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For generations of gays and lesbians, especially those for whom walking into the sometime secret and darkened doorway of one was often the first step in the coming-out process, gay bars have long held a significant place in their personal histories.

That was never more apparent than in the days following the mass shootings at Pulse, the gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in which 49 patrons lost their lives, and which prompted many to recall the nights they had spent in similar settings, and the sense of community they found there.

“I can’t tell you how many bars and clubs I’ve been to over the years,” the CNN newsman Anderson Cooper told The New York Times last week. “Every gay man in America remembers the first time they went to a gay bar and how they felt.”

“I don’t want to sound like I’m speaking for the gay community,” said Mr. Cooper, who publicly acknowledged his sexual orientation in 2012. “But it certainly resonates very deeply for me.”

Below, some other prominent gays and lesbians recall what gay bars meant to them as they began to embrace their sexuality, some eagerly and some nervously.

Andy Cohen

Television host and producer

I used to sneak away from my straight friends at Boston University and go to Chaps (gay bars often have hypermasculine names) in Boston’s Back Bay. It was quite literally like stepping into another world. When I moved to New York in 1990, the Works on Columbus Avenue and Uncle Charlie’s on Greenwich Avenue were where I built a community of friends. Pre-internet, gay bars were integral in our social development. They were an escape from the (often unfriendly) outside world, packed every night of the week, and everyone inside was a friend.

Larry Kramer

Playwright, author and activist

In 1953, gay bars were scary. I was a freshman at Yale. I thought I was the only gay man there. I overheard some guys making snide and sneering references to a place called Pirelli’s where “the fairies” went. I was lonely, very. So I went. It was a knock-three-times-and-whisper-low kind of place only a few blocks from campus. Surely I’d meet a guy from Yale here.

When the smoke cleared, I saw 30 or so men, all much older and definitely not collegiate. Eventually a middle-ager spoke to me. Would I like to go for a ride? We drove for miles looking for a place to “do it.” We did it parked in some wilderness, a distance from New Haven. He drove me back to Yale and then he drove home. He’d come all the way from Hartford to find his gay bar.

This was my coming out at Yale. Except nobody knew it but me. And I was still lonely, very. It would still be a bunch of years before gay bars would start being less scary, and a lot of fun.

Jane Lynch

Actress

The first gay bar I ever went to was the Cubbyhole when it was on Hudson Street in the West Village. It would have been around 1984, which made me 23-ish and I was fresh out of graduate school. I looked very straight and very Midwestern cornfed. I walked around the block before I got the nerve to go in because the lady bouncers looked so fearsome and eyed me suspiciously.

When I finally tried to walk in, the door lady stopped me and asked: “Do you know where you are? This is a lesbian bar.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said nonchalantly, as if I’d been walking into dyke bars since the beginning of time.

Rachel Maddow

Host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show”

The first time I went to a gay bar was in 1990, thanks to a fairly terrible fake ID that I bought for $25. I was 17 years old, and equally scared of being caught for being underage, and of being recognized by anyone I knew. I don’t even think I ordered a beer. I just remember frantically playing pinball and not speaking to anyone the whole time I was there. That fake ID was my lifeline for years because it got me into the only places where I could find the gay community that I so wanted to be part of. Gay bars and clubs were the alpha and the omega for me then. I wish I still had that terrible fake Arizona drivers’ license — I think my alter ego from that ID (her name was Ann) would be 48 years old by now. I still have her same haircut.

Billy Eichner

Actor and comedian

My first gay bar in New York was the Duplex, because it was kind of a soft launch into the gay world. My good friend Diane Davis and I used to get up onstage after a few drinks and sing “Sun and Moon” from “Miss Saigon.” That may have been my first gay bar over all. I went to school at Northwestern and lived with a bunch of gay guys, and we would go out to Boystown, the big strip of gay bars in Chicago. There was one called Charlie’s Chicago, which was a gay country-and-western bar. I was, like, I’m gay, but I’m not into this. That’s where I started to draw some lines.

