“Club Frottage” is the local gay afterhours dance place in San Sargasso. I call it that because (on a good night) it’s jam-packed with horny, sweaty, muscular guys who love to run around shirtless and rub up against each other with feigned nonchalance. (At the old Pyramid Lounge in New York, the emcee, Miss Hapi Phace, used to close the show by saying, in a way that was somehow at once sweet and salacious: “Y’all go and rub off on each other.”) If you like the circuit party type of guy, the men range from passably attractive (or “doable”) to drop dead gorgeous (I would rank myself as barely making it onto the lower end of that scale).
Now, there are those in San Sargasso who like to disparage the people who go to Frottage as nothing but a bunch of vapid narcissistic tweakers. I suppose there is some truth to that, but since those disparaging comments usually come from people who would not be considered attractive by those (admittedly narrow) standards, you have to wonder whether they’d be of the same opinion if they were quite muscular and attractive and had an endless supply of drugs available to them, and had the opportunity to go out every weekend and be in an extended state of euphoric, high sensory-erotic overload among a stunningly beautiful tribe of men. To my ear it sounds a bit like poor folks trying to put down the rich folks, when you know the poor folks would behave exactly the same if they had the money.
Having lived in San Sargasso for many years, and having been a nightclub addict since I was first old enough to set foot in one, I’ve spent a shameless amount of time in that environment. I wouldn’t say that the time was entirely wasted, however, because I’ve always felt as though I was learning things there. It’s kind of like a very intense and surreal underwater reef ecosystem that you can swim around in and contemplate without the fish paying too much attention to you. There’s a lot of stuff I’d like to say about my experiences there, so I’ll start in with the following narrative of a typical night:
One night a bony li’l faggot type said hi to me and I said hi back. This was somewhat unusual on his part, because there is an unwritten etiquette that says the ones who don’t work out generally don’t talk to the ones who do, and vice versa. You might think this rule was invented and enforced by the gym types, but I suspect it is enforced just as rigidly by the non-gym types who make no effort to mask their resentment and hence wouldn’t deign to break the rule.
I know this expression “bony li’l faggot” is a horrible and degrading one, but the first time I heard it used many years ago (by the emcee of a drag show at Boybar in New York), it had struck me as a perversely apt description of a very definite type of gay man, universally identifiable, and universally loathed. It was in fact what many of us saw ourselves as and consequently was an image from which we were fleeing in horror as we slaved away in the gymnasiums. And the truth of it is, if you look around at some of these muscle guys, it is quite evident that the muscles are just like an awkward and unnatural garment they’ve put on to go out in public, and really inside they are still the same self-loathing person they always were.
Anyway, that interchange made me feel as though I hadn’t been making enough of an effort to be nice to the bony li’l faggots, especially the ones who were just coming out. I had been observing this other short, ultrafeminine boy wearing a cropped shirt with bell sleeves and dancing by himself next to me in my usual spot by the stairs. I thought, god, he probably lives in some horrible community where he’s been tormented his whole life, and now he’s finally found a place where he can come and express himself without being bothered. I felt very protective toward him, and I looked around to make sure that no one was mocking him or staring at him, but no one paid him any mind. I considered talking to him, but it really didn’t seem like we had anything in common, and I didn’t want him to think I was being condescending, and besides that, he seemed to be doing fine just doing his little dance with the crossing and uncrossing of the bell-sleeved arms.
Warren [not his real name] came by. He was really high on G and he got into the state he gets into where he wants to start compulsively introducing people to each other. I guess it’s the artist in him – a generous spirit that admires bright interesting people and wants to bring them together – a human montage! Albeit in an environment where you can’t possibly talk about anything (because the music is so aggressively loud).
So he introduces me to this guy that I have lusted after for years – perfect body, boyish, mischievous smile and sparkling eyes – really beautiful. From time to time I had sensed the guy might be interested in me, but he had this strong “top” energy about him, which is kind of a turnoff for me. So that introduction felt really good – it was like a barrier being broken – the Berlin wall coming down – even though it meant nothing and we probably wouldn’t speak to each other again.
