfems. You hate TERFs more than you love trans women.

You can’t stop talking about how TERF ideology is just as bad for transmascs when they literally want all transfems murdered—yeah, they hurt transmascs a lot, but they’re killing us. You can't stop trying to make transmisogyny about you. You refuse to analyze transmasc-specific bigotry through any lense other than comparison to transmisogyny.

If you get told to stop using one slur, get a little uncomfortable, feel like we’re being too mean? That “allyship” goes straight out of the window.

You’re more averse to speciesism than transmisogyny. You’re more upset by “kinnie” than by [slur].

Maybe treat us like you give a shit, and fucking listen. Then you might realize that, hey, this community isn’t just transmascs and enbies, and it never has been.

(on the slur censored in this post:)

[Slur], which some might have guessed, is femboy. While transmascs and gay men use it… a lot, now, it originated in the 90s as a sibling term for trap, but even more sexualized. As in, it literally came from the same discussion boards.

The main difference, and why the f-mboy is even more sexualized, is that since they’re not “deceiving” men, they can have very visible bulges. This is also why the term is extremely pornographic, reclaimed or not, and minors really need to stop throwing around.

Frankly, the whole queer men "reclaiming" it has made it way fucking worse. Conflating a slur calling trans women men with queer men is extremely fucking gross. "Reclaiming" other communities' trauma and erasing them from the discussion is gross. (And, no, "I wan't a term with history" isn't an excuse when that history is the sexualization, trafficking, and murder of trans women. Want historical terms? Scroll down.)

The movements formed around it are cool. Yay feminine men. But the use of the slur is still violently transphobic even if the culture is nice.

It feels a bit too late to stop completely at this point, but the least you (and the MOGAI Wiki) could do is not actively spread transmisogynistic misinformation on the word.

If you're looking for alternatives that don't fuck over transfems, consider:

Lavender boy - Much more history within the gay community, and more of a connection to queer men than f-mboy will ever had. Referring to a feminine queer man/masc. 1920s

Rosboy - A modern equivalent to the exact definition of f-mboy used by queer men/mascs, but this time the definition used is accurate to the term itself.

Tomgirl - Opposite of tomboy

Femme - Literally just femme. We've had femme the whole time. Just use it

Femme man, masc, guy, etc. - See femme

Make something up, or do your own research! Both are definitely options for anyone

Also, yes I have sources on all of this, I'm just not posting them publicly because I would be immediately outed if I did. If anyone involved/in the Discord wants to back me up without saying who I am or showing my user/nickname, feel free.

Hello, i want to ask your opinion on something but you really dont have to pay this any mind if you dont care to answer! Id just rather ask trans people about this; if you're still keeping up with Alison bechdel's output, how do you feel about her, after she endorsed that transphobic novel "Adam" a couple years ago? Was that a fluke on her part and does she have generally sound opinions now? I recently saw criticism of her latest DTWOF comics and they had more to do with her politics than anything gender related, so i'm not sure.

no problem, this is an important q to ask! she fucked up massively in endorsing adam, an especially bizarre move given that the novel was also actively offensive to [cis] lesbians? i have no clue what possessed her to do that, other than being ambivalently incorporated into the normie queer literary scene (and in a recent interview she admits that).

i'm assuming you came here from that interview, which i linked in my substack! i'd say - without having read, or particularly planning to read, her new memoir, and without having read any recent dykes to watch out for - engagement with people like that is a judgement call we need to make on our own. i personally wouldn't market myself as a bechdel fan, though her writing in fun home on OCD in particular has been immensely comforting to me. i was impressed by the quality of that specific interview, and don't feel a personal need to out and out cancel bechdel the way i would a rowling or adiche. that said, if you don't want to consume content by or about her, i totally understand that, too.

tldr: i don't endorse/id as a fan of hers, but i don't mind casual engagement w content about her if i find it interesting.

I have a favor to ask. In the post about femme bi women you mentioned that you've read the relevant "tedious histories". I was hoping you'd share those and any other queer history/ theory book recs you can think of. It seems that most of what I find is about gay men, and I'm looking for something more diverse or inclusive.

The truly tedious post I was referencing was by gothhabiba, about the history of lesbian bar cultures, with frequent asides about how butch/femme only belongs to lesbians and anyway bisexual women had nothing to do with that history and lesbians have never been mean to bisexual women either.

It was tedious mostly because it was like.. fascinating history, slightly inaccurate fascinating history, BI WOMEN SUCK, weird historical analysis that downplayed something’s coolness, BI WOMEN SUCK, fascinating history.

But there’s some really cool stuff out there!

Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel - The strip that named the Bechdel Test, by the author of Fun Home - a reflection of lesbian life since the late 1980s, and a cornerstone of every alternative weekly newspaper of North America during the 90s. Some strips available online; others through anthology

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg is a semi-autobiographical novel that’s available online. It was published in 1993, just as queer women were getting louder about reclaiming the words “butch” and “femme”, which had been declared Problematic and Cancelled by radical feminist lesbian separatists for decades previous. The novel is available for free at that link. A lot of the people who say “butch/femme are lesbian-exclusive” pass around that link and say they’re honouring the lesbian bar culture that book depicts--but they’ve clearly never read the book, because it’s got trans people and he/him lesbians and the author uses neopronouns and it’s SO OBVIOUS that queer history is SO MUCH MORE DIVERSE than cis lesbians who have cut all social ties with men. 

It HAS got a fair bit of rape, trauma, and queer-bashing, though, so warning for that.

There are a lot of other books from the 1990s that Tumblr lesbian exclusionists love to cite that I haven’t gotten my hands on yet (partly because something’s up with my brain’s ability to process longform text, so it takes me months to read a single book these days and they aren’t available in audio) but I suspect reading the whole thing, instead of a few carefully-chosen passages, might yield up a more complicated history:

The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, edited by Joan Nestle - a collection of essays, poems, and stories by a broad collection of people about their experiences of butch/femme relationships, largely WLW-centred

Boots Of Leather, Slippers Of Gold, edited by Elizabeth Kennedy - a collection of oral histories of the lesbian community of Buffalo, New York from 1930-1960 

Queerer stuff!

PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality - Edited by Carol Queen and Lawrence Schmiel, Preface by Kate Bornstein - Another book I haven’t read in its entirety, but sometimes my girlfriend reads me bits of this one over the phone and I weep and gnash my teeth over not being able to consume the whole thing at a gulp. It’s from 1997, and went, “Well, now you know gay people exist. But what if we told you... that was only the beginning of the rainbow?”

Public Sex: The Culture Of Radical Sex - by Pat Califia - Thank fuckin’ god, one of these books got recorded to audio. I ended up typing up an excerpt here.  It’s a collection of Califia’s public writing from the early 1970s to the height of the AIDS crisis. The bit I excerpted is about the friction between official “lesbian feminist” academic thought and the sex practices of actual lesbians (pornography, butches, and dildos, oh my!) but there’s a lot more--Califia pushes for sexual freedoms that make me clutch pearls I didn’t even know I had sometimes, but at the same time, these are questions that need to be asked.

This is just a quick overview, and sadly, it isn’t all widely-available. If anyone else has any more suggestions, just sing out!

How Lesbian Bars Are Surviving a Pandemic

Jolene’s in San Francisco

As few as 16 lesbian bars remain in the United States, and their owners are fighting with all they have to make it through

On the night of March 2, a tornado churned through Nashville, ripping through whole neighborhoods and damaging swaths of restaurants. Among the businesses hit was the Lipstick Lounge, a lesbian-owned “bar for humans” open for almost 18 years. Co-owners Christa Suppan and Jonda Valentine rallied their community to save the bar; a friend launched a GoFundMe that raised over $16,000. The owners, staff, and friends threw themselves into eight days of repairs to save the bar. On March 11, they reopened. “Everybody who walked in those doors, we had the biggest hugs ever,” Suppan says. “We missed them after just eight days.”

That triumph and relief were short-lived: On March 15, Nashville ordered all bars and restaurants to close to curb the spread of COVID-19. Lipstick shut down again. And it hasn’t opened since. “It was a double whammy,” Suppan says. “Having already lost everything, all our food, and reopening again, which cost a lot of money, we had to close four days later. I’ve been in this industry so long, and I’ve never gone through anything like this, and neither has anybody else. There’s no handbook.”

As the pandemic stretches onward, America’s few remaining lesbian bars are hanging on for dear life, and waiting for their moment. While there is no official Queer Bar Registry, current estimates put the number of lesbian bars in the United States at a vanishingly small 16. In the 1980s, there were hundreds, according to a study which has confirmed the gut feeling in queer America that the gay bar is in decline, and lesbian bars are the most endangered. Without major community and even government support, COVID-19 could reduce those numbers further — or cause a full-on extinction. Many of the bar owners I spoke to are getting by trading off bills, hoping for landlord understanding, and maxing out their credit cards; some aren’t sure if they can last past June or July if they remain closed. But still, they are holding out hope.

Courtesy of Jolene’s

A crowd at Jolene’s in San Francisco

In San Francisco, the bar Jolene’s opened just a year ago to fill the void for queer people who are left out of the male-centric bar spaces elsewhere in the city. Owner Jolene Linsangan calls her first year a “rollercoaster,” even after a lifetime spent in and around the restaurant industry. “It’s still a rollercoaster to figure out how we’re going to survive. I’m trying to pay off one bill at a time and ask for extensions and see if we can make it.” She has unleashed a slew of creative strategies to keep the lights on and stay connected to her community during lockdown. The bar normally serves food, so there’s takeout brunch with rainbow pancakes and an entirely Hawai‘i-themed menu by her chef who grew up there. Regulars who live in the neighborhood come by weekly or even daily for to-go cocktails in cups sealed by a machine commonly used for boba. “A customer accidentally dropped it and still it was closed — she was so amazed,” Linsangan says. The bar also regularly streams performances over Zoom, with the performers’ Venmo accounts attached so they can get a bit of financial relief, too. When reopening does happen, Linsangan plans on maintaining social distancing by selling tickets for dinner and a show, in the hopes that customers will want to pay to sit in one place and enjoy live entertainment.

Linsangan is regularly in touch with Julie Mabry of Pearl Bar in Houston, who she met after bringing her lesbian party, which usually hopped around bars in San Francisco, on tour. Now the bar owners trade advice and support. Mabry is emerging as a connecting node among the loose coalition of lesbian bar owners across the country. It happened by accident: After Mabry was denied a Paycheck Protection Program loan by Chase, her longtime bank, she tagged Ellen DeGeneres in an open letter on Facebook, asking for her help in ensuring the last 16 lesbian bars survive. Mabry never heard back from DeGeneres (her show’s crew allegedly didn’t either), but the post inspired the bar’s regulars and fans to reach out. On Instagram she launched a #SaveTheLastLesbianBars campaign, where she regularly highlights different bars, linking out to their websites and GoFundMe pages and tagging famous lesbians and bisexual women to ask for their help (none have replied).

But if the famous people in the queer world haven’t been pitching in, the everyday community has. Mabry is getting to know bar owners around the country who share her hyperspecific challenges, and she says there’s a growing sense that they’re all in this together. A woman in Los Angeles sent money to help keep Pearl alive. “[It was] someone who hasn’t been to Pearl and just saw what we built and believes we will make it through.”

Courtesy of Pearl Bar

Pearl Bar in Houston

The perilous state of the lesbian bar in America has inspired a new awareness of these bars, especially as young lesbians and queer people who feel at home in dyke-centric spaces come of age and discover they have no place to call their own. Out of this longing, lesbian bars are proliferating on television, as Lena Wilson recently wrote in the New York Times, in shows like Vida, Catwoman, and, of course, The L Word: Generation Q.

Lauren Amador is one of those young lesbians trying to imagine a way forward for queer spaces. An architect who runs a roving pop-up, the Fingerjoint, which is currently Los Angeles’s only lesbian bar, she had booked out their entire summer with events before COVID-19 hit; now all of those events are postponed or canceled. Still, the timing could have been worse. “If I had a lease [right now], and we had started construction, it would have been a nightmare,” Amador says. She hopes that maybe this mass closure of everyone’s spaces will inspire a new understanding of why it’s so debilitating to lose lesbian bars. “People haven’t been able to go to their sports bar, and they’re having a similar experience of what it’s like to not have a space. Maybe we can get through to people about what that means, that we’ve been without these spaces all this time.”

