BijouBlog

I recently saw a show on the Discovery channel the other night that informed me about one thing that we all should be thankful for, and that is Beer.

Beer truly makes the world go round. Yes I learned that beer is the basis for everything in this world (I shit you not). The show was simply amazing, so grab a bottle and learn a little something from the Chicago's night life sexual underground. Early man was a hunter-gatherer, each day he wandered around for a couple of hours hunting looking for something to eat. May it be animal or vegetable it didn't matter the routine until around 9,000 B.C. Of course early man did a lot of  fucking also or we won't be here (to enjoy a good beer).

I remember reading the book by David Leavitt, The Lost Language of Cranes, published in 1997. The closeted father of the gay main character has spent much of his adult life expressing his sexual desires in gay oorn movie theaters. In one strange scene, he evens runs into his wife on a Sunday while walking to one of the gay theaters in New York City. His wife never questions what her husband does every Sunday afternoon.

By the publication date of this book, 1997, the Internet was taking off as a means to hook up, most gay guys owned a VHS player which enabled them to watch porn by themselves, and AIDS had decimated much of the gay population that had experienced sexual encounters in such theaters: was the porn movie theater soon to become an icon of the past? How many guys, married or not, spend Sunday afternoons in gay porn theaters?

Recently, in Chicago, the forest preserve has replaced the movie theater as spot of gay sex. Bathrooms are still popular trysting spots (perhaps because they are free, despite the obvious danger). Unlike many of the bathhouses, any of which which closed because of AIDS, the theaters continued their business, perhaps more fitfully, but all these factors seemed to signal an end to that world of endlessly available sex, a world depicted vividly in the classic gay porn film A Night at the Adonis.

The Adonis was New York City's famous gay porn theaters in the 1970s. Other theaters included the Eros, Gaiety, Bijoux, and Elgin. 42nd Street was the spot for XXX activity, both gay and straight. In fact, Any movie theater could end up being a space for gay sex, as depicted so brutally in the film Midnight Cowboy in the scene where the cowboy hustler played by Jon Voigt picks up a young kid who can't pay him for the sex. Even the New York Times accepted ads for gay porn films!

Jack Wrangler and Malo star in A Night at the Adonis, directed by Jack Deveau for Hand-in-Hand Films.

Jack stars as a store owner who has designs on his husky employee, Malo (a.k.a.Roger). Malo turns down a date with his boss and goes to his hairdresser, who promptly fucks him hard on the barber chair. But Jack and Malo do meet later because, as this film demonstrates, throughout the 1970's everybody in New York City wound up at the Adonis Theatre sooner or later.

From the balcony to the boiler room, director Jack Deveau does a good job of showing the wide range of customers (from young to mature, from leather to clean-cut) engaging in all sort of sexual enjoyment.

In a restroom of the theatre, the manager and a leatherman share blowjobs with one another, the latter blowing onto the sucker's face. Meanwhile, as different Hand-in-Hand films are playing on the screen, Jack and the barber have met up with one another and are busy beating each other off, but disturbed by the constant intrusions.

Into another men's room, three men begin to get into one another. Roger is there and has one of the guy's mouth with his big cock while the other watches. The barber goes down on Jack's boner and Roger is shown plowing ass in the bathroom over the sink. Roger soon glides Geraldo's cock into an ass he was sucking, the film here becoming a full-scale orgy. Highlighting this orgy is a dual jackoff session by "two" Big Bill Elds.

The Adonis was a place where, as the title of Brad Gooch's book reads, the “Golden Age of Promiscuity” played out, behind those marquees which are now dimmed. But new kinds of lights flash these days, but on cellphones, as the new generation hooks up via Grinder.

Slate Magazine recently published a six-part series of insightful and well-researched pieces by June Thomas, “The Gay Bar: Is It Dying?” (http://www.slate.com/id/2297608).

Have you noticed that the typical gay celebrity on television dispenses advice on weddings, hair styles, fashion, desserts, and home décor. What if gays instead dispensed advice on fishing, truck driving, auto repair, hunting, American football, home repair (not decorating), and tool and die techniques (and I'm not in anyway referring to the classic gay porn flick L.A. Tool and Die)? Would anyone listen, much believe that the above is even possible? That gay men do men things? Or would the straight experts in those fields allow a gay guy infringe on their traditionally masculine territory? But then, there are straight male hair stylists, fashion designers, and wedding planners. Or are there, or are they hiding in the closet, pun intended?

I'm not calling for an all-out war on gay stereotypes, but I do wonder if the prototype of this gay advice genre, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, only served to perpetuate, if not emphasize the stereotypes. Not that all the guys on that show were as “flamboyant” as Carson Kressley, but several Carson Kressley types have popped up on such reality TV/advice show fare such as My Fair Wedding and Clean House.

These gay “fairy godfathers” usually help straights clean up their messes, but what do they get out of it after they work their magic? I would love to know if there is any dick involved as gratitude for a makeover well done, but nobody's telling. The straight couple gets married, their house gets decluttered and redecorated, and the gay fairy godfather returns to his lover that he can't marry in most states or countries or to his beautifully decorated empty house and a cat (more stereotypes, perhaps?).