Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh shit!

We turned around in San Juan, Puerto Rico yesterday. The new passenger roster is very different from the last voyage. They are generally younger, with many 30 and 40’s; there are many native Puerto Ricans, many of which aren’t comfortable speaking English; there is a group of 300 Mormons on board; and finally, a group of 250 gay men. When I found out 2 days ago that there would be a large gay group coming on board, I was excited. I thought it would make for a fun cruise, with great dancing, partying and lots of eye candy. But I was, oh so wrong! It turns out that they are a very specific subset of the Gay culture: they are the Bears.

The idealized version of a Bear is a hunky, muscular, masculine man with a lot of chest hair. A man's man! In reality, Bears have evolved to be large, overweight gay men with lots of body hair in unseemly places, especially on their shoulders and back. Whereas many gay men are self-conscious of their weight and their back hair, Bears actual seem to celebrate the abundance of both, perhaps assigning these things as a signs of prosperity and masculinity, or maybe this celebration is merely an unconscious expression of overcompensation for not fitting in with all the beautiful gay boys, and a very human need to belong to a group. I don’t presume to know. Most Bears have large thick bushy goatee’s or mustaches and yet, inexplicably, they trim the hair on the top of their head so that it is almost all trimmed off. Many bears wear leather, although that’s a whole other topic, and on this ship, can generally be found at the buffet on the Lido Deck. Bears seem to be a middle-aged phenomenon, but there are younger guys who are attracted to Bears and they are labeled Cubs. Bear Cubs are simply a younger, smaller version of a Bear. Bears can be tops (active) or bottoms (passive) but Bear Cubs are almost always bottoms. Bears are generally friendly and very approachable, so I’m sure that although they are not going to be visually stimulating to this writer, they will be fun to have on board.