Queer and loathing in Las Vegas

Upon deplaning in Las Vegas the senses are immediately assaulted by huge backlit signs advertising Bette Midler, Elton John, Cher and Barry Manilow. Huge billboards flaunt the pecs of the Chippendale dancers and the men of Thunder From Down Under. Neon lights flash blindingly amidst architecture as demented and garish as any fantasy ever dreamt up by that mad opera queen King Ludwig II of Bavaria. As Midler herself says, “Does it get any gayer?”

In the1950s Las Vegas was segregated. Blacks could work and perform in the hotels and casinos but they were not allowed to be guests or to gamble. An upstart casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened quite a distance from the Strip in the heart of the black ghetto. The Moulin Rouge catered to non-white visitors and provided accommodation to headliners who were barred from white hotels even when their names were on the marquee. When Sammy Davis Jr. or Josephine Baker finished their shows they headed to the Moulin Rouge to eat, drink, jam and party. The high rollers and stars like Frank Sinatra and George Burns followed. Soon the Moulin Rouge was the place to be.

Customers from the mainstream casinos streamed across the tracks to the Moulin Rouge taking their dollars with them. The big boys were losing money so Las Vegas was desegregated almost overnight. And the Moulin Rouge mysteriously burned to the ground.

In 2008 the Paris hotel, at the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, launched an advertising campaign aimed at LGBT travelers. The campaign, bordering on softcore porn, features male-male and female-female couples in various romantic situations with the tagline “Everything’s sexier in Paris Las Vegas.” No one at the Paris so much as arches an eyebrow as a gaggle of gay – obviously gay – journalists and travel agents check in. Vegas with its endlessly thirsty slot machines and gaming tables is courting the pink dollar.

It all sounds marvelous but fab’s immediate concern is finding what Vegas actually has to offer queer visitors.

The tourist-oriented gay club scene in Vegas consists of one nightclub, Krave. Krave is just off the Strip and bills itself, with deliberate ambiguity, as an alternative club. Krave feels like a mini-fly with large video screens blaring the new Madonna video while go-go boys in tighty-whiteys gyrate onstage and on platforms. Large plush booths, reserved for bottle service, line the walls and ring the dancefloor. As with everywhere on the Strip, money talks.

Off the Strip several bars and clubs cater mainly to the locals and they turn out to be just as entertaining. Clustered on an intersection on Paradise Rd. nicknamed the Froot Loops, are Gipsy, Piranha, Free Zone, Buffalo and the LGBT bookstore Get Booked. It’s a mini-Church St. set in a strip mall.

Another strip mall northwest of the Strip is home to the Spotlight Lounge, the Badlands Saloon, two bathhouses, the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada and several dodgy businesses. The men at the Spotlight Lounge, many wearing their work shirts from various casinos, are delighted to see some fresh meat and are flirtatious in a low-key manner. The bartender jangles a cascade of bracelets every time he scoops up a tip and a man in a faded suit makes sure the Ralph Lauren label is always visible.

The Badlands Saloon entrance has a large sign reading, “The people who consort in this establishment lead a variation in lifestyle of which you may not approve. Therefore consider carefully before entering, because rude or offensive behavior will not be tolerated…and you may be asked to leave.” The kindly bartender explains that there have been problems with patrons of the strip mall’s two swinger clubs wandering in looking for a drink. He dryly notes that the swingers are cool with “girl on girl, guys on girls, girls on guys but not with guy on guy.”

The bartender also explains the strip mall phenomenon. It’s all about the parking. All the local bars are off the Strip and only accessible by car. We see what extreme lengths this can be taken to when Loosey Lips of the Sin Sity Sisters, the Vegas version of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, invites us to an event at one of Vegas’ two leather bars the Las Vegas Eagle. A long cab ride through a sea of box stores and suburban sprawl leads us to yet another strip mall. Men in harnesses and various states of undress spill out of a blackened glass door nestled between a tattoo parlour and a storefront church. The church is crowned with a neon sign advertising “Jesus Christo Es Rey.” The Eagle’s big draw is a very busy backroom guarded by a muscle-god right out of a Tom of Finland etching.

Local scenester Justin Hernandez of Empowerment, a safe-sex outreach program which also supplies the Adult Video News awards and the HustlaBall with condoms, explains that Vegas’ LGBT community is still in the process of coalescing. Despite a plethora of hotel workers, waiters, flight attendants, hairdressers, sequin sewers and showboys the Vegas gay scene is small with each bar having only one night where it is the place to be. Fortunately fab found that all of our cab drivers were happy to expound on the relative merits of the various gay bars. One driver and his girlfriend are regular habitués of the punk club also in the Froot Loops area. He also likes to accompany his lesbian friends to Charlie’s’ beer bust, all you can drink for $5, on Sunday afternoons in a so far fruitless quest for a ménage a trois.

Vegas is not really about clubbing: it is about gambling, excess and big shows. The biggest shows are by Cirque du Soleil and they are undeniably spectacular. The one Cirque show with specifically gay content is Zumanity which is billed as “the sensual side of Cirque du Soleil.” The male/male semi-nude pas de deux may have shocked the midwestern matrons seated behind us but was rather passé for most. The Vegas no-nudity laws made the overly muscled stripper somewhat redundant by denying the final reveal. Only the disturbingly arousing ode to autoerotic asphyxiation manages to deliver an erotic shock. However there is no denying that the partially clad men of Kà and the sublime O are eye candy of the highest calibre.

