I sucked on a cigarette (this was back when people still smoked inside) I exhaled on the Diane Arbus photograph above me. But at Big Chicks-and only at Big Chicks-a bear could not intimidate me.
Sometimes it seemed like it was only bears in the place-muscle bears, cubby bears, ginger bears, otters. Cruising the trans boys, the black girls, the grizzly raising eyebrows at me from the bar. I’ve been that boy leaning against the wall, lightheaded, cheap gin in my glass. She trails off, but I spent ten years of the aughts going to Big Chicks-I can fill in the rest.
