And then there’s the otter, who’s cublike in age and, perhaps, disposition but thin-a not-so-hairy younger guy who’s looking for a “daddy bear.”ĭirector John Waters used the Handbook when researching his 2004 sexually utopian farce, A Dirty Shame. Body types can be difficult to categorize firmly, but a more muscular, hairy man who styles himself as being more sexually aggressive is known as a wolf (especially online, where these distinctions are key for personal erotic marketing). The assumption is often that a cub’s more submissive (Boo-Boo to his Yogi “husbear”) but that he’ll likely grow into a bear. Some consider themselves cubs-usually younger, though that can also just mean smaller and younger-looking. Most bears are bears: big and often balding, with bushy beards and beefy arms the look is distinctly blue-collar and unfussy. Bears have been a fully fleshed-out alternative gay identity for at least a decade, but it seems the growling’s louder than ever.Īnd like any subculture, the bear community comes with its own distinct taxonomy-its minorities within a minority within a minority. It’s a quasi-intellectualized, entirely merchandized subculture of “those who are husky, hairy and homosexual,” as the Bear Handbook ($14.95 at your local Barnes & Noble) puts it. The Dugout is the city’s best-known bar for bears-gay men who look rather like middle-aged straight men who haven’t been metrosexually harassed into banishing carbs from their diets and hair from their shoulders.
But everybody’s having a pretty good time, even the skinny guys who wandered in for the $3 Buds at the Sunday-night beer blast and find themselves outnumbered, and largely ignored, by the husky men around them-the bears. The place doesn’t smell much like gay men are supposed to, either: beery, sweaty, like a frat party gone on way too long-in some cases, at least judging by the bushy gray facial hair in the dank room, for decades. Gay men aren’t supposed to look much like the balding, hairy-belly-up-to-the-bar crowd at the Dugout in the far West Village.