“Thanks Babs” The Day Tripper, who bills herself as an “outrageously gay aunt in Las Vegas,” is a fast-talking no-nonsense dyke who ships us out on a Pink Jeep tour of Red Rock Canyon. The topography is stunning and our guide, Michael Rossetti, provides a non-stop commentary. Despite the colour of the jeeps the company is straight-owned and operated. Rossetti was actually warned in advance that he would be driving a jeep filled with queers. He seemed non-plussed from a business point of view and personally delighted. Despite his butch khaki-clad exterior Rossetti is a sister whose husband is a showgirl and with whom he runs an exotic animal rescue operation.

Even the Liberace Museum has come out of the closet. Located of course in a strip mall the museum has been renovated and finally acknowledges the fact that Liberace was gay. The elaborate costumes and Swarovski crystal-encrusted pianos and cars on display are enough of a clue for anyone with even a touch of gaydar but the kitschy winking references in the gift shop make it obvious. Our official guide displays yet another rhinestoned atrocity and straight-facedly informs us that, “When you see a candelabra you think of Liberace,” while Darin Hollingsworth, the general manager of the Museum, gleefully points out a postcard proving Liberace’s penchant for young chauffeurs. Liberace is venerated as the highest grossing strip performer before Elvis but his appeal to middle-aged tourists is more valued than his camp status.

Gay artists may have built this city but their sexuality might offend those lucrative midwestern tourists. The Vegas Walk of Fame is a single inlaid star, and a garish gigantic faux-gold statue, dedicated to Siegfried and Roy whose stint at the Mirage ushered in the era of the Las Vegas spectacle. Yet there are no allusions whatsoever to their personal relationship — but then the tiger attack that ended their careers is tragically nowhere in evidence either.

Lucky Cheng’s Drag Show and Pan-Asian Buffet is filled with five bachelorette parties, an all female birthday party and a few straight couples. The host, Miss Conception, is delighted to find one gay man in the sea of estrogen and dubs him “my lone homo.” The crowd roars at the relentlessly filthy banter, snaps a lightning storm of photos and showers the lip-synching queens with dollar bills. Upon discovering we are from Toronto Miss Conception pulls us aside to issue a warning to our own Miss Conception. “She stole my name. She found it on myspace,” curses Vegas’ Miss Conception . “She’s a bitch but I’m not bitter. I live in this country and she lives in that one.” All is forgiven as Miss Conception ushers us out into the night admonishing, “Remember to drink and drive and have sex with strangers ‘cause you’re in fucking Vegas.”

Sex with strangers is actually a fairly easy proposition. The Strip itself resembles a never-ending spring break frat party for anyone old enough to drink. Hordes of tipsy tourists, clutching over-sized alcoholic beverages in kitschy containers, roam the streets 24/7 and among them are a surprising number of same-sex couples and blatantly cruising singles. The advertising slogan “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” seems to apply to sexual exploration as well. The two bathhouses, Entourage and Hawk’s Gym, are busy despite Vegas’ draconian sex laws. For a city that bills itself as a sexy destination Vegas actually has a very puritan streak. Hawk’s Gym’s Tom Conroy bemoans that, “no bathhouses are allowed in the state of Nevada, as well as gloryholes and poppers.” Conroy’s co-worker Marty chimes in that, “basically anything fun is illegal unless you’re straight.”

There is one gay hotel in Vegas, a $15 cab ride away from the Strip, in an industrial area of factories, storage facilities, down rent hotels and a massive straight strip club built to resemble a palace. The Blue Moon Resort is a charmingly schizoid fusion of a Bed and Breakfast, bathhouse and hotel. The clothing-optional three-story building is attached to a large kidney-shaped pool with a waterfall curtaining a hot tub. At all hours of the day there are men cruising the pool area, steam room and the video room screening “Educational Programming” — porn is also illegal in Las Vegas. The very popular screening room used to be on the third floor but was moved to ground level when the dilapidated elevator couldn’t handle the traffic to and from the pool. After the frills of the Paris hotel the masculine chocolate brown trimmings of the Blue Moon room are soothing though the faux-marble luxury bathroom is missed.

Most Vegas pools are unheated to encourage guests not to linger but rather get back to the casino to gamble but the Blue Moon pool is a perfect temperatue. It is refreshing to lose the constraints of a bathing suit and submerge. The other guests, clad mainly in designer underwear or fluffy blue towels, are conversational and many have made the Blue Moon their primary destination in Vegas. The Sunday afternoon BBQs are packed with out-of-towners and locals on day passes though one guest, enjoying a weekend of sex away from his home in Los Angeles, prefers the more tranquil times when “there are less drunks whooping it up.” It is a refreshing relief to be in an explicitly gay space after the heterooriented hubbub of the Strip. The complimentary continental breakfast can be carried poolside where luxuriating naked in the Vegas sun is encouraged. At 7am there are already many hungry men wandering around. A friendly gentleman from Arizona hoists himself out of the hot tub to offer his rather impressive erection and suddenly this is the most appealing breakfast buffet in Vegas.

Vegas is designed for one reason only and that is to vacuum as much money out of your pockets as possible. The sexuality of the wallets’ owners is irrelevant. Whether we will ever see an explicitly gay casino to equal the Playboy and Hooters complexes is debatable. Sin City’s sleazy surface is all hetro but beneath the flash and trash there is a strongly beating queer heart, and hardon, that is eager to play.

Drew Rowsome is an editor at fab and actually gained twenty pink dollars when gambling in Vegas.