What is Gay Travel?

Mexico City contains all the elements necessary to give gay travelers the vacation they've always wanted.

So what is gay travel? Based on 100% of the gay travel blogs I have seen, gay travel simply consists of the following

• A list of gay bars (usually all located on the same street) which closely resemble the ones in our hometowns

• A list of 'gay friendly' restaurants (again usually on the same street), which is nothing more than a short list of places the blogger went to during his short visit to the city, where they didn't Lynch him or call him a faggot, and hence it's now gay friendly.

• Pictures of blogger and perhaps his boyfriend, from the same culture, snapping selfies in front of very well known exotic destinations

• Maybe an interview with a local who becomes the singular authority on life in their country despite whether or not he happens to be an interesting person. 

Traceyparkertravel.com is here to offer something different. Here you will find dozens of gay spaces outside of the americanized gayborhood where a different type of gay experience takes place. Something uniquely Mexican and uniquely of this time period. I'm not a digital nomad who moves from place to place every few months or weeks. I have lived in Mexico City for 5 years (at the time of this blog post) and here I have found a gay experience totally and completely different from the reality I knew in my home country of United States. Also to my surprise, I found that being from a foreign country resulted in a different way of being received in Mexico which is very distinctive from the way we receive foreigners (collectively as a country) in the United States. This website is my attempt to share this experience in a way that informs my readers and hopefully provides a roadmap should they decide to come to Mexico City themselves for a few days, a few weeks, a month, or maybe even a few years like me.

What do gay people want to do when they travel?

I've never met anybody who travels who wasn't interested in finding something exotic and new. But we seem to look for these new things in the most boring of places. The mainstream gay community can be a bit of a mirage for travelers. Despite decreasing marginalization, gay culture still has a strong underground vibe. Many travelers, gay and straight alike, look to the gayborhood for an alternative 'deep dive' into a foreign culture. Most of these travelers always find a great time, but it's hard to find a new experience when you only look in the same places you already went to back in the USA.

If you go to the americanized gayborhood you'll find guys who like americanized bars, American music, and yes, American men. If you go on Grindr you'll meet guys who like to hook up on Grindr. But what about young guys who are into outdoor cruising? There is no such thing as this in the USA, but in Mexico there are hundreds of them. I'm actually in a movie/book club of young men who enjoy discussing movies and literature about cruising, desire, and risk. I found these guys during my 4th year in Mexico and they showed me a bunch of outdoor cruising places across Mexico City, and other Mexican states as well. Meeting people and places like this is like the opening a set of Russian dolls. Inside of each one I find another Mexico completely unknown to the one before it.

We read poetry about cruising in Morelia (a really cool city about 4 hours from Mexico City) and watch movies about cruising in France. There is no entry for these types of book clubs in tourist guidebooks because because we've stopped looking for them in America because there aren't really any left. .

This is just one example of dozens of new perspectives about being gay and our place in the world that I have been fortunate enough to experience as a result of moving to another country and culture. The theme of the articles in this blog will hopefully provide a way for other foreigners to access this in Mexico on a visit or possibly after moving here.

The Role of Sex in Gay Travel

Just as my trip to Europe during college allowed me to see my Americanness as not the only way of being, but as a certain flavor of being, in a diverse world, My experience of sex in Mexico has opened my eyes to just how diverse expressions of homosexuality can be within a culture and across the globe. I would say that the sexual side of gay life in Mexico is expressed much more intensely than in The United States. The city is peppered with so many concepts of places for gay men to meet and have sex than I could ever have imagined as a gay American. But if you don't know to look for this you won't find it. Chronicling these places is the main point of this blog. But doing so is more than just a simple list. If I wanted to list for you my favorite restaurants I could do so very quickly because I know that my readers already know what a restaurant is. I aim to express exactly how these sexual encounter meeting places are so unique and the expressions of sexuality as well as the gay male experienced are expressed through these places.

Gay Travel enables us to ask the big questions

When you experience something new it often makes you reconsider what you thought was the truth in the first place. Also being in a new place allows you to pay attention to things that you start to ignore after your first time somewhere. You can find yourselves pondering for the first time like . . .

What is being gay?

I believe the whole world is working their way through this question and I think travel can provide some meaningful answers. Before a trip I've always hoped that my travels may shed some light onto some of the big questions. My first time abroad I traveled across Europe one summer with 70 other American students from my University. George W. Bush was in the first year of his presidency. It was the summer before 9-11. I was suprised at how many people had an opinion of his presidency, of the American place in the world, and about me as an American. If you never leave America how can you really know what it is to be an American?

The expression of homosexuality in the United States is not the only way to do it. I realized this when I arrived to Mexico. After two months living in Mexico I met a young man in a steam room one afternoon. I was 37 at the time, and he was 20. I still don't understand why the young Mexican young guys find older men attractive. In the USA the assumption is that of financial desparity. The young are poor and beautiful and the old are rich and ugly. Older men with questionable morals take advantage of their financial position to buy the beautiful young men even if the young men are not interested. I arrived to Mexico with that assumption and I was wrong. That simply wasn't what was happening. I've seen it happen in other countries, and I've heard about it happening the in USA. But in Mexico there is something else going on. Some other dynamic.

The intergenerational nature of homosexuality cannot express itself in the US culture which is so obsessed with youth. It's a seed that cannot grow in US soil.

I didn't even come up with the idea to make this blog until I had lived here for 3 years. Before that I was just a foreigner who barely knew how to scratch the surface of this fascinating culture. I hope this blog can serve as a shortcut to the aspects of the Mexican gay experience that make it truly unique from that of the United States.