A series of media reports on the week of August 22 claimed that a planned gay rights protest in Varna had been cancelled by city officials under pressure from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The story was heartbreaking, enraging and untrue. No such protest, in which “you fight for something or fight against something” had been planned, according to Desislava Petrova of Gemini, a gay organisation based in Sofia. The Gay Days in Varna which lasted from August 24 to August 28 were meant to be “gay” in the classic sense of the word. There was a volleyball tournament, a transvestite beauty contest, a pool party, a boat party, an underwear party and every night there was a celebration at Varna’s “mix club” – whose logo honours homosexuality as well as heterosexuality – Alexander.
It is true that church officials sent out a press release condemning the activities in Varna. Petrova found herself on television not long before the festival in a Fox News-like confrontation with one of them, where she says her opponent kept repeating lines like “Gay people don’t exist”. And this, in turn, encouraged some hysteria and unwanted media attention. Some journalists popped into Alexander during the opening night’s kick-off party, taking pictures indiscriminately, frightening some of the less open guests. When the volleyball tournament was held on August 27, only about a third of the 60-some registered players showed up, many of the no-shows having called ahead, saying they were nervous because of the coverage.
There had been a few protesters – “like four of them” – at the beginning of the celebration, though they were gone by the time I showed up. Maybe they, like everyone else in Bulgaria, preferred to spend the last weekend of August on the beach. In the end, all the events went off fine, though the same faces kept showing up at each of them and the numbers at Alexander seemed to dissipate from one night to the next. Petrova was gunning for more people next year, now that everyone realises the controversy was a lot of shouting about nothing. For a country where homosexuality is not actively oppressed but not particularly accepted, it may have been a predictable outcome.
Alexander, which happens to be owned by a straight businessman who also runs several other bars and clubs in town, opened a few months ago. It has three floors, all designed with exquisite bad taste. There were slap-dashed depictions of classical homoeroticism and some small plastic Greek armour copies decorating the walls. There looked to be about three go-go boys, who weren’t bad at all, dressed in green-pastel-coloured translucent Egyptian pants, a brighter version of the ones worn by princes in the Arabian Nights stories. The music was all techno, including one composition written for the club itself: “Welcome to my club / Alexander / Start to shout / Start to party / Start to dance / Baby, what are you doing with my ass.”
Daniela, a 31-year-old jeweller in Varna said she liked having a mix club. When I brought up the fact that the club seemed more geared to gay male than lesbian sensibilities, she seemed to not understand what I was talking about.
Elza Pariny, a giant drag queen in a black dress and a blonde wig, is Alexander’s manager, the organiser of Gay Days, and probably the Black Sea coast’s most famous gay celebrity. It was under her auspices that the club held a transvestite beauty contest on August 25. Elza, as she likes to be called, stood at the side of the stage next to the DJ, while she announced each of the contestants.
The jokes were pretty awful. Miss Rose was “a breast ahead of others”. Later on, the transvestite IQ contest included some oldies but goodies: Why is the church so hostile to gay people? “Probably because they can only wear black dresses and they’re bored.” Are men who have sex with transvestites straight? “But of course.”
The highlight of the show was Miss Camilla Parker’s performance. She dressed as a nun and lip-synched to a song called Love is Free. Two of the go-go boys, dressed now in black briefs with devil’s tails attached, joined her on stage and let her pour hot wax from the small candles surrounding the stage on their backs.
I met Elza Pariny the next day at a gay pool party at Villa Aqua in Golden Sands. Villa Aqua, which serves as a hotel, a bar and a private residence, is decorated with a Parthenon-like structure, vintage cars and motorcycles. There were some young men in thongs hanging out around a small green pool – the transvestites out of costume. One of the hotel guests - a boy with an obnoxious smirk, who looked about 13 - recorded the whole thing on his digital camera. No one seemed to notice.
In deference to Elza’s wishes I won’t use her real name and I won’t describe what she looks like as a man. She has an affected kind of charisma, completely centred on the cult of her own personality, a Debbie Reynolds as rock star. She’s 32 and has been working as a drag queen entertainer for 11 years. When she began she used “bad make-up” and “cheap costumes”. But she kept doing what she was doing because the money was too good and well, “I was just too good”.
She never had any real problems with her job in way of harassment, and as far as most gay issues are concerned, the kind that Gemini spends most of its time arguing about, she seemed completely uninterested. “If gay people want to stay together or have children, there are ways to do it.” The controversy of the past week had left her nonplussed.
Peter Moews, 48, a German steel engineer who has been living in Bulgaria for six years, is the founder of Bulgaria’s first gay sports club, Tangra. He was, he says, the co-founder of Europe’s first gay sports club in Cologne in 1979.
He’s balding, but not bad-off for a man his age. He was confident enough to strip down to a white undershirt and black boxer-briefs at the underwear party at Alexander on August 26. He had some younger friends with him, including a young man studying to become a physical therapist who had an almost completely shaved body – leaving some irritated red marks – and wore a black Speedo.
There were some reasons why volleyball was good for gay people, Moews said. “You don’t have to make any contact with the other side, like in handball or soccer... It’s an elegant game.” And the last reason: “Gay people like to clap their hand” – and here he made a limp-wristed motion. The joke was that gay people have an inborn ability to play volleyball due to the way some tend to hold their hands.
Moews, like quite a few others, is quick to say that gay people are no different from anybody else, but such self-deprecating humour seems unlikely to ever go away.
The players were pretty unprofessional, though they weren’t bad for beginners and most were. There were a few balls that didn’t quite make the net and a few that nearly hit me on the sidelines. Petrova was there, goading on her team Cherry. People joked around about the week’s inevitable hook-ups and dramas. “It’s part of Gay Days,” someone said.
The tournament ended around 6 pm. Moews and company took down the rainbow flag and piled up their truck. There was another party at Alexander that night, and some celebrations the next day. And then everyone went home.
