All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, (2 page)

We waited in the dressing room while the other dancer went through his set, then we went back to the theater for the ten-minute finale. I don't remember any of the other songs that played while I was dancing, but the last song of the finale was Madonna's "Where's the Party."

As I walked through the audience again—butt naked, hands on my dick, Madonna thumping in my ear ('"Where's the party, I want to free my soul / Where's the party, I want to lose control")—I felt that I'd made a transformation as surely as Superman slipping out of a phone booth or Wonder Woman doing a sunburst spin. I was bare-ass in a room of paying strangers, a stripper. After years of wondering what it would be like, I had done it—faced a fear, defied expectation, embraced a taboo self. It was only the beginning.

2

I first went to one of D.C.'s gay strip clubs as a customer. It was summer 1990 and I'd read in the local gay paper that my favorite porn star, Joey Stefano, was appearing at La Cage Aux Follies, one of the oldest gay strip joints in the city. For me, Joey was less a cheesy porn dude than a genuine XXX role model.

See, Joey was the guy who made me feel it was OK to have—and even possibly enjoy—gay sex, butt-fucking specifically. I was still a marginally closeted gay-sex virgin. (Sweet twenty-one and never been reamed.) But watching Joey get his smooth, tan, perfectly rounded rump plowed on the small screen made me feel like I could actually do this whole gay thing. I knew I had the emotional attachment stuff down, as heart-wrenching crushes on some high school friends had proved; and that year I'd even found the courage to come out to my mom and dad. But the idea of gay sex had always freaked me out, especially since I came of age in the eighties, when AIDS hysteria was at full tilt. It was, therefore, reassuring to see that someone like Joey could get fucked in the ass without succumbing to an instant pestilence-filled death or having his lower intestine fall out in a bloody coil.

There was no way I was going to miss seeing Joey once I found out he was coming to town. But the idea of going to a gay strip club scared the shit out of me. Not in a bleeding-colon way, but close. In my mind, strip clubs were linked to bathhouses and leather bars and all the other things that meant AIDS in the late eighties and early nineties.

All I knew about D.C/s gay strip clubs was what I had read. They were notorious nationwide because they allowed strippers to dance completely naked. (In most of the country, strippers have to cover up something—nipples, genitals, booty cracks—but in the nation's capital you could let it all hang, poke, or protrude out.) As one gay travel guide relayed:

Perch on a bar stool, select a dancer (you'll find a nice variety, from long-haired blond boys to muscular military studs), produce a bill, and express your approval by rubbing it against his strong young ankle. He will respond by squatting before you. Slide your palm across his smooth, hard muscles—slip your hands between his thighs and finger that tight, butch butthole—grab the meat hanging in front of you, and milk it (no mouth action).

This quirk of the nation's capital made a lot of guys particularly proud to be American.

But I didn't know any of this as I made plans to see my porn star prince do his thing at La Cage. All I knew about stripping came from watching Gregory Harrison in
For Ladies Only
and Christopher Atkins in
A Night in Heaven.

To ease my anxiety, I enlisted a good friend of mine to go with me. He was a tall, skinny Jewish guy named Seth, and he was probably one of the guys I'd be having sex with if I was actually having sex. I didn't know Seth well, but I liked what I knew. We had similar tastes—sushi,
alu paratha,
James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf. And our CD and cassette collections had a lot of overlap: MC Lyte's
Eyes on This,
Janet Jackson's
Rhythm Nation: 1814,
Madonna's first album, the Pet Shop Boys'
Actually,
Ten City's
Foundation,
and the debut by a new singer named Mariah Carey.

"Mariah's got a good voice, but the album's a little overproduced," Seth said one day when I was hanging out at his apartment listening to Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome."

But even more than the shared tastes in food, authors, and music, I liked Seth because I felt comfortable around him. I didn't have to act a certain way to get him to like me. Whenever he saw me, whether I was dressed to go out or unshaven and droopy-eyed after an all-nighter, his eyes always opened a little wider and his lips looked ready to smile.