In Columbus, Ohio, longtime lesbian bar Slammers survived that city’s lockdown period on the prowess of its takeout pizza. It was supposed to reopen June 2, but during the uprisings in the city against police brutality, the bar was severely damaged. A former manager launched a GoFundMe to help fund repairs, with a note that “our windows and possessions can be replaced, while the lives of our slain brothers and sisters most certainly cannot.” Slammers reopened on Friday, June 12. Andrew Parnell, the general manager and “literally only guy who works here,” says that they’re taking every precaution and hoping patrons will take advantage of the patio. “We went the extra distance, spacing out tables, making sure it’s really simple and easy to keep that distance. The staff know it’s zero tolerance if someone doesn’t want to follow rules — they’re out, no questions, no explanations.” The bar is also boosting fundraisers for Columbus Freedom Fund on social media.

Reopening is an option for Pearl Bar, too, but Mabry is glad she held off as case numbers hit record levels in Houston. She had originally hoped to reopen June 24, but those plans are on hold. Several gay bars in Houston opened earlier in June, only to have to close their doors again as employees and owners tested positive. The financial burden of opening and closing again would be insurmountable for Mabry, but more than anything else, she is focused on keeping her community safe. Since the lockdown began, she’s received 40 or 50 messages from women who came to Pearl Bar when they first came out, saying that it was the place where they could go and feel safe. Mabry says she first dreamed of opening a lesbian bar when she went to one with her sister, who is also gay. “Whenever my sister walked into a gay bar, her whole entire mood changed. She just had happiness around her,” she says. Mabry understands that as the owner of one of the few lesbian bars left, she needs to safeguard that space for people like her sister.

Community also weighs heavily on the mind of Suppan as she tries to chart a way forward for Lipstick Lounge. “People come in, they’re so lost — I was one of them — they don’t feel loved by their family, their churches, and now they’re walking into a place that says, Hey, know what? I love you, Jonda loves you, my staff loves, you know you have this safe place to go to with no judgment.” Right now, she says the empty building can feel the absence of the bar’s regulars. Her life is a lot quieter, too — usually her phone is constantly buzzing with texts and calls from employees from the morning through closing up at 2 a.m. One of the strangest things about lockdown has been the silence. Suppan choked up when speaking about the people who haven’t been able to come in to Lipstick. “How many people are really struggling with depression who are quarantined by themselves? They don’t have a partner, they don’t have family to go hang out with or stay with, no one is even checking on them.”

But Suppan never wants her bar to be a place where people get sick. For now, she’s trying to fix the bar’s patio, which was damaged by the tornado, and see where things go from there. She has already maxed out her credit cards to keep Lipstick Lounge afloat, and won’t reopen until she’s sure Lipstick can stay open for good. “I have a wooden plaque in my house that says Be Still. It’s going to cost thousands to reopen, and if we don’t do it at the right time, we’re not going to get a second chance. We have one shot.”

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/37ZJ3yn https://ift.tt/3hUhdIx

Jolene’s in San Francisco

As few as 16 lesbian bars remain in the United States, and their owners are fighting with all they have to make it through

On the night of March 2, a tornado churned through Nashville, ripping through whole neighborhoods and damaging swaths of restaurants. Among the businesses hit was the Lipstick Lounge, a lesbian-owned “bar for humans” open for almost 18 years. Co-owners Christa Suppan and Jonda Valentine rallied their community to save the bar; a friend launched a GoFundMe that raised over $16,000. The owners, staff, and friends threw themselves into eight days of repairs to save the bar. On March 11, they reopened. “Everybody who walked in those doors, we had the biggest hugs ever,” Suppan says. “We missed them after just eight days.”

That triumph and relief were short-lived: On March 15, Nashville ordered all bars and restaurants to close to curb the spread of COVID-19. Lipstick shut down again. And it hasn’t opened since. “It was a double whammy,” Suppan says. “Having already lost everything, all our food, and reopening again, which cost a lot of money, we had to close four days later. I’ve been in this industry so long, and I’ve never gone through anything like this, and neither has anybody else. There’s no handbook.”

As the pandemic stretches onward, America’s few remaining lesbian bars are hanging on for dear life, and waiting for their moment. While there is no official Queer Bar Registry, current estimates put the number of lesbian bars in the United States at a vanishingly small 16. In the 1980s, there were hundreds, according to a study which has confirmed the gut feeling in queer America that the gay bar is in decline, and lesbian bars are the most endangered. Without major community and even government support, COVID-19 could reduce those numbers further — or cause a full-on extinction. Many of the bar owners I spoke to are getting by trading off bills, hoping for landlord understanding, and maxing out their credit cards; some aren’t sure if they can last past June or July if they remain closed. But still, they are holding out hope.

Courtesy of Jolene’s

A crowd at Jolene’s in San Francisco

In San Francisco, the bar Jolene’s opened just a year ago to fill the void for queer people who are left out of the male-centric bar spaces elsewhere in the city. Owner Jolene Linsangan calls her first year a “rollercoaster,” even after a lifetime spent in and around the restaurant industry. “It’s still a rollercoaster to figure out how we’re going to survive. I’m trying to pay off one bill at a time and ask for extensions and see if we can make it.” She has unleashed a slew of creative strategies to keep the lights on and stay connected to her community during lockdown. The bar normally serves food, so there’s takeout brunch with rainbow pancakes and an entirely Hawai‘i-themed menu by her chef who grew up there. Regulars who live in the neighborhood come by weekly or even daily for to-go cocktails in cups sealed by a machine commonly used for boba. “A customer accidentally dropped it and still it was closed — she was so amazed,” Linsangan says. The bar also regularly streams performances over Zoom, with the performers’ Venmo accounts attached so they can get a bit of financial relief, too. When reopening does happen, Linsangan plans on maintaining social distancing by selling tickets for dinner and a show, in the hopes that customers will want to pay to sit in one place and enjoy live entertainment.

