When I lived in Ottawa from 1994 to 1996, I was dating a Big Steel Man store manager.

I know, right? Big Steel Man. Who remembers those chrome and glass and NuWave consumer fortresses to men’s 80’s fashion? For my non-Canadian readers, Big Steel was a chain store that tried to usurp Le Chateau as a safe place for men to buy shoulder padded bolero jackets. It smelled like the death of the 80s when you walked in. I think Big Steel Man morphed into a trimmer, 90s-named “Steel” and then sold their last shiny suit in ’94.

I still have a Big Steel Man belt. Is that wrong?

I digress. His name was Marty.

…

Marty…

And Marty loved to Party.

*sigh* Yes. Yes he said that when I met him. When he said that I should have collected my shattered self respect and run the other way, but I didn’t. You see, Ottawa in 1994 was a gay wasteland with gay tumbleweeds and gay desert horizons. When you did hear of a gay in Ottawa they were one of only two types that populated our nation’s capital: Dinner Party Gays and Centretown Pub Trolls. I’ll explain:

The Dinner Party Gays were never EVER seen in a gay bar, purely because they held public servant positions and would never sully their reputation to be seen in career-killing establishments. It was like they were living in a Soviet Era spy novel. Like lava tube-hugging sea urchins at a great cold depth, DPGs would go from house to home and dine with political elites. They would skim the Ottawa gay barrel and invite the common gays into their realm every so often for amusement or scandal. If you were lucky to be invited to one of these parties and yet subsequently dumped by your invitee, it was impossible to stay within this realm, unless you suddenly sprouted a government job from your ass. I was dating one of these DPGs the first 3 months of my Ottawa occupation (a federal archivist with a hobby for poetry – yawn) and attended a couple parties where I was paraded as the “quaint new Torontonian”. When we broke up I was banished to…

The CentreTown Pub Trolls. These were your basic bar flies – but due to the hierarchy the DPGs created, the clique system within the CPTs was tight, savage. If you thought making friends in Toronto was hard, try chatting someone up in a gay bar in Ottawa – when a CPT found out you wern’t a DPG, slumming it for the night (or god forbid a snobbish ex-Torontonian) you were promptly branded and ignored. I didn’t seriously meet anyone for 6 months after my break up and when I did start to get into this fortress of gay, I was finding a castle full of queens and fools. No kings.

Marty… right… back to Party Marty.

He was dressed in a suit – which immediately made me think he was an extricated DPG, banished for some reason to CPT status. Today I realize Marty probably wore a loud suit of sorts but back then I was suit-blind. To me, a guy could be wearing a white suit with big lapels and cuffs on pantleg and sleeve, while it was October 12, and I’d only see “a guy in a suit”. I know better now. Marty was in a suit. I thought a suit in the Centretown Pub was classy. Memory fails but I am sure the suit was a big old shoulderpaddy monstrosity.

Hi… Marty… Party… Yes. The personal slogan tripped alarms off in my head. Instead of running, we grabbed a drink. And another. And… you get the drift. We closed the bar and managed to get back to his place. To my horror, his small apartment was decorated in Big Steel Man shop racks. I kid you not. Chrome and steel and glass clothing racks dominated the room. As store manager he was pilfering all manner of product and store display to bring home. It was like Hoarders, but with Confessions of a Shopaholic and Devil Wears Prada thrown into the mix. I swear we actually had to push through racks of poly-cotton blends to get to the bed.

Where nothing happened. We were too drunk.

Repeat three times. Three drunken dates where I tried to keep up with him, liquorly, but he was from the East Coast, where liquor is like air. I failed miserably but thankfully kept it all in and did not throw up on his massive collection of clothes. To this day I think I only ever saw Marty with his shirt off. We would collapse onto his futon fully dressed, pass out, and not do anything.

The upside was that I had fabulous clothes to wear home the next day. No walk of shame for me!