The Rubulad of Cali, Colombia

One of the things I've been trying to figure out here in Cali is how to have the kind of nightlife experience that I like, which has changed a lot over there years. I used to be a nightclub person, and over time, I started to prefer bars with a fun atmosphere. I'm not sure if that's because I'm getting older or if New York made me do it because all the nightclubs seemed to be closing down and no good new ones were taking their place. Whatever the mysterious reason, that's the way it is. But when I do want more of a party, in New York, Rubulad (and other parties that wish they were Rubulad) was what I went for.

Rubulad in the Church

If you're not familiar with the magic of Rubulad, allow me to explain. It was a group that moved around locations throwing kind of free-for-all parties with electronic music. My two favorite locations was an abandoned church in Bedstuy and a big public school in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They sold cheap beer (PBR.... the champagne of hipsters) and liquor, people came in costumes (which they often got a discount for doing), and there would sometimes be art installments. I remember my friend Frank and I sitting entranced in a room of the school location where they were projecting cartoons on the wall while someone played discordant piano music live.

I know. You're gagging on how hipstery and pretentious this is, but I loved it.

So I didn't quite need to find anything similar here in Cali, but well, I did. Alexis, a friend of mine from a neighboring city, came in to visit. We we're supposed to go play Tejo, a game where you through a rock onto another sort of rock and try to get an explosion to occur. It's a traditional game in Colombia. But when we got there, all the fields were busy, so we just drank beer, watched, and decided what to do next. After some aimless wondering around San Antonio and Alexis looking through Facebook, he told me about a party called convulxion, and while I wasn't super excited at first, I didn't have anything else better to suggest, so I thought, "Why not?"

We killed a bit of time in Granada, going to Cool (which was barren at 7:30) and then to Imaginaria, which is always fun to visit for their cocktail list. By the time we finished there, we walked to the bordering neighborhood, which is where convulxion was.

When I got inside, I was pleasantly surprised. It was a giant, two story room. There was pool, which no one seemed to take advantage of, a DJ booth with crazy scenes being projected behind it (lots of 90s and Nintendo nostalgia mixed with utter randomness) and some nice music playing from the first DJ. There was a makeshift bar in the back where they sold Poker (kind of the PBR of Colombia) and shots of whiskey. For a small charge, you could bring in your own bottle of whatever from the outside, which we eventually did. The placed also reaked of pot. Which is fine with me.

The people were almost all alternativos, and the second DJ who played was absolutely amazing. By the time she was well into her set, everyone was moving, somne stoned, some drunk, some both, many half-naked and everyone dripping in sweat. I looked around and realized there I was: In the midst of beautiful anarchy, where no one was normal and no one had expectations of how you should act, a place where being foreign was no more out of the norm than having your whole body tattoed or your face pierced. And I finally got a moment to relax.

convulxion

How to Have Fun in a Strip Club

This is what I thought to myself
once I got onto the bus.

So last week I had to make a decision: Stay in New York for pride or take up my friend Mike's offer to go down to Washington D.C. to visit him and my friend Jose. Since this would be one of the last opportunities I would have for a while and also that I'm liking D.C. a little more than NYC these days, I decided to go down for a short trip. I left at 7 a.m. on Friday after a very drunken night which included meeting fellow Fulbrighter Derek, a failed underwear party turned Eagle code night with Frank, and absolutely no sleep. As a pride weekend miracle, the Chinatown bus I took arrived at its scheduled time: 12 p.m. I was soon in Mike's apartment, napping it up, and when he arrived, we decided to go to a strip club called Secrets.

I've been to a strip club before. It was actually the same one I went to about two years ago with Jose. It was a disappointing experience. There weren't a lot of dancers, and the ones that were there weren't that attractive. To be quite frank, when you see a striper and think, "I've had sex with guys more attractive than you, and it didn't require sticking dollars down his pants and/or sock," you're a little demotivated to do more than pound back some drinks to make your visit worth it and then move on to the next bar. But Mike told me that this was the one night of the week that they dance without underwear and so I thought, "Well, at least there's that." And we went.

This time was a bit better. There were a wide variety of guys, all very good looking in their own way, and a bunch of people hanging around, drining and staring at the naked men. This alone provided about five minutes and six seconds of entertainment, so I already considered it an improvement over last time; however, after those five minutes, I was back to square one. "You're all pretty, and that's great, but now I want to go do something else." But Mike, on the other hand, was just starting up.

If you know me, you know I love talk to people. And if you don't know me, I just told you. I like poking at people and getting them to tell me the story that they're dying to tell someone. It's not as hard as it sounds because I, in turn, am dying to hear it. It's the best part about traveling. When you tell someone you're just passing through, they tend to consider you low risk because chances are they'll never see you again. That's how, the next day, I got Cheryl to tell me about the time she was held at gun point and had to fight off a potential rapist. Sounds dreary but combine that with a digression into Buddhism and you have a conversation about the triumph of the human spirit.

So Mike, being Mike plus three glasses of wine, started striking up conversations with all of them about their lives, if they were in school, what they're studying, and all sorts of other stuff, and that's when it dawned on me: Dude, just talk to them like any other guy you would at a bar. You know, where you're motivated by how attractive they are and that's what gets you to approach the person, but then once you get them to talk to you, you let it all fly to the wind after that because if you're letting a perfectly good human interaction be dictated by nervousness and fear, what's the point? Sure, sure, sure, they're not even wearing underpants, but why let that get in the way of you getting them to tell you an interesting story? It may sound totally bizarre, but it works for me.... because I'm bizarre.

Because, you know, nakedness...

So I talked to one guy about his bodybuilding competition coming up, to another about when his high school science teacher came to see him strip, and then another who didn't have much interesting to say but kept groping me so I called it a win because after that many beers, I don't know if I could still be considered the best conversationalist. (Sorry, I am a male after all.) And I ended up leaving having a good time after all.