When hate invades a space known for tolerance, figuring out how to react can be the hardest part of the aftermath. The national conversation about the Orlando massacre has been focused on gun control and terrorism, and rightfully so, but there's an aspect to the discussion being avoided by the media: the impact gay bars have on the LGBTQ community.

Every queer person remembers their first gay bar. Good or bad, it's always more than just a bar experience. When you spend your life being a sexual minority, the gay bar is often the only outlet available to shape a sense of identity, an understanding, and a community.

The gay bar is often the only outlet available to shape a sense of identity, an understanding, and a community.

I first found my gay bar, my community, my refuge at Attitude Bar in St. Louis, Missouri in 1998. I can't remember if it was an all-ages night, but somehow I got in even though I was under 21. I remember looking around at the literal rainbow of people—black, white, male, female, young, old, skinny, fat—and feeling a sense of calm. It felt like I was holding on to this weird anxiety that I couldn't understand, and then all of a sudden it clicked, and the anxiety was gone, and finally I could stop hiding my Madonna CDs in Led Zeppelin CD cases.

I asked notable LGBTQ artists, writers, actors, and comedians about their first gay bar experience and the impact it had on their lives. Sometimes the story is good, sometimes it is bad, but one thing is for sure: everyone's first gay bar experience is a story. And everyone has one. In sharing their stories, they are taking a stance against hate, and honoring every victim of violence based on hate.

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George Takei

I was a little apprehensive about going down an alley to a door with a red light over it. But I walked in and was immediately enwrapped by the warm scent of beer. There were guys playing pool and others standing around. There were guys sitting at the bar, some sitting intimately close together. The bartender was a good looking, friendly guy. My tension disappeared and I loosened. My guard eased, and I sat at the bar and started a conversation with a guy. It felt liberating. For the first time ever, I felt free.

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Cameron Esposito

I was 19 and went to an 18+ gay club outside Nashville with my older sister. She lived there at the time and we went with an older out friend of hers. I didn't yet realize I was gay–and she didn't know yet I was either–but the subtle messaging that it was okay to be gay and that gay spaces could be fun and welcoming mattered so much to me that when I did eventually begin dating women, she was the first person I told.

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Bryan Safi

The first gay bar I went to was in the West Village, and I went alone. I must have walked past it a dozen times before I got the courage to go inside. The thing I remember most clearly is a group of guys playing pool and talking about Kate Burton's performance in Hedda Gabler. It was Heaven.

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Jake Shears

I was 18 and had an ID that I found from some 30 year old dude... I realized if I dressed in drag, the bouncer would be none the wiser. So every Friday I would dress in drag and go by myself to a bar called 21st Century Foxes in Seattle. I called myself Cubic Zirconia and got up every week and did a James Bond number.

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Perez Hilton

Before I ever set foot in a gay club or bar, I went to the now defunct the Big Cup coffee shop in NYC's Chelsea neighborhood. I not only felt safe there but I also felt so accepted and welcome. Thank you to all of the gay business owners who are brave enough to create these homes for us, for creating jobs for our own and for creating community.

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Heather Matarazzo

My first gay bar was the Meow Mix on the Lower East Side in New York City. It was the first time in my life that I was surrounded by other lesbians. The feeling of finally being able to feel safe and at home with others who were like me was incredible. I never knew what it was to be a part of a community before then, and for the first time I didn't feel alone. I felt free, exalted, and full of deep joy.

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Bob the Drag Queen

The first time I went to a gay bar was to the Mad Hatter in Columbus, Georgia, and the drag queen used to work at the Applebee's. I haven't stopped dancing since.

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Frank DeCaro

My college friends at Northwestern and I were out of the closet big time, which, let me tell you, was a lot less common on campus in 1980 than it is now. As freshman that year, armed with our fake ID's, we would go every week to a gay bar in Chicago called the Bistro. It was a safe space, somewhere where we could be our outrageous selves and dance the night away. We never went home with anyone else. We were too young, too strange, too New Wave. We learned to be comfortable in our own skin there, dancing to Sylvester, Divine, and Lime. Thirty-six years later, I'm still close to all six members of that diverse group. I'll never like anyone better than I like those guys and never like a bar better than I did that place.

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Rhea Butcher

The first gay bar I ever went to was in my hometown of Akron, Ohio. I was both terrified and exhilarated. I remember looking and being looked at, and for the first time it was by people with whom I felt a strong community and, in retrospect, a familial connection.

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Drew Droege

It was 1996. I was in college at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina, directing a production of Steel Magnolias and wearing lots of large olive turtlenecks with pleated khaki shorts. I was hosting weekly screenings of Female Trouble to shock and educate my friends. But I really didn't quite know what I was doing. Somehow I heard about this bar far off of Silas Creek Parkway. Three of my friends and I ventured down a long country road for about half an hour—we were honestly terrified. We landed at a strip mall, with a dollar store and a gold exchange and a small watering hole with a rainbow flag in the window called the Odyssey. We were not 21. We were trembling. We were welcomed inside. Sweet creepy smoke engulfed our nostrils, neon danced across our faces, people of all shapes and ages were celebrating together, and we all were free. To everyone around us, nothing special was happening. To the four of us from Wake Forest, everything special was happening.

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Omar Sharif, Jr.

The first time I went to a gay bar was in Montreal. It was a club called Unity. Wow, that name has taken new significance this week. Coming from Egypt, and growing up to scenes of gay-frequented establishments being violently raided by authorities, I was terrified. Within moments of arriving at Unity, however, I found community, love and acceptance. I felt safe to finally be myself.

