GiB#2 | Rainbow Tea Tasting

It's a first. Starting this Sunday, the GiBs might have a new weekly hangout for Sunday afternoons, a European style tea dance party that promises to be fun, hot and trendy.

Taking place at EM Chill in Mar Mikhael, which has been making strides lately in promoting musical diversity and local talent. Does Beirut have a Tea Dance Party of its own at last? Let's make it happen!

GiB#2 | Go FAG Yourself!

Who the hell would call a shop “FAG”?!

Well, this guy in Jdeide did.

We should have him pose (proudly) in front of his shop and give him free publicity. How's that for an anti gay-bashing revenge? I bet he won’t even have a clue.

GiB#2 | Cotton Candy HIs and LOs

A couple years ago a bunch of folks realized – rightly so – that Beirut’s night scene could use a little more (pink) spice indeed. They went ahead and created a label, and started to throw out gigs, about once a month, that brought together a growing crowd of partygoers. They picked unusual, underground venues, hopping from a warehouse to an artist’s loft, from a rooftop to a deserted cinema, from a pool to a hotel suite.

Building on hype and word-of-mouth, in the beginning and for some time Cotton Candy has been able to build a fun, eclectic, LGBT-friendly crowd of likeminded party people. Every regular likes to remember their own favorite, that unforgettable Cotton Candy night.

Cotton Candy is still going, but since year 2 the parties have been hit or miss. On the good ones, the in-house DJs DJette, Tia & Romax, Jade (Basement) or Ordinary K set the place on fire so bad, the venue is trippy, the people pretty and the theme witty, and the vibe turns out great.

 At too many other gigs however, especially during the course of 2009, Cotton Candy seemed to be falling in the hole it dig for itself. Alternative turning Commercial. Eclectic turning Wannabe. Underground turning Suffocating. BYOB (bring-your-own-bottle) turning $50-Covers. Adult Adolescent turning Teenager. Creative turning Junk. Trashy turning Cheap. And GiB Loyalty was turning Boycott...

But then came the last two months’ Cotton Candies which fell more on the better side. Did the organizers get the wake-up call, and is Cotton Candy getting back on track? We GiBs certainly do hope so!

GiB#2 | Growing Up a GiB Village -- Monot Scores One (Half)

Another GiB joint opens up in Monot. Seems to be targeted at the bear(ded) scene - Wolf beware!

Is the crown on the logo that of a queen or a king? Can't decide...But I can already picture the bunch of self-proclaimed Kings bellydancing at Boshka on a boys-night-out.

Anyway, I hope it won’t turn out as crappy as the signs.

GiB#2 | Up for a Scrub?

Gay bathhouses (or ‘saunas’) are well rooted in Western gay culture and in many large cities of the world. Beirut doesn’t have any gay saunas worthy of the name, however history left us GiBs with a somewhat similar thing: the Hammam’s (aka Turkish baths). It used to be that the public baths played a social role during the Ottoman influence on the region (lasting until the 1900’s), a place where men – and women on specific days – would go to unwind, purify their body and socialize. I don’t know exactly who used to go there back then, if it really included intellectuals and politicians as they say, and whether the Hammam used to have a gay or libertarian connotation at all. It might be that the lines were more blurry back then anyway... But since then these Ottoman relics have clearly taken a sharp GiB turn!

After many of them closed down through the years, two authentic hammams are still standing today: hammam el Nuzha (1920’s) off the Ring in Beirut (the pics are from its entrance and lobby area), and hammam el Abed (1800’s) in the old souks of Tripoli. These two look so kitsch that going there is like taking a trip back in time. There’s also a third bathhouse, this one more modern, called Shehrazade near the stadium in Bourj Hammoud. To the curious and the horny, these can be interesting and fun places to visit.

