“I hope we will be in love in the future. “We met on my last trip here,” said Abdul-Azeem, who is 25, and spoke during a visit to the new Beirut Arts Center on a 90-degree afternoon in June. Instead, he said, he has been dating a Beirut man long-distance for the last nine months. While homophobia is not a rampant problem in Jordan, according to Abdul-Azeem, a gay man from Amman, he has not found enough openness to start a relationship with a man. I try to come here every year now, because it is a relief.” There’s only the Internet for me, to e-mail with other gay men. “I thought I would meet other gay men at university in Syria, but it didn’t happen, and then I thought as an adult man living in Damascus that it would happen, but it hasn’t,” said Asu, who was nursing a club soda at Wolf, a gay-friendly bar near the American University in Beirut. But even more than the partying, Beirut represents a different Middle East for some gay and lesbian Arabs: the only place in the region where they can openly enjoy a social life denied them at home.Īsu, a 35-year-old gay man visiting from Damascus who, like many men interviewed in Beirut, asked that his surname not be published said that only two close friends in Syria knew that he was gay and that there were no bars, clubs or cafes in Damascus where gay Syrians felt at ease. While homosexual activity (technically, sexual relations that officials deem “unnatural”) is illegal in Lebanon, as in most of the Arab world, Beirut’s vitality as a Mediterranean capital of night life has fueled a flourishing gay scene albeit one where men can be nervous about public displays of affection and where security guards at clubs can intercede if the good times turn too frisky on the dance floor. “O.K.,” Bertho said to no one in particular, “we should probably leave soon.” He lifted his T-shirt, which read “Maniac 65,” to show off a sliver of his toned, tanned torso, and flashed a dazzling smile.
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We’re gay, we overcome things.”Īt that moment Bertho’s boyfriend, Rob, a very young Justin Timberlake look-alike, stumbled in from a side bedroom.
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“Some of my friends are still scared to come here, because of the wars, and because it’s harder to be gay here than in Europe,” he said. In his 40s, wearing a white T-shirt and khaki shorts, Roberto said he was surprised by the brio of Beirut compared with gay life in Rome, and said he was going to spread the word back home.
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Tipping back a Red Bull on the sofa was Roberto Boccia, who was in from Rome for the event. “I’m just like, ‘Wait and see, you’ll like it, you’ll like it!’ ” “So many questions today about what ‘gay Beirut’ is like,” he told me.
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Bertho had been picking them up at the Beirut airport since morning, and he looked exhausted as he handed out fistfuls of condoms to the dozen men in the room. Scores of gay men most of them “bears,” a term used the world over for heavyset, hairy guys usually older than 30 were coming from across Lebanon and the Arab world, as well as Argentina, Italy, Mexico, the United States and elsewhere. The last question came from Bertho, a 28-year-old Lebanese tour operator who was the host of the main event that Thursday night in June: the Bear Arabia Mega Party, at the Oceana resort about 30 minutes south of Beirut. from Bardo, a gay bar here, going to be spinning? And did anyone need condoms? Would a certain 20-something from West Beirut be at the beach party? Had the two men from Cairo arrived yet? Was the cute D.J. the air was awash in cologne, hair spray, cigarette smoke and gossip about the night ahead. in Bertho Makso’s room at the Bella Riva Suite Hotel, and by 9:05 p.m.