July 10, 2011
When David Mason Chlopecki first suggested sometime last year Georgi and I join him for Pride in Madrid I think I eagerly said yes, quietly thinking to myself, absolutely not.
But then, as I often do, I began to reconsider my almost always initial internal reaction to everything, saying no. Georgi had lived two years, while at an American college, in Madrid and I know he was dying to go back. Suddenly David's Facebook photos of hooker-looking friends in Jeremy Scott for Adidas and overly-muscular bodies, an initial turn-off, became a turn-on. I love David's influence on me. He's made me appreciate all over again the style and glamour of nightclubs, hookers, go-go dancers, and nightlife culture. I thought it was dead in NYC. I thought drugs had killed it. But, no, it was there. I had just traded in a yuppy lifestyle of Michelin-starred meals and weekends upstate. David's allowed me to see, that in ever small doses, much fun exists in the world after dark.
So we acquiesced. And I agreed to go to Madrid for Pride, a place I thought was circuit boy heaven. Which it is. But it's so much more. This was my second trip to Spain, having first spent a week in Barcelona and a week in the Canary Islands with Ben in 2005. This trip was different. Then I was discovering Europe. It all seemed so new. Now, having traveled extensively the last 3 years, I know what I want to get out of a city. And out of Spain I wanted to dance. I wanted to drink outside while the sun set. I wanted plates of cheese and jamon iberico. All of which I had in spades.
Georgi is the perfect travel companion, besides the fact that he sleeps too much (I am always itching to get out the door). He could sleep all day! But other than that traveling together is easy for us. As we love the same thing: food. We ate a lot in Madrid, a place I thought I'd absolutely hate the food. But gazpacho and grilled pork and chorizo hit the spot. I discovered a new love for beer: so refreshing in Spain's heat hovering above 95 each day we were there.
David's friends, of which one could argue are on the circuit, were darling. The allure of being surrounded by gay men from all over the world is exciting. I made new friends from Lebanon and Germany and Australia and Brazil and Sweden and South Africa. We attended a cocktail party, where several of us took over a back room, aptly titling it the Interior Illusions Lounge. Georgi, and David, seemed outright shocked by my popularity in this circle of muscled international hunks. They assumed I'd annoy or combat. Just the opposite. I often say, as I have here repeatedly, that I collect friends as others collect stamps. Or MP3s. Or glass owl figurines. And in Spain I snapped them up. And when my discombobulated looks, my signature mixture of tattoos exposed, neon-hued shoes, primary colors, a few plastic accessories, and some type of street element (this trip, the fitted baseball cap) brought to mind Ke$Ha to many of my new (girl)friends, I took it as a compliment, and not a slap. Ke$Ha's the type of American export gay guys love. Tacky, romantic, fun, loud. When I talk to these people from far-off lands it's always easy. Everyone loves NYC still it seems (thanks for that, Lady Gaga). But when they probe deeper asking where I am really from, and I admit Baltimore, it elicits the same reaction everywhere in the world: the singing of "Good Morning Baltimore!" I only wish they'd reference the film, not the play. But I'll take it.
I shopped a bit too, buying, yes, Jeremy Scott for Adidas. We danced a lot. Saw friends from San Diego and New York and neighbors in our building (one of which removed me as a friend on Facebook, which really makes me proud for some strange reason). Sunned by the pool during the day, sipped more beers as the sun set, danced before it rose again.
I got a rush walking down this one block in Madrid. It was the walk from our adorable hotel, Hotel Urban, to Chueca, the gay ghetto. Along this block female prostitutes wearing neon-pink spandex, Cheetah-printed pumps, and over-processed hair stand, dozens, some aggressively courting male patrons. I was shocked! I knew that prostitution was legal here. But these hookers where mirror images of those I used to see on The Block, the infamous Baltimore strip. They could have been right out of a John Waters movie (I'll get to him a bit later).
And I thought that though the guys I was surrounded by were all doctors and designers and bankers, that they were not too dissimilar from the hookers. With their American B-ball caps, gym shorts, sports jerseys, and Jeremy Scotts, they too, like the hookers, were just wearing a uniform. And it's a cute look, borrowed from hip-hop and African-American sports stars. A nod, I think, to America. And even I, someone typically found in Paul Smith, enjoyed dressing the part.