Lea DeLaria

Actress

Between my junior and senior year of high school, I drove an ice cream truck in my hometown Belleville, Ill. My truck broke down near this little bar called Lil’s Tavern. I had heard rumblings about this tavern. I had an aunt and uncle who lived near there, so we would barbecue with them, and I heard words bandied about like “bulldyke” and “he-she.” I knew they would have a phone where I could call the boss, so I went in and in the corner was a table with six big ol’ butch dykes. Like, monster butch dykes. I had never seen one before. It was noon or so, and it was completely empty except for these six huge dykes playing poker. And one of them looked up at me and yelled, “Hey, baby butch!” I’ll never forget it. I did one of those look-around takes, like, “Oh, she’s talking to me.”

Honey Dijon

Performer

Rialto Tap in Chicago was the first black gay bar I went to, and what I really remember was the cracked tile dance floor. This was when everyone was playing raw house music and bands like Heaven 17 and Yazoo. After that, I went to C.O.D. As in Cash on Delivery. That’s where I first heard Frankie Knuckles. I was there underage with a fake ID. I was a trans person so I was an outsider, but it was where people went to dance and get away from the everyday. It was acceptance. It was no fear. I told my parents I was staying at a friend’s house.

Justin Torres

Novelist (“We the Animals”)

When I was 20, 21, and I liked to go out in a knee-length red skirt with a duck patch on it, which I paired with a hoodie and Chuck Taylors. I remember one night on the walk to the Stud in San Francisco, a man took me in with disgust — my hairy legs, my painted lips — and called me a “faggot,” in that quiet, direct way that always seems particularly menacing, looking straight into my eyes. I remember dancing particularly hard that night. I remember needing to feel beautiful, and catching glimpses in the mirrored wall of my hairy legs coming out under that skirt, catching glimpses of my desperate twirling. I remember my boyfriend was there, smiling at me, lovingly bemused. And then another man, who sidled up to me at the bar when I paused for beer, said to me, “Girl, you are figuring it out tonight on that dance floor,” and I was, and I still am.

Rosie O’Donnell

Actress and comedian

It was 1980, maybe 1981. I was — 19, living at my dad’s home in Commak, Long Island. My neighbor was housing a relative from England for the summer. We were both gay newbies. There was only one gay club that we knew of. I think it was called Thunders. In French the word for lightning is éclair. How I remembered that from ninth grade French? No idea. I asked my dad if I could use the car to go out. “Where to?” he asked (at 10 p.m. on a Friday night). “The bakery,” I said, “to get éclairs.” Silence, and then, he said “O.K.” Peter and I drove the dented white Volare to the strip mall in Commack. We danced the night away — drinking Bud Light. I felt happy and free. On the way home we made sure to stop at the Candlelight diner — around 2 a.m. — to pick up éclairs. Dad was clueless. From that day on, “bakery” was our code word for gay bar.

Keith Boykin

Broadcaster and author

On a Sunday night in July 1991, at a sprawling complex called Tracks in the District of Columbia, I found thousands of young black gay men and lesbians. At times, as I walked around the three dance floors, it seemed as though everyone in Washington was gay. The men at the gym, the parishioners at my church, the salespeople at the department stores, even the guards at the White House were there. But here, unlike the white gay clubs, the patrons appreciated, and in fact reveled in, black beauty. For the first time in my life, I felt not only desirous of others but desirable to them as well.

Alison Bechdel

Cartoonist, author of the graphic memoir “Fun Home”

My first gay bar was Satan’s, in Akron, Ohio. I was in college, and a bunch of us drove an hour and a half to get there. I was used to feeling like a total alien when I was in any kind of social group. But that night, in the large mixed crowd (there weren’t enough gay people to support a separate club for women), I experienced the profound existential relief, for once, of not being the only queer. A year later, in 1981, I moved to New York. There was a lot of routine anti-gay hostility on the street. Even in Sheridan Square on a weekend night you’d get hassled for holding hands. But then you’d step past the bouncer at the Duchess, and you were home free. The bar had its own perils — no one ever paid the slightest attention to me there — but it afforded me the space to just be, with my guard down, and that was salvational.

Darren Walker

President, the Ford Foundation

In 1978, my freshman year at the University of Texas, my sophisticated friend Kenneth would drive us in his new Cutlass to a bar called Austin Country. It was a giant converted warehouse, with bars encircling the dance floor and the biggest disco ball in Austin. I still can hear Karen Young belting out “Hot Shot.” I remember the closeted fraternity boys, who had just dropped their dates at the sorority house — and the girls who loved to spin and gyrate on the dance floor, earning the attention of adoring gay boys. By my senior year, the mood was changing. We were focused on getting into law school, or business school, or landing a job. Tragically, AIDS was beginning its deadly, devastating advance. The frivolity of those fast, fulsome, fleeting days has long since given way. But in that infectious music, to borrow a phrase from Sylvester, we were “made to feel mighty real.”

