A Fabulous of Gays

Ladies and gentlemen: I went to a gay club last night. I got home at 8:30am (staying out all night). I feel like a human being again.

That one night at a cheesy European disco should make me feel so fan-frickin'-tastic does sound lame, but I don't care. After months trapped underneath books and papers in my Cambridge bedroom, and now being sequestered in theaters and dormitories in Moscow, the opportunity to have an adult schedule makes me incredibly happy. Simply put: I felt right at home. In the midst of go-go boys, back rooms, cocktails, re-mixed techno beats and sweaty bodies, I got to call the shots (not curfews or class schedules). I decided to have the kind of Saturday night with friends in Moscow as I would have with friends in NYC.

Steven and Ian were the evening's captains extraordinaire. They are a fabulously British gay-married couple I met through an e-mail exchange with Erin, a wonderful lesbian at the U.S. State Department, who works with my ex Ken, a lovely American now gay-married to a German and living and working in Sri Lanka.

For gays, chains of this sort are quite common. They're how we survive.

First Stop: MakiCafe. I met the boys at the stylish bar of Maki at 11:15pm. Some vodka, introductions and off we go to 12 Volt -- the underground gay club that Steve had never been to and that Ian could not remember how to find (gay clubs are, afterall, still rather taboo in Russia).

Second Stop: 12 Volt. Back through some hidden alleyways, you wander to an unmarked doorway and ring a buzzer. After you're let in, you make your way down an ultraviolet lit staircase to an iron gate, through which you enter four very small, smokey, crowded rooms. Us four gentlemen waded through a sea of boys and girls to get to the bar. Another drink and it was time to go - too crowded, too young. We'll come back another night, but tonight -- we're off to 3 Monkeys.

Third Stop: 3 Monkeys. Steve is rather important. So much so, that he has a driver that his company expects him to use. So, Steve and Ian, Tom (the very cute, straight, 23 year-old British police officer "on holiday" in Moscow with his mom), and I piled into the polished black Range Rover and set-out to some part of Moscow. A couple hundred rubles, and into the pit of dancing men we lunged!

3 Monkeys was FUN! It reminded me of some of the clubs in DC that I would go to when I was first coming out of the closet in college. Nation, the 9:30 Club, Badlands ... oi, the memories and the fun! Sipping on some screwdrivers (vodka-orange) the boys and I chatted, met up with other friends, would run onto the dancefloor for certain songs, and otherwise just had a grand ole time.

But I kept looking at my watch.

I told Elena, the woman running the dormitory's door, that I was, ahem, "going to church for midnight services" and would be back by 2am. My watch read 1:30. Steven looked at me -- he thought 2am was a good time to venture home, too, and asked if I wanted to leave. I hesitated, and he offered his couch for the night.

DONE.

At about 2:30 Ian, Steven, Tom and I piled back into the black Range Rover and darted back to Steven & Ian's luxuious penthouse (well, it was a luxurious 5th floor apartment, but "pent" means five, right? AND it was the top floor of the building) across the street from Christ the Savior chuch. Some wine, some vodka, some episodes of "The Kids in the Hall," and all were ready to crash out -- not without throwing open the windows and letting the 3am bells of Christ the Savior reverberate in the apartment.

A wonderful evening. I sprawled out on Steven and Ian's remarkably comfortable Ikea couch (much more comfortable than my dormroom bed) and slept under a faux-fur duvet. HEAVEN. At 7:00am my alarm rang, and by 7:50 I silently slipped out the front door.

Moscow in the morning, like any major city, is magic. The dew rising, only a handful of cars on the street, the sun turning everything golden -- I keep thinking of Sky Masterson's "My Time of Day" from "Guys 'n' Dolls" on those early mornings. Gorgeous. I got on the brown line at Park Kultury (**not** the stop that was blasted) and within 25 minutes I was in a dormitory shower, preparing for Easter Sunday Mass at the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which was followed by a lovely day with friends and theater.

Fabulous.