Nashville's all-male strip club The Arrow has the distinction of being the first legal effort like it in the entire state. But instead of a coming-out party and a parade, it finds itself straddling both the big-city thrills and small-town snags of our growing metropolis. If this were San Francisco, D.C. or Miami—cities with an out and well-courted gay community, the new club would be no big deal. But this is Nashville—the buckle of the Bible belt, the industry hub for Christian publishing. As such, when The Arrow—housed in the former Ken's Gold Club building at 505 5th Ave. S.—first opened in September, the trajectory of most news stories was that a club featuring men would be—in 2009—positively shocking to some folks here. It was all pretty predictable. Metro Council member Michael Craddock, staunchly and reflexively anti-gay, reacted with comic disgust. "I'm sick to my stomach—I'm just absolutely sick," Craddock told WTVF-Channel 5. "It's different for a man to show himself than a woman."

The news that some Nashvillians still cling to prejudice is nothing new. Just consider the resistance to the anti-discrimination bill that only recently—fully six years after the first such legislative effort has been introduced—passed the Metro Council. But the head-scratcher here is that virtually no leaders among the rainbow coalition, so to speak, are willing to speak on record about the club. Folks in publishing, commerce, real estate, politics and even gay and human rights activism won't touch The Arrow with a three-foot rule.

Their reasons are as diverse as the range of male physiques on display at the club. Some just say they want to steer clear of the subject. Others says they don't feel comfortable. Still others imply that they don't care to contribute to a problematic and persistent stereotype associated with male homosexuality—that gay men are all oversexed fiends plagued by wanton libidos. "The bottom line is they don't feel comfortable speaking on the subject when there are so many other important battles to be fought," one grassroots activist says on condition of anonymity.

H.G. Stovall, president of the gay-advocacy Tennessee Equality Project, is among the few who will even broach the topic. But Stovall—who says the anti-discrimination bill's defeat in 2003 didn't help Nashville's image as a gay-friendly city—chooses his words carefully when talking about The Arrow, which he says he's never visited.

"Nashville has a long way to go when it comes to being seen as an inclusive destination for the GLBT travel industry. But I think we're making good progress in light of the intense religious feelings we have in the area. But the opening of this establishment would hopefully be perceived to show that the gay community is indeed made up of the same kind of people the straight community is made up of," he says. "In its own unique way, a kind of equality has been reached."

Stovall notwithstanding, the general silence about The Arrow is a telling twist that raises some pesky implications for Nashville's progress report card. The Arrow's presence doesn't just provoke questions about the economic or political implications of men "showing themselves." Rather, it pokes at the unspoken hierarchy of who's doing the looking: Men looking at women? No problem—they've long enjoyed solo space at the top of the pyramid, with obstacle-free access to dozens of clubs in town featuring female flesh. Lust-filled women looking at naked men? It's rarely catered to, but with the occasional Chippendale's appearance, it's only somewhat problematic. Gay men looking at other men, straight or otherwise? Now that's a troubling proposition.

Clearly, gay community leaders feel they can't afford any association with a club that promotes the darker side of gay sexuality. "There's gay-friendly and there's sexuality-friendly," says Arrow owner Cole Wakefield, a former journalist who often wrote about tourism for gay publications. "Nashville is a cosmopolitan city, and we have community leaders who know gay people and people at top levels who are gay. But when it comes down to naked men dancing or anything that puts the sex in sexuality, we're still a stuffed shirt kind of city."

In other words, we like our gays a little on the straight side. Wakefield has spent the better part of this year preparing for his Labor Day opening, and while he knows Nashville is no New York or Miami, it certainly looks closer to it than anything in his rearview mirror (like his native Little Rock).

Wakefield's aim with The Arrow is much like local dance clubs Play and Tribe. He want to do for male strip clubs what Hustler Hollywood has done for adult bookstores: take the taboo out of stripping by presenting it in a way that seems fun, upbeat and everybody-friendly, instead of dark, sleazy and destructive.

So gone is the red-printed wallpaper and 1850s saloon interior, which included Southern belle-styled nude portraits and gaudy chandeliers. Instead are glossy white walls, clean-lined fixtures, brighter environs and a light box in place of the moat that once surrounded the stage to keep male customers at a distance.

And Wakefield says he made sure to play this one by the books. He's following to the letter Sexually Oriented Business requirements, which include the aforementioned three feet of distance from the dancers and a stage 18 inches high, among others. "Instead of viewing the rules as an obtrusive restriction on our design, we've just incorporated them," he says.

But most importantly, he wants to remove the stigma of a strip club and create a space where men and women feel equally welcome. "Our idea is that we don't want people to feel like this is a place they come where they need to hide out in the corner where they won't be seen," he says. "We want it to be just like any other club they'd go to, but the entertainment is different. If you have a group of girlfriends or guy friends who want to come out and see a show, I don't think you should be embarrassed to come to Arrow."

The trick, he says, is to make the whole affair matter of fact. Dancers greet patrons in a friendly manner that isn't overbearing or sleazy. Servers smile and chat with a tone that's no different than you'd find at O'Charley's. Pop music featuring the likes of Justin Timberlake and Prince create the vibe of a dance club, and door personnel welcome and send off patrons with the enthusiasm of Wal-Mart greeters.

That friendly, guilt-free vibe has attracted an increasingly greater female population over the club's first two months of opening, far beyond Wakefield's initial expectations. He had hoped to attract a regular crowd of female tourists, bachelorette parties and girls' nights outs but couldn't have predicted such turnouts. On Saturday nights especially, 70 to 80 percent of its patrons are women, out of some 300 who come through the door. Wakefield argues that this will also help convention center business—an industry whose dirty little secret has always been its partial reliance on proximity to adult entertainment.

"We're a step toward hopefully continuing Nashville's evolution as a true metropolitan city," Wakefield says. "A city that's not just country music, not just religious publishing, not just health care but a true destination city with a lot to offer everyone—men and women, gay or straight. A city that's not embarrassed to admit that wives and daughters and grandmothers want to see men dance. And that it's a fact of life. And they come every weekend. Nashville has to just acknowledge that. They want us or don't and they will vote with their dollars. And so far, that answer has been overwhelmingly yes."

All of this makes it even more perplexing that Nashville's gay community leaders still find it prudent to play a conservative game with the guilt-by-association crowd and remain silent on the question of what role, if any, The Arrow could play in raising Nashville's visibility as a gay-friendly destination, particularly when it clearly fills at least one piece of the equality puzzle. But it doesn't conflict with much of activism's history—feminists notoriously ignored their lesbian and bisexual sisters during the second wave, and even now, many of them are too busy battling pay inequities to concern themselves with the rights of sex workers.

"That's just our local atmosphere," Wakefield says of the silent treatment. "People fighting gay equality battles every day are understandably sensitive to anything that alters public perception and makes their jobs harder. If you had called me back when I was doing gay travel promotion, I would have been happy to comment. So I think it has more to do with the city. It's not that gay people in general are ashamed of Arrow. The leadership you call around town always has that Southern, Nashville calculation to everything they say or don't say. And, what's funny? Some of those same people have been here."

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