I had entered a reality similar to the gay pornos I watched as a teen-men gathered here to have sex with other men they didn’t even know-and I felt my nervousness evaporate. Strangers looking for cocks to suck surrounded me. While the twink sang “How Deep is Your Love” and sprayed disinfectant over any surface he could find, I looked around the room at grown men removing their suits and young guys slipping out of their sweaty boxers. He presented me with flip-flops and led me into a locker room blasting the Bee Gees. Once I handed over the paperwork, an Asian twink in a tank top approached me from across the lobby. The club returns the card to the patron when he leaves. Each member receives a card and must turn in the card upon entrance. The contract stipulated that to enter any Roman gay club, men must pay a membership fee and agree to keep the identities of the patrons a secret. The website said the club only cost 13 euros, but I handed him cash, anyway in return, he gave me a pile of paper thicker than the documents I had presented to enter Italy. He looked at Tarzan as if I had said I were Amanda Knox visiting Rome to murder a few sodomites.
Inside, I joined the line behind businessmen in suits carrying backpacks-the postwork closet-case crowd was just arriving, I guess-and examined the portrait behind the receptionist of two gay men jerking each other off in an empty disco, until the receptionist shouted at me in Italian. A Tarzan look-alike wearing nothing but a white towel appeared and gave me a once-over-to see if I was hot enough, maybe?-then opened the front door. Luckily, the sex club, as well as the Vatican-owned apartments, were located in Salustiano, a nice (read: bourgie) area that didn’t seem like it would hold any insane gays.Īfter a few minutes of procrastination, I swallowed my fear and buzzed the Multiclub’s entrance. We ran out of the building after 20 minutes because a guy claiming to be Gloria Estefan’s “background dancer” shoved Diva D, naked, into a locker.
The last time I had been in a bathhouse was my senior year of high school, when my friend Diva D and I went to one in Miami. We have also seen, little by little, the emergence of an accepting & tolerant mentality towards those in the LGTB community in Cuba.Naturally, when I visited Rome recently, the Multiclub was on my sightseeing list, though I was a little nervous. Havana, is specially what cities in the United States & Europe, pre-internet, once called “cruising grounds” - areas that have for the most part become quaint artifacts of the gay past, replaced by hookup apps like Grindr, Jack’d and Scruff. We have witnessed the evolution of a gay scene in Havana throughout all its om a very underground gay nightlife in Havana at the beginning (when illegal fiestas of diez pesos took place) to a very vibrant gay scene in Havana with plenty of bars, clubs & gay friendly places filled with the hottest crowd, every sigle night of the week!
To the present day, gay life in Havana and Cuba has only been moving forward! The fact that Cuba belongs to a geographical region infected with a very ¨macho mentality¨ & that we are one of the last communist countries in the world, would make you think that gay life in Cuba is a nightmare but nothing is furthest from reality! Then in May 17th of 2008 our first gay pride parade took place along calle 23 and then this day become the National Day Against Homophobia.
In June 2008, the unprecedented took place when the Cuban government set out a law allowing free sex-change operations to qualifying Cuban citizens. Ten years later, Cuban gay characters show up in a soap opera called “La cara oculta de la luna” (The Dark Side of the Moon).
#Gay twink sex club code#
In 1997, the Cuban Penal Code no longer applies to same-sex acts or homosexuality. In 1993, the release of the Oscar-nominated gay Cuban film Fresa & Choclate (the conflicted relationship between a committed Marxist student & a flamboyantly gay artist) raised a national debate about gay life in Cuba! Since the 1990s, Mariela Castro (daughter of our current president) became a campaigner of LGBT rights in Cuba & has been supporter of same-sex unions in Cuba & access to gender reassignment surgery. The 1988 version of the Penal Code of Cuba’s ARTICULO 303 was the last to apply specifically to homosexuality in Cuba. In 1979, the Cuban government partially decriminalized homosexuality in Cuba. In the 1960s and 70s, a few decades after the Revolution´s triumph, Cuban gay men were being sent to re-education camps to be supposedly rehabilitated. We believe that it is absolutely essential that you are aware of what to expect when you visit Cuba.īur first, some background history on gay Cuba: