Last week Mickey's, a nightclub in West Hollywood, caught on fire. A couple of days after the fire, I got to climb onto the roof of the building next to it and see how extensive the damage was/is. From the roof all you can see are these large black gashes from the fire, charred holes open to the sky. The inside of the club must be completely gone. It was a shock to see what had happened to this place that I have probably known longer than almost anywhere else in Los Angeles.
I'm no longer a club-goer. I don't really care for drinking at this point in my life, and all of the men in the clubs seem to be either teenagers or just out of their teen years, far too young for me to find them attractive or appealing (and vice versa). I had only been to Mickey's once in the past 15 years. I wound up there on an ill-fated date one night a couple of years ago; I knew he wasn't "the one" when he kept ogling the strippers and checking out the rest of the club patrons all night long instead of talking directly to me. (Sometimes the signs are subtle; sometimes they aren't.) So I'm not feeling nostalgic for Mickey's because I was a "regular" there. Actually, I only went to Mickey's a few times before I found the club that I would call "home": Rage. That was the club that I eventually considered a regular part of my weekends in my late 20s.
However, Mickey's was the first club I went into after I got here in 1990. I can't recall why I picked it out of all of the rest of them on Santa Monica Boulevard. I paid my fee and walked in. Then I proceeded to be so overwhelmed by the number of gay men in one place that I didn't speak to anyone else all night long. At one point, a handsome guy walked up to me and said, "If you don't move soon, someone is going to hang a picture on you by mistake." All I could manage was a weak smile; I didn't recover the power of speech for another few days. I guess I didn't realize just how young and very naive I still was, even at the then-age of 27 (an age at which most gay men are almost considered "over the hill" nowadays).
I had been to gay clubs before, even quite a few of them in Alabama (a fact which will, no doubt, surprise some people). So it wasn't the shock of the new. I think it really was the number of people in one place. Here was one club on a street of clubs, and it was packed. Here was a large group of gay men while outside in the other clubs and in A Different Light and the restaurants and coffeehouses, there were many, many others. I truly began to feel like there was a community for me here. It's as if I had a sense even then that I had found a place where I could feel comfortable being who I am, a feeling I never fully seemed to have in Mississippi or Alabama; in fact, I still feel completely out of sorts in many ways when I return to either state. But I did feel that way in this city on that night. Oddly, it took a place with strippers and a disco ball (I remember a disco ball, but that may be my overactive imagination) and loud music and a full bar and handsome men to make me feel a sense of comfort.
Now it's 17 years later, and Mickey's is no more. I have no idea if it will be rebuilt or not. I've been unable to find out much about the place since the fire. Even if they (whoever "they" are) rebuild, I'm not really likely to go back. Still, I'm feeling a sense of loss. A part of my past--a small part, perhaps, but still a significant one--is gone. I have no memorabilia from the place, no flyer or photos or keepsake or totem. All I have now are the memories of that slightly scared Mississippi boy walking into a bar in the city that he would eventually come to call home.
