ExposedNYC

You know, sociology should be taught in bars. It’s a fascinating study. I got glimpses of two VERY different scenes tonight.

I started out at Connelly’s, one of my favorite Irish pubs just off of Times Square. I was sitting next to a group of women in town from Texas who were drinking their faces off and hitting on the bartender. Luckily, I’d been going there long enough to know that not only was this useless, but that if it did work out the whole bar would hear about it the next night.

I considered myself lucky to have not fallen into bed with a sweet talking Irish lad, closed my tab, and headed downtown. I met up with a friend I used to work with about an hour late for a birthday party (because no one actually shows up on time). Unfortunately, I was wrong, and I just barely missed the one mutual girlfriend we share before she called it a night.

To his credit, the birthday boy, not a straight man, chose a bar with mixed company. The first guy I met bought me a glass of champagne, and I assumed it was in order to hit on the guy I was talking with. When he struck up a conversation with me, I took it with a grain of salt.

Five minutes later, he excused himself to the bar to grab another drink. As I watched with him easily chat with the man next to him, I was reminded of the wide scale of gray in between sexual orientation.

In New York I have met straight men who are adamantly against gay men, okay to tolerate them, consider them close friends, swing both ways, or are in fact homosexual. This has been an incredibly eye-opening experience, and forced me to question, unfairly I know, every man who is comfortable in the setting of a gay bar.

As I sat in the corner and watched the guy who bought me a drink head to the bar, cozying up next to a group of women, I became intrigued. I watched him order four shots, without consulting them, and then offer them up to the group of girls. When they refused, he turned to the next closest flock of women on the dance floor. I guess guys in a gay bar are just as indiscriminate as a straight bar, if not more so.

Share This