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January 02, 2008
GaySpace
Whenever I travel I realize how un-gay the world really is. During my entire trip I saw maybe five homos (outside of the token gay neighborhoods). And I have awesome gaydar. I should work at a state fair guessing people's sexual orientation instead of their weight.
Granted, we did hit a lot of "family" touristy spots, but if we are truly 10% of the population, I would expect to have seen that represented by -- at least -- a couple men or a couple women traveling together.
We made sure to get one night of GaySpace away from the family. It's healthy. Seriously, I live in such a gay bubble that when I deviate from it for a few days, I get the chills, tremble, and cough up blood.
So we got a hotel in Amsterdam for a night. We spent the majority of that evening hanging out with some Dutch friends of ours. They're straight, but they don't get all pissy or freaked out when I talk about buttsex, like my parents do. So very refreshing.
I was surprised and disappointed the hotel didn't have any gay porn channels. They, of course, did have two channels of straight porn -- so -- in a moment of extreme weakness, curiosity, and the need to see some mullet meat -- we ordered a movie.
Gross. Never doing that again.
Straight porn hasn't changed since I last watched it in my closeted days. So, so contrived. It's not the man/woman thing that skeeves me out so much; it's the huge fake tits, man mullets and totally fake lesbian action that make it unwatchable. Those poor women/girls do not want to be gnawing on each other's ginger roots. It's so obvious. If a woman resembles a baby tasting a lemon for the first time, she's just not that into your vagina.
We also managed to score some GaySpace during our last day in Paris. We explored the gayborhoods. The first sign we were in the right area was when we spotted the Bears' Den. It was like The Ssssecret was in effect and offering me a reward! The entire place was decked out in the bear flag colors. They describe themselves as "A honey pot in the center of Marais." I love that! Each town should have a honey pot for traveling bears.
Because we took advantage of our GaySpace, we got along swimmingly with the whole family the entire trip. No arguments, no resentments, no annoyances -- just shiny, happy, straight and gay people.
The next time we go back, we will hit Germany as our side trip. My honey pot is looking forward to that, based on my search of German bears on dudesnude dot com. I will enjoy lots of GaySpace there. MmmmMmmm Mmmm.
Posted by durban bud at January 2, 2008 12:57 PM
Comments
Love gay Space during travel with friends or family. We always make time for it if possible.
Funny though, we seem to have exactly the opposite experience with homo spotting when we travel...even when we hit the family spots. Last time in Paris we had a little faglet traveling with his Mom latch onto us on a tour to Mt. Saint Michel. They even re-booked a tour for the next day to do it with us. Last year in London we kept running into the same Mo couple at different tourist spots til I had to walk up and say hello...we ended up having dinner and still exchange Christmas cards.
Posted by: Boomer at January 2, 2008 03:26 PM
Cool. My whole trip to Amsterdam this last spring was a week of GaySpace before a week with the parents in the soooo straight Black Forest. Did get cruised a couple of times by businessmen on the trains down and back up, though. I, too, was bewildered by the lack of gay travelers. Where do we all go?
Posted by: Raybob at January 3, 2008 02:54 AM
I'd been told that Paris has the raunchiest gay bar choices in western Europe - like guys getting fisted on stage with everyone else casually drinking beer in the bar proper. Was that what this place was like?
Posted by: atari_age at January 3, 2008 08:33 AM
I think it's just that being gay in much of Europe is not that big of a deal.
Posted by: tom at January 3, 2008 01:22 PM
Maybe all gays are not flaming fagots.
Posted by: Jeff at January 3, 2008 06:29 PM
I know what you mean. I had to cap off my two weeks in Sweden with 3 days in Stockholm, or I would have lost my mind a bit. Small cities, towns and farms don't make for a big community.
As someone who visits Europe on a semi-regular basis, I can tell you it's just your 'dar that needs re-calibration. Mine needs it too when I go, but after a little acclimation time I get better at it. I mean we all sucked at it at first right? So much gaydar relies on cultural hints, or marker, which of course change. "If he's well dressed, lives in the city, is over 30 and is white he must be gay" was long a standard. Then came the metrosexuals, and all went awry.
Jeff...there are no words. Well there are, but self-hate is so 1980's Ronald "McDonald" Reagan.
Posted by: copperred at January 5, 2008 06:54 PM
Wow, only 5 homos?
My gaydar is completely off in Europe. I'm convinced most men are gay there, but then I'm told they're just Euro-Gay.
You'll love Berlin. They have something like 120 gay bars, and Woof is a great bear bar ;)
Posted by: Jason at January 7, 2008 11:55 AM