I also appreciated that he agreed to go with me to the strip club to see Joey. A lot of people would've thought it was too kinky or weird. But Seth had my back, and he didn't judge me for wanting to go.

We headed to the club on a Friday night, and on the way there I got the strangest flashback feeling. We were driving on streets that, as a D.C. native, I'd traveled many times on the way to my grandmother's house (she lived about ten minutes away) and to my mother's job at one of the big federal office buildings. As a teenager, I'd sometimes see the glowing La Cage sign while in the car with my mother. I didn't know what the club was then, but it sure looked intriguing.

La Cage sat just blocks away from such national landmarks as the U.S. Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the White House. But the neighborhood was far from tourist friendly, full of abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and houses that looked like they were one brick away from being condemned. The block came alive only at night, when La Cage and the other clubs turned on their neon signs and all sorts of men looking to get it on with other guys descended upon the sidewalkless streets.

Seth and I arrived at La Cage, found a place to park, and tentatively stepped inside the side door entrance. We paid $5 each to a serious-looking man sitting in a booth and moved into the club's dark innards. There were two bars in the club, and standing on top of them were some of the hottest guys I'd ever seen, dancing completely naked save for their socks. The dancers were bathed in warm red light shining from above the bars. They glowed like dreams, and I was enthralled.

As I walked through the club, my eyes focused on this one particular dancer, a tall, athletic guy who looked like he could've modeled some polo shirts for Ralph Lauren. Watching him move across the bar reminded me of that scene from
Risky Business
where Tom Cruise dances around the living room in his underwear. I loved seeing such a private moment on the big screen, and I felt similarly about looking at Polo Guy.

It was great just to be able to gaze at a guy, naked or otherwise, and really be able to check him out. This was something I hadn't been able to do without fear since the second grade, when an incident happened at the home of my best friend, Teddy, a blond kid who was about a year younger than me. I went over his house to play almost every day after school, and I was perpetually fascinated because I'd never spent so much time in a white person's house. Every detail struck me as both familiar and strange, like watching
The Brady Bunch
in 3D and Smell-O-Vision.

We were in his bedroom going through our daily routine. He would ask me to turn around so that he could change from his school outfit into his play clothes, and every day I would comply. But on this particular day, something felt different. I wanted to look. I had to. It was like I'd lost the choice not to look. Slowly I peeked my head around, and caught a flash of blond hair, pale skin, and Superman Underoos. Then I saw Teddy's eyes as he looked up. Suddenly he lunged at me, pounding his small fists at my chest and screaming, "I told you to turn around. I told you not to look." I tried to get him off me as his mother—every white mom you've ever seen in a sitcom—came racing into the room.

"What on earth is going on here?" she asked, pulling her son toward her.

"Craig looked at me while I was changing," he yelled.

"What?"

"Craig looked at me while I was changing. I told him to turn around and he didn't."

Her eyes darted toward me. I felt my face burn red and tears start to well up in my eyes. I didn't know what to say.

"I think you should go home now," she told me. "Teddy's very upset."

"OK," I said, backing out of the room. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine. Just please go," she said, looking at me, not like I had done something bad but like I
was
something bad.

The next day my mother asked me why I wasn't going over to Teddy's house and I just told her that he got mad at me about something and that I didn't think we were friends anymore. Thankfully, she didn't press the issue. How could I admit that I lost my best friend because I couldn't help myself from wanting to see him naked? I didn't understand it myself, so how could I have explained it to my mom?

By the time I came out, some fifteen years later, I had at least owned up to the fact that I wanted to look at guys, but that didn't make it any easier to do, I never knew when I might look too long or too desirously and get my ass kicked—or worse. But here at the strip club, it was safe to look, and that made me feel powerful.

