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Show 187 uncommitted to a gay identity, which to his knowledge consisted only of impersonal sex and frequenting Radio City Lounge. On the eve of his "arranged" marriage, Bill made a single foray into Salt Lake's gay subculture in order to settle his mind on the matter: I knew I was attracted to men but I was headed for marriage, so I left my home one night with the intent of finding out if I could engage in a male homosexual relationship with somebody that I hadn't known before. I went to the Radio City bar, it was the only bar I knew of that was a gay bar. I'd never even had a beer in my life, but I went to the bar and ordered beer, learned what drinking beer was all about. It was kind of a sleazy bar, dark and a little dirty and the people there were not people that a particularly attracted me, but that wasn't important at the time because I was just out to find another man. I did get picked up by this guy and taken home. I'm sure it wasn't very satisfying for him, he wanted it to linger and be a pleasant, evenly paced kind of thing, I was anxious to get it over with and get out of there. I felt horribly guilty afterwards this was new to me because I had not felt guilt over sex before, but this was the first time I had gone out deliberately to find somebody to pick me up, and it was ... anonymous sex and it was all my planning." Unlike narrators who first experienced the bar in the company of friends, Bill's solitary trip to Radio City and expectation of superficial sexual contact assured his alienation. The experience allowed him to frame his predicament as a simple choice between security, family, and community and a life among strangers. Since neither the bar nor anonymous sex resonated with his background and self-image, Bill resigned himself to the course laid out for him by family and church. Whether the gay subculture reinforced or destroyed preconceptions therefore depended on one's point of view. In contrast to Wayne Hewitt's characterization of Radio City as primarily a place to socialize, Bill Cloward's clear intention of having an anonymous sexual experience colored his perceptions of the bar and confirmed the LDS 98Cloward interview. |