As the weekend ended the Europeans fled the city to their hometowns to go back to work. Georgi and I too were supposed to go, having booked a trip to Oslo. But weather reports suggested 62 degree highs in Norway and rain, so we abandoned our flight and hotel, booked 3 more nights in Madrid, and stayed in Spain. We relaxed. Saw Guernica! Visited Georgi's old school (which was so cute to see him show me the place he came as a poor Bulgarian student). And ate more ham and cheese and paella and gazpacho. Sun-kissed and well rested we headed to Berlin.
As soon as we landed I knew I loved Berlin. I had been romanticizing the city since I visited in dreary winter several years back with the McLoughlin twins. But now it was summer and 80 degrees and lush and green. There's a perfect order in Berlin. Signs for streets, lanes for bikes, merchandised shop floors make everything tourists do easy. I was struck by the architecture: so modern, much glass, but not in a vulgar display of glass towers many other cities have adopted. In Berlin order exists, with an irreverent and downright dirtiness existing under a layer or two.
We visited the Bauhaus Archive, a small, but powerful museum, dedicated to the likes of Breuer and Schlemmer. I bought 15 posters in the gift shop. We saw the Reichstag and the Holocaust memorial and ate sauerkraut, sausages, and cheese dip with pretzels. We drank wheat beers and had dinner with Dr. Jon, an American living in Berlin, who we met at our hotel in Madrid. We were taken to a Berlin bar, a laboratory of sites and sounds, where I was shocked and delighted by the bizarre display of unadulterated and brazen acts of the dwellers.
The next morning when I rented bikes with Bille Ray Martin, the German singer I've known for a decade and a half, we laughed about the night before. She told me she has friends who have moved to Berlin just for the underground. Just then we rode past Tom's, the legendary leather bar, and we both wondered aloud what it would have been like to have been in Berlin during the days Freddie Mercury frequented the haunt. If alive today, methinks, Freddie'd have a fondness for boys with Jeremy Scotts on.
Over rose and more sausage Billie and I laughed out loud on a corner of a quiet and manicured neighborhood of Berlin. Our loudness was off-putting to some society ladies, who Billie said live in the adorable little neighborhood. Over heated discussions of Gaga and German culture (Maraschino cherries in a martini, what type of people do that!?), we settled on the one religion we both practice: the cult of Warhol. We ranked our favorite Superstars, both choosing Holly Woodlawn as our favorite, me choosing Candy Darling as my second fave, and Bil insisting on Jackie Curtis, the "brains" of the group according to her. We spoke of our love, and the depth of Warhol's diaries. We laughed at the idea of carpeting the streets. We both admire Warhol's belief that everyone in this world, from the drug addict to the pop singer to the transexual to the hustler to the business tycoon to the society doyenne, is special. Everyone is worth knowing (collecting as a friend), and that life is a better experience when mixed with high and low. Both in fashions, art, culture, and people. Andy's image followed us that day. His face hung on a shop sign steps from the cafe where we dined. And later, on our bikes, we passed a hotel filled with Warhol images. I hopped off mine and made Billie shoot a photo of me and Andy, my number one role model.
At lunch we spoke of John Waters, whose book Role Models I've read on this trip. She loved A Dirty Shame, Waters' last film, a bomb, which admittedly I think is his worst film. I adore Cecil B. Demented, which Billie cannot even sit through. But we love Waters. I wonder why I have never met John Waters. Though I am far an A-list Hollywood type, I have met my fair share of influential homosexuals and I do find it odd that we've never, not once, crossed paths. I really want to know him. I have a lot to say to him.
But I guess some role models go unmet. Like several of those in Waters' book.
Packing dark bars with museum archives and fancy restaurants, dance floors with rooftop pools and architecture, I saw high and low on our rainbow tour of Europe. And though Madrid and Berlin's designs influenced me in great ways (Nouvel's Reina Sofia, type/fonts used in Germany's street/store signs) it was the people I remember best. David's insistence on me acting younger, Billie's obsession with Andy, Georgi's companionship and sweet caresses, Fred and his fits of sweetness, Graham and his cute little dance. And those I met, Ryan, the acupuncturist, and Princess Jasmine and Wine and Omega, an African-American make-up artist living in Cologne. Dance floor companions. Drinking buddies. And the servers. And the bartenders. Go-go boys. Cops. Faces on the train and on this airplane
Faces, familiar and new, are what I hold on to. Like Andy's stare from above, they're hard to forget and are the sweet treat of the luxury of travel.