Paul Rudnick

Author and playwright

When I was a teenage apprentice in summer stock, I went to my first gay bar in suburban Connecticut. I don’t remember the bar’s name, but the parking lot was packed with station wagons. The atmosphere was friendly and the outfits were from Sears and Brooks Brothers. I remember thinking that if I said “Dad?” lots of guys would turn around.

Andrew Solomon

Author, “The Noonday Demon,” “Far & Away”

There were two gay bars in the neighborhood where I grew up. One was Uncle Charlie’s Uptown, the other had a punning name I didn’t understand at the time: Camp David. I haunted them, promenading back and forth with our family dog, whom I had to walk after dinner, and trying to see past the darkened windows and curtained doors, simultaneously hoping and fearing that one of those men in tight jeans would want to strike up an intimacy as he exited. By the time I was old enough to enter such an establishment, I had my own tight jeans and inchoate prospects. But contrary to so many narratives of relief at finding a gay context, my initial experience was primarily of anxiety, because to be where the least acceptable aspect of myself was the explicit topic made me feel more naked than the go-go boys. It was Boy Bar on St. Marks Place, and I clung to someone I knew named Debbie who was temporarily lesbian and now teaches at Rutgers. Sex was already easy to find, though it unnerved me. Love was not unimaginable, though I didn’t yet have the hang of it. Ease and dignity, however, had seemed incompatible with my gayness until my sweaty June bar visit set me on a new path, one that much later led me to marrying my husband, having our children, and becoming an activist for L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

Jonathan Adler

Potter and designer

Providence, R.I., 1989. I’m at my local gay watering hole, the No Name (a.k.a. No Shame), frivolously dancing to Bronski Beat. In walks a dude from New York who was a member of ACT UP, wearing a leather jacket that said “Don’t Tread on Me.” It was a defining moment for me. It was about gay empowerment, it was about not getting messed with and it was about the importance of addressing an existential crisis head on. I moved to New York the next year.

Humberto Leon

Co-founder, Opening Ceremony, and co-creative director, Kenzo

Wonder B—r was one of my favorite New York haunts. I remember, it was on a really random night, and it was pretty quiet — –maybe 10 people in the bar. Of the 10 people, in the back, was Madonna and her little crew, just going out on a Tuesday night. My friend girl Robin used to D.J. there, so we would go, and this time it was me and my six friends — trying to play it cool as much as we could.

Jon Robin Baitz

Playwright and producer

It was the Roosterfish, a dingy nautical gay bar in Venice Beach in Los Angeles. I went to stupidly try and find a gay surfer who loved Didion, Ed Ruscha and Tecate. I ended up with a Reagan-era Republican boy with red hair, a supply-side economics fanatic from Pepperdine up the coast in Malibu. We made out in the back. I found his politics repulsively erotic. There was a jukebox, and I think it had Dennis Wilson’s ultra cool “Pacific Ocean Blue” on it, which I loved. We went back to my place, and I explored the dichotomy between lust and politics.

Patricia Field

Fashion and costume designer

My first early experience that I remember was my trips to Provincetown, Mass., and it was fun and liberating. It occupied a couple of years of my life during my early 20s. Provincetown was a gay destination, a mecca where gay people at that time could feel comfortable and celebratory. It was particularly attractive because the gay society in the early ’60s was much more underground in the big cities. I would describe it as an escape from big-city gay reality. Provincetown was a free and open space, lots of great performers, people out to have fun, and this is exactly what it was to me.

Joseph Altuzarra

Creative director, Altuzarra

The first gay club I went to was Le Queen in Paris when I was in high school. It still exists — it’s on the Champs-Élysées — but it was an institution at the time. I was probably 16, and I remember being very stressed-out about going. I was really new to that sort of scene. I remember it being very dark and no one talking to me. I think I stayed about an hour, an hour and a half — not dancing, not drinking, though I’m sure I was bopping around in my dark corner. I think at the time, I thought I was going to find a boyfriend if I went out, or become friends with people, which clearly doesn’t happen in a dance-y, techno club in Paris. But it felt very exhilarating. It was my first time interacting with other gay people, even though I wasn’t really interacting with them — at least I was in their presence. That was a very powerful thing.

