Stuff Gay People Like: New York City

Gay people have lots of anxieties: getting old, STDs, Republicans, belly fat and running out of vodka. But these fears, along with any others you could think of, are traceable to one ultimate and transcending concern – missing out on something, and, in particular, a party.

If keggers and dance clubs had never been invented, gay people would be just fine making their own entertainment through things like campfire circles and romance novels. But the world is what it is, and so the torture and dismay of every queer man is that an amazing social experience might be going on somewhere in the world where he isn’t.

For a substantial portion of the gay population, that experience is New York City, as pretty much anything that exists on Earth can be found in some form there. Living far from the largest city in the United States is like being locked outside the most popular, packed dance club in the world, forced to listen to the thumping bass through an eighth-inch aluminum door from the dark, rain-soaked alley.

Ten percent of central-city dwellers in America live in the five boroughs, but a much higher share of American television shows, plays, movies and news programs are set there, blasted to the suburbs and across the plains, ensuring that everyone has an idea of what New York City looks like. It adds insult to injury for those who are left out.

Gay people are said to like nice things – stereotypes insist that they love stylish clothes, fancy food and artistic furniture and appliances, which the Big Apple has in abundance. But what really makes them so well-suited for New York is that they also have a surprising tolerance for filth.

Six-foot piles of garbage on the corner during a strike? Don’t look at them! A subway tunnel full of rats and grime? What did you expect – red carpet? One-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot apartments with leaky toilets and cracked tile floors? As long as there’s room for a bed!

New York is a dichotomy in that you could step out of one of the fanciest hotels in the city into a world of traffic cones and dog urine, motor exhaust and the sound of honking horns. Middle America doesn’t understand the appeal – but that’s OK, because Middle America is mostly what gay people are trying to get away from when they go to a place like Manhattan. Gay people are nothing if not tolerant, and so New York City is exactly where they want to be.

El Dorado was a legendary city in the New World, thought to have gold-paved streets and unprecedented riches, enticing the Spanish across the Atlantic and into the Amazon Rainforest. Manhattan is El Dorado for gay people, full of legendary promise – skyscrapers disappearing into the clouds, 24-hour activity, bars on every block, crowds of creative and progressive good-looking young people, a gay population of over a quarter million, retail fashion that is always up-to-date, and not a social conservative in sight!

Like El Dorado, whether or not there is truth to the rumors or not is beside the point. It’s that when you’re not there, you’re missing it – regardless of whatever it is – and that needs to be fixed by going.

Stuff Gay People Like (SGPL) is a satirical/cultural column featured in Out Front Colorado. Visit the Facebook Page or view the whole list.

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