Queer Nightlife

The LA List: My Favorite Places to Fuck, Dance, Eat and Play in LA.

Discerning Daddy

(Picture provided by Jack Faulkner, House, Disco’s Revenge)

Los Angeles is a sprawling Mega-City of almost 14 million people. It is home to the second largest LGBTQ population in the United States.

Everything people say about LA is true: the traffic is shit, it is an overcrowded, sprawling, expensive, and often times chaotic City.

But it is also stunningly beautiful, and full of magic: LA is the kind of City that changes you, like a fairy tale kingdom that only really reveals itself to you once it decides you are worthy.

It is a wild City of artists and philosophers, a City where people come to leave behind the rules and expectations they were raised with: to be born again, to redefine their existence.

It’s not for everyone. It can devour you, leave you broken and alone, but for those of us who love this City, it will forever be one of the most amazing places in the world.

It is also one of the best places I know of to eat, fuck and dance, and lose yourself in abandonment.

Here’s a list of a few of my favorite Queer places in LA.

1.House, Disco’s Revenge: This is by far one of my favorite parties happening in LA right now. Jack Faulkner has created a fun, uplifting, amazing space to come together and dance and feel like you are part of a community. It has that underground, high as fuck, deep beats kinda vibe. The crowd is friendly and sexy: every time I’m there I feel like I’m surrounded by friends and some of the best music I’ve heard out in a while.

“I’ve been building House, Disco’s Revenge for a few years now at one of my favorite dive bars in Silverlake – Akbar. I believe that people want to be taken on a journey. This is what I was always looking for on the dance floor: a place to escape to. Monstrous beats, deep grooves, souful vocals that you can dance hard to, and that take you on a deep journey leaving you feeling uplifted. This is what my party is all about. An all-inclusive, safe space where people lose themselves in the music and feel the collective love of our underground community on the dance floor.” – Jack Faulkner.

House, Disco’s Revenge, takes place at Akbar, 4356 West Sunset Blvd, in Silverlake. The next House, Disco’s Revenge will be: Saturday November 16, 10pm – 2am.

2. Por Detroit, LA: Por Detroit, a party based out of Mexico City, and brought to LA by legendary DJ Victor Rodriquez, is one of my favorite warehouse parties happening in LA. You’ll have to keep checking their Facebook and Instagram pages to see when the next one is happening. What I love about this party, besides the amazing music and vibe, is that while it’s still a full-on warehouse party, it’s also small enough to feel intimate. And it has one of my favorite dark rooms. Layne fucked me so good one night at this party while a bunch of guys stood around watching and jerking off. What more do you want from a party? Great music. Great People. Great Vibes. And all the dicks and asses (or whatever it is you want) you can handle.

3. The Party By Ostbahnhof: I’ve written a lot about this party. And it still remains my favorite warehouse party in a City that is full of amazing after hours and warehouse parties. I have danced, I have partied, I have lost myself in the lights and the music, and I have been so well fucked and had some of the sexiest adventures with Layne at this party. It is pure artistic hedonism at its best. Thrown by Black Charmed and Victor Rodriquez, it is still my favorite warehouse party. If you’re planning a trip to LA or live here, check out this amazing experience, happening the 3rd Saturday of every month. You can find more info on Instagram.

4. Casita Del Campo: Ok. This has to make the list. It’s one of Layne’s favorite restaurants in LA, and still holds its old school gay run vibe. Great Mexican food, fun campy shows weekly in their theatre, still super gay, friendly, and well worth every penny. This place isn’t just about the food: it’s about the whole experience. It’s a throw-back to an older, gayer Silverlake. 1920 Hyperion Avenue, LA, CA, 90027.

5. The Eagle LA: Full disclosure, I work the door at the Eagle (so feel free to come show me your ass or bring me cupcakes anytime you plan on visiting), so maybe I’m biased, but I still think it’s one of the best bars in LA. The Eagle is more than a leather bar, or “Dude” bar. It’s one of the most open and diverse bars in LA. With parties like MeatRack, CubScout , and Vaseline Alley, it plays to a wide and diverse crowd. While on weekends it can get busy, it still has that neighborhood gay bar vibe to it. 4219 Santa Monica Blvd, LA, CA, 90029.

