I don’t know what I expected from a gay bar—the closest I’ve ever gotten to being in one was when I went to a drag show in Beirut, Lebanon, and still, the place was filled with large groups of friends and a few straight couples, and I suspected the only people there who were queer were the performers themselves. Two and a half years later, I again found myself far from home, and it is only this distance that can remind me that people don’t have to live in the shadows if they don’t want to.
Vietnam proved to be a wonderful place of chaos and serenity, where you could walk the streets of Hanoi in the midst of a million scooters swaying around you, wondering how you’ve not been hit yet, and then ride one yourself for a few hours and end up in the middle of nowhere, the most beautiful ‘nowhere’ you’ve ever seen.
Five hundred miles south of the capital is the ancient town of Hoi An: a gem, a little hidden gem as an old French guy described it to me. And he was half right. A gem it really was, lined with historic buildings coated in sunflower yellow with lanterns dangling in-between and a river that cuts through the entirety of the town, always filled with little boats carrying tourists who joyfully light candles and set them down the river. But it was anything but hidden. During peak hours, you could hardly walk through all the crowds, and it didn’t matter if it was a Tuesday or a Saturday, people were always there.
After a little while in Hoi An, I was fortunate enough to meet a Vietnamese girl who grew up in America and returned to reconnect with her roots, and she offered to show me around. After spending a few hours together, we were both comfortable enough to tell each other that we were both bisexual. In our accepting atmosphere, which was a complete novelty to me as I never disclosed my sexuality back home, she mentioned that a new gay bar had just opened in town and she asked if I wanted to go there. Very gladly, I said yes.
At 10 that night, I rode my bicycle out of the touristy old town into a hidden street where I saw a neon sign glowing in the colors of the rainbow. I parked and went in. The place was full but quiet, men sat around in groups around tables or at the bar and chatted over drinks. I saw my friend sitting with four guys and she waved to me. Very timidly, I said hi and introduced myself to the two Australian men, one in his thirties and one in his sixties, the American guy in his thirties, and the Filipino young man who was the most energetic. My friend and I exchanged looks and I saw worry in her eyes. She suspected I might be out of my element, and she was right.
I turned to the bartender and ordered a gin and tonic. I heard a faint French accent when he spoke and said merci when he gave me the drink. With a big smile, he asked me if I was French, and I said no, I’m Moroccan. We exchanged a few words about life in Vietnam before he had to go back to work. I asked him for an ashtray, and he handed me one completely in black with a big cock erected in the middle of it. I sipped on my drink and smoked my cigarette and dropped the ash on the tip of the ashtray’s cock.
My friend suggested we all move to a couch, so we followed her. Once we sat down, the old Australian man turned to me and asked me if I wanted a cigarette. He then pulled out a pack of Marlboro Gold with two cigarettes left. Out of politeness, I said, “You only have two left,” and he said, “It’s okay, I just bought another pack.” And after a small pause, he looked at me and said, “I also have another pack here,” while grabbing his cock and laughing.
We smoked our cigarettes in quiet afterward. He thought he made a move too quickly and I could see he was trying to fix it, but I was just amused. I had no interest in meeting anyone, I was only there to observe and listen. A couple of minutes later, he turned to me and said, “We all have that one man in our lives, don’t we? The one we know would be perfect for us but for some reason it never works out. Who’s that for you?” And I thought about it for a minute but could not think of anyone, so I said, “I have yet to meet him.”
He wanted to tell me about his. They met in college and decided to drop out and join the military together. He spoke to me of their love in the closet, hidden away from a society that would’ve sent them both to jail. He spoke of him as Baldwin speaks of Giovanni. Abruptly, his story cut to twenty years later and his unnamed lover is married with a kid. It had been twenty years since they last spoke, and they randomly stumbled upon each other online and decided to catch up. With a sad smile, he told me about how great of a woman his wife is, and how much fun he had hiking with his kid and getting to know him as one of his dad’s old military buddies. Before they said goodbye again, his old lover turned to him completely unprovoked and said, “You know I can never leave my wife.”
He spoke to me about how much progress he had made in those twenty years and how he learned to let go of the man he thought was perfect for him, and how much damage that single sentence inflicted. Four years later, he was with me in a gay bar in Vietnam getting ready to see him again in a month, and as he told me how they’re just good friends now and nothing more, I saw the battle in his head raging through his escaped excuses as he justified himself passionately for something I perfectly understood.
I don’t know what I expected from a gay bar, but I’m happy with what I got. I saw love, I saw humanity in its most beautiful form, feeling down to the depths of its heart, and I saw cute guys flirting with each other all night. May y(our) love be easier.
Herrak is a writer, musician, and photographer from Casablanca, Morocco. He is also the Social Media Coordinator for The Gay & Lesbian Review.
