The Sun (8/8/96)

Miki Casalino wrote:

Hum now what was that bar in salt lake.....The Sun?

Yup. Been there. Done that. Driving out in 1989 to Boise for my first job I was freaking out because I was driving with all my possessions to a city I had never seen to work for a man I had talked to once. I stayed overnight in Cleveland, Des Moines, Cheyenne and Salt Lake on the last day.

I got to SLC early enough on Saturday to go to Temple Square, which was kind of like Epcot Center with religion (I had bad experiences with LDS people in Finland trying over-zealously to convert me, but I had much better experiences with LDS friends in Boise)

I was pretty strung out and exhausted, and a little angered because they show a proselytizing film at the end of a visit to Temple Square. It is their prerogative, but I asked myself if that would be done at the end of Malcolm Miller's tours of Chartres? I got up and walked out as the film began.

I felt really out of sync with the town. So I called up the gay/lesbian hotline and asked if there were someplace to go. The voice on the other end mentioned the Sun, and then said, "Welcome Home." Reassuring, but I knew I was not home.

When I got to the Sun, I had to pull out my out of state license so that I could be admitted for the evening (in Utah, it seems a place like that needs to be a private club). It was your basic sprawling bar/discotheque, the kind you don't often see in NYC, simply because land costs too much.

I do remember a drunken man fondling my hair. I also remember leaving at around 1 am, and striking up a conversation with a young architect (was he a friend of the drunken man? I don't recall.) He offered to drive me to my hotel, as I had walked to the Sun, and as a bonus, gave me a quick tour of the City. We drove past notable houses and a promontory overlooking the lights flourescing below in the rigorous grid laid out by the visions of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

We talked until four a.m. and we were both laughing and hallucinating from sleep deprivation when he left to go home. I don't remember if I kissed him or if we shook hands. It wasn't that kind of meeting.

I woke up bleary eyed and with the shades pulled to combat the August heat as I readied myself to drive north to a city I had never seen on the edge of the desert where I was to live.

LAW