Savagely

Gay bars in Seattle, by and large, are not scary.

My first experience being a tourist in such a strange land was in Wilkes-Barre at a bar called Twist (I had to look that up). It was positioned such that my college apartment was halfway down an alley between it and the only full nudie bar in the city, Toppers (I didn't have to look that up). It created a general weirdness vortex under our fire escape where we learned that human poo outlasts winter snows and wrote a punk song called "don't pee on my house" to serenade our late night visitors. Anyway, my old friend Tyler and I swung by Twist after being asked to leave an Irish Pub for not fighting. It was late - very late - and the bartender gladly made two "Mind Erasers" for the tall blond and young kid. From what I can vaguely recall (the drink lived up to its name) we were followed out of the place by two lonely, likely married (to wives), men who very much wanted to give us a ride home. I'm sure they had the best intentions. Tyler and I had a good laugh, then chucked on his carpet.

This weekend I accompanied a few of my friends to show support of the Capitol Hill scene in the face of a crazy threat from a deranged or lonely person. Apparently, and I'll let the FBI handle the details, some nut job sent letters to most of the gay bars on Capitol Hill (and one to The Stranger) threatening to spike 55 drinks with ricin. Which would not be nice. Anyway, the gay community answered in the best way they know how: they threw a party and called for a pub-crawl.

I'm not much for crawling, and neither are my friends. We actually camped out at Purr most of the night on big, cushy leather couches. Dan Savage dropped by. He sends his regards. He's much cuter in person, but I'm still straight.

So, my friends and I talked at the top of our voice while tall beefy men and obviously-not-ladies women danced and flirted somewhere on the other end of the bar. None of us are dancers (though I believe one has a thing for them).

Long story short: at least so far the threat is as empty as the threater's head. I hope it stays that way. The news camera outside of Purr Saturday night made my skin crawl. Too much attention to such a despicable act. Why can't we all just get a long?