viernes, 15 de marzo de 2013
Up until 1996, being gay in Romania was literally illegal, that should in itself paint a picture of what it's like to be gay in a city like Bucharest. As a gay man myself I have found that, though it's not as awful as some people paint it out to be, truth is that being gay in this city is no easy chore.
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Most of the gay guys you will meet in Bucharest are in the closet. Many of them are in some sort of partial closet where "some people know they're gay". There is only one gay dance club in this city, it's called Purple (it's in Piata Romana), there used to be quite a few but since so few gay guys go so much as near a gay club, they closed shop.
Attempting to hold hands with a romanian guy in public will be at best met with reservation. They don't do the whole "public showing of afftection" thing. Kissing is undoubtably out of the question and even a hug could be seen as something odd.
Being in the closet in this town seems to be the common denominator. In fact, if you ask a "partially openly gay person" if he or she is gay you will most likely be met with one of the many denials you will see.
As for how people "see you" when you're gay over here, well I personally haven't noticed the people chasing me down with torches but it's definetly not common for straight people over here to meet openly gay people. Something which many would argue is the reason why they find it so "strange" to begin with.
In my first two weeks here three people attempted to tell me that being gay was a "phase", something that would pass. It's hard for them to understand that for someone from western Europe, being gay is no big deal and not something "strange" at all.
Even when you attempt to meet guys in chat rooms you will find that most of them won't even share a picture of their faces. Yeah, that's how closeted they actually are.
As for romanian guys, it depends on your tastes, most of them will say they are both top and bottom or just top, percieving a negative stigma to being only a bottom. They tend to lie about their lives because of the whole being in the closet thing and well, i would guess everything else depends on your own personal experience.
