Rodeo Disco: the circle of life

OKLA CITY -- Country bars and gay bars are like 4 millimeters apart on the great wheel of nightlife.

This is based on a recent visit to Club Rodeo, where, as you'll see in this video, a bunch of dudes in cowboy hats and nut-hugger jeans jump around beneath a disco ball to "YMCA." If you listen closely, you'll hear my boyfriend say, "Oh, goddamn!" in the middle of it all.

The line-dancing bar is seriously a two-step away from being a gay disco. Everything's about the clothes: who has the coolest cowboy boots or the biggest hat. The urinals are closer together than any straight person (or me, for that matter) could possibly be comfortable with. And guys are the center off attention on the dance floor: they wear pastel colored shirts, twirl around and whip their heads from side to side like they're in a tango competition.

The music isn't too far off, either. Club Rodeo is as big as an airport hanger, and while people wait to see live bull riding, they dance to everything from Kenny Chesney to Kanye. There's a laser light show, obviously, and the tracks that hold the lights lowers down close to the floor for the hip-hop, and pulls up high for slow country tunes ... kind of going into roller rink mode.

Of course, while women dance together openly, waiting for some cowboy to step in, you'd never see two men dancing together. But plop some of those homeboys down in a gay bar, and I'm sure there'd be a few boot heels clickin.

John