When I first visited the Double Header four years ago, I immediately noticed the logging equipment and yellowed photos decorating the walls, but I was a couple beers in before I noticed something familiar about the logging-town-era women in the photos, something I associate with a sense of belonging, and catharsis, and waking up during Pride weekend in an unfamiliar apartment wearing only a mink stole and Sharpie drawings of cocks. These women of yore were drag queens, from an era when drag queens were called “female impersonators,” and I had wandered into the oldest continuously operating gay bar on the West Coast.
That night, the clientele seemed mainly to be residents of the Mission shelter across the street, either not in drag or passing very well, but the second time I stopped by it was full of bears. The place’s level and flavor of queerness seemed to vary greatly. The night I met Mary Anne, I have no idea who was there besides her. I’d experienced immediate attraction before, usually inspired by asses that appear to be violently dominating whatever hopeless garment tries to contain them, but never had that been mixed with awe. I had been actively avoiding dating, and even actively avoiding perfect asses, but this was like a hit-and-run by Venus fleeing a DUI.
