They're real proud to be Americans, real proud to be gay, and they love their country. "These kids," Leonard says of his military patrons, "are really a special breed. Jay Farrar denies any specific knowledge about Friend's, he quotes NIS officials who say that sort of anti-gay surveillance was discontinued around 1985. After that, Leonard says, NIS visits started to dwindle. His favorite strategy: Having nonmilitary patrons get Marine look-alike buzz cuts. "We'd hold a sheet up when they got out of the van so they couldn't be spotted," he says. Other nights he would run a shuttle service to the bar from a nearby McDonald's. Sometimes his customers hiked overland, crawling the last hundred feet through the woods. Leonard called friends on base to spread the word that nobody should park at the bar.
Leonard says the agents parked just off Leonard's property, noting license plates and spying on patrons with high-powered binoculars. The first few years, Leonard conducted a running campaign to thwart agents of the Naval Investigative Service. Leonard bought the bar about the same time it was declared off-limits.
"I was put here for a reason - for these boys and girls," says the Lexington, N.C., native. Leonard, 48, has been a part-time female impersonator for going on 28 years, he says, as well as bar owner for the past 11. "We'd call him Dad," he says with a laugh, "but he wears a dress sometimes." "He's Mom," says Don Gaines of Flint, Mich., a former Marine corporal who finished his tour of duty a year ago and is now a student. Patrons agree Leonard is no ordinary businessman. Still, coming to Friend's is considerably less risky today than eight years ago because the military no longer enforces the 1982 ban - in part due to Leonard's sabotage of their surveillance. "They'd be calling me a `Clinton sailor' for sure," he says, using the new military euphemism for homosexual. Taller than most in stiletto heels, two nervous but friendly female impersonators strut about getting ready for their midnight show.Īt the bar, a sailor who swears he's straight concedes the visit could cause him "a lot of flak if people found out." Military types of both sexes bend over pool shots, crowd the dance floor and line up for drinks. One towering active-duty corporal operates the bar, while another runs the DJ booth. 30 just 40 miles south of here, Crae Pridgen says, he was dragged out of a Wilmington, N.C., gay bar and beaten by three Marines, reportedly in retaliation for Clinton's efforts to end the ban.īut if politics and danger hang in the air like cigarette smoke, they can't obscure the fact that Friend's Lounge is quite a scene. "I just tell them, `Y'all come around,' " Leonard says.Īll the same, nobody gets in the locked door until the cashier has given them the once-over. Leonard estimates about two-thirds of his patrons are Marines and sailors, despite the fact Camp Lejeune has declared the bar off-limits. Right now he's peering through the wire mesh on the locked front door at Route 24, known as "Freedom Way," which connects his establishment to the vast Marine base at Camp Lejeune.Īny gay bar within spitting distance of a military base might be nervous, given the firestorm greeting President Clinton's apparent determination to end the ban on homosexuals in the military. It's 11 o'clock on a Saturday night, and with more than 100 drinking, dancing, pool-shooting patrons in Friend's Lounge, Danny Leonard ought to be one happy proprietor.īut the owner of Jacksonville's only gay bar is edgy.