I didn’t expect the New York piano bar Marie’s Crisis to be a life-changing locale. I simply went because it was the latest place my friends wanted to go to. After all, I was a zygote gay both traveling on her own and visiting her online queer friends in real life for the first time. I still couldn’t bring myself to say the word “bisexual” out loud, let alone “trans lesbian. I was just so inexperienced talking out loud about queer stuff with people my own age. Just getting to the Big Apple felt like a triumph! I tended to just go wherever my friends wanted to and experience what came my way. Even as someone who didn’t drink, that meant I happily transversed to whatever bar they wanted to go to.
I initially thought Marie’s Crisis would be like the other New York bars I’d seen; interesting atmosphere, some cool decorations, a bit too noisy to stay in for long. Those other bars, though, didn’t have a giant piano against the wall and pianist playing various showtunes. That was the cool thing about Marie’s Crisis: there was always a song playing live that you could sing along to. Very quickly, I discovered that there’s nothing more enjoyable on this Earth than singing Broadway ditties in cramped confines. In other circumstances, these claustrophobic surroundings would’ve sent my autism brain into overdrive. However, my love for musicals, my friends, and communal bonding ejected any thoughts of being overwhelmed.
I’ve always become transported to the past through particular songs. Various 60s and 70s songs like “Moonage Daydream” immediately place me into memories of bonding with my mom. David Allan Coe tunes bring me back to me and my dad were driving around Plano in his car. Certain chords of Eric Church’s “Springsteen” immediately make my hands go clammy as I prepare myself to once again endure the misery of 10th grade. Yet, in that 2018 Marie’s Crisis excursion, that phenomenon ceased. “Defying Gravity,” “One Day More,” “Over the Rainbow”, I’d heard them countless times before. I had fond pre-2018 memories attached to them. However, this piano bar was such a glorious experience that my feet firmly remained in the present. No evocative memories of yesteryear could compare to the joys and exhilaration in that moment.
After all, how could I get lost in the past when I was getting nearly thrown out of a bar for the first time? Yes, my inaugural Marie’s Crisis experience almost became my last thanks to me absent-mindedly sitting my frame on a nearby table. A bouncer had to step in and tell me to stop that. Imagine that! I’d never even been in a bar before June 2018. Now here I was being so “rowdy” that a bouncer had to intervene. I had gone from dipping my toes into the water to suddenly swimming laps in the Olympics. Charlie Sheen in 2010 couldn’t keep up with my bar shenanigans!
Returning to the songs, the showtunes came at a steady clip at Marie’s Crisis, there was no lull to let the energy seep out the door. Big group numbers like “One Day More” especially got the bar thumping. The bounciness of "You'll Be Back" from Hamilton was extraordinarily fun to do with a boatload of other people. A “Frozen on Broadway” balloon that had entered the bar sometimes bounced around the crowd in a reflection of all the vigor floating around. Nostalgic Broadway tunes from productions like Rent really got the older members of the bar wistful. Oh my goodness, "Defying Gravity" is also a euphoric ditty to do live with a horde of other souls. Truly nothing feels like it can ever bring you down when so many people are united in harmonizing that number!
As a big Little Shop of Horror fan, anytime the songs from that show came on, I was also overjoyed. Just getting to hear some of my fave musical numbers in history (Howard Ashman was such a lyrical genius) was a treat. However, there was unexpectedly extra emotional power in hearing something like "Somewhere That's Green" performed by a massive crowd. The underlying yearning of the lyrics just becomes extra palpable in those confines. Meanwhile, no offense to Audrey II, my personal favorite experience of all the sing-a-longs at the bar involved “How Far I’ll Go”. The first Moana song of the night, I was convinced this tune would play to a mostly silent crowd. After all, this was a newer Disney film that didn’t even have a Broadway adaptation to broaden our its fanbase. It would be understandable if 99% of the bar didn’t know what was going on when this ditty came on. However, the moment the song started, everyone in that bar immediately went “I’VE BEEN STARING AT THE EDGE OF THE WATER”
It was utter magic. That excellent showtune wasn’t even two years old and yet it had already burrowed its way into everyone’s subconscious. It was a microcosm of how that bar transformed total strangers into close comrades. There’s nothing like a Sondheim or Ashman song to make everyone in the nearby vicinity feel like family. The closeness and familial nature of this environment felt so especially satisfying as a queer space. I couldn’t have been the only out-of-towner in that bar that night.
So many of us were coming from locations where it often felt like we were the only gays in the world. Now those souls occupied a space overflowing with queers! Our usual loneliness became a temporary memory in those crowded yet soothing confines. It was as if we were all packed into a separate dimension from everyday reality. There was no way the intolerance and discomforts of existence could hurt us. Here was a zone that belonged to showtunes and your beverage of choice.
As I stood there harmonizing along to Chicago and West Side Story songs, one thought about the past did creep into my mind. “Boy, Uncle Doug would’ve loved this place.” Uncle Doug was a dear relative to me, an openly gay man, lover of theatre, a published writer, and devoured of Moose Tracks ice cream. When I was a few hours old, Uncle Doug cradled me in my arms and softy sung to me “Ooook-lahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain”. From then on, I was destined to be obsessed with musicals. I always felt so comfortable around Uncle Doug, he was always a great listener and a compassionate soul. Uncle Doug was taken away from this world in the early days of July 2017. Even with his years of suffering from a sickness, his death was still so sudden and devastating.
