SWINGING BOTH WAYS

Simon Blow compares and contrasts

heterosexual and homosexual meeting places

DO homosexuals have a better time than heterosexuals when they go out at night? Puzzling over this, I picked two nightclubs — one for men who like women, and one for men who like men — to see how romance (or should I call it lust?) fared for the two inclinations. For my straight evening, a friend said I must go to Mot- comb's in Belgravia, and offered to accom- pany me.

We met at a modish spot, Black's club in Soho, where my friend assured me it took a very long time to pick up a girl (although, apparently, there is a room at the top of the building where sex has been known to have occurred). Black's was full of rather nondescript people who, apart from their fashion-conscious garb, could Well have been bank officials. But perhaps there is some lack of insight on my side, since I have always been disturbed by how unappetising trendy people look. Motcomb's was quite another matter. We went first to Motcomb's bar, which is separate from the nightclub. No dark bar h. ere with candles to announce intimacy. It is brightly lit and the intimacy is self-evi- dent on arrival. 'I like you,' said a woman with a strong Russian accent. She pinched my cheek. She was like a diminutive Lara and wore a brown cloche hat pulled down to her ears. Other women were hanging around, either talking to middle-aged men in suits, or drifting from group to group, seeing where the potential lay. An Italian lady came in with a basket of red roses wrapped in silver foil. As my friend filled me in on the pick-up situation, I took in the sub-Cubist paintings fastened to the aquamarine-coloured walls. The petite Russian woman — Ludmilla came over and sat on my friend's lap. The Italian lady, resting from her flower duties, now sat down and started to talk about her life. I asked her a few questions. She didn't have sex any more with her husband — I assumed that after producing five sons she'd had enough. 'No, it's not that,' she said. There was a pause. 'Well, actually, he s gay. But I don't care. If I want to do it I can do it with myself.' By now, I'd taken the hint that the con- versation was to be reasonably straightfor- ward throughout the evening. After a while we went round the corner to Mot- comb's nightclub. Ludmilla came with us. She was extremely skittish and put her arm through mine. She was looking for- ward to something afterwards: her hus- band had died young. But the Algerian manager of the nightclub wouldn't let her in. Apparently last time she'd been there she had got drunk and insulted the man- agement. So regretfully we had to leave Ludmilla on the doorstep, while my friend and I plunged down the stairs to the night- club area.

At Motcomb's the women were not slow in coming forward and the men easily out- numbered them. In Motcomb's dark cav- ern — I felt like Orpheus descending to the Underworld — the bar was well propped up by females with enough mas- cara and glistening lipstick to make a harem. But most did not seem that happy with the men they were talking to. I wasn't surprised. I asked myself why it is that het- erosexual men make so little effort with their appearance: a suit is simply not enough. However, I did see a girl with her arms around a podgy, weather-beaten man wearing black-rimmed spectacles. Or was it the size of his wallet that attracted her?

A girl came up and asked me to dance. On a small, polished dance-floor, seductive- ly lit by dancing rivulets of orange light, two girls danced together. A short, bald-headed man with an extremely shiny pate was staring into the eyes of an equally short girl. My friend told me that all sorts of things could happen in this area. He suggested that men could undo their trousers and press their erect members against a girl's stomach — or wherever. In expectation, the disc jockey had put on a record by an ensemble called the Weather Girls: 'It's Raining Men, Hallelu- jah'. But, alas — or not, for the women — I saw no erect members.

`Come and talk to us,' a thirty-something woman leaning at the bar with a red-head- ed friend, said to me. She complained about the lack of good-looking men. 'Most of them tonight are over the hill,' she said, twinkling flirtatiously at me. 'Are you mar- ried?' she asked, giving a bit of a wiggle with her hips. 'Yes,' I lied. 'First time round?' she queried. 'Why do you ask that?' I said. Her eyes were now making signals. 'Well, you look as if you could be a wanderer, perhaps.'

She pressed a Motcomb's matchbox with her telephone number written on the inside into my hand. I drifted off, saying I would call her. At the far end of the bar my friend had been talking to a pixie-faced blonde girl. 'I've told her you're gay,' he said. `So where did that lead?' I asked. 'Oh, now she thinks I'm bisexual because I'm here with you.' I told him that, for the purpose of my evening's researches, ambiguity was better.

The badly shaped heterosexual men con- tinued to hang around, and I was fascinat- ed to see a fat young man encased in a grey flannel pin-stripe suit executing the most dazzling dance steps. I asked him how he kept his balance. 'It's rebound, not rhythm,' he said to me with great self-assurance.

