The Black Party

Roseland Ballroom, 5AM.

Steve and I have been on the dancefloor for hours, as the swirling maelstrom of thousands of leather-clad bodybuilders spins around us. The men move in and out...of our field of vision, momentarily illuminated by an explosion of strobe lights, then sucked...back into the darkness.

This Steve's first Black Party, my ninth. Finally, he tells me that he's relaxed enough to "go exploring" and I take him upstairs to...(cue sinister music)...the balcony.

At first, we spend a few minutes peering over the rail, watching the dancers roil and throb beneath us as one huge carnal beast. Then Steve takes hold of my belt loop and I lead him to the long, dark, cock....riddled area of the balcony that runs the length of the room.

I want to show Steve all the hot men getting nasty in the dim darkness, and since he's never seen anything like that, I'm carrying myself as the supremely jaded, seen it all before, nothing surprises me queen that I can be.

Inching throught the hot...pulsating...sweaty crowd, we can scarcely see where to put our feet. The music is so loud, we have to shout in each other's ears.

Then we move into a section that is shielded by a wall, the music volume drops by more than half...and we fall silent.

We see a guy...blowing a sexy black go-go boy, the box he's standing on thinly lit by an orange spotlight. We see a guy...leaning against the wall getting fisted while standing up, which even I think is a pretty neat trick. We see groups of men standing in tight circles, their pants at half-mast, engaged in some mutual beefy-jerky. In the corners, various guys are openly snorting lines of various white powders off the backs of various other guys' hands.

And then...I see something so shocking, so unexpected, so offensive that I accidently shouted out loud.

"THAT guy is SMOKING!!!"