Even in the face of machismo, LGBT rights and culture are flourishing in Mexico. The Mexican Constitution was amended in 2001 to prohibit discrimination against sexual minorities, and in 2006 civil unions were legalized in Mexico City. The city’s Zona Rosa is a hub of homo activity and the area around Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara is considered the “gay belt” for USA and Canadian gay tourists. In many of the small cities around Vera Cruz there are gay bars with Pride Flags blowing in the wind. In 2007 the country starting allowing same sex conjugal visits in their prison systems. Part of legislative changes and progressing governments is how people act out their lives on the street, and I had a chance in Mexico City to witness a small glimpse of Mexican LGBT life.
Sitting with perfect posture in a single seat facing the train wall, Cleopatra-style eye makeup and spiky hair like a funky lady from Sherwood Park was a young Mexican man. He, like me, was on the pink line of Mexico City’s metro. He was wearing what appeared to be a pair of his little sister’s jeans and his grandma’s blouse. He was beautiful and still. Around his wrist were strips of cloth and bracelets that were traded and given out at the International AIDS Conference (IAC) that had just wrapped up in the city. Attached to his decidedly un-femlike bag were LGBT-related buttons from all over the world. Judging from all this it was easy to assume that he was a volunteer at the IAC.
The volunteers had intrigued me. They were all so quiet at the beginning of the week but by the end were more expressive. It was an awesome insight into Mexico City’s queer youth population, and a window into how the culture was changing. By the end of the week volunteers were getting more creative with the way they accessorized their volunteer T-shirts and were talking more with reporters in the media room, even flirting a bit.
Beside the young man on the train, leaning against a pole for support with his torso facing the inside of the train was another young man. He was a guapo, a good-looking guy, the kind that makes teenage girls and 40-year-old gay men swoon. His outfit was emblematic of a new kind of softer machismo that is ever-present in Mexico City, mostly in the Zona Rosa. He was wearing a tight pink T-shirt and baggy low-hung jeans, and he wore his hair slick, short and spiky. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets and he was slightly hunched with his shoulders and stance wide.
Diagonally from the other side of the train, holding onto a pole while staring at the young guapo was a tight robust man, the closest to a Chelsea Boy that I had seen in Mexico City. His arms were veiny from working out, his shoulders were as wide as he was tall. He had on a Diesel shirt, Lacoste glasses, boot cut jeans and a department store shopping bag stuffed between his black athletic dress shoes. He did not take his eyes off the young guy for a second. He was waiting for eye contact in return, a sign that the lust was reciprocated.
At another time and place I would label this guy a creep, a pervert, desperate. But with the AIDS Conference and a new sensitivity to men who have sex with men (MSM) issues fresh in mind, in a culture that was not my own, I saw him simply as a horny guy trying to get it on with someone he found attractive. He was like many of us who find ourselves a slave to our attractions, a cart being pulled by a horse of hormones and desires.
I was looking at the young man the minute he felt the older man’s eyes on him. He lowered his face into his chest and closed his eyes. It was a conscious signal that he was sending: I am not interested. From his reaction it was obvious he had been perused before. He was not shocked or unsure. He knew how to protect himself, to say “no” before he was approached. When he would open his eyes to check what station we were approaching he would take the time to use the reflection of the subway windows to look at the older man. He would watch the man watching him. Once when he looked up we made eye contact and I wondered if he could recognize my gayness, my attraction to him, my witness to what was happening.
Throughout all this the young volunteer was sitting forward, watching metros pass in the opposite direction, oblivious to what was going on beside him. He stood up—maintaining his excellent posture—as his stop approached and smoothed his pants as if he was wearing a short skirt. As he walked off the train he cut through the invisible line between the young guapo and the older man. He had a sense of security about himself. He was fine standing out, fine with what his walk or how he dressed might look and mean to others. Watching him become a small figure among the masses that made up the scene at the train station as we pulled away I couldn’t help but think that the exposure of seeing people from all over the world at the conference—including a healthy dose of global queers—gave him the ability to be sure of himself. At the conference he—like me—got to see people from all over the world in all their worldliness and it was (at least for me) inspiring. Coming back to Canada after the conference I feel more secure in my ability to be as gay as I want to be and be the “gay whatever” if that is what I want.
The older man got ready to leave as we approached the next stop, still waiting for the young guapo to give him a look in return. It did not come as he began to walk towards the door, it did not come as he passed him to leave the train and it did not come when he looked back as the train took off once again. With the train moving, the older man becoming smaller with distance, and the young man relaxed. Three girls take up the space the older man had occupied and the young guapo watches them with curiosity, trying to catch their eye and then looking away when he succeeds.
He gets off at the next stop and quickly becomes a part of the seething, exciting, over-populated world of Mexico City, where regardless of sexual or gender identity one must work hard to just carve out a small place for themselves to breathe.
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