culture shock at the bar- a folkloric study in progress

On Thursday night, I and one of my roomies went to the oyster bar in our little town. It is also the only bar, and is only open from the fall through the spring. Since we live "downtown," it is a convenient walk- perhaps 2 blocks. And by blocks, I mean small ones- even the streets are small here.

The bar has 3 rooms, a front one with tables, a side room with the "bar," and a back room connected to the kitchen. This is where most of the action is, where people sit at the U-shaped counter to eat oysters, scallops, and other seafood items. They also have cheese which you can order in 2 different sizes. This confused me- just cheese? Do people just eat it plain? Perhaps they eat it with the saltines that are placed on the bar, next to the bowls of cocktail sauce where people dip their seafood. The "bar" is in quotation marks because it is the saddest bar I've ever seen. There is no liquor license in this town (and I could've really used a cran-vodka, let me tell you), so I didn't expect much. But they didn't even have draft beer- everything is in bottles. And by everything, I mean the best you can get is Corona. They also have what they call "wine coolers," malt drinks like Schmirnoff Ice. No thank you, I don't think I've had one of those since.... perhaps I was 20?

The "movers and shakers" crowd from the back porch were there, they migrate once the oyster bar opens. They are all very nice and welcoming to us new teachers, so it was nice to see them, though I feel like I have to keep my game face on the whole time which can be tiring. I'm still getting used to walking into a place and people just introducing themselves. It didn't happen as much at this bar, since there were maybe 20-30 people there instead of 8, but it's still funny to me that I could walk into a bar for the first time and see about 8 people I know whom I've met once or twice. Oh, small towns.

The other patrons were mostly dudes, which didn't surprise me, though I was a bit intimidated to walk in there. What was a little strange is that all of the customers- except my roomie, who is black- were white. This is only strange because I'm pretty sure there are more black people living in this area than white people, but clearly they don't hang out there. And by white, I mean mostly country rednecks. We're talking full on camo gear, just got finished hunting and stopped by for beer and food. We went around 9- apparently it can get crazy late at night when some of the rougher rednecks from the even smaller out-lying communities show up. A guy we were talking to, who was cool and I wouldn't mind chatting to him again, told us that he used to work there in high school (is that ok? Maybe he just didn't serve alcohol) and there could be fights sometimes. He told us if we start hearing thick dialects hooping and hollering and yelling yee-haw to get the heck out of dodge. Noted.

There were also a few younger women there on dates, who were more dressed up, which just looked so out of place. I normally have a no-hoodie policy when I go out, but I didn't bother following it that night, and even the hoodie I was wearing seemed nice compared to the camo gear and trucker hats. The roomie and I were getting some looks, but they didn't seem hostile, just curious. Though I'm not sure if they were curious because they didn't know us, because he was black, or because he was black and sitting next to me, a white woman. Any and all of these reasons are probably true. The only other black people were 2 of the workers in the kitchen- so, so weird.

So, we were bringing the tokenism to the bar, though I don't think anyone's picked up on queerness yet. I mean, I seem to either ping people's gaydar the instant they see me, or not at all. And given the fact that I have yet to see any openly gay locals (though I've heard there is a gay minister at one of the churches) I'm going to assume that the locals' gaydar is not highly tuned. Knock on wood that no one has asked me a direct question that would force me to closet myself or come up with an awkward answer. So far, the only one has been with the janitor at school. She asked me if I had a boyfriend back in Oregon, and when I said no, asked if I'd seen anyone who had caught my eye, or if I was looking. No, and no. Simple, no more information, and when I didn't volunteer she didn't ask. I'm usually very (maybe too much, sometimes) open with people, so this is a new experience. Normally if anyone said are there any guys you've seen that you like, I'd say well no but I'm not interested anyway, or if I'd seen a cute girl I might say that. But here, especially in a bar like that, I would not feel safe. On the back porch, in a smaller supportive crowd, I think it would be ok, but in a bar full of very macho guys, I wouldn't have the guts.

That's not to say that I feel I'd be beaten up or anything, but as a new person in town, I'm going to try to keep a low profile for awhile. Maybe hanging out with my black male roommate will start rumors that we're dating- which would cramp his style, but might give me a nice beard for awhile. And yes, it depresses me that I just said that, but here you have to move slow. When I was making the difficult decision to take the job in NC, I had a great conversation with a guy who helps run NC pride. He told me that in many southern small towns, the people may be homophobic but that it's mostly out of ignorance, and they will rarely be rude or openly hostile. He advised to keep a low profile at first. And, that's also a good idea because small town southerners can be suspicious of any outsider, which I can completely understand. So we'll just see what happens. Maybe someone will stumble upon my blog- that might make for an exciting scandal.

But the best part of the night was when one of the back porch guys, who owns or co-owns a BBQ sandwich shop next door, went and got me a 1/2 pint of their coleslaw. Vinegar based and delicious. Sometimes small towns can be pretty awesome.