Sebastian's Journal

i had been going to the bar a lot back then. Not for any big reason, really. It was just somewhere to go. Somewhere with lights, music, familiar faces, and the feeling that I wasn’t sitting alone with my own thoughts.

After that first night, I kept going back. What had unsettled me in the beginning slowly became familiar. The drag shows I had once watched with wide-eyed shock started to feel fun, sharp, and strangely comforting. I began to see more than the spectacle. There was humor in it, confidence in it, and a kind of freedom I had not known how to read the first time.

The first time I went to a gay bar by myself, I was 16. The age to get in was 18, but somehow they let me in anyway. They even served me alcohol, which made the whole night feel even stranger in hindsight.

I came out at 16, and around that time an older cousin brought me along on a night out that opened my eyes to a world I had never seen up close before.

I don’t read as much as I should, but when I do, everything slows down a little.