Visit to a black gaybar (3 of 3): Afterwards.

After the poems, they had a "warm fuzzy" where everyone just went around and hugged everyone else "since you don't know where someone is and why they came here tonight, and everyone needs encouragement," and then the evening broke down for socializing, and at that point there were like 30+ (black) lesbians in the room.

Me and my one (British) friend drank up, and I asked the cop if it was okay we were here.

"Oh yeah," she was like, "Men drift through here every few weeks, and we have a men-as-allies night last night of the month."

I then told her that I thought it was a poetry night and not so much a lesbian social hour, and she told me that up until 4 years ago, the bar used to be mostly (black) and (gay) with some (black) lesbians coming in, but "then the women took it over".

"You know how women are," she was like, "They take things over!".

She also told me that 3 Sundays a month they have 60s music night for (black) lesbians of that generation, from 5-10pm.

When we left, my one (British) friend said he quite enjoyed himself, and he also said he was surprised how the few other men there turned out to be women, both the old man with the 2 women tucked away in nursing homes, and the security guard, who seemed to be a (black) guy with a hat tucked down around his ears, but was actually a woman.

Many of the announcements had to do with "butches" and "femmes", and he said he was interested in how that was such a prominent part of that community (he's an anthropologist).

Then, we biked back through the sidestreets, and it was 10:30pm and very hot out, and some (black) kids sitting on a front porch stoop on a street with a lot of broken glass heckled us.