6. Gold’s Gym Hollywood: Ok, I get it. You’re all rolling your eyes. But let’s be real: Gold’s Gym Hollywood is a classic gay-influenced LA gym. Every time my friend Reiner is visiting from Berlin he makes me take him to Gold’s. While it’s a big LA gym, it still has a local, neighborhood feel to it. Staff and members are all friendly. And come on, there are some of the hottest guys to watch at this place: every time I work out here I’m inspired, and my dick is hard. What more do you want? 1016 Cole Ave, LA, CA 90038.

7.Runyon Canyon: Runyon is one of those hikes you have to experience to understand. LA’s bod- perfect, shirtless, sun-worshipping devotees flock here to be seen and to see. Go for a hike, get healthy, and see plenty of super-hot, sometimes famous, people showing off. Also, you never know, I once got a blow job by this muscle daddy in the bushes one late afternoon. Life’s all about adventure. Go have one.

So those are a few of my favorite places in LA. I could keep the list going but I’ll save some for my part two! I’d love to hear your thoughts and your favorite places.

In Celebration of Fucking and The Freedom to Explore All of Who We Are

Discerning Daddy

“I can feel your heartbeat,” Clay whispers in my ear, his cock buried deep inside me.

We are lying in my bed, there are candles burning, scented sage and lavender.

I am on my stomach. Clay is on top of me, the full weight of him pinning me to the bed. An arm is wrapped under my neck, pulling me up slightly.

“All of this,” he says, his cock pushing deeper into me, grounding me, filling me until there is nothing left, “is mine.”

He begins to fuck me harder, his arm tightening around my neck: reminding me of what he has just told me: that I belong to him.

My cock is so hard it hurts, but I won’t cum until he does. I won’t allow myself release until I know he is totally satisfied.

I have allowed myself to explore my sexuality: to be the dominant top, the dirty fisting piss daddy, the lover, group sex, gang bangs, public sex, I have been a master and an alpha, brutal and kind, all in the relentless pursuit of the edges of who I was.

But it is here, in my bed, pinned underneath the man I love, his cock pounding into me, that I find my real frontiers: the edges of experience that had always seemed just out of reach.

No matter how scared I get, or jealous, or insecure, I know, that I am safe with him. Even when we are in the middle of some pointless fight that doesn’t seem to end, I am safe here.

It is that sense of safety that allows me to feel free to express my needs, and to be open when he expresses his.

Last weekend Clay and I went to Por Detroit, an afterhours party from Mexico City that takes place in a warehouse in Downtown LA.

We arrived at 1:30 in the morning. The music pulsed through the room, all around us people were dancing. The room burst into cheers as the DJ elevated us, pulled us along, pushing us to the edge and then pulling us back.

Clay slipped his hands down the back of my jeans, his fingers playing around my hole, tickling it, his teeth nibbling at my ear. My hand went straight for his cock. He was hard: he has the perfect dick, big and fat, the kind of dick I want inside me all the time.

“Look how hard you make me, baby,” he whispered in my ear. “That’s what you do to me.”

He led me through the crowd: drag queens and queer royalty, club kids and muscle bears and art fags, queer kids and gender-fluid, dancing and laughing, losing themselves: and I remember thinking: this is my world, my friends, my family: this is where we are safe. Parties like Por Detroit and Ostbahnhof, these worlds of music and dance on the fringes of the City, are where we, the freaks, beautiful and glorious, get to come to be who we really are, where we get to be loved and celebrated.

Clay lead me into the dark room. He took me in his arms, kissing me, pulling me into him, in the middle of that room: surrounded by people fucking and falling in love, sucking and exploring desires that only exist inside those moments: at night, in the darkness of a club where all of us come together to share our bodies and our fantasies and he pushed me to my knees, taking his dick out and my mind went blank, the only thing I knew in that moment was that cock, and how bad I needed it.

We moved toward the back of the room, where a tall muscular man in his 50’s dressed in a leather harness and leather jeans was getting his dick stroked by a sexy boy in a jock strap.

“Do you want to suck his dick, baby?” He asked me.

I dropped to my knees, sucking on the man’s dick. When I looked up, Clay was licking his nipples, rubbing him.

