Strippers!

Letopho posted about his New York trip, and accused me of being "well-adjusted"! That was a first, I think. Despite my well-adjustedness, I still feel like a bit of a gay noob sometimes, and it leads to odd etiquette questions like, is it weird to go to a strip club with your boyfriend?

Miss Manners was not able to answer my question before this past Sunday, where after a rooftop dinner shared with our friend, with much wine, and other intoxicants, we decided it would be a good idea to check out a strip club. As you can infer from the types of places I dragged Letopho to on his New York tour, despite being generally a good girl, I have a weakness for the really seedy gay bars, go-go boys and the like, but I had never been to a gay male strip club! I have actually been to most straight strip clubs in the city, both from my awkward closeted days, but even afterwards, for friends' birthday parties, bachelor parties, and even a pretty well respected steakhouse/strip club here in New York that was quite an odd experience. I have not had occassion to go to a gay strip club, mostly because there aren't any. There are some venues that do individual nights as a male cabaret, but they're not on odd days, and I had never had the opportunity to check them out. In either case, I figured it was time to lose my gay strip club cherry and check out Le Boyz. I found this flyer here:

And we headed over. Now a few things to note about our experience at this particular club. First things first- everything on that flyer is pretty much a lie. When we got to the door, they were trying to charge us cover, but I showed them the flyer that says "Free Admission". This caused a ridiculous commotion and they had to call 2 people at the door before they grudgingly let us in, and we found that the place was pretty empty, at about 11pm. I don't know if we were too early or too late or whatever, but there were only about 4 strippers in the whole place, of varying quality. The second lie is that the strippers were pretty much nothing like the guys on that flyer, but that's probably pretty common.
As our eyes adjusted to the dim basement, we found that it was not at all like the strip club experience I was expecting. There was no stage show or anything, and it was really just strippers in their underwear walking up to you and aggressively propositioning you for a lapdance, often pulling down their underwear to flash a seemingly unending schlong. These "lapdances" occurred in the corner but in plain sight of the whole room and from where I saw looked less like what I was expecting, and more like grinding their crotch into your face. I definitely got the feeling that this situation could have escalated to more for more money, but it felt really... uncomfortable. It's not JUST because I was there with my boyfriend, but also just it wasn't what I was expecting. I would have liked a stage where I could stuff dollars in a guy's g-string, or maybe a more artistic lapdance, where you're not allowed or expected to grope and lick the dancers.
In either case, despite our initial uncomfortability, we got a little more relaxed when more people showed up, and just like us, for the most part, they just ignored the dancers and treated the place as a normal gay club. We spotted what we believed to be a drag house meeting, where they were all trading some sick moves, and we did our own dancing by the bar and it ended up being a lot of fun, just the three of us.
I wouldn't go back for the Le Boyz event though. Just wasn't a fan of the set up, the door attitude, or the massive hangover on Monday morning...

California Gurls

WeHo

On my last trip to california, I got to hang out in LA for a few days, and I met up with prolific gay asian blogger letopho! We took two pics together, and though I thought the one above looked better, I'm including the second one:

because you can see the gogo boy's crack, and it looks like there's some strange going down in the photobooth.

Weddings

I also met up with a friend who moved from NY to LA with his bf of 10 years, and they are one of those couples just waiting for gay marriage to be legalized in California now. For their sake I hope it's soon. We ended up talking a lot about gay marriage conventions, which were all new to me since I have never been to one. Topics were things like:

• He said both grooms are supposed to wear white? That sounds awful.
• I asked, who do you dance with? Your mom or your dad?
• Do you have groomsmen or bridesmaids or both?

Obviously the answer is "whatever you want", but it's fun to talk about.

Neither of us had been to a gay wedding, but our friend had been to a lesbian wedding and said they retained most of the traditional elements, except for things like a bouquet toss.

