A Gay Night Out

I apologize to any family members reading this where it makes you at all uncomfortable, but I think this is important to write about.

After work Michelle and I took the train to Hongdae, a notorious party district. We were aiming to go to one of Seoul's actual women-only lesbian bars. It's quite unique since South Korea is split pretty much 50-50 on whether or not homosexuality is completely morally wrong, and here there are actual women-only spaces. Stranger still, that countries with good stance on queer right usually don't have places like this -possibly because they want people to feel welcome at any bar. I also feel as though my generation of lesbians is more inclined to do away with the gender binary altogether, so admitting only women would reinforce structuring society are concepts of gender. But we wanted to see this first hand, since it might just become a relic of the past, or remain as a place made possible out of both pride and shame.

We first went to Paul's Kitchen. I have been once before. It's more of a pub style, good food and drinks. It's owned by two women who named the place after their dog. We ate there as to not arrive to early to the bar -since Koreans love to be out late, late, late.

It was really had to find, as most places are. This one had an added level of secrecy since they probably wanted to shy away from any signs indicating their clientel. It's accessible by elevator on the 8th floor of a pretty non-descript retail building on a main road.We arrived at ten. The lady at the desk asked for our IDs. Reflecting on this, we determined it was probably more to see if we were government certified women, and not really bothering with the drinking age.

When we got in it just looked like a plane bunker with a big DJ podium, a raised area full of reserved tables, a dance floor in the middle and a bar opposite the DJ podium. Oh and five people cause "Fridays are slow." We were advised to come back around midnight.

Leaving the club, we went to do what comes more naturally. We might not be night-life kind of people, but we certainly know are way around arcades. SO we toured four different arcades in the area before coming back just after midnight.

In the elevator we talked to a woman who expressed how she was thankful to find some English speakers. Michelle asked where she was from and the woman replied with Sweden, and just like that we all abandoned English for a bit.

Sure enough, it was packed. I then understood why they were checking IDs at the door, so many Korean lesbians just appeared as young boys. There were also plenty of people smoking inside, which didn't surprise me too much.

I could go into great detail with all the people we met, and how we moved around the venue, and whatever, but it's not really too important. What did strike me was how people we so excited about me and Michelle. Not for being foreign (we got a bit of that), but for being together. They wanted to know how we met, how long we've been together, who confessed their love frst (Koreans are dramatic like that), everything. One particulary drunk girl was sort of crying out to the universe asking for a relationship like ours before we helped her into a cab.

The whole experience made me thankful first of all, for Michelle. I am incredibly fortunate to find a person who has all the same interess as me, and a perfectly compatible life and attitude. But I was also thankful for my safety. I mean, I wouldn't call Australia queer-friendly by any means, but it's only the strange few who would go out of their way to make you feel rotten about yourself. In Korea, that's the majority of people, and the historically and culturally dominant opinion. I like that I could tell people that my mum met Michelle when she came to my graduation. They would be shocked, and then blissful that a world exists whee you can be out and accepted just like that. Thanks mum, you're a star.

We stuck around the bar until about 4am, they closed at 5am, but our aim was to get the first train heading back home. We hungout in a 24 hour cafe to warm up and wait for the subway. They don't run all night, the first on departs just after 5am.

On the train my morning alarm went off and it occured to me that I had been awake now for over 24 hours. Wow.

There was something surreal about passing by the school as the sun came up and going to bed after my second wake-up alarm.