*event updated to allow chat function*
Join us to discuss our June book club pick Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin (description below)!
We’ll start with introductions, then discuss the book (what we liked, didn’t like, etc). We’ll wrap it up by discussing thoughts for our June book pick.
Here’s a rough schedule:
• 7:00-7:15 — Arrive, order something to drink, informal introductions.
• 7:15-8:00 — Discussion
• 8:00-8:30 — Planning for next month / continued chatting.
In addition to discussing the book, my hope is that this group will connect people with similar interests to form a community of queer folks who love to read! If we get off-topic on a subject we all are interested in, that’s great! And you’re welcome to stay after to chat and mingle.
**Location: Fable Cafe
96 Center St
Southington, CT 06489
United States
During evenings, Fable operates as a speakeasy that calls itself the Underworld. The main entrance on Center Street is locked and you need to enter through the parking lot entrance. The parking lot is behind the building and accessable from all 4 streets that make up the block. The entrance has a purple light above it. They have a selection of specialty cocktails that are Underworld themed, other alcoholic beverages and non-alcoholic beverages.
About Gay Bar: Why We Went Out:
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR The New York Times * NPR * Vogue * Gay Times * Artforum *
“ Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force.” –Maggie Nelson
"Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.” – New York Times Book Review
As gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what’s being lost in this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of queer history.
Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression—whatever your scene, whoever you’re seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it?
In Gay Bar, the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever.
The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity—a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.