Sounds like a lot of guys have gotten their passports stamped, if you know what we mean. Reddit users in the r/askgaybros subreddit chimed in with more than 180 comments after one person asked, “Have you ever hooked up with a guy where the two of you didn’t speak the same language at all?”
From a barstool encounter in Mexico to an airport-lounge hookup in Munich, here are some of the best, hottest, and goofiest anecdotes from the thread.
“Yup. I spoke no Georgian, and he spoke no English or any of the other languages I speak. Got the full-on Georgian cultural immersion with a good f*ck surrounded by Orthodox Christian images on every wall in that room.”
“I did, with a French guy once, and it was really sweet. We met in a club, and somehow I worked up the courage to go ‘talk’ to him—thanks, haircut!—and then he got hungry, so we went to get him some snacks. Then we started walking under the moonlight on empty streets and stopped to sit under a bridge and made out. Brought him back to mine later, and we played around a bit and then cuddled and went to sleep. He was really, really cute. This kind of thing never happens to me, and that will always be a nice memory to have.”
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Related: Ten sexy men from across the globe to whet your appetite for a return to travel
“Yes, I met a guy online from Germany, and he came out and stayed with me for a week. I had to try and remember the two German classes I took in high school. What I didn’t know, he taught me. And most of the time, we really didn’t need to speak. Grunting and moaning was more like it.”
“At the end of a wild night, I ended up taking this guy home from a gay club in my car. He had just kind of attached himself to me like some lost puppy dog. We hooked up, and he spent the night. Next morning, we realized that I didn’t speak Spanish, and he didn’t speak English. But I had to get him home somehow, so he had to give me directions by pointing. Hooray for sign language.”
“Yes, I hooked up with a Japanese guy. Best f*ck of my life.”
“Quite a few times. The animal part of the brain just takes over, and it’s easy to communicate affection.”
“Yes… in a public restroom. He was Asian … and we didn’t require words, only gestures. And I mean, who doesn’t know how to gesture for a BJ?”
“Frequently. It’s honestly great to cut through the bullsh*t. A little Google Translate, a few meaningful sentences, and you’re off.”
“He’s French traveling in Thailand. I am Malaysian with fluent English. I hop on my rented scooter in the night, ditching my friends in the hostel to meet up with him.”
“Portuguese guy. I went over to his house, we’d been chatting on Grindr in Portuguese. I know some Portuguese, but I didn’t understand this guy’s accent at all. I literally couldn’t understand a word he said. In the bedroom, he said something to me. I asked him to repeat. He said it again. I asked him to repeat again. He got a little annoyed and turned the light off. I realized he’d been asking me if I wanted the light on or off.”
“South Korean powerlifter after a meet. Next to no English. He was fifty pounds heavier but six inches shorter than me, a real fireplug. Got plowed relentlessly. Dick is the universal language.”
“My ex and I. He is Catalan, and I am American, we were living in Barcelona. We spoke Spanish and English together, but every time we would smoke marijuana, both of our language skills would go out the door. We’d end up just sitting there laughing and cuddling because all of a sudden, we couldn’t communicate with each other, lol.”
Related: Mexico City is one of the gayest cities on the planet. Here’s how to take it all in.
“Once did the deed inside of a Mexican restaurant where the guy was working. He caught me walking on the sidewalk and invited me—I almost said no. It was closed, but based off how he acted, I don’t think he would’ve care if it were open. We didn’t speak the same language, but I just got bent over a bar stool and y’know…”
“I hooked up with a French guy who kept shouting ‘bon bon’ and I finally figured out he was saying ‘good good.’ I still crack up remembering that. Hot time, too.”
“One memorable occasion happened in a sleeping pod in the Lufthansa first class lounge in Munich with a Thai executive whom I found on Grindr, both of us obviously using Google Translate to speed things along. The funniest moment being Google Translate asking me to ‘liquify inside him.’”
“Yes, I once hooked up with an Australian. Couldn’t understand a word.”
