It was really easy because if you wanted to find a lesbian, just find a ballpark or a softball diamond. “I was into sports a lot, and that was my other hook. You know, I had the outfit on, I had the whole thing going on, the short haircut. “And because you’re 14 or 15 years old, you don’t know that you’re not all that and a bag of chips, and I thought I was. But it was absolutely comfortable right from the jump. I’m never going anywhere else.’ Except I had to take my mom’s car back or she’d be mad. When you walked in the front door before you went downstairs, there was a great big meat hook on the ceiling, and I thought, ‘Okay, this is a little bit crazy.’ But we went down the stairs and there was a whole room full of women dancing and having a beer and it was like, ‘Okay, this is home. It was a club on Nicholas street, across from the jail and downstairs. “I was 15 and a friend and I took my mother’s car and we drove to The Coral Reef. But I knew what I was going to do, and so I knew where to go. I’m from Smiths Falls, where I think we had one other lesbian in town, but I didn’t know her very well.
“It was my first foray to a gay bar here in Ottawa. But I have a going out story - going out in big style.
I started seeing women and sleeping with women when I was 14 years old, so I didn’t have much time to figure out anything I just dove right into it. “I don’t have a coming out story, because I was never in.
