Only when I'm dancing, can I feel this free....

They just wanted to dance.

This is what I keep coming back to.  I don't know how coherent this is gonna be, I'm just gonna start typing, but I just keep going back to the fact they went there because they just wanted to dance.

The victims that I've seen have been as young as 20 and as old as 50.  There were men and women. There were nursing students, financial planners, business owners, college kids, and others.  They were black, white, Latino, and for all I know, Asian as well.  There's no statement yet that all of them were in fact gay, although surely, the majority of them were.

And they all just wanted to dance.

Twenty five, twenty six years ago, I came out to myself, finally, because of Madonna and the local gay bar, Deer Park.  Had it not been for both of them, who knows when I would have come out to myself.  It took me a few tries before I actually went into the bar.  And once I did, even though I knew no one else (cause I went in alone), even though I stood against the wall and clutched my beer bottle like it was a life preserver, I felt....at home.  Safe.  Accepted.  

There was music I liked.  There were people dancing, both alone and with each other.  There were people laughing, talking, holding hands, and even kissing.  And no one cared.  No one batted and eye at the two hot guys kissing at that table, or the two girls holding hands, with one's head on the other's shoulder.  A few drag queens circulated around the bar, like royalty, with the masses, parting like the Red Sea to let them though.  No one looked at me (not that I noticed) and judged me, or laughed at me, or called me names, or threatened me.  And thankfully none of that stuff has ever happened to me in real life, that I know of.  yeah, sure someone's judged me, and probably laughed at me, but whatever, they've not done it around me, or to my face.

But at the bar, I was home.  Despite the thumping music, and the darkness sliced through with the lights reflected off the swirling disco ball.  Despite the way it smelled of sweat, cologne, alcohol, and probably pot and poppers too, although at that time, I didn't really know what they smelled like.  Despite the crowds that weren't talking to me because I was new and despite me being afraid to talk to anyone myself, this was home.  This was where I belonged. I knew it almost immediately. This is where my people, my tribe were.  And I was with them.

And as I went back over the ensuing weekends, months, and years, to a second bar when the first one closed, and back to Deer Park, but now called The Lodge, when it reopened, all those times, I made friends, and acquaintances, dance partners, laughing friends, and sometimes fuckbuddies or just hookups,  Mostly we were there because we wanted to feel like we belonged.

And we just wanted to dance.

If you weren't a young gay man, alone (or so it seemed), the only one in a small rural town, you probably can't know what your first, what the only, gay bar 45 minute drive from your home, means to someone who IS a young gay man from a small rural town.  It was home, haven, funhouse, fraternity, and school.  It was, I've read someone call it, sacred.  And while that's possibly an overstatement, I think it's also quite correct.

The gay bar was were I could go to get away from the hypocrites, the haters, the judgers, the instigators, the homophobes, and the holier-than-thous.  At the gay bar, I didn't have to worry about my safety and security, other than possibly having too much to drink and getting a hangover.

I just want to dance.

I haven't been to a gay bar since...well probably last year when Louis was up to visit sometime.  From the mid-90s until probably 2008 or so, for that decade, I could count on one hand perhaps, certainly on both hands, the number of Saturdays nights I was NOT at whichever local gay club was open.  Anymore, on Saturday nights, I'm ready for bed by 10:30 or 11:00.  When I was going to the bars, I rarely got there before 11:00, but now, I'm happy just to be in a warm, comfy bed, relaxing, reading, or sleeping.  But back when I was going, oh man, did I dance.

Probably not well.  Certainly not as well as others there.  Sometimes with someone else, usually alone.  And none of that mattered.  I heard the music, I felt the music.  I let it flow through me and move my arms, shoulders, hips and legs.  And I didn't give a shit what anyone else thought.  Most people there, I knew, wouldn't be judging the way I was dancing and those who did, they meant nothing to me anyway.  I was lost in the music and the dancing.

"Only when I'm dancing, can I feel this free" - Madonna, Into The Groove

So that's why I went, to feel free, to feel accepted unconditionally, and to feel like I belonged, if not in some way loved.

I just went to dance.

How many of those poor people slaughtered Saturday night just went there to dance?  To lose themselves?  Have fun with friends or by themselves? And how many will never dance again.  how many families will have a hole ripped in them?  How many.....

Yesterday, I was numb. Today, as I think about this, a lot, I'm starting to feel things.  Anger, sadness, shock, depression...all the typical things I think.  I hope to soon...well, not understand this exactly, but to wrap my head around it somehow, deal with it, somehow and just go on.

But I think when I'm finished typing this, I'm going to put on some music from the late 90s, some music that I first heard in one of the gay bars here, and I'm going to dance.  For many reasons, but I'm doing to dance for those who can no longer do so.  

For those who are now dead, just because they wanted to dance.

POLT