I never got to tell him I was always queer. I never could’ve even entertained the idea of being trans while he was alive. I’ll always regret I never got to tell him those qualities about myself. It could’ve been another way we bonded, another way we mirrored each other. Forever and ever, I’ll always think about Uncle Doug and all the memories we could’ve made together.
Back in June 2018, my brain briefly fluttered to the past thinking how much he would’ve loved Marie’s Crisis. Uncle Doug would’ve been singing louder than anyone else. He also would’ve made the funniest mock shudder of horror when a Cats tune came on (oh, how he hated that show!). Uncle Doug even told me multiple times that he wanted to take me to New York one day. He loved the place so much and wanted to share it with me. We never got to take that trip. We never got to make many memories.
But I made it. That fateful day in June 2018, I knew in the back of my head that Uncle Doug would been proud of me for making new memories, forming fresh friendships, and keeping his love of musicals alive. That glorious first trip to Marie’s Crisis beautifully intertwined elements of my past, present, and future as a queer woman. Immediately, I knew that this excursion, like so many of Uncle Doug outings, would be forever encased in my mind.
A week after that Marie’s Crisis trip, I was back in Allen, Texas working my cursed job at Walgreen’s. No longer was I surrounded by hordes of queer people. Now I was stuck behind a counter, selling cigarettes and beer to older people who referred to their autistic offspring as “damaged children” or made offhand homophobic comments. My long khaki pants and blue work uniform seemed to be suffocating me. I could feel them burning my skin. Because I was worried about having any physical evidence about being “queer” back then, I didn’t take any pictures of myself in Marie’s Crisis or in most of my NYC trip. All I could do to remind myself of that magical night was close my eyes, hum a certain showtune, and then conjure up memories of that night.
Sitting behind that counter, Marie's Crisis might as well have been on Mars. I felt like I'd never get back there. But I did, albeit after four years. In that interim period, I realized I was actually a trans girly lesbian, went to UTD, got my Master's degree, and began making a living from my writing exploits. I was also returning to the Big Apple just a few weeks before I was starting HRT. I was entering Marie's Crisis a radically different person in many ways, including in my fashion choices. However, I was also re-exploring this establishment with my love for showtunes and communal queer connections firmly interact. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This June 2022 Marie's Crisis excursion was a solo mission for yours truly. While I went with a horde of other queer people last time, this go-around I went alone. Once inside, I ended up bonding with a couple of New York gays I didn't know mere hours earlier. However, after one or two songs, we began chattering and became friends. What a glorious experience. Marie's Crisis didn't just depend on the bonds with previously-established chums, it also could bring immediate closeness between queers. I also absorbed a story from the man behind the piano about his first Marie's Crisis trip decades earlier.
His brother had taken this pianist to Marie's Crisis in the 1970s when he was just a little too young. While there, the sibling dubbed Marie's Crisis a grand sanctuary and revealed to this young pianist the "gay national anthem": "Over the Rainbow." At this point in the anecdote, the pianist's voice cracked with emotion and he had to pause. Then, he divulged to the bar that this sibling had died due to complications from AIDS decades earlier. It was a sobering but vital reminder of the queer community's past.
It also reaffirmed the power of these songs we were belting out. A rendition of "Over the Rainbow" didn't just make memories in the here and now. It connected us to our descendants, intertwining us with the past like a queen chain link. That pianist's brother, Uncle Doug, and any other LGBTQIA+ souls taken from us too soon were all in that bar. Like the deeply moving ending of BPM (Beats Per Minute), this story reminded me how enduring queer lives can be. Society wants to erase us. But our community can lengthen our lives far beyond what mortal coils can sustain.
It's a Wednesday morning in Allen, Texas. I sit here on a couch, pug heads on my lap, 23 months on estrogen. It's been two years since my last trip to Marie's Crisis. Yet, the memories I made there are so vivid. I feel like I can reach out and touch the bar counter or the little corner crevice to the left of the piano. Every time certain showtunes emerge on my Spotify shuffle, a smile emerges on my lips. I'm suddenly thrust back into the past singing that song with a boisterous crowd.
There are queer bars in Dallas, Texas. They even often house live karaoke events where you can sing with other gays. No offense to any of those, but they can't hold a candle to Marie's Crisis. How could they? There's something special about sitting in a bar rich with history not too far away from the streets of Broadway and the Stonewall Inn. Marie's Crisis is the place where queer history and musical theatre nerds intersect joyfully.
When I returned to Texas in June 2018, I felt distraught. It seemed like I'd never return to Marie's Crisis. Now? In my heart of hearts, I know I'll return someday. If I did everything I've accomplished in the last two years (started HRT, came out publicly, began living on my own, etc.), then anything is possible, for good and for ill. I will return to Marie's Crisis someday. Until then, those showtunes and memories will sufice. They remind me of all that I love about this queer community and the bonding great music can accomplish. Nothing better encapsulates those feelings than, naturally, a musical number. Specifically, a musical number belted out by a bit of a weirdo...
There's not a word yet
For old friends who've just met
Part heaven, part space
Or have I found my place
You can just visit
But I plan to stay
I'm going to go back there Someday