By the early hours nobody on either side appeared to have scored. The bald-headed man with the shiny pate went up the stairs with his girl. My God, she's accepted him, I thought. But then he came down the stairs again — alone. He went to the bar and ordered a drink. I'd always thought that women didn't mind too much about a man's looks, but from my night at Mot- comb's I realised that they did.

I ended my evening talking to the fat young man and his two thinner young friends, also in suits. They dealt in insur- ance in the city and spoke south London English. They thought that my friend and I were fashionable — neither of us was wear- ing a suit — and, because my friend looks rather raffish, into drugs. Which, I must quickly explain, he isn't.

Two nights later, I was at the Fridge in Brixton. On Saturdays, the Fridge is the venue for one of London's most spectacu- lar gay nights. It is aptly named 'Love Mus- cle'. This night was an evening to remember, because gay love was celebrat- ing St Valentine's Day. At a quarter to eleven there was already a lengthy queue outside. Here, to my relief, there was not a suit in sight. Faded jeans and leather jack- ets over vests barely concealing worked- upon pectorals was the view I surveyed. And everybody was eager to be admitted to the vast emporium where that night desire, in the name of St Valentine, was on offer.

Lipstick-red, heart-shaped balloons floated in bunches above my head. The black interior of the Fridge, with its scaf- folded tiers, was so garlanded with bal- loons that blue and white ones, joining the floating hearts, were strung like paper chains above the dance-floor. An hour after I arrived — that is, close to midnight — the crowds were tumbling in. Raunchy figures, some with body art and many stripped to the waist, were pounding their feet to techno sounds. This noisy music overrode all conversation — mouths moved, but you heard no voices. And there was a constant flow of movement, of groups of gays breaking up to take to the dance-floor, or groups watching from the tiers, their bodies shaking as if electroni- cally controlled by the dance-floor beat.

I wandered about the tiers and gazed at the dancers. Everywhere desire was con- templating achievement. I noticed a cute, fair-haired boy looking at me. I looked back. He left his group and came up and started talking. He was French and came from Bordeaux. His English was good. He bought me a drink and, as the music was drowning our voices, I said we should dance. I'm no good at body gyrations, and I don't follow the gay hand language you have to be a clone for that — but by imitating others I managed to cover up my deficiencies. I kept wishing they would play a Charleston, because I learnt that dance when I was ten and can do it really well, seeing myself as Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers. But there is not that kind of music history at the Fridge. Everything is immediate — now — because gays don't care for the past. The past is where you grow old, and gays don't do that.

I kept Motcomb's in my mind, visualis- ing a room now crowded with saggy-faced men and short-skirted girls — or women — stubbing each cigarette out a little more fiercely as Mr Physically Right did not turn up. I thought if the girls at Mot- comb's could be boys they would get what they wanted here. 'You're very attractive,' the French boy said to me as we came off the dance-floor. 'Really — I know — I mean, thank you,' I said. 'You have a love- ly smile,' he went on. I said I couldn't stay too long — the Fridge was closing at 7 a.m. and I wasn't up to an all-nighter. He asked for my telephone number and said he would call me when he got home.

The crowds were now so thick that mov- ing around them required the suppleness of a gymnast. Then suddenly the stage cleared and the male strippers came on. I managed to move forward through the crowds to see the finale. The music pound- ed to a climax, the near-naked, sun-bed- bronzed bodies of athletic young men were twisting like snakes around one another. The spotlights went full on, there was a spray of electric silver rain — like sparklers fanned out — from either side of the stage, and ten or more naked bodies were high- lighted in movement. Each boy's penis was enlarged by a leather penis-ring placed tight above the testicles. For a few seconds this erotic tableau of youthful, horny mas- culinity was held to full voyeuristic view, then darkness fell again. There was a fierce energy at the Fridge which skilfully covers up the underlying sadness of our human lives. At Mot- comb's, the sadness never left the surface. I got home from the Fridge at three in the morning, and was soon asleep. At a quarter to five the telephone rang, half waking me. It was the French boy. I was too tired to answer and let the message run. He blew a kiss and said that he would call me tomor- row. I haven't heard from him yet. But then gay life is fragile. And perhaps I should call the girl from Motcomb's. She may need comfort more.

Women at present, it seems, are having a hard time finding men. Was Anita Loos right when she said that today she would rename her bestseller Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen?