It was a direct result of the disquietude I felt in contrast to the beautiful women I found myself both appreciating and envying. Being a bisexual woman in a city teeming with pretty girls is a dizzying cocktail of the two emotions—constant, inevitable comparison and unalloyed admiration.
The minute she said it, it was unassailable. It was the palpable discomfort of watching beautiful strippers, servers and sex workers—all pulled into this life for their youth and male appeal—navigate these spaces with a practised smile and empty eyes.
It was the unshakeable disconcertment of navigating a city curated for the male gaze as a woman who is equally attracted to women, but is also one. It is a hard look at gender, race and culture politics in live action, too ubiquitous to go unnoticed.
The nuances of that are a whole other jeremiad that deserves its own discourse. What I tried to stay focussed on was parsing its impact in the context of my sexuality alone. Peeling back the layers of how this city—tailor-made for male pleasure—translated for me as a woman who had a pivotal thing in common with them: being attracted to women.
I had, thus far, visited these gogo bars with my partner a cis-het man as part of our perusal of the city and its streets. It allowed me to sit back and notice the women in these bars from an observable distance while giving me an invisibility cloak. I was not a potential customer so I lost lustre. A creepy man, I am not: and that spurred me to try it.