Linsangan is regularly in touch with Julie Mabry of Pearl Bar in Houston, who she met after bringing her lesbian party, which usually hopped around bars in San Francisco, on tour. Now the bar owners trade advice and support. Mabry is emerging as a connecting node among the loose coalition of lesbian bar owners across the country. It happened by accident: After Mabry was denied a Paycheck Protection Program loan by Chase, her longtime bank, she tagged Ellen DeGeneres in an open letter on Facebook, asking for her help in ensuring the last 16 lesbian bars survive. Mabry never heard back from DeGeneres (her show’s crew allegedly didn’t either), but the post inspired the bar’s regulars and fans to reach out. On Instagram she launched a #SaveTheLastLesbianBars campaign, where she regularly highlights different bars, linking out to their websites and GoFundMe pages and tagging famous lesbians and bisexual women to ask for their help (none have replied).

But if the famous people in the queer world haven’t been pitching in, the everyday community has. Mabry is getting to know bar owners around the country who share her hyperspecific challenges, and she says there’s a growing sense that they’re all in this together. A woman in Los Angeles sent money to help keep Pearl alive. “[It was] someone who hasn’t been to Pearl and just saw what we built and believes we will make it through.”

Courtesy of Pearl Bar

Pearl Bar in Houston

The perilous state of the lesbian bar in America has inspired a new awareness of these bars, especially as young lesbians and queer people who feel at home in dyke-centric spaces come of age and discover they have no place to call their own. Out of this longing, lesbian bars are proliferating on television, as Lena Wilson recently wrote in the New York Times, in shows like Vida, Catwoman, and, of course, The L Word: Generation Q.

Lauren Amador is one of those young lesbians trying to imagine a way forward for queer spaces. An architect who runs a roving pop-up, the Fingerjoint, which is currently Los Angeles’s only lesbian bar, she had booked out their entire summer with events before COVID-19 hit; now all of those events are postponed or canceled. Still, the timing could have been worse. “If I had a lease [right now], and we had started construction, it would have been a nightmare,” Amador says. She hopes that maybe this mass closure of everyone’s spaces will inspire a new understanding of why it’s so debilitating to lose lesbian bars. “People haven’t been able to go to their sports bar, and they’re having a similar experience of what it’s like to not have a space. Maybe we can get through to people about what that means, that we’ve been without these spaces all this time.”

In Columbus, Ohio, longtime lesbian bar Slammers survived that city’s lockdown period on the prowess of its takeout pizza. It was supposed to reopen June 2, but during the uprisings in the city against police brutality, the bar was severely damaged. A former manager launched a GoFundMe to help fund repairs, with a note that “our windows and possessions can be replaced, while the lives of our slain brothers and sisters most certainly cannot.” Slammers reopened on Friday, June 12. Andrew Parnell, the general manager and “literally only guy who works here,” says that they’re taking every precaution and hoping patrons will take advantage of the patio. “We went the extra distance, spacing out tables, making sure it’s really simple and easy to keep that distance. The staff know it’s zero tolerance if someone doesn’t want to follow rules — they’re out, no questions, no explanations.” The bar is also boosting fundraisers for Columbus Freedom Fund on social media.

Reopening is an option for Pearl Bar, too, but Mabry is glad she held off as case numbers hit record levels in Houston. She had originally hoped to reopen June 24, but those plans are on hold. Several gay bars in Houston opened earlier in June, only to have to close their doors again as employees and owners tested positive. The financial burden of opening and closing again would be insurmountable for Mabry, but more than anything else, she is focused on keeping her community safe. Since the lockdown began, she’s received 40 or 50 messages from women who came to Pearl Bar when they first came out, saying that it was the place where they could go and feel safe. Mabry says she first dreamed of opening a lesbian bar when she went to one with her sister, who is also gay. “Whenever my sister walked into a gay bar, her whole entire mood changed. She just had happiness around her,” she says. Mabry understands that as the owner of one of the few lesbian bars left, she needs to safeguard that space for people like her sister.

Community also weighs heavily on the mind of Suppan as she tries to chart a way forward for Lipstick Lounge. “People come in, they’re so lost — I was one of them — they don’t feel loved by their family, their churches, and now they’re walking into a place that says, Hey, know what? I love you, Jonda loves you, my staff loves, you know you have this safe place to go to with no judgment.” Right now, she says the empty building can feel the absence of the bar’s regulars. Her life is a lot quieter, too — usually her phone is constantly buzzing with texts and calls from employees from the morning through closing up at 2 a.m. One of the strangest things about lockdown has been the silence. Suppan choked up when speaking about the people who haven’t been able to come in to Lipstick. “How many people are really struggling with depression who are quarantined by themselves? They don’t have a partner, they don’t have family to go hang out with or stay with, no one is even checking on them.”

But Suppan never wants her bar to be a place where people get sick. For now, she’s trying to fix the bar’s patio, which was damaged by the tornado, and see where things go from there. She has already maxed out her credit cards to keep Lipstick Lounge afloat, and won’t reopen until she’s sure Lipstick can stay open for good. “I have a wooden plaque in my house that says Be Still. It’s going to cost thousands to reopen, and if we don’t do it at the right time, we’re not going to get a second chance. We have one shot.”

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/37ZJ3yn via Blogger https://ift.tt/2NqAEdZ

