I am Matt Thomas.

The Eagle

August 5, 2005

My friend Noah and I met when he was living on Tybee Island, a student at SCAD. It was the summer after I’d moved away from Tybee, but still visiting as often as I could. As fate would have it, Noah is from Annapolis, just a short half-hour drive from my new home in Baltimore. So, while he’s home for the summer, we kept saying that we’d have to meet up.

So, eventually we did—we went to the Baltimore Eagle. And let me tell you, you haven’t lived ‘til you’ve been there. I’ve been to some interesting bars before, but if there were a prize for “sleaziest whiskey joint,” this place would take the gold.

I knew it would be weird, because I knew the clientele it caters to and I knew its reputation. People had invited me to the Eagle before but I just hadn’t found myself interested enough to actually make the trip. But, with Noah, I knew I’d have no problem telling him if I thought it sucked—what are friends for, after all?

So we ventured up, up, and out of downtown, past the bright lights and the rainbow flags of Mt. Vernon and across the JFX to the corner of Charles and 21st, where the mighty Baltimore Eagle squats on its filthy perch. After entering the side-door adorned with the smallest sign in the world labeled “Eagle” you’re first confronted not with the sights and sounds of a Den of Iniquity as you’d expect, but a fluorescent-lit lobby adorned with cigarette and snack machines. I suppose you can do worse. Rounding the corner, you find what you were expecting—a pitch-black, low-ceilinged room with a well-lit-but-completely-empty bar at the very front. We ordered drinks—cash only—and as our eyes adjusted, we ventured into the darkness.

The Eagle, I realized quickly, becomes increasingly more populated yet less social the further back you venture. The bartender in the front was welcoming—and clothed—and there were a few friends, sitting around and chatting. As you walk into the darkness, you feel not unlike a small rodent being watched by owls in a thick forest. Your eyes still haven’t adjusted, so you can’t see anything. But the men sitting in the dark can see you just fine. You feel their eyes burning into the back of your head and just when you think you’re about to freak out, you’ve made it to the middle bar. It’s lighter at the middle bar, something I welcomed until I noticed that the sole source of light was that of the multiple televisions playing a gay leather porn. I looked around and noticed that every single person in the bar was sitting or standing, mouths agape, eyes affixed to the screen like drones in the Apple “1984” tv commercial.

We kept walking, past the middle bar and to the very back, the hot, stuffy back bar where the bartenders eschew traditional forms of attire and no one speaks a word. No barstools here, it was standing-room-only as most everyone there seemed to want to occupy the same hundred square feet of space. I attributed the feeling of people brushing up against me on the crowdedness, until I began looking behind me and realized that my ass was virtually on stage, and that people weren’t so much brushing up against me as they were copping a feel by walking wayyy closer to me than they had to.

Frankly, I had to appreciate the attention.

But between the porn, the attention my ass was receiving, the generally grodyness of the place and mostly, the fact that there really wasn’t much of anything going on, I decided that after my first drink I pretty much had my fill of the Eagle. Noah stopped to say goodbye to some friends he’d run into—go figure—and then we made our way back to my regular watering hole. It might not have the porn, the pervs or the personality, but I guess I’m just not cut out for the fabulous life at the Eagle.