Gay Leipzig

Friday night I decided to scratch my gay itch—but this time instead of going to gay Berlin, I decided it was feasible to take a late train to Leipzig, enjoy the gay night-life and then take the first train back on Saturday morning.

And it was. I took the 21:50 train from Weimar arriving in Leipzig at 22:40, before walking 5 minutes through the Leipzig Construction Zone and past the New Orleans American Bar that I spent a few hours in last December.

G-Garage (pronounced “Gay Garage”) was easy to find, and I found myself with a gin-tonic in only a few minutes. Now, the first time you enter any club or bar, it’s always a bit disorienting: Where are the toilets, is there more than one bar, where do people sit, what are the norms, etc. Naturally, the shy introverted person that I am, I took the most visible path from the bar to the seating area, where I got the last free bar stool and enjoyed my gin-tonic.

Age wise I was above the mean, but thankfully I was not one of the outliers. There were several outliers at the club during the slow part of the evening. I settled in and found the small cozy nature of the club to be quite nice. For one, the guys in Leipzig understand hair. Well over half of the guys had not just cute hair, but extremely attractive hair that looked fun.

Once I finished my gin-tonic, I ordered a Beck’s and then needed to pee. The men’s room was the first and only place I found overt sex in the club. For our enjoyment, there were televisions over the urinals playing porn, with the sound audible. I wondered if there was lesbian porn playing in the women’s toilet, but I did not investigate.

Eventually the dance floor filled up, although it was hard to tell if people were in the middle of the dance floor dancing intentionally, or if the late arrivals finally pushed people into the middle of the dance floor because there wasn’t any more room around the perimeter.

Funny enough, the DJ, who was good (and far better than any DJ I’ve suffered through at Test-IT ETC in Erfurt), reminded me of my trip to Berlin’s SO 36 last Saturday night. Some of you might recall that in describing SO 36, I said:

…at the gay clubs I’ve visited in the United States, I’ve been able to understand (if not comprehend) 100% of the lyrics. Elsewhere in the world, I’ve understood at least two-thirds of the lyrics—in Rotterdam (fun), Erfurt (not), and London (depending)—as I’ve danced the night away….

This track record was destroyed at SO 36: I could only understand 40-50% of the lyrics. Everything else was in languages I didn’t understand (and not German). Given the club’s target audience, I suspect I was passively learning Turkish.

At G-Garage, I could understood 100% of the understandable lyrics. The only lyrics that were not in English, were not in any language whatsoever. Madonna, and the other greats, ruled the night.

My biggest mistake of the night was leaving at 2:15. I’d some how gotten it into my head that a trip to Cocks—the gay cruising bar of Leipzig—was necessary. It wasn’t. Actually, it was dull, and I ended up leaving just after 4, which left me over an hour before my train—so I did something I hadn’t done in a long time:

I went to McDonalds.

The Leipzig Hauptbahnhof has a 24/7 McDonalds, and I was able to get three hamburgers for 5:10 train home—and I might note, it was the only food option open.

For the record, I was in bed at 6:45, and I think my gay itch has been scratched for at least a few weeks.