She responded by winking and mouthing the words, “You’re welcome.”Ī veteran co-worker later assured me, “You’ll get used to it. On one particular occasion, I looked back at a drunken ass-grabber to scold her. I received an offer 24 hours later to work at one of the city’s most popular bars, which hosted drag shows every night of the week and was particularly popular among queer students and straight women.ĭuring my stint as a bartender and bar-back, comments like, “It’s a shame that you’re gay,” and unsolicited ass- and crotch-grabbing, were nightly occurrences almost exclusively from straight women clientele. In a desperate attempt to make friends and money, I created a Grindr profile looking for a job as a bartender since I lived one street away from the city’s gay village. When I moved to Toronto from my hometown of Hamilton, once mortifyingly crowned the city with the most hate crimes in Canada, it was 2018, and I only had one friend.