Also, on a somewhat related note, a female friend of mine has asked me to be a "bridesman" at a wedding next year. Is that a thing? Oh well I'll let you know how that goes.

Ghey

So one thing that kind of shocked me in California, and maybe this is just a weird sampling, but I heard 3 grown adults, completely educated, and otherwise non-homophobic people say "That's gay" in conversation. I really can't remember the last time that I heard anyone over college-age in NYC say that. Is that actually ok to say in California, or maybe are people in NY just better at censoring themselves around me?

In one case, a girl said it, and immediately corrected herself awkwardly, unfortunately with "I mean, retarded". /facepalm.

In another case, my friend's ex said it, and she immediately challenged him on it (which I'm glad she did, because it would have been awkward if I had done it, as I barely knew him and he was giving us rides all over town), and he got a little defensive about it.

I'm not super-soapboxy about it, but I more surprised to hear it at all, more than anything else.

Bromance; Race

One of my big problems with blogging is that if I take a break for a while, all these things I want to talk about start piling up, and then when I finally sit down at the keyboard I want to give each topic that's been germinating it's fair share of time, but then the post becomes a monster. Well, here goes, I'll try to keep it succinct.

The Bachelor Party
This weekend was my friend E's bachelor party! I've known this guy for like 5 years now and he and his fiance are two of my closest friends in NYC now. They were the first NYC residents I came out to (Identified in this post as Friend Couple #1). Y'know though, after my parents, I think that one of the relationships that I feared would change most was the relationships I had with my straight guy friends. I always knew that they would be "cool with it" but I guess I always worried they would treat me different going forward. After this weekend I feel ashamed for not giving them enough credit. This weekend I was totally just one of the guys, and even though they all knew I was gay (even some of these guys that I never met before), it wasn't awkward, and it was fun. There was some ribbing about me sneaking off to gay bars, and they made me get a lap dance from a girl (which was actually fun, and she was a really good sport about it). Mostly it was just drinking and bonding, and mostly making the groom's life hell, cause that's what bachelor parties are all about right?

They even let me throw some beads at this guy underneath our balcony for showing me his ass, heh. Ah, New Orleans.

I did break away from the hetero-fest a few other times too, especially while they were getting series' of lapdances, to check out the gay go-go bars too heh. I figure if they get to see female strippers, I can see cute brazilian boys in their underwear. It was pretty much the same thing as up here, but I do think I attracted a lot of attention, both from the go-go boys, and the other patrons, just cause I was Asian. It was nothing untoward or creepy actually, but that and an offhand comment in one of letopho's recent posts got me thinking alot about my next topic which is:

Race
So I have been pretty sheltered, race-wise having grown up in California and living now in NYC, both of which have thriving Asian populations. I was a little stunned in New Orleans not seeing any Asians (except our group, which was predominantly so. For the most part it was fine, but there was some outright racism that I'd really never seen before, but my friend told me is really not uncommon in the south. At one point, a group of us (maybe 10 asian guys) were walking down the street, and this hot dog vendor stopped and bowed mockingly at each of us. It was offensive on this level I'd never even seen before; I would have told him off, but he wasn't even worth my time.

OK, I meant to write more about that, especially in the context of dating, but I'm tired now. More later.

Next Long Weekend

So this weekend isn't officially a long weekend, but I'm actually taking Friday off. A really good buddy of mine is having his bachelor party in New Orleans this week! He's straight, actually, and every other guy in the bachelor party is straight, but it should still be a fun time. While the focus is drinking, I'm sure there are a few titty bars on the agenda too. I actually took the liberty of writing down the names of a few gay bars in the area (I figure if these straight guys with girlfriends and fiances can see tits, I shouldn't feel guilty about seeing some of New Orleans' go-go boys, right?)- I've never been there, and I've heard they have some of the oldest legal gay bars in the country.

As it turns out, last week was some huge gay party there, which is just as well that I missed, lol. Anyway, this weekend should be fun, regardless!