Out in the Mountains

 

An Ex-Nun, A Farm-Boy, and The Only Gay Bar in the World:
Memories of Burlington in 1975

Guy Kettelhack

There are many people who could tell
this story better. People who’ve stayed in
Burlington and other towns in Vermont -
not moved away, like I did, in 1975, with
the idea that an exciting gay life could
only happen in New York. Surely many
of you remember details I have forgotten.
Like the name of the ex-nun who bar-
tended at the Hi Hat, Vermont’s (and
sometimes it seemed the world’s) only
gay bar. You may remember, too, when
the Hi Hat closed, and then re-opened un-
der new management. The biggest
change was who welcomed you: a bat-
wielding bouncer charged with denying
entry to anyone who looked “suspicious.”
We gay Vermonters might have turned
this into Burlington’s “Stonewall.” But
we didn’t. Pragmatic and fearful, we
went to Plattsburgh (the site of the North
Country’s only other gay bar) instead.

Nectar’s, on Main Street, now inhabits
the old Hi Hat space. On a November
1991 trip to Burlington, I popped into it
(no bouncer in sight) in search of lin-
gering ghosts of Vermont’s 1970s gay
population. The actual bar, that ‘50s free-
form wooden swirl of a thing, was still
there. And so, for me, were a few mem-
ones if not ghosts — some (now that I’m
40) dimmer than others, dimmer for my
maddeningly erratic memory. But much
lingers.

I lived in Vermont from 1969 through
1975, the last two of those years in Bur-
lington. Before I fled — and that’s the
right word for it, so convinced was my
twenty-four year old self that New York
was the only place for a horny, impatient
and ambitious gay man — I got to know,
live with and love some of an ex-
traordinarily varied lot of gay men and
women. If the Hi Hat was our beehive,
we were an unusual swarm of bees (few
drones; a lot of queens!) We were social
workers during the day, pretend-black-
leather-demons at night. We taught kids

in elementary, junior and high schools
and went home to lonely houses, won-
dering if we’d ever find someone to love.
We were college professors, farm-boys,
musicians, some of us old and balding
(learning ‘line—dances’ like the Hustle,
didn't matter how silly we looked, we
practiced like a bunch of Rockettes, danc-
ing at our late, drunken, high drama pri-
vate parties), others of us young and tight
and confused, stoned on grass, timid
about meeting each other, afraid of the
world, curious about sex, creeping up to
Montreal for some big city fun (regulars
at health clinics getting rid of gonorrhea
and crabs and the other unfortunate div-
idends of big city fun)... Montreal —
what a place to sin! Consigned to the
“gay” floor of the YMCA by an under-
standing, smiling YMCA matriarch, we
were hyper-alert to the sound of even one
shower (a naked man!) in the communal
bathroom. Oh, the stack heels (just try to
walk in those things after ten years of
work-boots), chains around the neck,
blow-dried hair... It was a long way from
the farm, the office, the school—room.
Yes, it was a largely gay male world: sev-
enties “public” gay life still seemed large-
ly to involve men. Women seemed to be
more private; their lives went on in living
rooms more than discos. (Pearl’s was a
long way off.)

So many images came up for me on this
past trip, images like dreams. That bar-
tender at the Hi Hat, for instance. With
her greying hair brushed tightly back, her
shy, wide, slightly buck—toothed smile,
her sensible spectacles and sensible
shoes, her back stooped from the onset of
osteoporosis, her manners cultivated at a
convent and the kindness she was born
with, she was a marvel. Her Jesuit dis-
cipline and training had prepared her in
ways her last Mother Superior could nev-
er have anticipated: she was a whiz at
making drinks. She had an encyclopedic
knowledge of them — Pink Squirrels

came out of her like smiles, their Pepto-
Bismol brightness as startling and easy
as her welcome every time you walked
in. She knew what you wanted before
you did. Anything amber, red, green,
pastel or fruit-studded — you name it,
she could make it. But she was more
than a drinks whiz; she was a warrior,
too, or at least prepared to be. There
were a few nights (not, thank God,
many) when some UVM frat or “the
faggots,” drunkenly storming into the Hi
Hat and sending its frightened clientele
into dark comers in the back. I wish I
could say we stood up to those assholes,
but we didn’t. However, our ex-nun bar-
tender did. “Get out of my bar and leave
my customers alone!” she’d pipe, stand-
ing her ground like General Patton.
And, after a few shot glasses were
thrown across the room, they would.
She was stronger than they were, strong-
er than we were. And all of us knew it.

Her customers were quite a crew. The
earringed and (tastefully) made up man
with the horde of pet Dobermans -
who was the butchest thing going when
you talked about raising dogs... My first
roommate, one of those social workers I
mentioned, the sweetest guy you ever
met, and the least likely you’d ever ex-
pect to see swathed from head to foot in
sinister black leather A number of col-
lege professors, struggling with coming
out, earnest about adopted children, Gay
Academic Unions, divorced wives...
French-Canadians who’d moved south
from huge farm families, so terribly ter-
ribly eager to fall in love with someone,
anyone, everyone, the world... and a
man I’ll call Joe.

Joe isn’t his real name; un-
characteristically, I remember his real
name very well, but it doesn’t seem
right for me to say it, not now, when he
can’t give his side of the story. You may
know who I’m talking about from my

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