My roommate Livia and I looked out on to the crowded dance floor below us, where several women were dancing around a pole on a raised stage.

‘Are there a lot of other women here?’ she asked.

We squinted into the darkness at the three people leaning provocatively from the pole. Aside from them, there were no women in sight. Then came a wave of realization: Those on the stage were not women. We were at a gay club in Beirut.

The New York Times published a travel article several years ago saying Beirut had become a safe haven for gay Arab men and developed a large underground gay community. Elsewhere in the Middle East, this topic is incredibly taboo, and gay and lesbian people are relegated to finding love through impersonal, sometimes very dangerous, online networks, a gay blogger told Time Out Beirut magazine in its May issue. Even in Lebanon, being gay is still a punishable crime.

The valet at a swanky bar — clearly with a sense of humor — directed us to the gay bar after telling us the club Basement, to which we’d intended to go, closed months ago.

‘Do you want to go to Milk?’ he had asked.

As we took in the rare scene, cages hanging symbolically from the ceiling, the name ‘Milk’ took on a lewd and appropriate meaning. We decided to get our two free drinks with the 20,000 LL entry fee and then reassess. The cover charge comes out to about $13, and considering the price of a beer at our hotel bar is about $4, the two 12-ounce cupfuls of stiff gin and tonic made the cover fee quite reasonable. At Chuck’s Cafe back in Syracuse, this would cost more than $16 each, plus a $3 cover charge.

Sober and very cautious, we began to dance. Hulking men in tight T-shirts looked around at us, appearing just as confused as to how and why we were there. In the United States, women swarm gay clubs, but here I had an uncomfortable feeling we were intruding on secret and sacred space. We dealt with our shock and awkwardness by gulping down our enormous drinks and getting lost in the darkness pulsating with techno music.  

The legal drinking age in Lebanon is 18 years old, but many bars and clubs set their own age requirements. Several popular night clubs have a 21-and-older policy, others wishing to cater to a mature, professional crowd may go even higher. Of course, Milk’s clientele exemplifies the ineffectiveness and dysfunction of Lebanese law. Since Livia and I met at our hotel that week, we’d been checking out many of the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood. Milk was the first that checked that we were at least 20, perhaps a hint they offered something a bit more risque.

With a gin-induced boldness, my roommate turned to the stage.

‘Let’s go,’ she said.

I already felt like a spectacle, so our conspicuous and raucous stage presence seemed to say, ‘Yeah, we meant to come here!’ And immediately, the young man dancing left his nightlong station at the pole and clapped us up the stairs as we joined him.

The reservations and worries I had about going to a nightclub in a country where I can’t walk halfway down the street or even onto my balcony without men gawking at my blatant foreignness disappeared.

A young Lebanese man, born and raised in Miami, who we met at our hotel, complained earlier in the night that everyone stares at everyone, whether a foreigner or simply a stranger in a different neighborhood. He said not to let it bother me. But at this club, two girls couldn’t be more invisible. Rubbing elbows with sweaty men lost any suggestiveness. I was as innocuous and unassuming as a puppy, and every once and a while one of the guys would grab our hands and spin us around or offer us his lit cigarette. 

The club had two bathrooms, but I was not entirely surprised to find they were both marked for men. We took turns waiting with our backs to bathroom lineup of busy urinals, marveling at the oddness of the situation.

The apex of the night was finding myself dancing Dabke, a traditional Lebanese step dance (similar to Greek circle dances), arm-in-arm with my roommate and a handful of Lebanese Canadians, who promptly asked for our numbers and insisted we get lunch. Then one of them dragged us to the bar, and hoisting ourselves up, we ended the night with nearly half the men at the fairly small club smiling up at us or clapping in encouragement.

Utterly exhausted, sweaty, but absolutely elated, I fell into bed at about 4 a.m. What a bizarre but wonderful first night out. I offer advice to young women who are in Beirut for the first time and searching for a safe but fantastic night out. Start with a gay club.

Beckie Strum is the editorial editor and a senior newspaper and Middle Eastern studies major. To read more about her experiences in Beirut, Lebanon, where she is a summer intern with Time Out Beirut magazine, visit her blog at beckiestrum.wordpress.com. She can be reached at rastrum@syr.edu.

Published on June 6, 2011 at 12:00 pm