3 Things TV Can Teach Gaming about Queer Storylines

Even though television had a head start on the first generation of video games, these two art forms have found themselves on an even playing field within the last decade. Graphically, games may have evolved a bit slower over the decades but, that didn’t stop them from leaving as much of a cultural mark on the world as popular TV shows. Motion capture technology has allowed games the ability to deliver cinematic experiences in a far more immersive setting. One thing that is truly holding back major video games from exploring a range of gender and sexual identity, is the production process. In many cases, big name game developers can take two to four years to produce one title, and that’s if they’re lucky. Television shows take far less time to produce and thus, have done more to advance stories of the queer community by simply providing more of them over time. This is not to say that games have not attempted to include queer characters at all. In fact, indie game developers have been leading the charge in intersectional diversity for years. The only time queer characters come close to being the sole lead of a multi-platform gaming franchise is if it’s a massive RPG and you get to create your own avatar. While these kinds of games are enjoyable, they do not provide the same definite representation that a game with a set protagonist does. If we look back at the Tomb Raider reboot we can see a clear example of an opportunity for representation that was missed. In a 2013 interview with Kill Screen, Rihanna Prachet stated that she wished she could make Lara Croft gay, and went on to make very clear points about representation beyond including more female characters in games: “Whenever anybody talks about a need for more female protagonists I say: “There’s a need for more female protagonists, but there’s a need for characters of different ethnicities, ages, sexual orientation, ability, et cetera.” We are very narrow when it comes to our characters.” This interview gave many fans, including myself, hope that the reboot would establish Lara Croft as queer, especially with Lara spending the first game rescuing her best friend Sam, whom she clearly had a deep connection with. Since this interview, we’ve had one more installment of the reboot that side stepped Lara’s sexuality entirely. This didn’t make the game any less enjoyable but the complete disconnect from the events of the first game was not unnoticed by fans. Not only was Sam nowhere to be found in game, her Wiki page stated that she was in a mental ward. Now with Pratchet leaving the post of lead writer for the third installment there is not much hope left that we may see a queer Lara Croft anytime soon. It’s my belief that if major game developers studied three key factors of how queer storylines have been handled well (and poorly) on TV, they may be more willing to consider writing queer protagonists. Maybe even some that fall under that “et cetera” category Pratchet was talking about nearly four years ago.   I find that most forms of mainstream entertainment relegate any serious exploration of gender identity to the fringes. Independent filmmakers, indie games devs, premium or non-cable TV networks. Billions, a Showtime original series, is introducing the first major genderqueer supporting character in a drama series. The character’s name is Taylor, and will be played by Asia Kate Dillon, an androgynous actor that identifies with they/them pronouns. In 2016, the now canceled MTV show, Faking It, featured many queer characters within one plot. It also had the first intersex character in a supporting role on a TV show. There are far more examples to pull from in television these days, with many shows including at least one queer character and sometimes even multiple queer storylines and once. It seems like an odd thing to dwell on because nobody ever says “look at all these hetero people in my plotline” but if we really think about the number of mainstream shows or movies in recent years with more than one or two queer protagonists who aren’t in a relationship with each other, it’s not as common. A current instance of this is Orange is the New Black. While not without its faults, there are a range of queer identities throughout the show. This does not make it exempt from failing its audience by killing off queer characters in misguided ways or failing to uphold a character’s sexual identity, however. Piper, the main character of the show, is clearly established as a bisexual woman through her various romances and yet, is never referred to directly as a bisexual. She is often referred to as a “former lesbian” “dyke” and so on, but she never corrects anyone. Oddly enough, the best onscreen conversation about bisexuality didn’t happen in a show like this, it happened on a now canceled show that aired on ABC family, Chasing Life. In episode seven of the second season of Chasing Life, Brenna Carver attends an LGBTQ club meeting and her bisexuality is brought up. The conversation that ensues showcases many of the most common misconceptions that bisexuals face. The conversation Brenna has reminded me of the conversation Krem in Dragon Age Inquisition has with the Inquisitor if they choose to have drinks with Iron Bull and his crew. The primary difference being that once the conversation is over in Dragon Age Inquisition, Krem turns back into NPC set dressing and in Chasing Life, Brenna is still a full-fledged member of the plot. Krem’s presence in Inquisition was incredibly important, but the impact he would have had if he had been a romanceable party member would have been astounding. Many people probably wouldn’t scoff at a trans male character like Krem at the helm of a major video game plot. Adding queer characters to a story is as important as actually utilizing them within it. It would also be ideal to include more than one queer character, to increase the likelihood that a queer character might end up alive at the resolution of a story. They often end up in shows or movies where “anyone can die” and due to the low number of queer people present, usually take the entirety of the stories queer representation with them if they get killed or written off. When this happens, it creates a bitter fan base and usually leads them to stop watching a show or seeing a filmmaker’s next 90-minute dramedy. It’s simple: don’t write queer storylines like an episode of Highlander. There can be more than one. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the closet knows the depths to which one will claw at any scrap of positive representation they can identify with, even if that means reading into things only they can see. Often we are forced to create our own worlds within the restrictions put forth by the storytellers. Games like Final Fantasy XIII, while widely regarded as the most unfavorable game in the franchise, is also considered being the queerest one due to subtext. This is the result of the seemingly over-affectionate nature of characters Vanille and Fang. For those who didn’t pay too much attention to the development of the game, like me, you probably were unaware that Fang was first developed as a male character. This could explain why the relationship between Vanille and Fang reads as romantic. Intentional or not, if Fang had remained a male character, it’s highly likely that we wouldn’t be having debates over whether or not her and Vanille were a couple. We can only imagine the impact that game could have had if the relationship between them had been at the forefront. This “close female friendship” phenomenon is a very common form of subtext. A TV show notorious for subtext of this kind is Rizzoli and Isles. Ending in 2016 after seven seasons, plenty of beards and a hefty amount of queerbaiting, our heroines found themselves relaxing in a bed planning a trip to Paris together. Completely normal non-romantic behavior right? Let’s put things into perspective here. Bones, a show that has been on air since 2005, featured almost the same dynamic, a cop and a medical examiner working together with a rag tag group of scientists and detectives. The difference being that the heterosexual relationship between the two lead characters is acknowledged and fully actualized with them going on to marry each other in season 9 and even have children. Bones got to marry her quippy lovable detective friend, while Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles were constantly being bounced around to romantic storylines severely lacking in chemistry in order to deflect from the fact that they were perfect for each other. Had the relationship been made explicit it would have been the first major network detective show of its kind to put a queer female romance at the forefront. The resolution of the hero’s journey often relies on martyrdom or some other form of doom and gloom to wrap up a story. This is never more true than for the queer individual. If it wasn’t, then the Bury Your Gays Trope wouldn’t exist. It is very real, and self-explanatory but if you truly don’t know what it is, you’re one Google search away from being fully briefed on the topic. I’m one of those people who love a great ambiguous ending or twilight zone twist at the end of a story, but when it comes to queer characters, I would take riding off into the sunset over death any day. Games like The Last of Us provide us with Ellie, a queer supporting character who ultimately rises to equal footing with her male counterpart Joel but, her story is still rooted in tragedy. Many responses from showrunners have been that death is just part of the show and if we want to be treated like everyone else we should except it. Sure, that might make sense for Game of Thrones but not for shows like Last Tango in Halifax, which grew in popularity between 2013 and 2015, due to its inclusion of a genuine late-in-life coming out story and romance between two women. In the finale of the third season, Caroline marries her pregnant live-in girlfriend Kate, only to be widowed within 24 hours. Kate gets into a car accident off screen and dies, and a little piece of every fan rooting for them dies too. These types of “sudden death” storylines occur across television and film far too often. At a certain point, it stops being about just one character. Each new death rubs the salt deeper into an already open wound, a wound that constantly throbs with anger. An anger rooted in the fact that queer people have been around as long as there have been stories to tell and yet, we still live in a world that consistently fails at replicating our experiences. It’s 2017, and the only shows where there are well established queer female romances that will most likely not end with one of them dead are featured in shows like Wynonna Earp and Supergirl. Everyone involved in the creation of these two shows including the actors, has openly stated that they are invested in the characters that make up their queer representation, treating them as they would a heterosexual couple. SyFy even created an entire section of the Wynonna Earp website dedicated to the relationship between Waverly Earp and Nicole Haught. Games have the unique ability to sidestep the restraints of having to seek out crowd drawing actors or shooting in expensive locations because they can literally mold characters out of polygons and build their worlds out of code. This uniquely positions them to create something we have never seen before, someone we’ve never seen before. As Rhianna Pratchet put it: “Exploring something about what it means to be a gay character, bisexual character, transgender character, in games, that would create some interesting stories.” I couldn’t agree more http://dlvr.it/NKvGm1