But unlike the openly gay bathhouses abroad, Lebanon’s bathhouses have nothing nearly as explicit as the closed cubicles, the dark rooms, the sling rooms and the gloryholes that are commonplace elsewhere. The amenities here are usually limited to a steam room, a dry sauna, showers, and massage rooms, although Shehrazade also has a pretty big Jacuzzi. On the downside, the amenities are not very well maintained, making the hygiene of these worlds of water highly questionable: you can’t help but think twice before putting on the flip-flops and towels they give you as you come in, and wonder whether you’re not actually stepping into a world of fungus instead.

 Until it closed down a couple years ago, Hammam el-Sheikh near the Cola roundabout was the closest thing Lebanon ever had to a real gay bathhouse. It seemed to be a quite successful business in the beginning, which was astonishing given its location in this populous and mostly Muslim part of the city. At some point, el-Sheikh looked like it was becoming the official pre-party for Acid on weekends. Picture GiB queens in une-pièce swim suits gathered in an old-style picturesque architecture, dancing to Arabic music around a large indoor pool with bar area, tiptoeing along the watercourse connecting the pool to the Jacuzzi, then sneaking in to the shady waterfall tunnel leading up to a not-so-secret 5mx5m dimly-lit vault, the 'darkroom'. Isolated by water from outside sight, light, and sound, GiB-in, GiB-out, this one room was probably the most private and safe kinky public GiB spot (ever) in Lebanon!

If you’re going to visit (what remains of) the bathhouses for action, things won’t be as straightforward as you would hope. Action between customers is quick and furtive, and it feels like the staff are constantly playing police with the men getting touchy. As for the local staff – mostly Syrians and Egyptians of all ages – they have access to the private rooms where they provide optional services such as massage, soaping and body scrubs. 

It’s your choice whether to go for the experienced 60-year old scrubber and get a quality treat, or choose the 20 year-old hunk pretending to know massage, who’ll try to include a 5-minute rental of his body into the deal, only to then remind you incessantly not to forget to tip him through the cashier on  the way out since you’re not carrying any money on you. Now how’s this for embarrassment, as you’re paying for your services on the way out, when the cashier shouts out loud for the whole place to hear: “w 3achra la 7assan! w 3achra la shebeb!” (“+ 10 for Hassan, and 10 for the boys!”).

 

GiB#2 I Male Arabia in-a-box

It strikes me every time I return from travel, how much testosterone flows in the streets of Beirut.

It can’t escape you as soon as you get there: The drive from the airport towards the city center takes you right through the southern suburbs of Beirut (until they build the next bridge to ride above it), one of the most densely populated areas of the city. The sex ratio on the streets of Beirut Suburbia is obvious, weighted heavily towards men, unlike what they say it is in the clubs. For the streets are full of men who hang around outside all day, seemingly with not much to do, while their women are probably hanging out at home somewhere in Lebanon or back in Syria, Egypt, Iraq or Soudan.

Mostly your average working-age Arab guys – shop owners, mechanics, street merchants, or free-floating workers on the hunt for underpaid work hours. They’re typically wearing undershirts and jogging pants, work uniforms or old-fashioned clothes, and maybe underwear like these ones I saw in Souk-el-Ahad. As far as the physics of it,  there is certainly one for every taste. Skin tones ranging all the way from light to dark, hair colors from black to red (great-grandma had a fling with a Crusader), bodies from skinny to buff, from soft to hairy. Ugly, fat, cute or pretty. But as far as chemistry for us GiBs, this is probably not boyfriend material and not our cup of tea at least for those more into the metrosexual type. Although a GiB friend tells me all sorts of great things about the now-regular (paid) lover he picked up from the crowd!

Based on some tourist feedback I got, it is these raw and masculine Arab men, and not the guys-next-door of Beirut (or the sophisticated GiBs for that matter), that make up much of the erotic energy that emanates from this city, that seeds its ground. It took me an absence from the country to be able to see this manly mass as a feature for Beirut, as it clearly creates a fertile ground for a middle-eastern flavored fantasy!