Now, for the Spanish men. Such snake hips! Such tiny butts! Whichever
came first, Ewen demanded to know. The lovely thing about Spanish men
is that they are very tactile (that is, above the chest only, and one
person doing the touching at any one time - so no holding hands or
cuddling, please, we´re not queer like that). Of course, the fagboys
take things a bit further, and it was nice to see two twinks crossing
the main road (Madrid´s equivalent of Auckland´s Queen Street), one
slipping his hand in his bf´s pants and they were tonsil-hockeying even
before they reached the other side of the road. The waiting traffic
literally didn´t give a hoot.
Once in the gay ‘hood, Chueca, which
looks a bit like Amsterdam minus the canals, we tried to find a quiet
place to have a drink or two - as Frankie sang to Nancy – and found La
Acuarela, which looks and feels as arty as its name. Full of arty
looking tattooed boys and their fag hags, but quite friendly.
We
tried the leather bars, leather being an attitude rather than a dress
code here - Madrid is far too warm for dressing up in leathers or
rubber, so the men do a lot of sports gear scenes here. All very odd, of
course, cos it´s not often that adidas shoes get licked in Auckland, at
least not in the places I frequent.
I was pleased to see that no Beckham shirts were on display, even though he is a local boy now. We went to Leather and The Eagle,
which also has a branch in Barcelona - more of that in a later report.
The cruise bars were open in the afternoon, which makes siesta time far
more interesting and less boring with all the other shops closed. Good
to take that weight off your slingbacks after all that hard shopping and
sightseeing.
My personal favourite venue is called Into The Tank.
It looks rather new and industrial with lots of steel girders and grey
walls. They do dress codes but we were a bit overdressed, as it were.
The place is run by a guy called Gom, who treated us rather well, being
foreigners from such a faraway place. I must say the punters were quite
sociable and chatty and curious about us, something kiwis could learn
from. Ewen went home early (about 1am) but I stayed till about 4 cos it
was my birthday and they all insisted on celebrating it in style.
We stayed in a hotel
marketing itself as a gay place but we failed to see much gay info
there. It was a short walk to Chueca, and the route went through one of
the red light districts of Madrid, where the girls parade their wares at
all hours of the day and night. We were always blown kisses by them and
I must say it has been a VERY long time since I have been called
´chico´. When we indicated that we were not that interested in them, one
of them sounded surprised that we were together. She spoke perfect
English and then went back giggling with her mates. The guys openly
negotiate on the street, there is only foot traffic and the cops don´t
seem to care much. If only the punters knew that up the road they can
get it off for free rather than with a dodgy looking sub-Saharan working
girl...
Oh, one more thing. We wandered into a bespoke leather
shop where you can get outfitted, even though it´s far too hot. They had
a baby crocodile in the shop as a pet. Scary! But not as scary as some
of the men in the ‘Leather’ backroom.
OK too much information already.
No comments:
Post a Comment