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Unfortunately, visiting gay author Armistead Maupin’s tale of the city of Alice Springs isn’t going to be happy one.
Visiting the Bojangles Saloon & Dining Room there while on his Aussie tour, his partner asked to use the bathroom.
The response from a bartender? That the toilet was reserved for “real men.” When questioned, the staff member then repeated the regrettable slur.
“Neither one of us could quite believe he’d said it, and he actually repeated it – ‘see the sign on the door, it says gents, it’s for real men,’” Maupin later told the ABC.
Maupin and his partner promptly left the bar and complained at the town’s Visitor Information Centre.
Luckily the experience, while unnerving, hasn’t affected Maupin’s opinion of Oz too much.
As the story went global, he explained on Facebook – “Just to be clear: There are no apologies necessary from either Alice Springs or Australia. I’ve never felt more welcomed by a country. This was a lone gunman, and we just handed him his balls on a platter. It’s over.”
Phil Walcott of the NT Regional Director of Gay and Lesbian Tourism Australia told the NT News Alice was a tolerant community and the gay slur at Bojangles was an “isolated incident.”