I'm not a bear...
Jul. 29th, 2006 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fingertroubleI've decided I'm not a bear, I'm a gay guy with a longish beard and a belly.
Why? Because it's Saturday night and (as a man who likes to go places where bearish guys hang out) I have nowhere I can go on my own without having to put up with one or all of five things:
Musclebears: Sorry, ex-squeeze me, when was a gym ever a place that a food-loving weight-confident bear should ever go? And I don't mean for health reasons, you don't take that amount of health-destroying 'roids and pump that amount of iron just to make sure you don't get late onset diabetes?
Bad Music: Pounding pounding techno music. What has this to do with cuddly bears exactly? Or anything gay? Bad DJing and shit music has turned gay London into a subculture of all it's own. One of bad music, bad drugs and bad venues...vanguards of taste, indeed. More to do with making people move faster so they drink more water/alcohol.
Too many Drugs: Not prudish (hey listen to my podcasts to hear my monged out audio experiments), but if you have to munch a vet's weekly supply to cope with any of the 5 of these, or your existence, then it's not cool it's just sad. And having to put up with (admittedly muscly and butch) queens on ketamine stumbling around does not make my night.
SM: Nothing against SM, they seem much more accepting than the bear scene...maybe that's why the bears scenes outside of London get lumped in with them (and sometimes even in London too). Makes finding a shag a sort of ironic lottery though (ooh is he actually a SM bottom, the top from hell, or Colin Self?)
Attitude: Heh not a muscle-fairy or SM-god or rugby-shirted bearded twink, and happy with your body? That's your date out of the window then...conform to the uniform, goto the gym and put up with the bad decor and music to get a shag, otherwise there's the door.
I think we should create a new group of bearded gay men nothing to do with bears.
Who's with me?
Why? Because it's Saturday night and (as a man who likes to go places where bearish guys hang out) I have nowhere I can go on my own without having to put up with one or all of five things:
Musclebears: Sorry, ex-squeeze me, when was a gym ever a place that a food-loving weight-confident bear should ever go? And I don't mean for health reasons, you don't take that amount of health-destroying 'roids and pump that amount of iron just to make sure you don't get late onset diabetes?
Bad Music: Pounding pounding techno music. What has this to do with cuddly bears exactly? Or anything gay? Bad DJing and shit music has turned gay London into a subculture of all it's own. One of bad music, bad drugs and bad venues...vanguards of taste, indeed. More to do with making people move faster so they drink more water/alcohol.
Too many Drugs: Not prudish (hey listen to my podcasts to hear my monged out audio experiments), but if you have to munch a vet's weekly supply to cope with any of the 5 of these, or your existence, then it's not cool it's just sad. And having to put up with (admittedly muscly and butch) queens on ketamine stumbling around does not make my night.
SM: Nothing against SM, they seem much more accepting than the bear scene...maybe that's why the bears scenes outside of London get lumped in with them (and sometimes even in London too). Makes finding a shag a sort of ironic lottery though (ooh is he actually a SM bottom, the top from hell, or Colin Self?)
Attitude: Heh not a muscle-fairy or SM-god or rugby-shirted bearded twink, and happy with your body? That's your date out of the window then...conform to the uniform, goto the gym and put up with the bad decor and music to get a shag, otherwise there's the door.
I think we should create a new group of bearded gay men nothing to do with bears.
Who's with me?
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-29 08:46 pm (UTC)Well, a fair amount of what you say is probably true. As I'm not much of a socializer, and tend to hang with people who aren't much at socializing either, I'm not in much of a position to judge.
The bears I've known aren't like the above...but I have absolutely no doubt they exist in abundance... :)
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From:well...
Date: 2006-07-30 12:26 pm (UTC)The only thing I try to do myself is, from my position as a bear event organizer, give a space for everything. Yes we had 5 night parties, but at least one didn't want to be only "house and techno" and we tried to offer some day activities (pool party, tour) to not to make it just a nightly thing.
I do have a recent similar experience like yours. When I was on the bear float during Madrid gay pride, as one of the organizers I had to ask a guy to stop sniffing thing under the TV cameras.
My conclusion is that forget the scene: just hang with the ones you like. They might be harder to find but it's worthy. I have very interesting bear friends