The Holy Trinity

The room was packed with gyrating bodies, the air smelt of stale smoke, beer and sweat. Trapped near the speakers, Def Leppard pounded a hole in my head—all so Ajit could eye his piece of candy. The guy was sullenly turning the tables and pretending to ignore him. I made a getaway to the loo.

Imagine how surprised I was when a doe-eyed lovely sidled up to me and handed me a tissue to hold. She patted her face with water, smiled and left without reclaiming her tissue. I was about to throw it away when I saw she had scribbled her name and number on it.

I instantly recalled what a friend had once told me about Voodoo: “If you get picked up, you’ll be paying for the night.” Since I had all of 100 bucks in my pocket, and I’ve never had to pay to get lucky, I decided to chuck the tissue.

That was perhaps the most overt come-on I’ve ever had on a night out. On any given queer night though, the ratio of women to men is abysmal. The women who make the evening come alive are usually the dancing queens, who are pretty hot too. But I haven’t ventured into trans territory just yet.

Blame it on Cinderella timings, limited resources, or queer girls being plain party-shy, getting a dozen women together under one roof is like preforming a miracle. So where does a woman go, for her dose of wine, women and song?

Mikanos in central Mumbai, with its innocuous ‘ladies night’, has had some interesting results. The intention was to charge no cover for female customers who came in before 11 pm, and even throw in a free drink. Later they’d let in the guys at almost double the cover. And usually they’d turn up since they now had no dearth of women to hit on.

A dyke couple slipping in as two straight gal pals would often go unnoticed. That is as long as you didn’t liplock in public as one very attractive Parsi girl once did with her leggy, long-haired girlfriend. I was on my second screwdriver and she was on her fourth sangria—like I said, a drink usually helps.

Suddenly the girlfriend, who’d been setting the floor on fire, came and plonked herself on the Parsi girl’s lap. Soon the two were entwined and I just had to take my action elsewhere.

It was, however, at the tiny, often unnoticeable nightclub opposite Chowpatty that I made my great foray into the land of the tender trap. I could’ve blamed it on the near-perfect selection of dance music—Saturday Night Fever followed by Queen’s I Want To Break Free, and then updated to Sean Paul’s Turn Me On proved to be quite an intoxicating mix.

The white rum helped raise the momentum a few notches, and before I knew it, I had said the words almost on bended knee to the cutest girl I’ve ever dated. It’s another thing that she didn’t laugh in my face and actually said yes. And the rest, as they say, is history. Naturally, my fondest memories will always be of this pub on the corner of Marine Drive.

Onto Kolkata, where if you don’t speak Bengali, it might be a little hard to chat up the kurta-clad, jhola-toting, one-time commie chick who’s just caused a crick in the neck from trying to peep at her. However, at Dolly’s tea joint in south Kolkata, there’s nothing a cup of hot Darjeeling can’t iron out. But I’m told that apart from the odd private parties (with rum and Coke), there isn’t much of a queer nightlife in the City of Joy.

In Delhi, farmhouse parties rule the roost. A jeep packed with gals, pals and pretty boys makes its way down the dusty roads of Mehrauli. The farmhouse, tucked away in a leafy lane, can be located only by following the music—a mix of bhangra and hip-hop. Hammocks and heavily wooded areas are the prime make-out spots.

Unlike in Mumbai, where people from various economic strata can be spotted bopping the night away, the class distinction at Delhi parties is more in place and pretty apparent. “It’s mostly upper middle class men with their lower middle class boys,” claims one Delhi lad, disdainfully.

As far as Delhi girls go, they never kiss on a first date, although I do know a few who will make an exception.