Saw that lessening of antagonism between strangers happen many times in a restaurant while working as a cocktail server. The restaurant was a fine dining establishment in a gay-friendly tourist city in the Florida Keys. The three owners were gay but the eatery was open to diners from all lifestyles, if they could afford the prices! Theambiance was charming, the food exquisite and the wait staff accommodating and experienced.



Tourists from all over the world wanted to get a reservation, especially on a Saturday night. There was a room with a bar in the rear of the building. It started out as a service bar but soon became a popular place to wait for a table. Diners with or without reservations could sit at the small six-seat bar, or around the cocktail tables placed around the room.

The bartender was popular with the customers and, because he was a member of the gay community, sometimes his friends would join him for a drink without expecting to dine there. The place became so popular that the owners eventually hired someone to play a keyboard piano in the bar room all evening.

One of the regular patrons of the bar was a gay man who was rather flamboyant. He owned a successful business in the city and was well known to city residents as quite a character. We'll call him Randy. Randy would come in just before the dinner hour, sometimes waiting for a table to have dinner but many times just to have a drink at the bar and chat with the bartender. Randy, who was quite loquacious, would soon draw whoever was sitting at the bar into his conversation.

The people were usually heterosexual tourists, rather unsophisticated, whose contact with people of Randy's lifestyle was non-existent or very little. I will always remember the rather shocked look on the patrons faces as they realized their seatmate was one of those. Randy was oblivious, or maybe he wasn't. So he carried on in his usual talkative manner, about anything and everything, eventually drawing the patrons into the conversation for their opinion, or even for recipes which he would exchange with the wife.

After a while, the husband was a few drinks into the conversation, too, and happy that the little woman was having such a great time. The atmosphere went from hostility to congeniality, until the husband was buying Randy drinks or inviting him to join them for dinner.

The bartender would look up at me and raise his eyebrows as if to say. It's happened again, and we would laugh.