Then Warren introduced me to a very tall blond muscular guy who I always thought was sort of attractive and almost talked to once or twice but I had always hesitated because I suspected he had skinny legs and a funky-shaped butt. But the titillating thing was the fact that he must be interesting/intelligent if Warren knew him. Then Warren introduced me to yet another guy I had seen around for years and who I thought was very cute – short, muscular, boyish, dark hair. Warren leaned over to me and said the guy was super smart – a genius. I was impressed. As it happens the guy was the lover or ex-lover of a very beautiful guy I had dated a few times – the one who works for the cell phone manufacturer and who had his own web site with tons of great pictures of himself. The web site boy was there too but we weren’t introduced. The third guy in that group was also one of my all-time most beautiful boys, but the last few times I had seen him out I realized he probably had AIDS because he had lost so much weight – he looked like a different person. That made me feel kind of sad. But then I realized it may well have been crystal addiction.
Anyway, the Quentin Crisp thing was this: at the end of The Naked Civil Servant there’s a scene where Quentin (John Hurt) is on a ship and suddenly he’s surrounded by all these beautiful sailors and there’s this delightful flirtatious dance as the sailors revolve around him. Meeting all those cute intelligent guys was like that for a few moments – I felt like I was being accepted and pulled into this charmed world of smart beautiful men that I never even knew existed – because I had always thought those guys were just bimbos.
Once the Quentin Crisp fantasy had worn off, I decided to leave the club “early” – (2:45 a.m.) because it had gotten too thin and the energy wasn’t holding me. There were even some depressed people leaning against the walls. The last straw was they put a bright spotlight on the nearly empty stage where some not very interesting people were dancing, and I said to myself, oh, no, that’s not a good lighting plan, time to go. But I had the delicacy at least to wait until the spotlight was turned off and it was dim again before leaving, because I know psychologically it’s an energy drain when people start leaving a club – not that anyone would necessarily care or notice that I was leaving – but there’s always a change in the energy when people leave or come in. So I left discreetly.
I walked up the hill under the highway and the cars screaming by reminded me of J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash (about people who are sexually aroused by fantasies of being in car crashes) and I felt kind of romantic and sexy under the bridge.
Then as I was driving back up Washington Street I stopped at the light and in the car next to me was Miss Charisse, one of my favorite San Sargasso drag queens. She was a hefty girl and always wore these great prom dresses and late 1960s-era bouffants. (In the clubs she had always been a magnet for goodlooking men who liked to bask in her drag queen glow, and so I'm sure she had had her share of Quentin Crisp moments.) I waved at her and she rolled down the window and asked me where I was going. There was another drag queen at the wheel. I threw up my hands, shrugged and said “Home.” Miss Charisse repeated the word “Home” sweetly and thoughtfully, as though it were a marvelous place not to be found on any map. The light changed, and as I was going up the hill, I thought, I wish I could have hung out with them. “Fierce Ruling Diva” was playing on my Velvet Mafia CD, and I had this fantasy of art directing Miss Charisse and her friend to be even more fabulous and sophisticated and edgy like The Lady Bunny and the New York drag queens. But I never liked crystal or coke, and so my night had to end prematurely.
Outtakes and witticisms from the course of the night:
“Well, if you really want to make a good impression, why don’t you show him your NAMBLA scrapbook.”
“Oh, my god, T_____ and his boyfriend have AIDS! Oops, no, it’s just crystal.”
“Oh, my god, I think I understand this!” [A line from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.]
I am Madame Verdurin. [A pretentious, social climbing character from Proust; also an echo of Flaubert’s famous line: “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.”]
Twilight Zone casting call at Club Frottage: “You didn’t make the cut, but Mr. Serling would like to see you in the green room.”
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