The West Coast Men's Chorus is a gay men's community chorus of about a hundred voices, founded in 1987 by eleven guys who wanted to sing together and, in the middle of the worst years of the epidemic, wanted to be seen doing it. We are a lot bigger now and the songs are, on average, a lot happier, but that's still the idea: sing well, sing out, and be seen. We put on a holiday concert in December and a spring concert in May or June, sing at a lot of things in between (see below), and rehearse every Monday night in the fellowship hall of a very generous church that lets a hundred gay men make noise in it once a week and asks only that we stack the chairs.

We are four sections: first tenors, second tenors, baritones and basses. Roughly twenty-five each, give or take, though the second tenors are consistently a little larger, because we're the section everybody secretly wants to be in. We have a wonderful artistic director, a heroic accompanist, a board, a newsletter, a section leader for each section (hello), and an annual retreat where we learn the spring music and eat far too much.

You don't have to read music to join. Plenty of us learn by ear and by rehearsal tape. You don't have to have sung since high school. You don't have to be gay, actually, though nearly all of us are. You do have to show up on Mondays. More on that in a second.

Rehearsal is every Monday, 7:00 to 9:30 p.m., September through the holiday concert, and then again January through the spring concert. Here is a Monday, for anyone wondering what they'd be getting into:

• 6:40 — Early birds set up chairs in four curved rows. The second tenors sit stage right, between the first tenors and the baritones, because someone has to keep those two apart.
• 7:00 — Warm-ups. Lip trills, sirens, the "mee-may-mah-moh-moo" thing, and one that involves shaking out our arms that always makes the newest members look around to see if we're serious. We are serious.
• 7:15 — Announcements, which is where the ticket sales pitch happens and where we sing happy birthday to somebody, in four parts, whether he likes it or not.
• 7:20 to 8:30 — Music. Sometimes the whole chorus, sometimes we split off for sectionals. Sectionals are where the section leader (hello again) plays the notes on a piano he can barely play and everybody sings it back until it sticks. This is also where the second tenor jokes get written.
• 8:30 — Break. Someone has brought cookies. It is always the same three people who bring cookies and we do not deserve them.
• 8:45 to 9:30 — Run the pieces we know. Go home hoarse and happy.

Attendance is taken, because with a hundred people it has to be. Miss more than three rehearsals in a season and you sit out the concert. It sounds strict. It's the only reason we sound as good as we do.

If you want to come see what it's like, you can sit in on any Monday in the fall as a guest. E-mail me and I'll meet you at the door so you don't have to walk into a room of a hundred strangers alone. I remember doing that in 1994 and I nearly turned around in the parking lot.

Saturday, December 11 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, December 12 at 3:00 p.m. Two performances, same program, at the big Methodist church downtown with the good acoustics and the bad parking. Tickets go on sale in November through the chorus and at the door, and the Saturday show sold out last year, so don't sit on it.

The program this year is a mix of the carols everyone knows, done the way a hundred men can do them, plus some things you won't expect. I'm allowed to tell you the carols. The rest I'm not.

A short and completely impartial guide to the four sections of a men's chorus, for those who are new.

First tenors. Sing the highest notes. Get the melody. Get the solos. Get the attention. Know it. There is a joke that first tenors are the sopranos of the men's chorus and it is unkind and it is true. We love them. They cannot hear us over the sound of their own high A.

Baritones. The largest section by ego, if not by number. They sing the notes in the middle that make the chord a chord and they will tell you so. They have a saying about how the baritones are "the heart of the chorus." We have a saying too, and it's that the heart is just a muscle that pumps and gets no melody. Sit with us, baritones. We'll teach you a tune.

Basses. Sing the low notes, stand in the back, arrive last, leave first, and are the nicest men in the room. Nobody makes fun of the basses. Something about the way the floor shakes.

Second tenors. Sing the part that nobody in the audience can pick out and that nothing works without. We are the harmony under the melody, the note that makes the pretty part pretty. We are loud enough to matter and not so high that we're insufferable. We get the occasional melody line when the arranger is feeling generous and we sing it better than the firsts do, and everyone knows it, and nobody says so, because we are also the most gracious section. We have the best sectional snacks (this is measurable). We have the best attendance (this is also measurable, and I have the sheet). We had the winning team at the retreat trivia night three years running. Our section T-shirt says "Second to None" and the firsts still haven't come up with a comeback.

In fairness, at the end of the day the chorus is a hundred guys who need each other to make a chord, and the sound that comes out when it all lines up on a held note in a big stone church is the reason every one of us drives across town on a Monday night. Even the baritones. Especially the baritones. Don't tell them I said that.

We take new members twice a year, and the next time is Monday, January 10 and Monday, January 17, 2000, starting at 6:00 p.m., before rehearsal, in the same church hall. Here's what it is and isn't:

• It is ten minutes with the artistic director and the accompanist in a side room. They'll have you sing some scales to find your range, sing back a short phrase they play, and try a verse of a song you know ("America the Beautiful" or "Happy Birthday" is fine; you don't have to prepare anything).
• It is not an audition in the sense of competing for a spot. It's a placement. They want to know whether you can carry a tune and match a pitch, and which section you belong in. Most people who come in get in.
• You'll find out which section within a week. If they put you in the second tenors, congratulations; I'll be in touch. If they put you somewhere else, I'm sorry, but you'll be happy anyway.
• Dues are modest and there's a fund so nobody is turned away for money. The first year you also buy the concert outfit (black tux, and we have a closet of loaners).
• New members start with the spring season the very next week, so if you're thinking about it, you'll be on stage by June.

To sign up for a slot, e-mail me and I'll put you on the list, or just show up at 6:00 on either Monday and wait your turn with the rest of the nervous people. I brought a friend last January who swore he'd only sing in the car. He's a baritone now and he won't shut up about it.

Two big concerts a year is the part people see. The rest of the year we're out doing this:

• Pride. We march, we sing on a float that is never quite finished, and we do a set on the main stage in the afternoon in June. Every year.
• Hospice and hospital visits. Small groups of eight or ten go and sing in the common rooms and, when asked, at bedsides. This is the most important thing the chorus does and the thing we talk about least. If you join, you'll be asked to go at least once. Go.
• AIDS Walk and the candlelight vigil. We've sung at every one since the chorus began, and the chorus has a list of members we've lost that gets read at the spring concert. It's long. We sing for them.
• Schools and youth groups. When invited, small ensembles sing for high school choirs and talk to the kids about what a community chorus is. Some of those kids show up at our auditions five or six years later, which is the best thing.
• Other people's causes. Fundraisers for the food bank, the community center, the women's shelter, a couple of churches. We sing for our supper (usually literally; the shelter's potluck is outstanding) and for the goodwill, which is worth a lot to a group of gay men in a town where not everybody was glad to see us in 1987.
• The annual holiday visit to the community center's seniors' lunch, where we do the carols in December and the seniors sing along louder than the audience at the church, and somebody's grandmother always asks a bass to marry her granddaughter.

If your organization would like a small ensemble at an event, write to the chorus through me and I'll pass it along. We can't do everything, but we say yes a lot.