MISTERJETT
very frustrating. he didn’t speak English and i didn’t speak Spanish. we both had Spanish/English speaking friends so they would translate when they were around, but they couldn’t be with us all of the time. our relationship boiled down to just sex. i decided that it was best to split up, however, i had no way of telling him because we didn’t speak the same language and he wouldn’t understand what i was saying, so i just disappeared without any explanation. i did hear from a friend of his that he had moved back to Mexico and married a woman. i hope he’s happy.
Prax07
I’m in an area with a huge influx of Spanish speaking only people. Don’t know why or how exactly they’ve all descended on a Pennsylvania town, but they’re here, and they don’t speak English, which makes any interaction impossible.
Just yesterday I was getting Chinese takeout and the guy in front of me was holding everything up because the counter girl needed his phone number for his order (ordering is done via phone since covid started) and it took him five minutes speaking Spanish on his phone to someone for him to figure out what she was asking.
NateOcean
This was in the 1990s in Silicon Valley. The best I can recall, we must have met on gay.com . He only had a grainy photo, but a certain cuteness still shown thru. We communicated reasonably well using the message system, and soon I was on my way from Sunnyvale to his house in Milpitas. His photo certainly did him a disservice; in person he was exceptionally good looking. This was in the middle of a winter cold snap, so we quickly went to the hot tub. He’d mentioned earlier that he was profoundly deaf, and without his hearing aid in the hot tub, and me with no ASL, we both smiled at our shared predicament. But as they say, there are no limits to the language of love! Later on, we sat on the edge of the bed scribbling notes back and forth, and strategized for “round two”. Afterwards, as it was very late, I was invited to spend the night, and was treated to breakfast in the morning. He was in the process of returning to university back east, so one night was all we could arrange. He might have been the the one that got away.
Gadfeal
I got one better. Before cell phones, I met a deaf youth in France. I was OK in French but there was no communication other than writing and gesture.
Intimacy was out of this world, as if the lack of words was rendered irrelevant to the richness of the tactile communication. I instantly fell in love, and the feeling was possibly mutual. Unfortunately, he lived in Amiens (where Macron dallied with his drama teacher, before he was sent off to Paris), and the only way to communicate was by letter.
Since then, I’ve always wondered if deaf people were more palpably skilled than the normo-auditive guy.
NateOcean
Tokyo in the early 1980s: I’d visited a few of the gay bars in the Shinjuku area, but steered away from the more touristy ones. Instead, I’d grown attached to Kingsman, a neighborhood bar long since bulldozed in the name of progress. While sipping a beer there I’d occasionally try my limited Japanese on anyone willing, and in turn they’d get to try their English on me. “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “How long are you visiting?” were the possible questions exchanged.
Anyway, one of the regulars (Koichi) had approached me, and we were struggling to hit it off, but kept bumping up against the language barrier. Fortunately, another patron intervened. He worked for a Japanese bank and explained (in perfect English) that he spends most his day on the phone to New York. “Speaking too much English makes my head hurt”, he joked. So he served somewhat as an intermediary and negotiated the “deal” for Koichi and I, and soon we were off in search of a “love hotel”.
There seemed to be considerable discussion at the front desk as we checked in. I feared we were being hassled, but the opposite was true. Koichi explained that the clerk had welcomed him, thanked us for choosing his hotel, made sure we got extra towels, and to not hesitate to call the front desk if we needed anything else. Typical Japanese hospitality.
At our room, we shared a relaxing soak in the ofuro (Japanese tub) before getting busy in the bedroom. The scene was something out of “Blade Runner”: The streets wet from a light rain, the regular clatter of trains on the tracks below, and a flashing red neon light sign cycling at regular intervals. That’s how we fell asleep that night.
Around 3am I awoke, but now all was quiet; that special kind of quiet you only get in the early morning hours. The trains had stopped, no dogs barking, and the neon lights were off, but filtering thru the window blinds was the moonlight, bathing the room in a pale blue, almost violet glow. I cuddled up to Koichi, but this woke his as well.
So we f*cked again.
MrMichaelJ
Virgin Islands in like 1989, French guy looked like a very hot version of Dave Gahan. We were staying at the same resort. Totally hooked up. Not one word spoken b/w us.