31 October 2007
I haven’t been everywhere in the world, but I have visited many places and I’ve been gay in all of them. Over the years, I’ve noticed a growing sameness among popular gay gathering places around the globe that borders on the cliché.
Similarly, I have become increasingly aware of the development of a universal gay aesthetic and attitude that appears to transcend cultural definition to define a singular global gay lifestyle.
In other times I might have thought such homogeneity grand, but as I reflect on it today, it makes me kind of sad.
I was out in London the other night at G-A-Y, one of Soho’s most popular gay nightclubs, when it struck me that there was something very familiar about the joint. Then it hit me. From the walls mounted with television screens playing videos by the latest pop tartlets to the colourful modern décor, G-A-Y reminded me of so many other clubs I had frequented in other parts of the world.
Take away the accents and I could have been at Raidd in Paris, G Lounge in New York, or Here Lounge in Los Angeles. It was actually kind of scary as I looked around the bustling party spot to discover that, aside from the patrons, there was not a single thing about the place that was uniquely British – not even the colour scheme or the lighting. There was even a certain uniformity in the way that all the wriggling horny bodies surrounding me had chosen to attire themselves. For a brief moment, I actually thought I had stepped into the land of the Stepford gays!
Later in the evening as I stood by myself on the outside patio to catch a breath of fresh air and continue my observation, a friendly stranger, apparently sensing my dismay at the scene, nudged me and said, “It’s really quite boring isn’t it”? To which my reply was a quick and resounding “Yes”.
In all fairness, it wasn’t G-A-Y that was boring, but instead the tired nature of the scene and the whole ‘been there, done that’ feeling that came along with it.
I mean, unless you’ve worked your way through every potential partner available to you wherever you currently reside, why hop on a plane and fly 6,000 miles to do the exact same thing (in a carbon copy of the place) that you could have just as easily done at home?
I don’t know about you, but when I go to a city I go to explore its uniqueness. In France, I expect fresh baked croissants. In Spain, I expect spicy paella. In Holland, I expect extraordinary cheeses and until recently, when I went to a city, I expected to explore home grown gay nightlife, but that appears to be something of rarity.
I don’t know when it happened or who’s responsible, but it seems to me that gay nightlife has been franchised, pre-fabricated, packaged up and shipped around the world for easy assembly and, in the process, stripped of any cultural identity.
Thankfully, no matter where you go, there are still local bars filled with zany local traditions and even zanier local characters. These are the places to which I find I am drawn when I travel. Call me crazy, call me insane, but I really enjoying taking side trips off the beaten path and experiencing people and places unlike anything I’ve ever known. To me, that’s living.
Though I’ve always believed the meaning behind the old adage, 'the more we’re different, the more we’re the same', when it comes to gay nightlife, I’m not so sure that its verity is such a good thing.
http://gaydarnation.com/UserPortal/Article/Detail.aspx?ID=19638
© 2007 GayWired.com; All Rights Reserved. Article provided by GayLinkContent.com.
Author: Duane Wells
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário