Black Party: Redux

Tomorrow I'll be attending my tenth Saint-At-Large Black Party, the most notable and notorious event on the calendar of gay homosexual perverts around the world. As a preview for those who may be attending for the first time this year, here's my posting after last year's event.

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, before being sucked (back into the darkness).

This Steve's first Black Party, my ninth. Finally, at 5AM, 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 we agree 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!!!"


Originally posted March 30, 2005

UPDATE: For what's it worth, I'm not really interested in anybody's moralizing judgements regarding the Black Party as an event, or its attendees. If you don't like what goes on at the Black Party, I'd strongly suggest not buying a ticket. For those interested, I've found a 2002 Black Party review from the Village Voice, written by NY Blade editor Steve Weinstein, here. And in 2005, Weinstein wrote another story, this time for the Blade, here.