ok, so you’re tired of the internet and manhunt and craigslist.
you’re fed up with weirdos asking to pay you for sex. or getting rejected by guys who clearly aren’t as hot as you are. or scheduling a sex date with what turns out to be the guy across the hall in Creswell who you destroy in Halo even though he plays like ten times as much as you do. doesn’t he know where the melee button is?
it’s time to, in one evening, meet a bunch of reasonably attractive gay men who could conceivably have sex with you.
it’s time to go to Atlanta.
see, nobody in Athens will have sex with you without vetting you through all of their friends. you should too. because fuck if you want to see that person every other day on College Avenue, at Smoothie King, at Genco’s, at Bourbon Street, at Starbucks, at Jittery Joes, and have it be really awkward and think, “that’s the guy who i tried to fuck but then i couldn’t get it in right away and that made me a little nervous because i thought maybe i won’t be able to get it in and then i got a little bit softer and that made it even worse and then it was like only half hard and it definitely wasn’t going in by that point and then we laughed and said maybe we’ll try tomorrow and then we broke up because he wasn’t over his ex yet and didn’t want to rebound and so now there’s this guy walking around Athens who i hope he isn’t telling everyone that i’m a bad top cause i’m normally great at it but it was just that one time and now there he is and he just finished ordering a smoothie and we haven’t talked in three months so i don’t know if i’m just supposed to nod or smile or wave or make small talk or make slightly meaningful small talk or make plans to hang out that neither of us actually plan on fulfilling, so i guess i’ll just look at him and mirror whatever he does but now i think he’s doing the same thing and now we’re just staring at each other and goddamnit we’re awkward.”
but you don’t have to worry about this in ATLANTA. when you’re in ATLANTA, they don’t worry about you showing up wherever it is people in atlanta hang out in the daytime! (the IKEA store? trader joes? you never go there!)
but Hayden, you say, Atlanta is scary! the parking spots don’t have lines! i can’t move between bars without driving! i’m so used to asking people what their major is that i don’t know how to make small talk anymore outside of a college town! people are older than 25! and a coke costs five dollars!
these things are all true. but that certainly isn’t stopping you, because you’re tired of the internet, and summer time means Blur is still a PWTGB. thus, my advice for touring Atlanta.
BLAKE’S – if you’re like me, your first question upon arriving in Blake’s is, why is there a line to get into the bathroom? is Blake’s like a bookstore? does it suddenly make you have to take a shit?
they are nice bathrooms. but the urinals are conspicuously free.
but the reason people are waiting in line to use the bathroom with the locking door is because it’s not classy to snort coke off a urinal partition. also, you can’t fish an ecstasy pill from your underwear out in the open, as somebody’s likely to steal it.
i mention blake’s first because my readership consists of a lot of 21-28 year old twinks, and 21-28 twinks love meeting other 21-28 twinks, and they all love blake’s. so try it out. you can compare workout plans, difficulties using your college degree to find employment, or contemporary Modernist methods of decorating your studio loft such that the furniture arrangement makes it feel comfortable, efficient, and still masculine.
MARY’S
mary’s is the more fun, more trendy, more hipster, equally young counterpart to Blake’s. you’re far more likely to have an interesting conversation here. mary’s has a lot of straight people and women, so it’s not like walking into kmart with a blue light special on hot attractive gay men with visible abdominal muscles. mary’s isn’t a meat market like blake’s is. people at blake’s want it. preferably in the ass. did i mention they’re all bottoms? (probably why i never get laid at blake’s.)
i’m sure there’s plenty of you out there moaning about superficiality, or whatever, but the bars in Athens are reminiscent of Mary’s. which is a bad thing. you’re driving an hour and a half to see something new. or you’re in Atlanta because you want to meet a bunch of hot gay men who you could make out with and are easily ignored later. if you wanted fun and interesting conversation, you’d go out in Athens.
mary’s does have a stripper pole.
THE EAGLE
a bear bar. there’s a store in it that sells sex toys, if, god forbid, you left your nipple clamps at home. there’s a cage, but i never see anyone in it, because it’s in a terrible location off the dance floor.
if you feel like dancing with your shirt off and don’t want anybody judging you, the eagle is great, and has no cover. the fun result of this is a place that looks like a truck stop with a bunch of shirtless, hairless twinks on the dance floor. madness!
BURKHART’S
burkhart’s is most notable for having parking. like an actual parking lot. in front of the bar. with lines demarcating where the cars go. you just drive in, and park! and you’re done!
this joint is interesting because there’s no bar mentality. you walk up and talk to someone as though you were on the sidewalk. people at burkhart’s will tell you they have a boyfriend before you spend thirty minutes trying to flirt with them. people at blake’s will wait until after you’ve met their parents.
ATLANTA BAR MENTALITY
there’s lots of other bars. i’ll write a blog about more of them maybe later. but first, i would like to discuss the atmosphere of an Atlanta gay bar, so that you don’t go in unacquainted.
1. your chances of finding someone for a meaningful relationship are ridiculously low. like so low, that if this is your only goal, your chances would be better off if you spent your gas and drink money to hire a personal assistant in india to scour Missed Connections on your behalf. you should only go because you want to dance and party and have a fun time.
2. don’t let people who are attracted to but who you aren’t attracted to monopolize your time. some guys have a schtick where they come up and pretend to be shy and act as though you’re the one person who’s so attractive that they’ve left all fear behind to come up and talk to you and aren’t you an asshole if you don’t talk to them for a while. this is a lie. shy people don’t talk to you. shy people send over a friend. the person who’s talking to you is a bullshitter who goes there every night and gets shitfaced and harasses every guy who walks in the door. ignore their hateful death stare and spend your time talking to people who are either intelligent or attractive. if you find someone who is both intelligent AND attractive, and they don’t already have a monogamous boyfriend, then you’re probably hallucinating from the drugs you fished out of your underwear an hour ago. go drink some water you drunk bitch.
3. learn some jiu jitsu. a bar full of mostly polite people can be ruined by a couple strangers who try to forcefully grope you. if you just up and punch them in the face, you’ll get thrown out of the bar. it’s much easier to just grab an individual finger and pull back on it. you can do it low and without much movement, so it’s just as invisible as their wayward hand. you shouldn’t actually break their finger, but they’ll get the point. if you’re not comfortable doing that, then tell a bouncer (not the bartender) immediately. do not let strangers you aren’t interested in grope you, even just on the leg or the chest, because they’ll get more aggressive and you’ll really have to clock them. this might be shocking, but it’s not exclusive to gay bars–it’s the world straight women live in all the time.
4. prepare to get rejected. i’ve heard firsthand accounts of guys getting rejected because… their shoulders were too big, too much hair on the chest, too little hair on the chest, weren’t vegetarian, weren’t vegan, were vegan, didn’t have a job, had a corporate job, sold drugs, didn’t do drugs, too many sexual partners, too few sexual partners, too tall, too short, had red hair, weren’t latino, had a fake tan, were too pale, played warcraft, didn’t play warcraft, were atheist, weren’t atheist, dick was too big, dick was too small… a bar is very difficult, because you win or lose in a matter of seconds, based on what you look like and how witty you can be in under five minutes. you’ll probably fuck it up the first fifty or so times. don’t worry about it. it’s not how you’ll be meeting most of the people you end up dating anyway.
