Thinking and Drinking

Amos Milburn - Thinking and Drinking

So I went to a gay party/club for the first time in my life yesterday and I survived to tell of it. It all started innoncently enough, my roommate had a friend over for dinner and after a while they kind of dared me to come and go to this club around the corner from here. Because they assured me that I would get free tickets and seriously played the dare game with me after a while I was like, fuck this, I'm going now.

We first went to some friend's place (luckily all within walking distance from here), where there were about 7 guys hanging out (note that the word guys in this context is to be taken literally) and sat around there for a while, I had two more beers and smoked some crap. Everything sweet and dandy so far. After some prodding by the more active members of our select group we finally went to the club the entrance of which is hidden in the back of a Café (I wonder whether that is for historical hiding purposes or just of an accidental nature).

Well, I enter this gay club, show my ticket to the bouncer who looks me over once and gives me a wink for my natural good looks (or maybe that's just how he wanted to say hi or I don't know what). Well, I ventured deeper into the whole thing (the place is basically in a cellar) and found two dudes making out on the stair case before entering the dancefloor area. The funny thing is, it really wasn't all that spectacular, after initially feeling a little weird simply because I was surrounded by virtually only men (there were some women around too, some obviously lesbian, a couple of hetero couples and (I believe even though I don't know) some hetero women who just came for the party) it all gave way to nothing really. Just felt completely normal, just a club, just people drinking, just people trying to hit on each other.

Having said that, obviously some things were different. First of all, I don't think I ever got hit on that blatantly. There were at least two guys (maybe more, I am not that great at picking up the signals apparently) who not only showed up where I was standing around all the time, but also walked past me trying to catch my eye at least four or five times. I didn't talk to either of them, but one of them actually looked pretty good (as far as I can judge that), so I guess I actually pass as decent looking in the gay world.

Then, the whole place is fucking neat, no crappy regular Berlin club. They have an immaculate wardrobe, everywhere is proper lighting (again completely opposed to most dim club's here). Finally, and this really surprised me, everybody is completely respectful of each other. Having slowly adjusted to the idea that guys apparently feel girls up while dancing all the time (when the girls for the most part don't want any of that), I had figured that gay men would be kind of agressive. This is not true at all though, I probably haven't had as little body contact while dancing in a full club in like forever.

Finally, it was surprising how normal everybody was. I would estimate 80% of the place I would not have considered homosexual on the street. There were thugs, nerds and everybody else too. I talked quite a bit to some American guy who has been living here for a while (just as a side note, there were quite a few black guys in there as well as Asians, quite a good bit of foreigners too) and it was just very relaxing and easy-going. Plus, he kept talking to me after I had (in a Freudian slip most likely I presume) mentioned my girlfriend as did this Turkish-German dude from Bochum (who had gotten us the free tickets).

Summing it up (way too long this whole thing I know, but it was a weird (yet positive) experience) I loved how unpretentious people were in there. No showboasting to impress any girl around, no agressive stare-downs, nobody bumps into you and gives you a I'm-a-gangster-what-do-you-want look. The only downside of the whole thing really is that gay people listen to way too much pop shit, in the beginning they at least played some Missy Elliott (not that I recognized here, my roommate told me) but after that it went downhill quite fast. Anyways, I'd definitly recommend having a look at a club like that to everyone, if only to find out how normal and unspectacular it really is.