How Lesbian Bars Are Surviving a Pandemic added to Google Docs

How Lesbian Bars Are Surviving a Pandemic

 Jolene’s in San Francisco

As few as 16 lesbian bars remain in the United States, and their owners are fighting with all they have to make it through

On the night of March 2, a tornado churned through Nashville, ripping through whole neighborhoods and damaging swaths of restaurants. Among the businesses hit was the Lipstick Lounge, a lesbian-owned “bar for humans” open for almost 18 years. Co-owners Christa Suppan and Jonda Valentine rallied their community to save the bar; a friend launched a GoFundMe that raised over $16,000. The owners, staff, and friends threw themselves into eight days of repairs to save the bar. On March 11, they reopened. “Everybody who walked in those doors, we had the biggest hugs ever,” Suppan says. “We missed them after just eight days.”

That triumph and relief were short-lived: On March 15, Nashville ordered all bars and restaurants to close to curb the spread of COVID-19. Lipstick shut down again. And it hasn’t opened since. “It was a double whammy,” Suppan says. “Having already lost everything, all our food, and reopening again, which cost a lot of money, we had to close four days later. I’ve been in this industry so long, and I’ve never gone through anything like this, and neither has anybody else. There’s no handbook.”

As the pandemic stretches onward, America’s few remaining lesbian bars are hanging on for dear life, and waiting for their moment. While there is no official Queer Bar Registry, current estimates put the number of lesbian bars in the United States at a vanishingly small 16. In the 1980s, there were hundreds, according to a study which has confirmed the gut feeling in queer America that the gay bar is in decline, and lesbian bars are the most endangered. Without major community and even government support, COVID-19 could reduce those numbers further — or cause a full-on extinction. Many of the bar owners I spoke to are getting by trading off bills, hoping for landlord understanding, and maxing out their credit cards; some aren’t sure if they can last past June or July if they remain closed. But still, they are holding out hope.

 Courtesy of Jolene’s A crowd at Jolene’s in San Francisco

In San Francisco, the bar Jolene’s opened just a year ago to fill the void for queer people who are left out of the male-centric bar spaces elsewhere in the city. Owner Jolene Linsangan calls her first year a “rollercoaster,” even after a lifetime spent in and around the restaurant industry. “It’s still a rollercoaster to figure out how we’re going to survive. I’m trying to pay off one bill at a time and ask for extensions and see if we can make it.” She has unleashed a slew of creative strategies to keep the lights on and stay connected to her community during lockdown. The bar normally serves food, so there’s takeout brunch with rainbow pancakes and an entirely Hawai‘i-themed menu by her chef who grew up there. Regulars who live in the neighborhood come by weekly or even daily for to-go cocktails in cups sealed by a machine commonly used for boba. “A customer accidentally dropped it and still it was closed — she was so amazed,” Linsangan says. The bar also regularly streams performances over Zoom, with the performers’ Venmo accounts attached so they can get a bit of financial relief, too. When reopening does happen, Linsangan plans on maintaining social distancing by selling tickets for dinner and a show, in the hopes that customers will want to pay to sit in one place and enjoy live entertainment.

Linsangan is regularly in touch with Julie Mabry of Pearl Bar in Houston, who she met after bringing her lesbian party, which usually hopped around bars in San Francisco, on tour. Now the bar owners trade advice and support. Mabry is emerging as a connecting node among the loose coalition of lesbian bar owners across the country. It happened by accident: After Mabry was denied a Paycheck Protection Program loan by Chase, her longtime bank, she tagged Ellen DeGeneres in an open letter on Facebook, asking for her help in ensuring the last 16 lesbian bars survive. Mabry never heard back from DeGeneres (her show’s crew allegedly didn’t either), but the post inspired the bar’s regulars and fans to reach out. On Instagram she launched a #SaveTheLastLesbianBars campaign, where she regularly highlights different bars, linking out to their websites and GoFundMe pages and tagging famous lesbians and bisexual women to ask for their help (none have replied).

But if the famous people in the queer world haven’t been pitching in, the everyday community has. Mabry is getting to know bar owners around the country who share her hyperspecific challenges, and she says there’s a growing sense that they’re all in this together. A woman in Los Angeles loaned money to help keep Pearl alive. “[It was] someone who hasn’t been to Pearl and just saw what we built and believes we will make it through.”