Standing up, Clay said to me, “How was it?”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” I said.

I loved watching Clay suck that dude’s dick. I love how much my man loves to suck dick.

And I love that we get to be there, together, exploring all the sides of our sexuality, not limiting ourselves, and not limiting each other.

But here is the other truth: none of this is easy all the time. I can be a jealous cave man, full of fury and insecurity. And I am learning that I need to share these parts of who I am with Clay as well: that by sharing the whole truth of who I am, the ugly and the beautiful, the scared and the proud and the sadness and the joy, only then will we be truly open to each other.

Because, for me, that is the point: I don’t want either of us to limit the other. Not because we are afraid. I want my dude to grow and explore, not just sexually, but as a man, a human, an artist, and I want the same.

And I believe we can do that together. If we are honest with each other.

Someone recently asked me why I need to always write about sex, and in such a “pornographic way”.

I really thought about that: because sure, I want to turn you on, I want your dicks to get hard, I want you wet and I want to make you horny, and I want you to validate me, but I also want to say,

Whoever you are, you are okay. That we are all in this together. And sex is fun. And love is vast and beautiful and scary and that we, all of us, are full of such potential, if we allow ourselves to reach it. That we should be allowed to be our biggest, fullest selves.

I am lucky. I live in a city that is open and tolerant. I live in a world that allows me to explore the boundaries of my desires, that allows me to explore who I am as an artist and a man, as a top or a bottom, as a lover and a partner, as a fucking human being. Not everyone is as lucky as I am.

So I write. About who I am. About my adventures. My relationships. Sometimes I fuck it all up. Sometimes I participate in something really amazing.

But this is the bottom line: you are fucking beautiful. Whoever you are. You deserve the right to be the kind of human being you want to be.

And also, sex is fucking fun. We all need to lighten the fuck up. Go out, get laid, have fun, fall in love, fuck your whole life up and then recreate it all into something new and magnificent, because here’s the other thing: this ride is going to end. We might as well get everything out of it we can.

Hey, if you liked reading this, check out my book, Accidental Warlocks on Amazon. Your support allows me to keep writing.

Infinite and Forever: In Memory of Days of Endless Orgies

Discerning Daddy

This is an excerpt from a new book I am working on. Everything happens just as I say. Mostly. Photo Credit: Tom Bianchi.

When I was 18 I spent a few weeks in Fire Island at my friend Patrick’s father’s house. Patrick’s dad was gay. He was an art dealer, but there were rumors he was also a thief, or a gangster, I once heard he was smuggling guns for revolutionaries or cartels.

Patrick wasn’t my boyfriend but we used to fuck. We were young and horny and if we weren’t getting high or drunk or sticking our dicks in each other we were fighting over books and Heidegger, Marxist theory and how magic manifests in our lives.

Patrick was tall and athletic, curly black hair and green eyes, he had a long fat uncut dick and a fat ass from soccer and swimming. To this day I still jerk off thinking about Patrick.

I loved lying in bed with him, or sneaking out to the pool in the early dawn, still high as fuck and wanting more, or onto the beach, talking all night, holding each other, taking turns fucking each other, making out and telling each other our dreams.

We both wanted so much back then.

At 18 I wanted to fall in love, to fuck the world, to rise as high as I could, and then to freefall as deep as possible.

I never told Patrick that one night, while he was out dancing, I stayed up drinking beers with his father. I never told him that I ended up on my knees, on that kitchen floor, sucking his father off, and that once in a while, when we were alone, his dad would sneak into my room and fuck me, whispering in my ear that he owned me and that my ass belonged to him, and that I was right where I was supposed to be: pinned to the earth by his big dick.

One Saturday night I had stayed out at the club after Patrick had gone home. The night was beautiful: warm and balmy, the sky that endless sparkling brilliance that only happens in my memories, the world lit up in fire.
I was high and drunk and all around me men danced and laughed. They grabbed me and kissed me, holding me tight, whispering I love you and I need you. We fucked right there on the dance floor, stomping our feet and howling up into the sky: screaming out our names as loud as we could.

It was 1987 and we were dying: all around us, our friends and lovers, our community, were getting sick and dying.