After Polo Guy finished his set, the D.J. announced that Joey would be coming on next. I grabbed Seth's hand and we moved through the crush of older guys and got right next to the bar. My heart pounded and my dick got hard. There was silence for a moment, then a song came over the speakers. No beat, just a hearty gospel voice over dreamy synthesizers: "Everybody, everybody... Everybody, everybody."

The crowd roared and all eyes turned to the left side of the bar, where Joey, his brown hair flopping over his forehead, stepped on the bar in jean shorts, an orange reflective vest, and a yellow construction hat. He seemed to move in slow motion, easing along the bar and waving his arms to the song's chant. He took off his clothes without any striptease pretense or fanfare. The crowd pushed closer to the bar. Joey dropped to his knees and lay down, arching his back and writhing to the music. Hands rushed toward him in every direction. Guys rubbed him all over, along his chest, on his cock, back and forth down his legs.

I was dying to touch him, but I was scared. I wasn't sure what the limits were. What if mine was the one hand that pushed him over the edge? He'd storm off and it'd be all my fault. I couldn't risk it. Could I?

But then I thought, this might be the one and only chance I'd ever have to lay hands on a guy who'd meant so much to my budding sense of gay-boy-ness. I was going over this in my head when a bully unshaven guy behind me barked, "Look, if you're not gonna touch, move out of the way."

"What the hell," I thought as I stuck my hand out and reached toward Joey's balls, gingerly cupping them. My eyes quickly went to his face. It didn't register disgust so far as I could tell. He was still arching his back and writhing as a sea of hands washed over him. He stayed like this for a few minutes and my .hand didn't leave his balk once. As I touched him, I realized that this was the first guy I'd ever felt in a sexual way. Unlike my straight friends and, say, all the teens I'd seen in movies and on TV, I'd never experienced drunken gropes on a basement couch, hands down pants in the back of a car, or stolen kisses behind the football field bleachers. This was it for me, the first naked guy I'd ever laid my hands on. When the song was over, Joey put on his clothes, thanked the crowd, and left the bar. I put my hand to my nose and swore it smelled like cherries.

3

“I believe in the power of love ... I believe in the power of love." The words thumped from the loudspeakers at Tracks, one of D.C.'s hottest gay nightclubs. It was a few days after the Joey Stefano show. Seth had called me and asked if I'd go dancing with him. I figured I owed him one so I said yes.

"Are you sure?" he asked, probably sensing my hesitation.

"Yeah," I said. "Sure. I'd really like to go."

"OK, I'll pick you up in about an hour."

"Cool."

I felt bad that I'd given him the impression that I didn't want to go. I did like him. The problem was that I didn't know
how
to like someone. What should I do? Carry a sign? Send up smoke signals? Maybe I should make him a mixtape?

About an hour later, Seth picked me up in his roommate’s car and we headed to Tracks. The whole place was a sprawl of bars, large open spaces to dance, swirling lights, and dark corners. Most of the guys were young, flashy, and hot. But when I looked at them, trying to make eye contact, they either rolled their eyes and abruptly turned away or shot me a look like they wanted to devour me right then and there.

"You seem uptight," Seth said after we'd been standing around watching flocks of guys pass by. "Let's go dance."

"OK," I said, following him to the dance floor, where an extended mix of Deee-Lite's "Power of Love" was sending folks into a hands-in-the-air frenzy. After "Power of Love" faded into something else, we collapsed on a sofa near the dance floor.

"I really like that song," I said, smiling.

"Yeah, me too," Seth added. Then he put his right arm around me and I let him keep it there. For the first time in my life I let another guy hold me.

The next day, Seth called me at around four in the afternoon. I was still in bed.

"Hello," I answered groggily.

"Hey," he paused. "Did I wake you?"

"Sorta."

"Sorry. I just wanted to tell you that I bought that song you liked at the club, so if you want to come over ..."

"You mean Tower of Love'?"

"Yeah, the one we were dancing to last—"

"Oh, I already bought it."

"What? When? I thought you were still 'sleep."