Gay in Myanmar

One day, just out of the blue, Raoul emails and asks me to meet him in Myanmar. I don't know much about the place except that some people call it Burma and there's a vague connection to aftershave. Oh, and it's a totalitarian regime newly opened to tourists.

"You're going to a country where tourist dollars go straight into the pockets of dictators?" I ask.

Raoul sighs. "Well," he says, "after comparing the last two Olympics opening ceremonies -- the one where ten thousand Chinese dancers move in unbelievably precise synchronization, and the one where a pigtailed British milkmaid cavorts on Astroturf -- I'm not sure where I stand dictatorship-wise."

I'd prefer a neighborhood Starbucks, but I say sure. Next thing you know we're checking into the Ayarwaddy River View Hotel in Mandalay.

A nondescript desk clerk checks us in, and we walk upstairs to the room. It's perfectly okay. I've been warned to lower my standards with Myanmar. In the entire country, supposedly, they have only a couple thousand hotel rooms that wouldn't send Americans screaming for a Motel 6. This room wasn't exactly designed by David Bromstad, with its eight shades of brown screaming for a pop of red or neon green, but it's clean and comfortable and the second-story window shows a fetching panorama of gold-plated temples and scruffy men leading ox carts. I haven't seen Raoul in something like six months so the enormous bed beckons me.

We've just about finished unpacking when there's a knock at the door. It's the building's Assistant Manager. He's a not-unattractive man with the authoritative air of the high school principal in a 60s surfing movie, but for some reason he's out of breath and sweating like a Nazi in Indiana Jones. "I'm sorry," he says shakily, "but this room is already taken. However, we have another room that is even better, and offer it to you at the same price."

I barely have time to absorb this information when red flags go flying in my head. "It's 'taken'?" I repeat. "How is it 'taken'?"

He pauses to think. "Someone else has called up and requested it."

"You mean it's reserved?" I ask. "Like I reserved it?"

He nods. "Yes," he says, "it's reserved. They will be very disappointed if they don't get it."

This added information just deepens my confusion, so I struggle to make sense of it. The "request" for this room must have come from a valued customer, because if it was just some regular Joe then we'd be on equal footing and the Assistant Manager wouldn't give a damn. So a valued customer called the hotel at some point and requested a standard $46 room. We were mistakenly given the last $46 room, though, so the Assistant Manager had to bump us into one of the deluxe $69 rooms to keep the other guy happy.

If the other guy was a valued customer, though, why is the Assistant Manager kicking us upstairs? "No matter what happens," the other guy must have said, "don't upgrade me. Do not try to put me in a deluxe $69 room at no additional charge, because I don't want it. Foist your better rooms on strangers from foreign countries, because I'm not putting up with it. It's your standard $46 room or you're in trouble, buddy!"

"It's a better room?" I ask.

The Assistant Manager nods. "It's bigger," he confirms.

It still makes no sense but who are we to argue? Raoul and I pack up our belongings and follow the Assistant Manager to the new room, where the clouds of confusion part. It's pretty much like I suspected. Raoul and I okay the room, the Assistant Manager leaves -- now markedly more relaxed -- and we start to unpack. It's an okay room, almost undistinguishable from the last if not for the extra sitting area, the better view, and the two single beds.

Raoul looks at me. I look at Raoul. "Hey, how about those Olympics?" I say.