Sarah Mosteller is a lesbian in her early 20s, and spoke about her desire for more safe, queer – and especially sapphic spaces – in mid-Missouri.
NOTE: This piece includes a description of interpersonal violence.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Sarah Mosteller: I’m gonna lie, it's hard out here. It's rough.
I think I saw something saying there's like, less than 30 lesbian bars across the country, which is insane, and, if that's wrong, I'm sorry, I just read it somewhere. I can't remember.
But I know that even if that's wrong, it's a very small number, and whatever it is, it's much, much lower than the amount of like, gay bars for men.
And I'll say, even in our town, it's like – we have a gay bar, but this bar that we have is for primarily middle-aged gay men, which is a space that's very much needed, and it's great that we have that.
However, it is not my space, and that is really challenging.
So, I kind of have to go based off of, “So, what's the most alternative bar,” and that's kind of where we go. So, you just have to go, like, figure out where the other gays are going, just naturally, like, there's no sign that's like, “Oh, gay bar here. You know that there's gonna be queer people here.”
And the last few times that I went there, I had, like, very unpleasant encounters. Like, last time I was there, I was getting hit on by a man, which is like, I was like, “Hey, my name's Sarah, but don't waste your time on me. I'm into women.”
![Sarah Mosteller’s Canon EOS 6D Mark II camera sits on her kitchen table on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, at her apartment in Columbia. Mosteller owns her own photography business, Mosteller Visual Arts, and said she is working to diversify her audience and who she is documenting in her work. “I do think as a photographer, and as an artist, it's really important for me to document the queer experience and use my skills to create queer representation that I needed when I was growing up. I think that that's kind of not just a responsibility of mine, but like, it's something that I want to do. If I could only work with queer clients and make money like that, I totally would,” Mosteller said. “I wish that there was more representation, and I wish that my only representation [growing up] did not come from TikTok. But being on the creating end of that is really interesting now because I do feel obligated to be that representation. And, I don't think I do as good of a job being that representation with my photography business because it's something that's kind of more monetized. So, I kind of just have to do what makes me money instead of what I really would like to be doing, which would be just taking pictures of queer people all the time. That would be great.”](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/313f5cf/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1750x1169+0+0/resize/840x562!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fac%2F23%2Fffa9e5b54650a59700584ccfceb2%2F20240424-bas-queer-joy-sarah-mosteller-0096.jpg)
Was very straightforward about that, so I'm not, like, accidentally leading him on, and then he said, “Oh, okay, cool. Well, a lot of my, I have a lot of lesbian friends.”
And I was like – okay, so I did get a little sassy – I said, “Are they here tonight? Are you trying to introduce me to them?”
Then he just looked at me, and he started choking me just like that. Out of nowhere.
I didn't report it to anyone. I just, like, yanked his arm off of me, yelled at him to stop, ran, got my car and drove to my friend's house, and just escaped that situation.
But I'm like, I want to be at a space where something like that cannot or will not happen.
This being one of our safer bars in town, and still having those kind of interactions is so – is really, really hard, because you're like, “Well, where am I supposed to go then? Where can I go and feel safe?”
And it kind of makes me feel like I need to start my own queer areas. I'm actually meeting up with some friends this weekend, thinking about starting like a sapphic pickleball group, which is such a funny idea, but hopefully that goes somewhere.
And I recently, last week, I went to Colorado and went to my first gay bar. It was underwhelming because there was only 15 people, so that was kind of lame, but just seeing that they even have spaces for queer people, and having, like, queer cafes and stuff was so amazing and so special to see the kind of community they had.
And it makes me wish that that was easier to find in my town, and it inspires me to create those kind of spaces, but it's hard to know where to even start.
But I think in general, being around other queer people automatically makes me feel safe.