But on that night, for those few minutes we raged against the inevitable, against the loss and the fear and the despair: we danced, and we fucked, and we howled until there was nothing left: just the ecstasy piercing the night, elevating us, reminding us that we were human, that we were alive: on that night the world was full of magic and possibility: and we were full of love.
I decided to walk home along the beach. At one point I cut through a path, through a grove of trees and dunes. In the dark I heard men laughing and moaning and I stepped off the path, into the trees, in search of adventure.

It was like stumbling into a magical ceremony: a coven of witches: a circle of warlocks. In the trees, hidden from the walk way, a group of 20 or so guys stood around passing joints and bottles of wine, taking turns fucking this stunning muscle guy bent over a large tree trunk that must have found its way to the shore from the depths of the ocean.

Sitting alone on a rock was a dark-haired boy with a thick beard. He couldn’t stop watching as men took turns pounding themselves into the muscle guy.
I sat on the rock next to him. He told me his name was Adam. He was getting his PH’d in Theoretical Physics and was on the Island for a wedding.

I offered to split a tiny blue pill I found in my pocket with him.

“What is it?” he asked me.

“I have no clue,” I laughed. “But it makes everything really fucking beautiful.”

We made out on that rock and he told me how the world was not how it looked: that the physical world was a deception, a lie, but that the truth was there, hiding, playing a game with us: calling out to us.

“You can see it if you really look. Out of the corners of your eyes. Reflecting in the surfaces all around us.” He took my hands in his, his lips brushing my lips: I felt my heart quicken, my dick was so hard it hurt. “You and me. This separation: it’s a lie. There is nothing between us. You and me, we are connected.”

We ended up leaving the coven of fucking magicians and walked to the edges of the world, the ocean dark and stunning, the moon a sliver of gold. He kissed me and told me that he believed that we were endless beings: infinite and forever.
He kept saying those words to me: “We are infinite and forever.”

When the sun began to rise he told me he had somewhere to be.

When we kissed goodbye I felt what he had said to me: infinity and connectedness: I felt forever.

Later that day Ryan and I walked home along the beach from the gym. Ahead of us was a wedding: a man and a woman standing on the edges of the ocean. When we got closer I saw the man was Adam.

For a moment our eyes connected, and in his were a kind of pain and sadness I didn’t understand at the time: they were full of loss. And then he looked away, to the woman he would marry.

When I told Ryan he said,

“Everyone is so fucked up.” He took my hand in his, leading me away from the Ocean and Adam. “Fucked up and beautiful. We’re all locked in this crazy madhouse together and the only way out is through it. Till the fucking end.”

“Yeah. Till the fucking end.”

I still can’t escape that feeling of magic. Of something larger than life happening to me. Those moments, our bodies pressed together, the taste of his breath, the smell of him: I can’t escape that feeling that we knew each other. For who we really were.

At least for a few moments.

“We are infinite and forever,” he said to me.

I feel it. 32 years later. I can feel the way those words became a part of me. Defined me.

32 years later I can feel what it was he was saying to me: that there is a magic in this world, a purpose and a meaning, it is burning right here in front of us. It is ours if we choose it.

Infinite and forever. Burning bright and strong.

I can close my eyes in this moment, here and now, and still taste him: I can feel the warmth of his skin, the timbre of his voice.

And I can feel every man I have ever loved. Every man I have ever fucked. Every man who has ever been inside me: I can feel us all, in these moments, howling like mad men at the night, raging against the future, running full speed from the past, desperate and mad and in love.

Connected.

Thanks for reading. If you want to read more, go check out my book, Accidental Warlocks, on Amazon. Support queer artists!

We Are All Beautiful.

Discerning Daddy

I grew up in and around New York City in the 80’s and 90’s. Some of my mother’s closest friends were gay men. Most of them have died from AIDS. When, at 45 years old I found out I was HIV positive, regardless of what I knew intellectually, I felt the devastation of all those men my mother had loved who had died. I felt afraid, alone, suddenly cut off from the rest of my community.

Of course the truth was very different. I sero-converted in the age of PrEP and Treatment as Prevention, an age where more and more of my community understood what being positive meant, the age of the Undetectable Status.

