posite, because shes been taken in, accepted, befriended. That little lessonthat we go to gay bars to be taken inis what lies beneath Burtons tour of the last lesbian bars in the U.S. She concludes, in Atlanta, that even if we dont need gay spaces (because theyve been made obsolete by assimilation or the Internet or whatever), we still want them. Of course, this has to do with age: when young, we go to bars to get laid; when old, simply to be with other LGBT people. For proof, just walk byAnnies on 17th Street in D.C. at any hour of the day or evening and glance in the window. By the time Burton reaches My Sisters Room in Atlanta, she has grown so discouraged by her insecurity as a shy femme that shes changed the stylish outfits shes been wearing to a faded black sweatshirt dress, with shoes that make her feet look like baked potatoes, an outfit that reads clearly as queer,only to find when she walks into the mostly black bar that she has entered High Femme paradise. You cant predict what youll find, though people are friendlier the further south you go, she discovers. And once she gets to Phoenix, shes going back to the city in which both of her parents used to live. In the Acknowledgments, Burton thanks her editor for insisting that she make the book my own story. The editor was right. The best parts of Moby Dyke are not the descriptions of bars whose only difference becomes, at a certain point, the splendor of their patios, but rather Burtons reflections when she returns to places she has been before. She used to put on seminars for educators in Columbus, Ohio; she once lived in Seattle; she grew up in Wisconsin; and, in Phoenix, she stayed with her parents after they retired. Its on returning to Arizona that we learn about her relationship with her mother and father, at whom she used to shout I hateyou! when growing up. MobyDyke is not just the slice of Americana that all road trips provide, nor just a portrait of the splintering of sexual identity in the homosexual community; its also glimpses of a writers past. Indeed, the sheer specificity of those memories produces its best prose, particularly when the author returns to the state in which she was raised. Its totally endearing when Davin bursts out: I love the Midwest! But its Burton who tells us why: You never know whats going to resonate with you, really. I spent my teenage years formulating and refining plans to get the hell out of Wisconsin and never come back. And now that I was back, decades later, it was almost a relief to be there. Id missed it. I really love fancy bullshit in all formscocktails featuring edible flowers; entrees I cant pronounce at restaurants you have to book months in advance; confrontationally minimalist shops that sell ambitiously priced bars of soap, and, like, specially blessed brass incense burnersbut Idont come from anything fancy. I come from a place where the hottest restaurant in town was once the newly built Noodles & Company. A place where the sight of a dripping deer hanging upside down on a hook doesnt make anybody flinch. Im from a place where three people sitting on lawn chairs inside a garage in February is a party. And it turns out what makes my homosexual heartbeat faster is sticky floors, queers in hunting sweatshirts, gay bears in wool hats saying Ope as they inch past you on their way to the bar, and a dart game that pauses for anyone who needs to peetwenty, thirty, fifty times in a night. ThatswhenMobyDyke is at its best: when it wears its heart on its sleeve, even while covered in the most sarcastic of thorns. SeptemberOctober 2023 29
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