Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, Jeremy Asherton Lin, 2021

My ex lent me this book a week before we ended our situationship and I believe that moment contributed heavily to my appreciation of the subject matter. Initially, I read it simply out of spite yet the further I obsessed over it the more spite turned to enjoyment. Gay Bar: Why We Went Out is a creative non-fiction book of short stories that acts as a memoir of author Jeremy Asherton Lin's experiences in the queer scene as a child roaming around the Santa Monica pier and sneaking into leather bars in high school, to a young adult finding themselves disoriented by the expectation that hook-up culture is indistinguishable from queer identity. The book spans across continents as Lin migrates from the US to the likes of Germany, eastern Europe, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. There's a unity of theme in loss and isolation that's present throughout as Lin comes to terms with his identity being so malleable and the spaces he calls home gradually becoming alienated towards his presence. Reading this during my fall semester while living in Chicago I guess I treated this book as a mirror. I was completely isolated from any familiar nostalgia and as I came to a realization of what my identity looked like it was tough for me to maintain relationships. Along with being a retelling of Lin's life, this book exists as an archive of queer spaces that no longer exist and really struggles with the opinion of if this is necessarily a positive

or negative outcome. As these spaces emerged largely as a means of resilience when publicly questioning the established norms of gender and sexuality could be harmful to your health. There's a kind of glorification attached to that period of suffrage as history happened here and one could argue that's enough. Despite that Lin is - some of the harmful practices that queer youth can be exposed to in these settings, specifically how sex is used to traverse the gay bar. Does the gay bar historically exist as an answer to oppression? As queer identity becomes more acceptable in society and we disregard physical community space in transition to these non-tangible networks which favor fluidity of connection. What is being lost and gained by queer people's ability to identify themselves and their peers through a lack of physical space? (Week 10)