That Fourth of July, Melissa drove us to the Grove, a stretch of Manchester that functioned as the current gayborhood. It wasn’t a gaybor hood as I imagined one: bears and butches walking their dogs, coffee shops soundtracked by spoken word. It was, instead, a series of gay and gay-friendly bars that generally awoke after my bedtime. Still, the rainbow and trans flags lining the streets relaxed my shoulders. The “Black Lives Matter” signs in the windows pushed me further into relief. Here, Melissa and I could hold hands across the table, dance, pretend freedom felt everyday. No small thing, anywhere.
That night, though, we were feeling bitter. We’d spent two years trying to find community—volunteering at the local LGBTQ community center, weeding the Trans Memorial Garden—only to introduce ourselves, once more, to the same impenetrable clique of queers we’d already met five times. We’d set up a meetup group for other local queer folks wishing to make friends. The Facebook page had taken off, but each offline invitation crashed and burned. We’d extended another invitation tonight and could already see the tumbleweeds taking shape. Instead, I sat alone at a high table. Melissa ordered drinks. Nearby, kg lang—the women’s folk rock tribute band we’d come to hear—set up on a makeshift stage. They’d moved inside, away from the screeching cicadas, in anticipation of a storm. I sat sweating inside the screened-in porch, waiting for my gin, and staring at the Table.
The Table was impossible to ignore. It stood feet away, on the other side of the screen, near the outdoor bar. The Table was actually a collection of tables, haphazardly arranged into one organism. Around it, an improbable number of lesbians perched on stools or leaned on those who did. The night had barely started, and I sat alone, watching another lesbian, another lesbian, and yet another lesbian join this nearby group. Each one caused the assembled crowd to cheer, erupt from their seats and share a hug. I opened and closed apps on my phone, grateful when Melissa returned with my drink. Grateful for someone to know, and something to hold.
“How do we get that?” I asked, nodding my head toward the crew of butches, femmes, and queers behind us.
“We don’t,” she said. “They’re full.”
Around us, the music started. My gin and tonic tasted strong. I moved my straw in circles, trying to stir the bitterness smooth.
Then the music started, and my foot tapped, in spite of me.
Last Call at Irene’s Cabaret
Quincy, IL
OWEN KEEHNEN
My heart broke a little when I read the news that Irene’s Cabaret had closed in late 2016 after 36 years in business. I was a regular there, ass planted on a bar stool until closing, probably a few nights a week for a couple years.
I remember the nightly last call for alcohol: “Ladies, fix your make-up.”
The first time I walked to the address at 124 5th Street, I discovered a boarded storefront painted black with a small sign affixed to the wood: Enter in Rear. The same phrase was printed on the bar’s matchbooks—twice. The second time I went to Irene’s, the bartender (everyone called him Whoretta) explained the joke to me. “See here, it says Enter in Rear, like in the butt.” Whoretta and the bar owner, his “uncle” Irene, were always on the prowl.
Back in 1980, I was a young gay thing, fairly naïve, and living in Quincy along the Mississippi. I desperately needed a place like Irene’s Cabaret.
Reading about the bar’s closing, I was surprised that Irene’s had opened in 1980. I had been going there almost from the start, but even then the place looked as though it had been around for decades. The decor had a lived-in look. Irene had brought some French provincial furniture from home and created a little seating area in the game room complete with a gilded mirror. I remember the etched tin ceiling, the worn purple carpet, the dim red lighting, and the red-flocked wallpaper. There was a David statue adorned with a boa, a disco ball, plastic ferns, and mirrors along one wall. There were baskets of salty popcorn and a pickle jar. Overall, Irene’s had a sort of riverboat brothel vibe.
Restaurant surplus tables and chairs surrounded the dance floor and to one side, a glowing diva-heavy jukebox—Della Reese, Dottie West, Streisand, Cher, Eydie Gorme, Miss Ross, Blondie, Patsy Cline, even Pia Zadora. On quiet nights at the bar Willie (aka Irene) would often hand me a few quarters, “Hon, go play something on that thing to make me smile.”
That summer I also discovered that Irene and Whoretta lived in a bungalow behind the music store where I had an apartment on the top floor. My bedroom overlooked their backyard. I used to watch them, lying out in the blistering sun in their speedos slathered in a mix of iodine and baby oil—sipping cocktails, chain-smoking Salems, and talking nonstop while flipping through magazines. Some days they used foil covered double albums to get deeper coloring on their faces. Whoretta told me when folks saw her coming she didn’t want them to see anything but teeth and the whites of his eyes.
Irene said the whites of Whoretta’s eyes hadn’t been visible for years.
“Whatever you say, you old hooker.”
They were a family.
The article on the bar’s closing mentioned that Willie/Irene had died in 2015. There was no mention of a nephew or Whoretta.
Irene and Whoretta weren’t the first gay people I met in Quincy. I’d met several others, but most of those men were discreet “gin and Judy” bachelors who congregated regularly for cocktails and conversation in one another’s homes. They were an odd blend of lechery and prudishness. Their words dripped with innuendo and, being young and cute, I was the focus of much of that attention. The “gin and Judys” embraced discretion, though everyone in town knew about them. They followed the unspoken rules of being gay in a smallish town.
Irene and Whoretta did not follow those rules. They embraced neither discretion nor tradition. Having a good time was their master plan. Willie told me that having a good time was why he opened the bar in the first place, “We all need a place to go for some laughs, some romance, and a little fun.”
Irene’s was where I decided to become a writer and where I honed the drinking skills that seemed a prerequisite for that occupation.
At the bar I fell in love with Kevin, my first “real” boyfriend. Kevin and I spent countless nights there playing pinball and pool, drinking, arguing art (ugh), and falling in love. We considered ourselves bohemians. We were going to join a commune someday. We were going to do so many things someday. Kevin is dead now, too.
Irene’s was the focal point for queer activity in the tri-state area. People would drive there from Keokuk or Springfield or Palmyra on the weekends to party. It was a melting pot of drag queens, leathermen, hustlers, lesbian farmers, bi-curious spouses, coeds, etc. Every combination of LGBT was represented at Irene’s most nights of the week. In the bar’s crimson light we became comrades and friends, and had a lot of laughs.
I realized I was gay years before moving to that lazy river town. However, at Irene’s I discovered that being gay could be about more than having gay sex. Irene’s was where I realized that being gay could also mean being part of a community. After feeling like an outcast for years, I had no idea that being open and still having a sense of belonging was a possibility for me. The realization changed, and possibly even saved my life.
So many memories resurface at the thought of Irene’s Cabaret. On more than one occasion, Kevin and I had wondered what any of us in the tri-state area would do without the place. News of the bar’s closing made me consider the question again. I didn’t have an answer.
A version of “Last Call at Irene’s Cabaret” was first published in the Windy City Times.
diaspora
Chicago, IL
RIVER IAN KERSTETTER