Closing Doors - The End Of The Toolbox

The other night, I was saddened by the news that the local bear bar that I had become accustomed to frequenting, The Toolbox, was closing its doors on August 28th.  This was really the only bar that I went to often since I moved to Toronto three years ago and it became special to me in many ways.

My friends, Bill, Danny and Goody first took me there when I had just barely arrived on their steps and it scared me deeply.  It was dark and dingy and I could not help thinking that this was definitely not the place for me.  However, as the night went on and I met some very nice people (including my first Toronto boyfriend), I was amazed that I was so eager to go back again.  Soon, it became the place of legend for my stories and yet there was always something new happening to the people there.

When I found out that the bar was closing, I was amazed again at how sad I felt about it.  Here I was amongst a group of big burly men hearing the news and there was a hush across the crowd as if a family member had passed away.  We all had heard rumours that the place was always for sale, but I don't think that many of us felt that the day it did would come so soon.

I still could not place my sadness, though, and I am not sure I really knew why I felt sadness until tonight when I left the bar.  Todd (whom I also first met at this bar) and myself came later to the bar and I made my rounds to visit with a few people.  I made my way through the bar talking to a variety of different personalities, all with fairly good spirits.  Then I spoke to the last person.

He came and sat next to a friend and myself and I forgot that I had met him back in the fall when I had performed a short story reading.  We reintroduced ourselves and soon he began to tell me a lot about himself.  I was amazed at what he was telling me, but being my nature, I opened my heart and ears to his story.   I became rather overwhelmed by his brutal honesty and really felt for him.  (Go back to a past article The Fragility Of Love to revisit my absorbing personality.)

I had to leave though and we parted with the hope of meeting again just to talk.  As I was leaving the bar and even as far as the subway ride home, I still thought about him and what he had said.  I have always known that people liked to talk to me, but it has become even more apparent that in this bar, I have heard a lot of stories and met a lot of people.  It was like Cheers with a hundred Norms with more body hair on a given night and almost the place where everyone knew your name.

I joked with someone after hearing of the closure that this bar was like a community centre plus the alcohol and sex and I did not realize how true those words were until tonight on the way home.  People have come to know the Toolbox as a place of comfort in their lives despite its distance from most people and the rather dismal atmosphere.  Yes, it is a dark bar with a weaving maze outdorr patio where sex has occurred, but it has become a haven for many.

A community centre is a place where people of a common grouping come together to find people like themselves and in a weird way, the Toolbox has been the community centre for big men, hairy men, men of different cultures and backgrounds who may not have found a home as comfortable withn the gay community.  I have seen quite a few young gay men with issues of their sexuality, body type and self esteem walk through those doors even in my few years there and been uplifted to find people like themselves.  When those doors close, there will not be that place for them.

The Toolbox has become more than just a bar to everyone much to the surprise to the people who ran it and frequented it throughout its 21-year history.  It became a home where people came when they had lost their own place of worth, either being kicked out of parents and being shunned by the rest of the gay community.  Would the guy I chatted with tonight haved found common people to share his life with if not for this bar?  Maybe, but he would have had to search for that experience.  To some, it may seem like just the closing of a bar, but I think for me, it is the loss of safety and acceptance that came from it that we may all need to understand when it is gone.  There may not be another Toolbox around us, but for all our good, we may need to create one.  It may be true that there really is no place like home and for many, we have lost one.