We hate to be all Scroogey, come the Christmas season, but there’s some gay gripes we just can’t quite get over. Don’t act like you don’t know what we’re talking about, but if you truly don’t – it’s likely that you’re doing it!
By Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown
10. THE GAY GUY ON THE PROWL
Yes, that’s all of us to some degree. The majority of us though, manage not to make it look like a fevered, mind-altering madness. He idles round the periphery of the dance floor and lingers over you and your friend’s shoulders. You’ll slip off, terrified, but barely able to contain himself, he’ll stalk through the club again, in the hope he’s missed someone helpless.
09. THE MERRY TROUPE OF FAG HAGS
Friday nights in (the good) gay clubs often don’t have a spare brick of floor-space for us guys, let alone ten of your straight, straight-to-the-front-so-we-can-scream-at-the-Go-Go girlfriends. We try to tolerate them, we really do, but we have to draw the line at them wrapping themselves around us in the most frantically suggestive displays, when they’re not pinching and poking our abs and arses.
08. THE GAY COUPLE IN THE CLUB
Do you have to hold hands, wrap the spare arm around each other’s waists and wander aimlessly around the club together – or can one just hold some dance floor space while the other gets the drinks? Don’t give us evils and dig your faces into one another to be all territorial either, you’re assuming we give a damn about your other half!
07. THE GAY WHO THINKS YOU GIVE A DAMN
But you damn well don’t! We’re talking about the guy who you just casually asked how long he’s been in the queue for, and has now decided to make things awkward by going on like you were making a move. It seems he’s now trying to give you the ‘not interested’ signal in the nicest, curtest way possible… aaaaargh!
06. THE GAY HUMAN CIRCUS ON OLD COMPTON STREET
You know the coffee shop window we’re talking about, where just about every gay man in the country checks you out through the glass and contributes his opinion to the social circle in sitting. Cringe-limitation consists of hiking your coat up high over your eyes and charging across to side of the street where the Compton critics can’t trash you quite so well.
05. THE GAY ‘GOD HE’S HOT’ CHARADE
You may think you’re being discreet; pointing, panting and swinging your eyeballs right the way around your skull should a hot guy walk into view of you and your fellow pack of hyenas – but it’s actually kind of full on, boys. We’ve never known any man to approach a group willingly who look like they might muscle his head off his shoulders and share the meat between them. Be subtle..
04. THE VAIN BARMAN
You’re more likely to see him lick his own nipples and flex his muscle-filleted arms than knock you up the speedy Sambucca shots you’re still waiting to pay for two and a half hours after rocking up to the bar. The gay club barman got his job because he’s a good-looking boy, but he thinks that’s all the work involves.
03. THE STRAIGHT GUY IN THE GAY CLUB
The mysterious, muscled, tanned and strikingly masculine creature that stalks the length of the club soon throws back his mask to reveal he is nothing but a straight man with a thirst for unsuspecting females. Where better than the gay club? Who better than the gay man’s girlfriend? She’s off her fucking fringe, doing backflips in the corner of the club we’ve relegated her to – until straight man takes the reigns. ‘You can see me?’ She stutters. What often follows are all sorts of lewd, hetero acts that give us hives. Not on our patch you don’t, take your trade elsewhere, love!
02. THE GAY OBSESSION WITH LADY GAGA
Her songs play all the time and it’s just too much! When did Lady G shove her little poker face into the gay scene? When did she drive her disco stick straight down into the heart and soul of homo nightlife?.
01. THE APOLOGETIC GAY
Why does he bother, boys? He’s the one who takes his straight set of friends to the gay club, only to spend the night wincing and cringing, his head buried in his hands at any remotely homosexual expression or display. He likes to insist over and over again ‘we’re not all like this’ and how sorry he is for the fact that ‘everything’s just so gay!’ He’s desperately close to tears – treacherously disturbed by what a gay set-list the DJ is making them suffer, he fires us all with a get-hit-by-a-freight-truck look as he makes his way out. Yeah, off you pop awkward one!
