Thursday, March 27, 2008

Gay bars are so out.

I'll start off by saying that my hatred for gay clubs stems from my misguided but intrinsic belief that they are a sort of shopping mall where I should be able to find an attractive, intelligent, well-humored man.


Thus, leaving a gay club leaves me feeling failed: like going to Lund's and finding out that they're out of that seven-layer bean/salsa/guac/cheese/sour cream dip. There is nothing you can do but go to bed hungry because you're damn well not settling for that creepy, sweaty, overweight 45-year-old hairdresser who turns out to be the only guy who talks to you (me).


Irrelevance aside, I was hoping that Vancouver, Canada would be the homo-MOA I'd always dreamed of. The large black X's removed from my hands combined with legalized gay marriage would lead at least a fun time and some successful flirting, right? The story unfolds:


After a night of "regular" bars, my friend and I hit up the gay bar district of Vancouver. We went to two clubs, named "Numbers" and "Celebrities," respectively. To compensate for the depressing number of over-50 men at Numbers, I took a number of tequila shots to complement the number of glasses of wine I'd earlier drunk. The rather small number of young, attractive men ruined themselves within ten minutes of our arrival with a number of terrible karaoke performances. If you get drunk and sing Aretha Franklin it's funny; if you're rather sober and really trying to pump out a Journey song, it's time for me to go.


Leave we did, and ended up at Celebrities. Less people, but most were of a more comparable age group: about five minutes of dancing, I was shooed off the dance floor by a fat drag queen, who valiantly attempted a performance to "It's Raining Men" amidst a malfunctioning CD ("Well this is no fun!" she wailed). Sitting on the stage adjacent to the dance floor, I was again shooed, this time by a fierce leather-clad transsexual who called me 'sweetie.' All was understood as the stage performance began, the leather clad transsexual whipping and undressing a group of three construction workers as they pounded long pieces of wood together.

The construction workers lifted up their wood (yes), now nailed into a large X, and then pounded it into a pre-made stand. What happened next I really didn't see coming: the two shirtless well-built men took the shirtless fat construction worker and tied his hands to the ends of the X, the fierce transsexual whipping them all intermittently and walking side to side in her heels. The well built men picked up a nail gun and pretend-nailed the fattie to the cross, and as the fat gay construction worker was further turned into Jesus Christ, I bee-lined to the bar for more tequila shots.

After the stage performance the fat drag queen allotted like ten more minutes of dancing before she announced that one of the well built construction workers was going to dance for us so we all had to make a circle around the dance floor. 'George' or something came out and danced around and stripped until all he was wearing was a Canadian flag around his shoulders as if some naked gay Canadian superhero. The Canucks LOVED IT. This lasted for around twenty minutes, George making sure he danced with everyone in the circle, doing flips, cartwheels, and running with his super-hero like fervor on top of the bar and around the club. He smelled overwhelmingly of baby powder and after he left my general vicinity I made another date with the bartender after I reconciled that they must be watering down my shots.

At some point in the general haze of the rest of the night, and failing to make conversation with anyone, the club had emptied save myself, my friend, and a larger Canuck with bleach blonde hair who ended up following us back to our hotel, where, given the looks my friend was giving me, I loudly explained that were WERE LEAVING AT 8 AM THE NEXT MORNING AND SHE REALLY COULDN'T GO SLEEP OVER AT HIS HOUSE. He was so heartbroken, but it's nice to go to a gay bar, not even get a glance from anyone my age, and have a female friend fighting them off at the door.

The moral of the story is that gay bars suck unless you like that 'I need a shower' feeling.

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