The Cubbyhole (#hangrid, lesbian story)

The Cubbyhole

Author's note: This story is inspired by the time Ingrid spent in New York finding herself before she came out to the world. In my mind this was fall of 2014, but I have no clue when she was actually there.

West Village, NYC

Ingrid got to the corner of W12th and W4th and stopped abruptly. There it was. The Cubbyhole. Center of all that was lesbian and holy in New York City.

Or so she'd heard.

Her extensive and progressively desperate internet searching (Where do lesbians go in New York?...Best lesbian bars...Best gay bars...Where do I go to meet gay women?) had all led her here. To this random corner in the West Village. A fancy-looking bistro called Cafe Cluny was on the opposite corner, making either Cubbyhole or the bistro seem very out of place. Ingrid couldn't decide which place didn't seem to belong.

She took a deep breath and shoved her hands in to the pockets of her cropped black leather jacket as she rocked on her heels on the sidewalk across the street from the bar. Her breath created a puff of white as she exhaled slowly in the cool fall air. She couldn't believe she was actually here. It had taken literally her whole life to get here. And now that she was actually in New York, on her own, coming to terms with the fact that she was gay, almost ready to stop hiding from it, she was frozen to this spot on a filthy New York City sidewalk.

"Ugh, just go in," she muttered to herself. "Just go, you've come this frickin' far!"

At that moment, the door of the bar swung open and two women stumbled out, laughing loudly. It was only 8:30, but they were clearly very drunk. Happy hour casualties, Ingrid thought with a smirk. Once they reached the sidewalk, holding on to one another to keep from falling down the steps, one of the women turned the other to her and kissed her, deeply, almost knocking the other woman off of her feet. "I've been wanting to do that all night!" the first woman yelled into the night when they broke apart. "God Bless the Cubbyhole!"

The other woman laughed, they linked arms, and heading down the block with their heads leaned together, clearly enamored, clearly on a first date that was going extreme well.

Ingrid pulled out her phone and typed:

I'm standing outside of Cubbyhole and I'm such a chicken shit. Tell me I should go in. I should go in...right??

SEND.

Less than 30 seconds later her phone lit up:

Yassssssssss you can do it, IN. So proud of you, dude.

Ingrid couldn't stop the huge smile that lit up her face as she read the text. Does she really  have to call me dude? She shook her head. Oh, Hannah. They joked all the time about how Hannah was the master of being super chill and also not at all chill, but Ingrid had to admit, she was damn good at being her cheerleader.

Quickly she sent back:

Thanks, DUDE. Ok, I'M GOING IN. Will report back!

SEND

Sliding her phone into the back pocket of her impossibly skinny jeans, she squared her shoulders, crossed the street, and pushed open the door.
She was immediately hit by how LOUD it was. That, and the crazy ceiling. Every square inch of the ceiling of the tiny hallway of a bar was covered in hanging, sparkly, kitschy, STUFF. It was insane and irreverent and made the place seem even smaller than it was. She loved it.

The next thing Ingrid noticed, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, was that even though it was packed (she was having to shoulder through the crowd near the door to move forward, and hadn't even actually seen the bar itself yet) there were still a lot of heads swiveling her way to see who had entered their sacred space. Having so many women's (and a few men's) eyes on her at once--so many gay women's eyes on her at once-- immediately made her blush and curse her extremely cool but extremely effective jacket. She felt herself break into a sweat as she realized that these women were checking her out, eyeing the competition, eyeing the fresh meat.