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An introvert walks into a bar: How — and why — Paul Whannel launched the AR Queer Men's Social Club - Arkansas Times.Watch enough movies with gay characters at the center of the plot, and you’ll become convinced that the closet is, to put it in video game terms, a gay person’s final boss.But one of the hardest things about gay life in a flyover state in the 21st century for me had little to do with coming out.It was a problem of volume.There weren’t many meet-cutes in the course of my day-to-day life.The chances of the handsome guy at the gym, the charming barista working behind the counter, or the Clark Kent lookalike who came to fix my work computer being available were slim.The hookup culture of the pre-internet era, already a poor fit for gay men seeking a connection beyond an evening’s duration, shapeshifted long ago into a network of singles apps, edging out any horny humanity that remained of the cruising scene and reducing it to a solitary (and often monetized) swipe gesture.This circumscribed the physical places I could go with the actual hope of meeting a romantic partner to, for the most part, bars or clubs.And once I aged out of my 20s and 30s, going out and spending money on drinks — just to wake up in the morning hungover and still alone — became less enticing.Sometimes, connection comes by way of serendipity, as it did for Daniel Spillers, who grew up the son of a university professor.Spillers, 48, attended school in the Bryant School District and, as a member of their first gifted and talented cohort, spent third through seventh grade in an isolated class that stayed together, instead of mixing with the larger student population.“We were this tight-knit group,” he said.“If I hadn’t had that group of people who knew me for five years before we were let out into the larger population for high school, I don’t know that I would have had as good of a growing-up-gay experience as I did.I felt I was protected by that group.” Spillers’ high school experiences as a queer person were relatively positive, if unremarkable.“I don’t know if I was ever in the closet.… I just kind of was myself.I wasn’t saying that I was gay, except to very few people when I was actually ready to come out,” he said.“But I don’t ever think anybody had any doubt.And I felt a little bit oblivious to it all, maybe.” He remembers finding his tribe, spending nights and weekends driving into Little Rock and hanging out on Kavanaugh Boulevard in the Hillcrest neighborhood where his parents had lived as newlyweds, inhabiting Cafe D’Roma.During his senior year of high school, Spillers worked on the University of Arkansas at Little Rock campus where his father taught, and in the fall he enrolled there as a student.And yet, while he did manage to arrive into young adulthood mostly unscathed, Spillers still felt himself isolating, single into middle age and struggling to meet other gay men.“While I say I had a charmed existence, it was definitely a delayed existence,” he said.“Being gay meant that I, like many people, especially in the South, wasn’t able to be visibly gay.I wasn’t able to date.So all of the skills, the relationship skills, those things that heterosexual people really are able to do a lot easier and a lot more publicly, I did not.” Spillers said he compartmentalized that part of his life because dating just wasn’t an option.This was aided by his unassuming presence and a measured manner; flamboyant gestures aren’t part of Spillers’ personality.The lone distinguishable feature about his presentation: a sort of edgy, curly short mullet gone a little long, like a member of Best Buy’s Geek Squad who’s aged out, counterbalanced by a preppy uniform, head to toe.Classic Midwestern creative class professional vibes with a full beard.“I always say I’m like 10 years behind,” he said.“And when you develop that kind of isolation early on, for survival, you develop an independence.I got really, really good at being by myself.” Spillers tried breaking out of that lonesomeness by going to Central Arkansas Pride in October, where he came across a booth for the Arkansas Queer Men’s Social Club, a group founded in 2024 by Paul Whannel to combat loneliness and isolation among queer men in Little Rock.“You know things are bad when an IT guy who’s an introvert decides, ‘I’m going to start a social club,’” Whannel, 43, joked.A system administrator at the William H.Bowen School of Law in Little Rock, Whannel knew all too well the impact of technology on feelings of disconnection and community.His idea was to rescue queer men like himself from the loneliness epidemic — nearly one in two American adults experiences significant, measurable loneliness, according to former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy — by planning outings for them in Central Arkansas.“I went out and I printed up the brightest, eye-catchingest rainbow posters you can, and just said, ‘Hey, we’re going to have our first meeting at Blackberry Market, and if you want community, show up,’” he said.“The first 10 times I did it were just terrifying.But as every person showed up, they kept saying the same thing: ‘What took so long for this to happen?This is such an obvious need.’” The terror makes sense, given Whannel’s self-effacing, guy-next-door style — most comfortable in a pair of jeans, or khakis probably, and a slim-fit polo.Members of the social club now meet for a planned roster of activities five to eight times a month.Their new member gatherings bring out about six people per session.Their game night at Caverns & Forests Board Game Cafe in the Argenta Arts District welcomes about 18-22 people every two weeks.Roughly 100 people have signed up either to join their Discord server or receive emails, and they have an even broader footprint via social media.The club maintains a roster of a few dozen active members, with a couple hundred in a larger orbit, “some [of whom] we only see once a year, and that’s OK,” Whannel said.‘The apps have replaced the community’ There’s a saturation point you reach when, putting yourself out there as a gay man in Little Rock, you begin to recognize the same profile pics across dating apps.A fierce, animal loneliness kicks up, and you begin to wonder what will even become of your appetite for companionship.Will it become feral, romping through your insides while you careen from bar to bar, or will you stay in, taking your discontent out on yourself?“In the bars, you see the same few hundred people night after night after night.And you start to think that those are the gay community,” Whannel said.“But the gay community really, truly isn’t that.They’re integrated.They’re all out trying to live their lives.They’re going to work 9 to 5.They come home, they’ve got a mortgage, they’ve got pets.They’re living their lives.And so a lot of them have the same feeling of disconnect.” And once the situation IRL has become stale, many default to the apps.“The apps have really replaced the community.And that’s terrible, because the apps are like people at their worst,” Whannel said.“People are trying to get laid, they’re being really ruthlessly mean.There’s transphobia, there’s racism, it’s just a toxic kind of environment.And so people get the idea that that’s the gay community.” The legacy of “cruising” in gay male culture, a heedless pursuit of sexual encounters defined by a system of performative gestures meant to exhibit one’s availability or appetite, can exert a substantial pressure, and is only juiced by the anonymity afforded by the internet.Eric Wells, a member of the social club, faced discrimination on the apps for being HIV-positive.“I stopped using the dating apps over a year ago, and started with the social club because the toxic environment on Grindr and on the regular dating apps that don’t have an option to disclose made for some really uncomfortable conversations,” Wells, 44, said.“I mean, there have been people who have said, ‘You should have died.’ People online who are like, ‘What are you even doing here?’” Wells’ boyfriend recognized how