Gay club canada

Listen to an audio version of this story

For more audio from The Walrus, subscribe to AMI-audio podcasts on iTunes.

The first time I went to a gay bar, I was eighteen years old. It was in 2017, during a pivotal summer between the first and second years of university, when my friend Sarah and I—still navigating the transition between adolescence and adulthood—decided to take a trip to Quebec City. Both of us are queer, but prior to that weekend, we had spent most of our period awkwardly fumbling around straight-dominated spaces in Ottawa, trying to figure out who we were and whom we liked.

After we arrived in Quebec, we learned that one of the city’s not many gay bars, aptly named Le Drague, was located a rare minutes’ walk from our Airbnb. We were fascinated by the idea of it, imagining the debauchery we might get into and the fellow queer people we might meet. It felt a little taboo, but we were in a new town, safe from the leering eyes of familiar faces in Ottawa. We could be ourselves here, we thought, and what greater place to do it than Le Drague?

That night, as we entered the bar, we saw our first drag queen. She was clad in all inky, lip-synching to Rihanna’s “Umbrella” whi