 Courtesy of Pearl Bar Pearl Bar in Houston

The perilous state of the lesbian bar in America has inspired a new awareness of these bars, especially as young lesbians and queer people who feel at home in dyke-centric spaces come of age and discover they have no place to call their own. Out of this longing, lesbian bars are proliferating on television, as Lena Wilson recently wrote in the New York Times, in shows like Vida, Catwoman, and, of course, The L Word: Generation Q.

Lauren Amador is one of those young lesbians trying to imagine a way forward for queer spaces. An architect who runs a roving pop-up, the Fingerjoint, which is currently Los Angeles’s only lesbian bar, she had booked out their entire summer with events before COVID-19 hit; now all of those events are postponed or canceled. Still, the timing could have been worse. “If I had a lease [right now], and we had started construction, it would have been a nightmare,” Amador says. She hopes that maybe this mass closure of everyone’s spaces will inspire a new understanding of why it’s so debilitating to lose lesbian bars. “People haven’t been able to go to their sports bar, and they’re having a similar experience of what it’s like to not have a space. Maybe we can get through to people about what that means, that we’ve been without these spaces all this time.”

In Columbus, Ohio, longtime lesbian bar Slammers survived that city’s lockdown period on the prowess of its takeout pizza. It was supposed to reopen June 2, but during the uprisings in the city against police brutality, the bar was severely damaged. A former manager launched a GoFundMe to help fund repairs, with a note that “our windows and possessions can be replaced, while the lives of our slain brothers and sisters most certainly cannot.” Slammers reopened on Friday, June 12. Andrew Parnell, the general manager and “literally only guy who works here,” says that they’re taking every precaution and hoping patrons will take advantage of the patio. “We went the extra distance, spacing out tables, making sure it’s really simple and easy to keep that distance. The staff know it’s zero tolerance if someone doesn’t want to follow rules — they’re out, no questions, no explanations.” The bar is also boosting fundraisers for Columbus Freedom Fund on social media.

Reopening is an option for Pearl Bar, too, but Mabry is glad she held off as case numbers hit record levels in Houston. She had originally hoped to reopen June 24, but those plans are on hold. Several gay bars in Houston opened earlier in June, only to have to close their doors again as employees and owners tested positive. The financial burden of opening and closing again would be insurmountable for Mabry, but more than anything else, she is focused on keeping her community safe. Since the lockdown began, she’s received 40 or 50 messages from women who came to Pearl Bar when they first came out, saying that it was the place where they could go and feel safe. Mabry says she first dreamed of opening a lesbian bar when she went to one with her sister, who is also gay. “Whenever my sister walked into a gay bar, her whole entire mood changed. She just had happiness around her,” she says. Mabry understands that as the owner of one of the few lesbian bars left, she needs to safeguard that space for people like her sister.

Community also weighs heavily on the mind of Suppan as she tries to chart a way forward for Lipstick Lounge. “People come in, they’re so lost — I was one of them — they don’t feel loved by their family, their churches, and now they’re walking into a place that says, Hey, know what? I love you, Jonda loves you, my staff loves, you know you have this safe place to go to with no judgment.” Right now, she says the empty building can feel the absence of the bar’s regulars. Her life is a lot quieter, too — usually her phone is constantly buzzing with texts and calls from employees from the morning through closing up at 2 a.m. One of the strangest things about lockdown has been the silence. Suppan choked up when speaking about the people who haven’t been able to come in to Lipstick. “How many people are really struggling with depression who are quarantined by themselves? They don’t have a partner, they don’t have family to go hang out with or stay with, no one is even checking on them.”

But Suppan never wants her bar to be a place where people get sick. For now, she’s trying to fix the bar’s patio, which was damaged by the tornado, and see where things go from there. She has already maxed out her credit cards to keep Lipstick Lounge afloat, and won’t reopen until she’s sure Lipstick can stay open for good. “I have a wooden plaque in my house that says Be Still. It’s going to cost thousands to reopen, and if we don’t do it at the right time, we’re not going to get a second chance. We have one shot.”

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/6/24/21301071/lesbian-bars-in-america-surviving-during-pandemic-covid-19

Created June 25, 2020 at 01:26AM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

