Let’s go to a lesbian bar on Friday…!!!

“We need to find you a girl! Let’s go to a lesbian bar on Friday!” My straight housemate said with some nuance of compassion after telling me about her magical mini-holiday with her perfect boyfriend.

Her words made me smile. Her active approach to quickly solving my lesbian spinsterhood in a one-night plan was definitely well-intended, but perhaps slightly simplistic. It was coming from her naïve “straight” vision of the world. A place where a girl can just walk into a bar on a Friday night with the right attitude and skirt length and find a competent romantic companion. However, the ‘hunting ritual’ among ‘women who like women’ seems to work in a slightly different way than in the rest of the male-dominated universe… or at least that is what a decade of experience as a lesbian woman has taught me.

“It doesn’t work that way… I can’t just walk into a bar and find a girl…” I replied to her mildly ambitious but very desirable Friday night plan.

“Why not?” She innocently asked.

 “Because…. ” As I started to reply, I realized that I didn’t know the answer to that question…. Why meeting someone as a lesbian woman seems to be such an impossible mission…? 

I interpreted her question as a challenge to my psychological barriers and not as if perhaps she considered the possibility that, after all of this time single, it had never occurred to me to go to a bar before.

“Because… there isn’t a lesbian bar in Brighton!” I finally said after some hesitation.

“What? There is not a Lesbian bar in Brighton? Are you kidding me!?! In Brighton!!! The gay capital of the UK!! There is not a lesbian bar?” She heatedly said with her cheery Canadian accent.

“I know, right?! There was one a few years ago, but it closed down”. I said while the memory of the only time that I went to the small lesbian bar in town with a date popped up into my mind. 

I remember the intimidating feeling of being in a poorly illuminated basement that had a pool table in the middle and a couple drinking booths on the side. There were also some small intimate rooms with beads curtains that were only a few watts away to be considered dark rooms. The bar was almost empty and the few other customers that night were mature butchy lesbians whose gaze immediately penetrated us from the minute we entered the bar as if they had never seen two young lesbian women before. I guess that the closing down of lesbian nightclubs around the world might confirm that women, as opposed to men, don’t go out with the ultimate and only intention of pulling.

“But where do lesbian women meet then?” My housemate asked me as if all lesbians living in Brighton would form part of the same society that regularly meets up as train enthusiasts do. 

“Well… there is a theater bar that generally gathers queer women…, perhaps we could go there.” I said feeling already the excitement of our “exploring the lesbian nightlife” Friday plan.

The week ended and we found ourselves in the unofficial female queer bar in town with few other friends as planned. This time, the Friday night gathering had diverted its way into the lesbian territory. The singles always drive the night and tonight was “my night”.

As we looked around the bar crowd, deducting the “taken”, the “perhaps too old” or “maybe too young” and, subtracting all gay men, the search count of possible mating partners for the evening produced 1 only possible match: the bartender!

Brighton Street Art. Picture taken in August 2016.

Unfortunately, we had already online-matched before and went on a date a couple of years ago…  Once again the lesbian pool in Brighton had confirmed its small size! 

“Should I give bartender-girl another try? After all… I’m kind of short of ankle shocks” I commented to my friends.

“Ankle shocks?” My Scottish-feminist friend asked baffled. 

“Yeah… She left a pair of ankle shocks in my room and… I washed them and I´ve been using them since” I replied a bit embarrassed.

“That’s legit!” She answered comforting my shame for wearing online-date’s left-over clothes.

“But I had to clean a nasty bathroom to get them…” I continued in my attempt to bring some suspense into the story that I was about to narrate. (Read the full date story post: “Brighton Beach + Seagulls + Alcohol”).

The night was coming to an end and not many interactions outside my group of friends were done. My team's mission of finding a girl on a Friday night failed this time.

“I might have miscalculated my skirt length tonight,” I said to my housemate on the way home.

“I’m sorry that we could not find you a girl tonight Boo!” My housemate replied resigned.

“It’s Ok… Who needs a girl when you have good friends to go out on a Friday night anyway…” I said and clumsily side-hugged her in an attempt to communicate my “drunken love for the world” as well as keep my balance.

“I guess that being a lesbian is tough…” She said expressing her recent understanding of the gap between her experience in dating as a straight woman and my experience of dating as a lesbian one.

“Well… if it wasn’t that difficult, I wouldn’t have anything to write about!” I said.

My beloved Brighton from the sky. Picture taken in August 2016