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Eliot Glazer

I'd say that going to my first gay bar was jarring. I didn't really get the appeal. There's almost something too "cool" when a gay guy says he's "not into the scene," which I've admittedly used as code for "I'm too smart to care about fitting in." But in the wake of Orlando, I'm reminded that a gay bar is not just a haven. Even though I disagree with a lot of the self-imposed rules gay men put upon ourselves, we are, at our core, still a community. An incredibly strong, active, and united front that broke down barriers at Stonewall, fought tooth and nail against a disease ignored by our government, and that has shaped global culture such that people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds are increasingly able to live their lives openly and honestly. And now, oddly enough, we may be the very people who bring about gun reform so that weapons of war no longer end up in the hands of maniacal, simple-minded, self-important cowards.

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Michael Musto

In the 1970s, I went with a friend to the Barefoot Boy, a glitzy gay dance club on East 39th Street. I was initially nervous, but quickly became thrilled to find there was a world of sophisticated people with good dance moves and great senses of humor. I'd found my family.

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Stephon Mendoza

On Halloween of 2013, I was 17 years old with a fake ID living in New York City. After being denied entrance at a straight club, I immediately took a cab with one of my gay friends and headed to XL nightclub. Once I arrived I was greeted by a six-foot-tall drag queen, and I knew my ruffle neckpiece and leather leggings would fit right in. Everyone welcomed me with open arms, and after dancing all night long I knew this was a place filled with acceptance, love, and positive energy.

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Jeffery Self

I can't entirely recall my first gay bar experience as it most likely coincided with my first double vodka tonic experience. I do remember, however, that it was with a fake ID in New York City when I was 20. I remember feeling safe and free and extremely overwhelmed by the hot people. Today, when I visit a new city, I try to go to the local gay bar. It's a beautiful way to immediately feel at home. Even if you know no one there and even if you're all from different walks of life or ages or interests: there's something tribal. And it's beautiful. Go to your nearest gay bar, request "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," and just LIVE.

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Christopher Rice

In 1996, if you wanted to be gay, you went to a bar. Period. There was really nowhere else to go to feel comfortable. In most American cities, if you went on a date with another man among the general public, you might do something to give yourself away, turning yourself into a target for either ridicule or violence. When I came out, I was thirsting for my own version of the prom I'd never had, the romantic movie dates I'd never been on, and the potential for all of those things was at the gay bar. It was literally the only place where I could feel comfortable expressing desires I had left pent up my entire life. But we were constantly being threatened. Our space was always being invaded. Sometimes they would be drunk closet cases that would seem like they'd wandered in by mistake, and at first, there would be something sexy about them. Like maybe they were there to be converted. Or to fall in love. But a lot of times these guys would make threats. A friend of mine who I knew from local theatre left the bar one night with a beautiful guy who'd been hitting on him for a while. As soon as they reached a dark corner, a gang of the guy's friends set upon him and beat him so badly his jaw was wired shut for weeks and he had to eat through a straw. In cities like New Orleans and Atlanta, everyone thought the gay neighborhoods were safe, but the truth was, these little comfortable pockets were only a ten-minute drive from some hotbed of religious fundamentalism, and it didn't take any effort at all for bigots to bring their madness to our doorstep.

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Zackary Drucker

I spent the first decade of my adult years in nightlife. I always felt like there was an unregulated and anything-is-possible element there, which is why people are drawn to it. I have seen violence erupt in a club more than once and have also been a target of that violence. Wherever unrestrained desire is expressed, there also exists an impulse to destroy that freedom; one person's utopia is another's dystopia. Without accepting each other's difference, or our own for that matter, we lose our humanity. LGBT uprisings and activism have originated directly from nightlife—so many significant moments in our history have occurred in bars and clubs. I hope that queer communities in the future will not be relegated to bars and clubs, but will be everywhere.

Kim Newmoney

Gabe Liedman

Every time I go out to a gay bar with friends, we run into more friends. Always. Walk in the door as a group of three, and you're eight in no time. It's where we meet each other, it's where we talk about work. For a natural introvert like me, gay bars are an exercise in being loved and known, where I have conversations without @-symbols. It's good to be physically present sometimes and accepted that way.

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Judy Gold

Imagine hiding a secret about yourself for your entire life—a secret that, if revealed, could cost you your job, your home, your family, your friends, and perhaps even your future. Imagine discovering in your youth that your true identity is considered shameful, disgusting, a mental illness, and illegal. You are terrified of being "found out," so you painstakingly overindulge in activities to prove to the outside world that you're just like them, that you're normal. You push away your disgraceful feelings like a lineman pushes his opponent at the 1st yard line.

Then imagine one day taking the biggest risk of your life by simply opening a door—a tangible door—and walking into a place where you no longer have to hide, a place where scores and scores of people who had shared the same secret surround you. But in this special place, the people had relinquished their secret, even if just for a few hours, and they were okay. In fact, they were more than okay. They were happy, proud and fearless. There was no shame or self loathing—only love, acceptance, and the best damn dance music you had ever heard in your life.

Bobby Quillard

Kit Williamson

I had my first kiss in a gay bar in New Orleans when I was 16. I had just come out to my sister, and I went to visit her at college. She brought me to the bar, cracked open a book in the corner, and told me to go "mingle." It was pretty crowded; there weren't any seats so I leaned against a trash can. My heart was beating fast, and I couldn't make eye contact with anyone. Finally, this kind of nerdy guy with glasses came up to talk to me. He was in town from Chile. We made out while Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" played on the TV screen. I started to get scared he wanted to take things further—probably because he told me he wanted to take things further—and I wasn't ready for that (guess I was the one that was "torn"). But part of me was grateful to have such a mundane problem. I remember being terrified of hurting his feelings, but also feeling like for the first time in my life that I was normal. I told him I had to go to the bathroom, grabbed my sister, and ran into the night. I go back to that trash can every time I visit New Orleans.

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