[GeorgiaMa'am]

I thought of a few things prior to my move to Atlanta that pertain to this topic:

Around 1984, I lived in Milledgeville, Georgia, a small college town. At that time, the lesbians went to a straight country and western dance bar called Cowboy Bill's. The SOP was that lesbians could dance together, BUT, if any guy asked you to dance, you had to dance with them also. The explanation for this was that it was always okay for women to dance together if they couldn't get a man. Straight women danced together too. For the most part, the men kind of knew which women only wanted to dance together and mostly ignored us. Some were polite, asked us politely to dance, and were polite when we said 'no' to a second dance or a drink. Some men tried to - I don't know the right word, "trick" us isn't exactly right - but some men tried to see if we would make a big deal out of it. It was like walking a tightrope sometimes. We had to make sure we didn't embarrass the men, like by refusing to dance with them. It was oppressive and maybe a little dangerous, but we kept going there to dance. We all dressed at least a little femme, even the butches, but really, how femme do you have to be in a cowboy bar? Everybody wore plaid shirts then.

The alternative to this was going to the gay bars in either Macon or Athens. Macon was a small city then, and Athens is a big college town, where UGA is. We would road trip from Milledgeville, five or six of us crammed in a car. The bars were dumps, and lesbians and gay men both went to them. There were rumors that the bars got raided sometimes, but it never happened while I was there. I think the bar in Macon was called The Pegasus. I don't remember the name of the one in Athens. We put a lot of miles on our cars, but it was so exciting and wonderful to be somewhere that we could be ourselves.