I spent this past weekend couch surfing on the edge of death, due to the influenza plague sweeping the city. This no-fuss-no-muss weight loss plan continued into Monday, leaving me watching a "Living Single" marathon and "Small Town Gay Bar" on Logo. (Chalk my viewing choices up to fever-impaired judgment, since I also bought "Dance Flick" on demand.) Ultimately, I'm glad I watched "Small Town Gay Bar"; it reminded me of what I'm grateful for just in time for Thanksgiving. Furthermore, its constant cable loop ensures many of you have seen it too, and can relate. So my first instinct is say that we should all be thankful to live in a big city where we don't need to self-segregate out of necessity to have fun and feel safe. We can hold our boyfriend's hand in the Beverly Center or double date in Santa Monica without a second thought, whereas in some small towns in, for example, North Texas (near where I grew up) the only safe space to be yourself is a secluded roadside bar, anonymous and unmarked for security's sake. And while they may be safe spaces inside, it doesn't take much to remind you that intolerance is just at the door. Take Mable Peabody's Beauty Parlor & Chainsaw Repair, a tin shack that played home to every homo in Denton, Texas until an arsonist torched it to the ground.

Well, just because we can assimilate into big city society doesn't mean we actually do. We gay Angelenos aren't much different than the gays of small town Texas (hush and keep those fashion-related remarks to yourself), since we tend to cloister ourselves along a strip of Santa Monica Boulevard, living in a gay ghetto and frequenting queer watering holes, despite the fact that we are welcome at any old bar in Los Angeles (provided we've built up a tolerance to Ed Hardy first). Our community may be skinner and better dressed than the small town microcommunities revealed in "Small Town Gay Bar," but we're equally comfortable in the company of common-minded souls.

But we're in 2009, not 1979, and all you have to do is turn on "Glee" to realize the gays have assimilated into certain aspects of society more quickly than could ever have been imagined. Indeed, just recently Mable Peabody's in Denton, Texas reopened to an eager public... in a strip mall, of all places, no longer secluded but proudly part of a diverse array of tenants. Maybe we can use our Thanksgiving break to reflect. With progress comes assimilation, and with more assimilation comes further progress. We'll never lose our identity or our love of community. But it may be worth it to befriend a straight once in a while, to head to the Westside for a night out, to break free from the walls of the gay ghetto now and then. If we want to shake the "separate but equal" status foisted up on us by Proposition 8, maybe we should start in our own backyard.