Mister B's
(names of people are changed for their protection)
I had been at Fort Jackson about a month for one of my AITs and had built up a few friendships. I was at the rec center one Friday evening with a few of them, playing D&D.
The game got a little erotic between one of the characters and my character and we just played it out with that.
We hadn't noticed the one soldier had been sitting in the room that we were using, watching us play, since we really didn't care because it was just a game, after all, and it was obvious that we were just playing roles in it. But the homoerotic overtones in it had caught his ear, I guess, and he hung out, watching us.
When it came time to close, we were not done, but had to pack up and leave anyway, so we all left, with him following us out. He started up a conversation with us, asking about what game it was and some of the details of how the game is played and what we were going to do with nowhere else that we could all go to play it tonight. We answered that we would just have to pick it up where we left off next week if we couldn't get together tomorrow to play. I said that I was probably just going to go to the EM club and see what was going on. The other guys all said, basically the same.
Then the guy, Rick, asked if we wanted to go to a club off base. Would we? Would we ever. He found a cab and told the driver where we were going and off we went. We ended up at a club in Columbia called "Mr. B's", which turned out to be a gay club. Very taboo at that time for military personnel. We went in anyway and found a booth, ordered drinks, and started to people watch and talk (as much as one can talk in any club). We found out that Rick was permanent party at the base and was getting ready to get out but was going to enjoy things while he was still in before heading back into the real world, so when he saw what we were doing he decided to watch and pick up what he could.
He told us that he noticed the homoerotic part of the game and thought that it would be interesting to find out how we played it out, which was why he was still there with us until the rec center closed.
We all chatted like that for a while and one of the guys bailed because it was late and he wanted to get up early for some reason, one of them said that he would go too, so they could split the cab fare, and that left me and my buddy, Reed, who was bi, like me (and both of us kept on the DL to avoid getting kicked out of the service).