'I was just this nerdy Black girl, you know, trying to find her way,' she said with a laugh. 'And Isis was small. Her favorite bar in the 1980s and 1990s was called Isis. 'I came out when I was 19 years old and I am 55 now,' said Phyllis Seven Harris, the Center's executive director and my former boss. So I asked some of my friends and coworkers. I wanted to learn more about queer women's nightlife in Cleveland: what it used to be like and how it is today. Why didn't that seem to happen in the bars? On this night, though, there were none in sight, and the energy was overwhelmingly masculine - just like at most of the other gay bars I knew.Īt the time, I was youth coordinator at the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland. I worked with people who expressed their gender in all kinds of ways. 'Women?' he said, and thought for a moment. 'They come in spurts.' 'Where are all the women?' I asked one of the other guys at the bar. One night, I was sitting at the Leather Stallion, a gay bar in Cleveland, and couldn't help but notice something missing.
