Oh, Manolo

This video brought back memories. Back in the aughts I used to go to The Eagle in Pittsburgh a lot. Back then, my friend Mikey and I used to jump on the Friday wagon and go dance to celebrate the end of the week. I was totally overwhelmed by college and Mikey worked a job in which I was convinced he was low key exploited. They certainly did not pay him enough money. He was overqualified for the job and I was constantly pushing for him to quit it.

At The Eagle, we were tight with the DJ. He used to play ALL of our songs the second we stepped in at around nine PM and would send us away at around midnight with a Madonna medley. During those days, I had to leave before midnight because I was supposed to take the lat Flyer going up to where I lived. I did not have a car (I never needed a car living in Pittsburgh) and I did not want Mikey going out of his way to give me a ride when I could take the bus. One of the (many!) experiences we had there had to do with a gogo boy. You see, they would bring gogo boys to pump up the Friday patrons (every day had their patrons, I'm sure) and this one night they brought a very handsome blond guy who was gyrating on his platform to a mix. I think it was Amber's 'Sexual' or something like that.

So the guy finishes his number and he climbs down the platform. He's literally wearing a jockstrap and nothing else. His body looks fantastic, to tell you the truth. He's covered in a thin layer of sweat and he goes to the DJ booth to get a towel and cool down. When he gets there, he starts drying up and decides to let his hair down. You see, while he was dancing his hair was apparently in a sort of bun or ponytai you could not really see. Once he was done, he let it down. He flipped his head forward and all this blond hair falls past his shoulders. It was beautiful. Or at least I thought so.

Apparently, the letting the hair down ruined it for some of the patrons who were to the left of us. I happened to look their way and they were literally mocking the gogo boy for letting his hair down. Apparently that was too 'feminine' for these very macho cocksuckers. In a fucking gay bar. I was kinda pissed. I started going their way and Mikey grabbed my arm and dragged me to the first floor. What was I thinking, he said. Those three men were all over six feet tall and the slimmest one had at least sixty pounds on me. I did not care. All I wanted to do was to go up to them and tell them they should be ashamed of themselves for belittling a man who did not fulfill their idea of what being 'a man' was. I was incensed. 

But we did leave and I never told them anything. Maybe it was for the best. That gogo boy did get nice tips (not everybody shared those three men's contempt) and he was back there several more Fridays. We even got to know his name: Kyle. He was super sweet and had a banging body (duh). He was a nursing student and he told us all about his last semester. Just like that, we had a new acquaintance to say hi on Fridays. I never saw the three men again. Or at least I never looked for them. They were obviously small minded and nasty. 

But that's nothing new in the gay community, so why would we be surprised if we find that the garden variety person is as homophobic as some leather dude in a gay bar?  One of the problems I find with the men (and women) who think there's only one and only one way to be 'a man' is that their view of the world has fucked up one and a thousand lives. Their contempt for anything not 'masculine enough' drives their tiny lives and constrains their view of the world. 

People like Manolo's dad and people like those three gay men at The Eagle make me mad. Manolo’s dad was probably brought up to think a man who kills bulls for fun is more of a man who somebody who is a dancer. And those faggots at The Eagle felt threatened by a man who was the representation of something they loathed about themselves, I guess. Poor misguided, sad, fearful, pathetic little men.Their skewed view of what is 'masculine' and what a 'man' has to do really is beyond myopic. Missing the forest for the trees indeed.

XOXO