John Amaechi

Psychologist and former National Basketball Association player

I’m from Manchester, England, so we have a very vibrant gay community that is very well integrated. There was an area called the Village. I used to go there with my sister with my friends routinely. In the U.S. I felt differently about it. I lived in Arizona, in Scottsdale, while I played in the league. I went to a little bar there called BS West. I remember walking in that first time quite tentatively with a group of my friends. Immediately, I get a drink, I turn around and I see someone at the bar and say, “Damn it, I know that guy.” It was Bill Kennedy, the N.B.A. ref, who came out recently. What are the chances that you walk into a bar and there’s a ref?

I didn’t talk to him the first time. Later, I did talk to him, and it was amazingly reassuring. In Scottsdale, in that bar, we met other players and other officials from other sports. Not just pro athletes but college athletes as well. It was fascinating to feel my world expanded. The feeling that you have that there are no other gay people in sports evaporated quickly.

Nick Wooster

Fashion consultant

Uncle Charlie’s in 1983 was the original social network. I moved to New York in January of 1983, fresh off the boat from Salina, Kan., the first place I went was the gay bar. It gave me permission to be me. There was such a culture of going out after work then. Everybody went to Uncle Charlie’s.

Alexander Wang

Fashion designer

The first gay club I went to was probably when I was 16. It was called City Nights in San Francisco. I remember I would have to get a fake ID as it was an 18-and-over club. But all my friends were older at that point because I lived by myself in S.F. and made friends from just going out. Night life was my escape from the day to day. I would go every Thursday: hip-hop night. I was very lucky to have the community I grew up in be so supportive.

Rufus Wainwright

Singer and songwriter

I came out when I was pretty young. I might have even been 13, but let’s just say 14, to be somewhat respectable. Montreal had a pretty decadent gay scene. There was a lot of cruising and tons of bathhouses. My first gay bar was this place called Alcatraz. I was alone — I kind of snuck out of my house wearing spandex. I was from Westmount, which was a more well-to-do area, and Alcatraz was in a poor French neighborhood. So I was like this lost little rich boy wearing a cravat. I didn’t actually have that much sex, per se, but it was fun and exciting. But it was also scary. I was just trying to figure my way out. I knew instinctively that the path that my life would take was through that barroom door.

Don Lemon

CNN anchor

I was deeply closeted in college. Everybody was. It was the 1980s, it was the South, and people didn’t come out then as quickly as they do now. With my friends, mostly straight frat guys, I would frequent a popular college bar at L.S.U. called the Bengal on Highland Road in Baton Rouge, La. But inevitably I would sneak off, very carefully, to the bars down the road, just past the straight bar. One was named Xanthus, an “alternative” bar where the bouncer was a girl named Big Hair. (By the way, Hair and I are still friends to this day).

The dance floor there was filled with punk rockers, bow heads (sorority girls), gay boys, lesbians and every kind of person under the sun, and I loved it. But the flat-out gay bar was a bit harder to navigate because it was across the street and one could easily be spotted entering and leaving. After I finally built up the liquid courage to do it, I never turned back. The eclectic music, the light show, the cute guys milling about, the club kids dancing on speakers: It was gay heaven! I didn’t have to pretend anymore. I was finally at home.

Carrie Brownstein

Actress and musician

My first gay bar was a lesbian dive called the Egyptian (“E”) Room in Portland, Ore. It had a terrible layout: a series of cramped, dank rooms, all seemingly accidental add-ons like a human habitrail. There were baby dyke couples twinned out with matching tongue rings and spiky hair, uniformed post office ladies, construction workers, power lezzies in Paula Poundstone blazers, and butches taking up space at the bar or around the pool table, manspreading because they could. I think I went to the E Room as much to witness another woman’s freedom as I did to get a sense of my own. A gay bar is ours. It’s ours like putty, it’s ours like clay. The environment is both ridiculous and profound, but we get to decide when it’s one or both, or neither. Only away from the glare of homophobia could we experience malleability, a flexing of the self, a full rotation. Who knew there were 360 degrees?