Like many places purported by some to be sinful dens of lechery, Portland’s only lesbian bar, the Mirage, was not as fraught with tantalizing mystery as Kristen had expected. At four o’clock, it looked like any other neighborhood dive bar. The walls were dark. The lights were low. The seats were empty. The walls were covered with large mirrors etched with BUDWEISER and pictures of horses charging through snowy forests because that…had absolutely nothing to do with being a lesbian in Portland.
The bartender emerged from the back just as Kristen was about to turn around and leave. Dressed in a leopard-print bodysuit, she fulfilled Kristen’s half-realized expectations more than the mirrors and the inflatable Corona bottles hanging from the ceiling.
“We’re open,” the bartender said. “What can I get you?”
Kristen scanned the rows of flavored vodka. “You don’t have Sadfire whiskey, do you?” she asked.
“Of course!” the bartender said, as though Kristen had just guessed a secret password. “We love Sadfire. They sponsor all our Pride Week events. Neat? On the rocks?”
“Neat.”
The bartender poured a shot and slid it across the counter. “Have you met the owners, Marydale and Aldean?”
Kristen choked on the familiar names, coughing as the whiskey hit the back of her throat.
“The Consummation Rye is no joke,” the bartender said sympathetically. She filled a glass of water for Kristen. “Marydale is amazing. She does all this work with paroled felons, real social consciousness. My best dishwasher came through her program. Only stayed with us six months, but that’s okay. She got a job bartending at some fancy whiskey bar downtown. That’s the point of working with felons, right? Reintegration? Anyway, make yourself at home. Special today is popcorn shrimp and fries. Let me know if you want some food.”
The only other customer was a woman with short, dark hair who sat at the other end of the bar, glaring at her laptop. Kristen stared at the mirror behind the bar, wishing she had brought her laptop or a book. She had left her phone in the car. It felt like the moment to take up video poker, just so she’d have something to do. She had imagined herself dancing with some faceless woman on a crowded dance floor—although why she thought that would happen at four o’clock in the afternoon she could no longer fathom. In her fantasy, Marydale appeared, watching jealously. I thought you were straight, Marydale said. How could you have thought that? Kristen asked, leaving the woman and falling into Marydale’s kiss. But in her fantasy, the Mirage was also crowded, suffused with red light and redolent with the smell of rich perfume, not stale beer. She nursed her whiskey for a long time.
Five o’clock brought a few more customers, including a trio of male construction workers who seemed to be regulars despite the fact that it was a lesbian bar. The bartender disappeared for a long time and reappeared wearing fake eyelashes.
“Can I get you another?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Kristen said. “I should probably be going.”
“I’m Vita,” the bartender said.
Ignoring Kristen’s refusal, she poured another shot of Consummation Rye into Kristen’s glass and set a bowl of peanuts in front of her.
“I went to a therapist once to figure out why I was attracted to women with personality disorders,” Vita said as though they had been having a conversation from which this comment flowed naturally. “He said, if you can’t talk to the people you know, just pick a stranger, a random stranger. Tell them everything. You’re never going to see them again. If they think you’re a Freudian mess two days away from being committed, so what? You don’t know them. And you get practice.”
“Practice doing what?” Kristen asked, wondering if she should just leave a twenty on the counter and walk out.
“Talking,” Vita said. “I’m a bartender. I’m a professional. I can tell.” She set her elbows on the bar and leaned in, examining Kristen closely. Her eyelashes looked like caterpillars. “You’re depressed.”
“I’m not,” Kristen protested.
The woman at the end of the bar spoke without looking up from her computer.
“Don’t pay any attention to her. Vita talks shit all the time.”
The woman looked like a lesbian, with baggy tuxedo pants and suspenders over her crisp white shirt. Kristen wondered for a foolish second if she should buy a pair of suspenders or cut her hair. Maybe if she shaved her head and got a rainbow flag tattooed on her biceps Marydale would forgive her, would take her back, would…love her. She sipped her drink and sighed. She hadn’t been that silly when she was eighteen. Even her visit to the Mirage suddenly felt pathetic. What was she supposed to do? Go back to Marydale’s houseboat and say, I went to a gay bar; will you go out with me now?
