The Terminal Bar

by Larry Mitchell

Terminal A Novel

Genres: Queer, Fiction, LGBT, Queer Lit, Queer Studies, Gay Fiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1982

About the author

Larry Mitchell (1939 – December 26, 2012) was an American author and publisher. He was the founder of Calamus Books - an early small press devoted to gay male literature - and the author of fiction dealing with the gay male experience in New York City during the 1970s and 1980s.

With Terry Helbing and Felice Picano, he cofounded Gay Presses of New York in 1981. His book of short stories My Life As a Mole won the 1989 Small Press Lambda Literary Award. Mitchell's novel The Terminal Bar, published in 1982, is considered to be the first book of fiction to address HIV/AIDS. The feature film Acid Snow (1998) directed by Joel Itman is based on Mitchell's novel of the same name.

He died on December 26, 2012 in Ithaca, New York after a battle with pancreatic cancer. [wikipedia]

Reviews

[Macartney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A forgotten masterpiece. To the East Village homo/arts/political scene what Dancer from the Dance is to the dance club/Fire Island homo scene. Another book from the late 70s/early 80s that eerily forebodes the end of the glory days and the beginning of the coming AIDS crisis. Add in apartments without heat, muggings left and right, Three Mile Island disaster, quaaludes and blow jobs and not a single straight character. Plus constant fantasies about kidnapping and torturing Henry Kissenger. What more could you want?

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Struggled a bit with this and nearly put it aside on several occasions, but I emphasize it's me, not it: as witty as it often is, I just wasn't very often in the mood for banter about the end of the world through political disaster and incompetence—nuclear scares and economic fiascos anxiously cast long shadow across this narrative—at this moment of grave political incompetence and likely disaster. And yet, Mitchell's novel is often funny—riotously, devastatingly so, and is what ultimately carried me through to the end.

I'll certainly be revisiting the Terminal Bar at some future date, when I'm in the right mood and frame of mind for this gloriously anarchist, acerbic, and ultimately endearing group of mistfit fags and dykes of all stripes. If anything, I couldn't help but feel that they're more or less the descendants of the sissies and bohemian queers of The Young and Evil, wearily maintaining the space staked out half a century before, and that's certainly worth continued consideration from me.

"At that moment the lights in the bar turned up. They all squint and blink and moan.

'It's all over but the gossip,' Maybellene declares.

They stumble out into the gritty air. The next day, as the phones ring all over the Lower East Side, the evening is judged a great success... they would never sacrifice their politics for an amusing story, but they would sacrifice nearly anything else and often do."

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final chapter of this book is called "Queers Dishing the End of the World," and that about sums it up. A bunch of dykes and faggots living in the East Village in crumbling-center-of-empire NYC in the late 70s. The world seems to be collapsing around them, they're high most of the time, and they're helpless, hopeless leftists. Aside from the wars and disasters having different names, and the Chelsea/West Village butch clones having a slightly different style, this book hits very close to home.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

it felt stereotypically, which is praise because it accurately depicted its scene soon after it occurred

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book read in tandem with "The faggots & their friends between revolutions" contrasts idealism and gay liberation with the small queer group of friends getting by and loving and living, with their commune not outside the city and heterodystopia, but inside the amerikan Empire, around The Terminal Bar, their queer dive.

Mitchell does a really good job of portraying political cynicism while showing that that cynicism doesn't have to bring life down; friends and lovers can help us get by and thrive, even in a shitty place and country.

Insightful queer commentary runs through the book in asides and quotes, such as:
• ""Did you talk about a cock you had sucked?"
"No, one I saw someone else suck. Well, actually not one. He sucked eleven guys while I watched." Robin coos in appreciation. "It was in a public tearoom below Houston Street. All black and hispanic men. Some watched the door, some masturbated, and some sat on the toilets and sucked any cock that was put in their mouths."
"Fags aren't usually so democratic"
"White fags, you mean"

• "Robin is inspired by Emma's wisdom. "So, we are here to stop het men from destroying it all. We [gay men] only look like men. We are really something else. You should never think that when you make love to a faggot that you are making love to a man"
"What about all those butch faggots in the West Village?"
"It's all attitude and drag"
"We're all such sweet transvestites..."" (72)

This book is also credited as the first to portray Aids (published in '82, I don't know how much the author knew about the illness circulating around the gay community when he was writing the book presumably a couple years before publication), which I'm unsure exactly how clear that portrayal is: there's one eerily prescient scene where it's alluded to a character having it without even mentioning (gay) cancer, and then there's a conversation about Three Mile Island and radiation poisoning that could be read as a metaphor for Aids:
• ""I'm losing energy, I tell you. When I get up in the morning my body barely responds to my mind. It moves about sluggishly. I drink cod-liver oil, take my vitamins and even exercise. What do they want from me?"
"Did you not go to the doctor?" Robin asks without even thinking.
"Of course not", snaps Bruce. "I'm losing energy, what the hell do the doctors know about that?"
"Maybe you have been to too many rock n roll clubs"
"Rock n roll gives me energy"
"Maybe everyone else is using too much. They are stealing some of yours. Maybe there are too many people for the amount of energy going around."
"Do you feel it Robin?"
"I might. But I've been taking do many drugs it's hard to tell."
"Oh, yeah? Anything good?"
"Nothing to help you."
"I decided if I stayed home, then I could protect my energy. But it doesn't seem to help. I need an hour of sleep for every hour I'm awake. Maybe the Lower East Side is wiping me out."
"Maybe it's your boyfriend, romance can take a lot out of you."
"... maybe people are fading off the scene. A blessing if you ask me."
"So you're a part of the cosmic fade-out," Robin says reassuringly." (78)

• ""And it's still giving off radioactivity [Three Mile Island]"
"You can't see it; you can't hear it; you can't taste it; you can't smell it; you can't feel it. It can penetrate your flesh and you will not know it for thirty years until your body goes berserk and pain overcomes you. It is invisible and lethal."
"... Are we going to stay here through it?"
"Sure. We'll have an end-of-the-world party."
"Here at the Terminal bar?"
"It'll be the first annual..."" (166)

Overall I think that though it's a bit uneven of a book, and a little unrelatable for those who aren't big on recreationally using quaaludes or other drugs, this book is a good piece of queer literature that is underrated, underread, and unfortunately long out of print. I read this through an ILL; hopefully one day it'll see the light of day again like the Faggots and their friends.

[Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. The problem is finding a copy.

An incredible novel written at the dawn of Reagan and AIDS, a group of queer New Yorkers going about their lives and trying not to give up -- indeed, exhaustedly trying to fight back -- as their entire world is about to be changed forever. Funny, political, unsentimental (or at least not sentimental in cliched and boring ways) this book is an unrecognized masterpiece.

I think the hardest part of this book is wanted to reach through the pages and yell at the characters, "You have no idea how bad things are going to get!" Someone really should reprint this.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

realistically stereotypical

[Dante · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something awfully relatable here—"whole-wits in a half-world."

[Beana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book enough but I couldn't stop thinking about how whiney the characters are! ha. alas, almost all of their complaints could be made to this day.