2 posts tagged “gays”
There is a bar in one of the neighborhoods near my apartment that always intrigued me. It is on a dark side street, and there was always a group of men gathered outside. A gaudy gold-painted loin’s head is mounted above the door. To my eyes, it seemed to be something secret, something that was purposely underground.
I had two guesses of what this place might be: a run-down gay bar for old people, or a seedy mafia hang out. On several occasions walking home from a concert or gallery, I have been tempted to go in and see for myself what lies behind the lion’s head. Luckily for me, I didn’t follow my curiosity until I was with a good Turkish friend. He and I walked in front of it a few times, and his instincts were the same as mine: elderly gays and/or criminal masterminds. We were already under the influence of wine/beer/raki/vodka, so we didn’t have the best judgment.
We walked past the group of guys gather in front. They were a rough crowd, markedly different from the moneyed or middle-class guys that the trendy bars in the better-lighted streets nearby. My friend and I were out of place, but we pressed on. One look at me, and the bouncer/coat-check man asked if I were a foreigner. My friend, not so drunk as to lose his cleverness, jumped in with “I’m Turkish,” and we went into the bar.
The décor was a mix between ancient Egyptian kitsch and cheap, fake rococo. Is it any wonder that it appeared gay? However, after our eye adjusted to the dark, we saw that the back part of the bar was taken up almost entirely by women with dyed blond hair waiting for customers. Oh no, we misjudged – it’s a mafia/prostitute bar.
My friend, standing his ground insisted that we stay for a drink. He explained that as a proud Kurd, even a gay one, he wouldn’t be intimidated. So at the bar, we asked for a beer and a vodka. There were maybe twenty bottles of Absolut on the shelf. Only after the bartender told us that they were all out of vodka did we notice that all the bottles on display were, in fact, empty. We settled for a beer and headed to a booth. At that point, one of the blond women came to try and speak with us. My friend thanked the woman but, using his most upper class register, dismissed her. He explained to me that, as Turkey is still a very class stratified society, he was able to show with his accent that he was powerful and connected so that the bouncers wouldn’t try to exhort money from us (a sadly common racket in mafia run bars in Istanbul). Hmm linguistic anthropology is everywhere we look.
One of the common words for “prostitute” in Turkish is “Natasha,” obviously derived from the Russian name. At once funny (from a word-origin standpoint) and depressing (given the realities of human trafficking following the financial crisis in the former Soviet States following perestroika), “Natasha” is often applied to the many big-haired, short-skirted Slavic women, regardless of the way they make their living.
In the bar, I noticed a clue that this place might also be a strip club later in the night. Above the area where the women were seated, a platform and “stripper pole” were suspended in the air. Oddly, there was a mannequin saddled up against the pole and wrapped in what appeared to be christmas tree garlands.
In the end, we escaped unscathed, though we gorged for the price of the beer (roughly $15 for the local equivalent of a Pabst). I also emerged wiser from the situation, and will avoid exploring seedy places on my own.
I found myself using this phrase to many describe Istanbul to many potential visitors from the US and Western Europe. People seem fear that people in Istanbul will resemble Saudi Arabia, when in fact it reminds me of Budapest.
However, in spite of my self-made propaganda purporting the city’s open-mindedness, I have found that one group here is strangely conservative and closed to new ideas. Religious people? The elderly? No – the gays. I can’t recall having been somewhere with such rigid minded fags. The average gay guy here is very anti-bi, and (to my mind) abnormally focused on the appropriateness of top/bottom pairings. I have talked to lots guys here for whom being with a bi guy is an unequivocal deal breaker. Also, the seemingly undue emphasis on anal sex within the community is a little off-putting. A good conversation can come to an abrupt end with – “oh, you are also a top? Never mind.”
Given the widespread reality of vast numbers married bisexual men living secret lives with gay lovers, I can somewhat understand this attitude. But the fervency of feeling appears to come from some kind of gay socialization that stigmatizes having a non-exclusively gay sexual identity. To compound the prejudice, there are also overtones of misogynistic and anti-tranny sentiments. One can find corollaries in gay subcultures the world over. But it is interesting that this is the dominant view among Turkish (or, perhaps, just Istanbullu) gay men. Although I have not spent much time in technically gay venues, I have not come across many people that would subscribe to a more broadly-defined queer identity. Anyone else have observations? Comment!