“I’m not depressed,” Kristen said quietly.
The woman with the laptop looked up and gave her a half smile.
“Vita’s good, though. She can read people, even if they hate it. This your first time here?”
“No. Yes. I was just in the area.”
Kristen had never just been in the area. The mossy Eastside neighborhood held nothing of interest except the green-roofed bungalow that housed the HumAnarchist, and that was not the kind of interest Kristen wanted to visit regularly.
“It’s a nice bar,” the woman said. “I met my wife right here.” She tapped the bar.
Vita said, “Let me tell you! They were crazy for each other from the minute they saw each other. It was like pythons mating.”
“No,” the woman with the laptop said with a wave of her hand. “It was not anything like pythons mating. Vita makes stuff up.” She held out her hand, and they shook over the expanse of empty barstools. “I’m Tate.”
“How did you meet your wife?” Kristen asked. “I mean, you were here, but how did it happen?”
The story that followed was sweet and romantic with lurid interludes from Vita. Apparently Tate had fallen in love with the woman who was trying to buy the coffee shop where Tate worked. Tate’s future wife, Laura, had been a real estate developer and, at the time, deep in the closet. Laura’s father was a conservative politician. Tate had been out, proud, broke, and lost.
“And somehow it just all worked out,” Tate said. “That was almost ten years ago. Laura started a development business here in Portland. I went back to college.”
“They’re sickening,” Vita said. “You’d think they met yesterday. They can’t keep their hands off each other.”
Tate shook her head. “No, Vita. That part is your imagination.”
Vita laughed. “But I do tell a good story.” She turned to Kristen. “You got someone special?”
“No.” It came out sounding mournful.
“And that’s your story, isn’t it?” Vita said. “Did she dump you? Cheat on you with an oboist?”
“An oboist?” Kristen asked.
Tate said to Vita, “You know, a woman is allowed to come in and have a drink by herself without you prying into her personal life.”
“You should tell her.” Vita nodded toward Tate.
“Tell her what?” Kristen asked.
“All your dark Freudian secrets. If you’re going to pick a stranger to talk to, Tate’s the one. She’s good people. I mean it. I’ve known her since I tried to burn her house down back in high school.”
“Since before then,” Tate agreed.
“See?” Vita said, and with that she disappeared into the back.
“Sorry,” Tate said. “That’s just Vita. There’s a line between her business and other people’s business, and it means nothing to her.”
They were quiet for a moment. Tate glanced at her laptop but not with any real interest. Kristen took a deep breath.
“Did you…?” Kristen began tentatively. “…always know you liked women?”
“Absolutely,” Tate said. “Since I was little.”
“Before puberty?”
“Yeah.”
“And your wife?”
“She was married to a man for a while, but she says she knew before that.”
“Damn.” Kristen took a sip of her whiskey.
“Are you…?”
“There’s this woman.” Kristen rotated the shot glass around in a circle.
Maybe Vita was right. Maybe there were stories one couldn’t tell friends, Kristen thought, or maybe she just didn’t have any real friends.
“She thinks I’m straight, and she thinks I’ll leave her.”
And she’s a felon, and I did leave.
“Are you straight?” Tate asked.
“I don’t know. She’s the only woman I’ve ever dated. She’s the only woman I’ve ever been attracted to. But sometimes I think there’s only ever been her, man or woman. She doesn’t believe me though.”
“It’s hard.”
“Portland is so liberal. I don’t get what she’s worried about.”
She was thinking of Marydale standing in the kitchen of her farmhouse confessing. I thought he was going to kill me.
“I don’t think it’s hard to be gay in Portland,” Tate said slowly. “But if she’s lived someplace where it was a lot easier to be with a man, she might just be afraid that she’s not good enough for you to, you know, take that risk. At least another lesbian doesn’t have the choice. Another lesbian can’t choose to be with a man if things get rough. Or maybe she’s been burned before.”
“She’s been burned before,” Kristen said, staring at the bar top before her.
“You just have to show her that you’re not the kind of person who runs away,” Tate said with a friendly shrug. “It’ll work out. I know that sounds like such a cliché, but if you’re meant to be together, it’ll work out.”