(Day 8) Newtown and the gay side of Sydney

(Day 8) Friday 9^th March

I was feeling somewhat better today; the banging headache, aches and pains and fluctuating body temperatures had gone.  I still had a blocked nose and a sore throat though.  When I get a sore throat my voice becomes low and husky, people say I have a “sex voice”.  It is a shame that I only sound sexy when I look and feel like shit.

Tonight I was meeting up with the German and Finnish girl from next door and then meeting up with a guy in Newtown that they met at Mardi Gras.  They met him after they asked if they could share the box he was standing on to see the parade.

Newtown is an inner city suburb approximately 2.5 miles south-west from Sydney centre.  I had heard that Newtown has a large gay and lesbian culture and this definitely turned out to be true.  Newtown on a Friday night was like a big gay party town, people where filling up every bar that was open.  Looking around it seemed that at least 2/3 people in Newtown were gay.  The best way I could describe Newtown is it’s like a gay version of Newcastle (if you have ever been to Newcastle). 

After spending some time in various bars and on a roof top bar we decided to head into Sydney and to go to a drag club to see a drag show (lol).  The place looked like a retro disco from the 80s with coloured glass tiles and a large mirror ball hanging from the centre of the ceiling.  The stage was covered in cheap looking red fabric with a red stage curtain drawn closed.

We had met up with some other people that the guy from Mardi Gras knew and we were in a fairly large group sat at the table nearest the stage.  I was worried about being sat so close to the stage because I thought the show might involve audience participation.  I had horrible images in my mind of one of the drag queens coming off stage, picking me and dragging me onto the stage to do some dancing.

It was interesting to see some middle aged guys on their own sat around the club waiting for the show to start.  They looked somewhat uncomfortable, but wouldn’t you be if you went to a drag club on your own to see a drag show?  They didn’t really look gay either, I wondered if any of them had wives at home who didn’t know about their husband’s little guilty pleasure?

After waiting around for like an hour word got around that there were no more shows tonight and that we had arrived just after the last show finished.  As you can imagine I was somewhat relieved, although I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.

Lasers

After the nonexistent drag show we headed off to a dance club and this was definitely the gayest club I have ever been in.  At first it seemed like your normal dance club with a big dance floor, a few platforms for pole dancing and some lasers beams shooting across the ceiling but I quickly noticed that most of the guys were taking off their shirts and were going around topless.  It was a bit intimidating to see all these guys walking around topless because they all seemed lot bigger and more muscular than me.  I felt a bit weedy and small compared to all these well tanned men walking around showing off their over developed pectoral and abdominal muscles.  After an hour or so of drinking and awkward attempts at dancing I left the club with the girls to go back to the hostels.  I had an invitation from one of the guys to stay and dance with him and to “see where the night would take us” but I told him that I would not make good company.

Tonight was...interesting.  I find the atmosphere is always good in gay clubs because people are a lot less pretentious or judgemental.  

No, only the guys go around topless.

An alright night, but this really isn’t my scene.