But I was now a 45-year-old man. My age and my HIV Status, the way I felt about my body in a culture obsessed with body image: these things fuck with your self-worth. It is easy to feel undesirable, it is easy to begin to feel like life is coming to a close, to start looking back and saying: what the fuck have I even accomplished?

Who the fuck am I?

In May I turned 50.

For most of my life I never liked the way I looked. I was too short, too stocky, too fat, too skinny…always too something that amounted to never being quite enough.

We live in a world that tells us, through advertising and fake news and PR campaigns, that we aren’t pretty enough, happy enough, successful enough: that nothing will ever fix us until we buy or try or wear or eat or fuck this one thing. Our worth and our acceptance is contingent on this product, service, whatever.

Because, they tell us, we are broken.

On Saturday night I went to my favorite underground warehouse party in LA. Severino from Horse Meat Disco was DJing. We arrived at 1:30 in the morning to an old warehouse behind a large parking lot in downtown LA.

Ushered from the street inside, we stood in a large waiting area, kids in colorful outfits and masks, horror movie and glamor make-up, drag queens and muscle bears in leather and jocks, girls and boys, genderless and gender queer, the music could be heard from inside, people were already dancing as we waited to be allowed entry.

On the dance floor the music pounded: Disco mixed toward a darker edge, then flowing back into that ecstatic memory of my childhood when my mother and her friends would dance wildly in the living room to Parliament and Donna Summer, bottles of red wine and joints, laughing and howling at the possibility of a future. They would scream into the night, they would hold each other and cry, my mother would do Tarot Cards and channel alien entities, she would cast spells as she held court over these men, and I would hide, quietly under the table, allowed to watch as long as I stayed in my little hidden fort.

I remember my mother saying to a friend of hers who had lost so much weight he seemed to be disappearing,

“We are all beautiful. Every single one of us. We are like these great shining lights, gorgeous and magical and full of existence.”

Underneath the disco ball as it captured and sent transcended light back to us as we danced, I closed my eyes, feeling the heat of the room, my body drenched in sweat, the floor shaking underneath the weight of us, bodies pushing against me, touching me: fans clapping loudly, people cheering with each new shift of the music: lost for a moment in the infinite possibility of who we all might be.

In that room I took my shirt off, no longer trapped by all the hateful shit that swirled in my head, no longer caring: I was more than my body, more than my HIV status, more than my age or my gender or my sexual preferences: in that room, underneath that disco ball I was part of something that extended way beyond myself, way beyond any of us.

It is easy to feel scared. It is easy to look at someone who appears beautiful, or of a different race or gender, someone with more money, someone with more power, and to think they are not scared. It is easy to be divided from each other, to forget that we are all human, and that we are all scared.

Before leaving the party I wandered into the Dark Room. I watched as a muscle man in a jock strap was bent over a chair, men taking turns on him, a shaved headed boy covered in tattoos knelt sucking the dick of a short, slender, gorgeous person, their shimmering black dress pulled up, golden high heels reflecting what little light was in the room.

In the middle of it all stood a tall vision dressed in white-netted cloth that reached up over their neck, covering their face, obfuscating them. They stood silently watching: as all around us men took turns fucking and sucking, jerking off onto each other, making out and laughing, talking quietly, moving to the music.

As men moaned, as someone said, over and over, “Fuck me harder, please, fuck me harder,” the white dressed obfuscation raised their glass, as if in toast, as if in blessing, and then turned and walked out of the room.

I followed them out, but I lost them. I looked everywhere but they were just gone. Maybe they had changed clothes, now walking naked through the party, or maybe they had left, walking out onto the street, or maybe they had come, just for a few minutes, to celebrate with us, to dance and fuck and laugh with us: blessing us before fading back into whatever strange and beautiful existence they had appeared from.

It’s easy to take all the hate and shame and fear I have and turn it on someone else: to judge them, to categorize their flaws, to hate them: it is easy to forget that, like my mother said, we are all beautiful, and we are all afraid.
I don’t want to be afraid anymore, to judge myself as if I am somehow flawed, not worthy.

I like to think of that white clad creature extending their drink over all those fucking men as some kind of angel come to say, “You are beautiful, and we love you just as you are. You are absolutely fucking perfect just like this.”