Beulah Land

Tonight there was a big gay pride celebration in the square outside my flat. At first I was disenchanted with the whole thing. Throughout the morning and the afternoon the stage was full of unenthusiastic high-school bands and bjork cover artists who sang off key. They weren't even opening up the beer stands. Then as the evening set in they pulled out, what I assumed were the big guns. First off, a series of possibly the worst drag queens I've ever seen. I tried to convince myself for awhile that I was just too far up to witness their gender-bending magic. But soon than later it became obvious, namely when the headlining drag queen lost her wig high kicking to Selena, that this was in fact the worst gay pride celebration ever. Despite all this, I downed a bottle of cheap red wine and after eating some fish full of bones that Anton whipped up for about 4 Euro and watching the what I can only assume was a 10 years too late German rip off of Lords of Acid (complete with a silver body painted wig-crotch gangly front-man and a 210 pound topless fag-hag), decided to brave the increasing crowd of dolled up assholes and be disappointed with the whole affair, firsthand. Anton brought his camera along and proceeded to film a group of lesbian dj's who, not surprisingly, couldn't beat match some obscure happy hardcore remix of "comfortably numb" with "sexy back". At one point we were close enough to the sidelines that one of these shaved-head disco divas asked Anton if he has an AV cable so they could use his camera to switch from a live feed to cued up loops of the Bride of Frankenstein. I encouraged Anton to go upstairs and grab his cable, which ended up being of no use to them. But somewhere in between there they managed to put on some decent dj's and the square blew up to what we estimated from our terrace to be about 1500 people. We hurried downstairs and proceeded to dance our asses off to some pretty decent euro-house (isolee included). Anton, being the squirrely bastard he is, made his way up to the front and I followed suit shortly there after.

That is when I spotted him. The only good looking guy in the 1500+ crowd. Not just good-looking. This guy was fucking stunning. He looked like a blonde, pepper-bearded, Sean Astin (believe me, that guy is hot).
My newfound streak of optimism, however, stopped my straight-dar from recognizing him as such. Sooner than later his ever so mildly attractive friend leaned over to me and asked in Spanish three times where I was from. I succintly responded with a coy "WHAT?!" each time. When he finally switched to 'Merican I told him we were musicians from Ohio getting ready for our first European tour. As it turned out, he was Canadian. They all were. Him, his gorgeous friend, and their equally attractive lady friend with one breast exposed. As the night wore on (about 2:30am) they shut the square down and the crowd proceeded to mingle around, slowly heading off to the clubs. I managed to find our newfound Canadian counterparts and we resolved to find a decent club to go to, as our flat was void of any alcohol (in case you had forgotten, Anton and I are both constantly recovering alcoholics). Canadian gay (I forgot his name) who was the only one in the five of us who spoke Spanish, butterflied around looking for a cheap and decent after-hours to head towards. We must have been out there for over an hour dicking around and attempting to find an ok place to go. I spent the majority of the time talking up the overwhelmingly attractive Canadian man, quickly realizing how utterly straight he was. I managed to distract myself from this though, by reveling in all the hilarious hideous foreign gay dudes that were wandering around attempting conversation with us. That and with the fact that this small group of Canadians were the almost perfect answer to the American coming-of-age comedy. They had it all. The tall and intelligent gay dude. The oaf-ish, over-sized silver watch wearing, collar-popped purple shirt, jock. And the buck-some, extroverted vixen with an exposed tit. I was honestly, really enjoying myself.
After awhile it became obvious we were not going to get through this evening without either parting company or following them and a gaggle of giggling gay Europeans (who claimed to be Catalan but acted much more Eastern European) to any of the ridiculously overpriced clubs in the area (14 euro a head. BUT YOU GET A FREE DRINK *rasberry*). Anton and I resolved to follow them, but when we got in the door, decided it was probably not a good idea to blow out our bank accounts chasing tail we probably wouldn't get anyway. And slowly resigned ourselves to walking back, by ourselves, the block and a half to our charming flat, alone, and disenchanted.

And that's the story of how I, ONCE AGAIN, managed to pinpoint the ONLY straight man in the 1500+ crowd of gay men and women, and find myself uselessly infatuated.

Thank you, and goodnight.


Post-script: Anton wanted me to mention that we almost got rufied. Which basically means, he took a drink from some dude who spoke horrible English, and I got paranoid and and set it down on the concrete... and later drank the rest of it.