Jolene’s in San Francisco As few as 16 lesbian bars remain in the United States, and their owners are fighting with all they have to make it through On the night of March 2, a tornado churned through Nashville, ripping through whole neighborhoods and damaging swaths of restaurants. Among the businesses hit was the Lipstick Lounge, a lesbian-owned “bar for humans” open for almost 18 years. Co-owners Christa Suppan and Jonda Valentine rallied their community to save the bar; a friend launched a GoFundMe that raised over $16,000. The owners, staff, and friends threw themselves into eight days of repairs to save the bar. On March 11, they reopened. “Everybody who walked in those doors, we had the biggest hugs ever,” Suppan says. “We missed them after just eight days.” That triumph and relief were short-lived: On March 15, Nashville ordered all bars and restaurants to close to curb the spread of COVID-19. Lipstick shut down again. And it hasn’t opened since. “It was a double whammy,” Suppan says. “Having already lost everything, all our food, and reopening again, which cost a lot of money, we had to close four days later. I’ve been in this industry so long, and I’ve never gone through anything like this, and neither has anybody else. There’s no handbook.” As the pandemic stretches onward, America’s few remaining lesbian bars are hanging on for dear life, and waiting for their moment. While there is no official Queer Bar Registry, current estimates put the number of lesbian bars in the United States at a vanishingly small 16. In the 1980s, there were hundreds, according to a study which has confirmed the gut feeling in queer America that the gay bar is in decline, and lesbian bars are the most endangered. Without major community and even government support, COVID-19 could reduce those numbers further — or cause a full-on extinction. Many of the bar owners I spoke to are getting by trading off bills, hoping for landlord understanding, and maxing out their credit cards; some aren’t sure if they can last past June or July if they remain closed. But still, they are holding out hope. Courtesy of Jolene’s A crowd at Jolene’s in San Francisco In San Francisco, the bar Jolene’s opened just a year ago to fill the void for queer people who are left out of the male-centric bar spaces elsewhere in the city. Owner Jolene Linsangan calls her first year a “rollercoaster,” even after a lifetime spent in and around the restaurant industry. “It’s still a rollercoaster to figure out how we’re going to survive. I’m trying to pay off one bill at a time and ask for extensions and see if we can make it.” She has unleashed a slew of creative strategies to keep the lights on and stay connected to her community during lockdown. The bar normally serves food, so there’s takeout brunch with rainbow pancakes and an entirely Hawai‘i-themed menu by her chef who grew up there. Regulars who live in the neighborhood come by weekly or even daily for to-go cocktails in cups sealed by a machine commonly used for boba. “A customer accidentally dropped it and still it was closed — she was so amazed,” Linsangan says. The bar also regularly streams performances over Zoom, with the performers’ Venmo accounts attached so they can get a bit of financial relief, too. When reopening does happen, Linsangan plans on maintaining social distancing by selling tickets for dinner and a show, in the hopes that customers will want to pay to sit in one place and enjoy live entertainment. Linsangan is regularly in touch with Julie Mabry of Pearl Bar in Houston, who she met after bringing her lesbian party, which usually hopped around bars in San Francisco, on tour. Now the bar owners trade advice and support. Mabry is emerging as a connecting node among the loose coalition of lesbian bar owners across the country. It happened by accident: After Mabry was denied a Paycheck Protection Program loan by Chase, her longtime bank, she tagged Ellen DeGeneres in an open letter on Facebook, asking for her help in ensuring the last 16 lesbian bars survive. Mabry never heard back from DeGeneres (her show’s crew allegedly didn’t either), but the post inspired the bar’s regulars and fans to reach out. On Instagram she launched a #SaveTheLastLesbianBars campaign, where she regularly highlights different bars, linking out to their websites and GoFundMe pages and tagging famous lesbians and bisexual women to ask for their help (none have replied). But if the famous people in the queer world haven’t been pitching in, the everyday community has. Mabry is getting to know bar owners around the country who share her hyperspecific challenges, and she says there’s a growing sense that they’re all in this together. A woman in Los Angeles sent money to help keep Pearl alive. “[It was] someone who hasn’t been to Pearl and just saw what we built and believes we will make it through.” Courtesy of Pearl Bar Pearl Bar in Houston The perilous state of the lesbian bar in America has inspired a new awareness of these bars, especially as young lesbians and queer people who feel at home in dyke-centric spaces come of age and discover they have no place to call their own. Out of this longing, lesbian bars are proliferating on television, as Lena Wilson recently wrote in the New York Times, in shows like Vida, Catwoman, and, of course, The L Word: Generation Q. Lauren Amador is one of those young lesbians trying to imagine a way forward for queer spaces. An architect who runs a roving pop-up, the Fingerjoint, which is currently Los Angeles’s only lesbian bar, she had booked out their entire summer with events before COVID-19 hit; now all of those events are postponed or canceled. Still, the timing could have been worse. “If I had a lease [right now], and we had started construction, it would have been a nightmare,” Amador says. She hopes that maybe this mass closure of everyone’s spaces will inspire a new understanding of why it’s so debilitating to lose lesbian bars. “People haven’t been able to go to their sports bar, and they’re having a similar experience of what it’s like to not have a space. Maybe we can get through to people about what that means, that we’ve been without these spaces all this time.” In Columbus, Ohio, longtime lesbian bar Slammers survived that city’s lockdown period on the prowess of its takeout pizza. It was supposed to reopen June 2, but during the uprisings in the city against police brutality, the bar was severely damaged. A former manager launched a GoFundMe to help fund repairs, with a note that “our windows and possessions can be replaced, while the lives of our slain brothers and sisters most certainly cannot.” Slammers reopened on Friday, June 12. Andrew Parnell, the general manager and “literally only guy who works here,” says that they’re taking every precaution and hoping patrons will take advantage of the patio. “We went the extra distance, spacing out tables, making sure it’s really simple and easy to keep that distance. The staff know it’s zero tolerance if someone doesn’t want to follow rules — they’re out, no questions, no explanations.” The bar is also boosting fundraisers for Columbus Freedom Fund on social media. Reopening is an option for Pearl Bar, too, but Mabry is glad she held off as case numbers hit record levels in Houston. She had originally hoped to reopen June 24, but those plans are on hold. Several gay bars in Houston opened earlier in June, only to have to close their doors again as employees and owners tested positive. The financial burden of opening and closing again would be insurmountable for Mabry, but more than anything else, she is focused on keeping her community safe. Since the lockdown began, she’s received 40 or 50 messages from women who came to Pearl Bar when they first came out, saying that it was the place where they could go and feel safe. Mabry says she first dreamed of opening a lesbian bar when she went to one with her sister, who is also gay. “Whenever my sister walked into a gay bar, her whole entire mood changed. She just had happiness around her,” she says. Mabry understands that as the owner of one of the few lesbian bars left, she needs to safeguard that space for people like her sister. Community also weighs heavily on the mind of Suppan as she tries to chart a way forward for Lipstick Lounge. “People come in, they’re so lost — I was one of them — they don’t feel loved by their family, their churches, and now they’re walking into a place that says, Hey, know what? I love you, Jonda loves you, my staff loves, you know you have this safe place to go to with no judgment.” Right now, she says the empty building can feel the absence of the bar’s regulars. Her life is a lot quieter, too — usually her phone is constantly buzzing with texts and calls from employees from the morning through closing up at 2 a.m. One of the strangest things about lockdown has been the silence. Suppan choked up when speaking about the people who haven’t been able to come in to Lipstick. “How many people are really struggling with depression who are quarantined by themselves? They don’t have a partner, they don’t have family to go hang out with or stay with, no one is even checking on them.” But Suppan never wants her bar to be a place where people get sick. For now, she’s trying to fix the bar’s patio, which was damaged by the tornado, and see where things go from there. She has already maxed out her credit cards to keep Lipstick Lounge afloat, and won’t reopen until she’s sure Lipstick can stay open for good. “I have a wooden plaque in my house that says Be Still. It’s going to cost thousands to reopen, and if we don’t do it at the right time, we’re not going to get a second chance. We have one shot.” Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent from Eater - All https://ift.tt/37ZJ3yn

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