Straight bait: A straight guy's first time in a gay bar

MANILA, Philippines - I don’t do this; I just don’t,” I thought, as I was going up the stairs to O-Bar in Ortigas.

 But I followed through anyway. In what was to be the ultimate form of pretension, I went to a gay bar last Saturday night, trying to look like a regular. Now, I don’t mean to generalize that all gay guys go about this way, but I went in dressed according to a well-Googled stereotype: thoroughly fashion-forward with a tight, pastel-colored polo tucked in a pair of tight jeans in the equally spurious hope that I could fake-score that night. Overkill in every way, yes, as I was with my tight friends — two girls and two guys — who saw to it that I wouldn’t be alone on such an evening.

The night went on with me gathering more observations: tighter clothing, gay-friendly rave anthems on rotation, and a certain common look on everyone’s faces that gave away their orientation. Some of them had a gentler way about them, the way they puckered their lips and lithely scuttled from cocktail table to cocktail table. In any case, the good sport in me mingled and smiled around — the strange part was no one was asking me to do this; I took it upon myself to blend the hell in.

YMCA? Yep, it’s a young men’s club to associate in, definitely.

I couldn’t go all the way on this one, though. If I had to keep something untouched, it had to be my un-puckered lips. If I had to keep a second thing untouched, it had to be my speech. I was going to be the gay guy a straight guy could loosely mistake for his own kind. After such a tedious mental bargain, I finally ordered Amaretto Sours for my friends and myself. The waiter seemed tarush (“rude” in gay lingo, as my friend would teach me) at first but quickly warmed up when we got to chat.

Before I could spell chos (“joke” as I learned) though, I found myself being introduced to three gay guys by a lady friend I had brought along with me. Again, the sport in me engaged them in small talk, the length of which saw the ice in my cocktail glasses melt before I could deliver them to my also-straight friends. To my slight surprise, they were dressed up less flamboyantly than I was. Eventually, I singled out Josh, one-third of their gang. For God knows what reason, I asked him if he “went here often,” to which he replied, “Yes, I come here twice a month. You should go here more often, Ralph.” Twice a... wow, that was pretty specific, man. At that time, a throbbing techno remix of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit had started blaring through the speakers, distracting us both. Who knew grunge would replace Kylie Minogue here? There was no shortage of wild lights there either; it was the sort of rapid-blink shimmer you would get blinded by on an episode of Jersey Shore. Such imagery could only

The poster pretty much says it all. The flesh and the fantasy meet in O Bar—if you swing that way.

be completed with the four muscled male dancers gyrating in their torn jeans atop their respective steel-fenced porches, installed on every high corner. I would’ve wanted to assume a second fake identity — a spy, perhaps, to tell myself this was all for work — but again, the flickering lasers kept me from overthinking anything.

As photos were taken and fists pumped the air, I made my way back to my friends, who looked every bit like they wanted to run away and stay put at the same time — an irony only gay bars can elicit. After showing ourselves out, I realized I actually broke my straight bar streak that night. But it all turned out to be quite the story anyway, something I can reminisce with the same tight friends a few years from now.

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O Bar is located above the Persian Square Restaurant in the Ortigas Home Depot Complex along Doa Julia Vargas Ave. in Pasig City. You can’t miss it.