The Underground, Carbondale IL

I remember as an undergraduate at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in the mid-1970s the gay bar, The Underground. The name kind of spells it out; as it was away from the other campus bars on the strip and literally underground. Inside that bar, I felt for the first time, I could be myself. I remember dancing hard to the disco beat and feeling my body as sexual for the first time. Gay culture in that small college town was literally underground. Cruising was done in hidden places on the street, outdoors in the park and the infamous men's room of the library. The Underground bar really was a kind of grounding for being-gay for the first in my small town midwestern existence. — Kole K.