My life in s/m started relatively early. As a 12 year old, I was already doing self suspension and abuse in the basement of my parents' New Jersey home. The things I did then were pretty wild for a 12 year old -- but that's another story perhaps better told in person. What fed my fantasies however, were the front cover illustrations of "straight" sex novels with s/m overtones. They featured incredibly masculine, unshaven and bare-chested men tied up and tortured by the Nazis. More fertilizers for my adolescent mind were TV shows in the sixties like "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "The Wild, Wild West." My right hand developed its strength much faster than my left due to those fantasies. Oh to be the captured spy, hung from my wrists and tortured, only to be rescued by the ever so handsome Robert Conrad.
As I grew older I was unaware that there was a whole underground circuit of men who enjoyed doing the things I fantasized about: masculinity, bondage, torture, enslavement and servitude. However, after some guilt-ridden introspection, a period of self-denial was imposed to quell such desires. Not until my college years in the early seventies did I let the s/m fantasies rear their (beautiful) heads again.
As a 21 year old, I wanted to come out, reach out, make contact. The only thing was, I didn't know how. I wanted the man of my fantasies to bring me out. At this point of my life, though, I was clue-less as how to meet him.
A couple of more years passed, and every so often I would hear about places like Greenwich Village. Unfortunately I never heard about where to go. A breakthrough finally occurred via the Edgar Bronfman, Jr. kidnapping. Remember that? While trying to collect every detail about his kidnapping (hoping to hear specifics as how his wrists might have been bound with rope and tape used to gag his mouth) the newspapers broke the story about his homosexual life. Wow! They reported on his activities and which bars he frequented. Clues were now starting to pour in.
Finally, a leather breakthrough: The Village Voice mentioned a place called the Ramrod where men into s/m collected. It was on West Street between Christopher and West 10th Streets. I decided to go.
There I was on a rainy Saturday night, sitting in my car under the West Side Highway. Across the street was the Ramrod. Seeing the men entering and exiting the bar both terrified and elated me. My car radio played The Eagles' Lyin' Eyes and One of These Nights, and The Doobie Brothers' Black Water and South City Midnight Lady. To me the music was masculine and strong. Even so, it did not give me the guts to break through my head's sex barrier. I couldn't even muster up the courage to leave the safety of my car let alone cross the threshold of the bar. For nearly every Saturday night of 1976 I repeated this vigil of sitting in my car for hours on end under the West Side Highway. Sitting, watching, waiting and praying someone would notice, come over and take me home. Those were my times of sexual expectation and hope.
At last, I met someone (a story of its own) and entered into the world of gay male leathersex. More and more, I found out about places populated by men like me. Little by little I started to frequent them. Looking back, these places formed a collage of fond memories of "nights out" and actualized fantasies.
Take a walk with me to some of them.
Let's start by going over to Second Avenue and the northwest corner of East 6th Street. No, not an s/m bar, but definitely in its heyday, a part of s/m New York: The Saint. At this place, the old Fillmore East, there were Black Parties of renown with rumored circumcisions, piercings, tattooing and s/m sex scenes taking place to the beat of music under the spectacular dome. Any given Saturday night, you would find incredible shirtless men dancing their asses off. And later on, you'd see them at the Mineshaft. There was nothing like it. I love recounting this short story: LA, 1981. After spending a fruitless Friday night in the local LA leather scene, I woke up with my best friend in the Beverly Hilton Hotel. We looked at each other with sleepy and oh-I-am-sooo-tired-of-LA eyes. He said to me, "Tonight's the Black Party at The Saint." I said, "Let's go." We went.
Now head up to St. Marks Place and make a left. Walk past the street vendors, vintage clothing stores and various restaurants. Just before you reach 4th Avenue, on the south side of the block at #6 St. Marks Place, is a building presently undergoing some renovation: The New Saint Marks Baths. Here is where the disco bunnies got their last licks before the close of each weekend. At this bathhouse you'd find bodies and muscles of great form and sex for days. The s/m scenes there would be varied but usually private.
Continue to walk westward on St. Marks Place crossing Cooper Square into East 8th Street and across town to the West Village.
Get to Christopher Street and start to stroll around this ever changing neighborhood. It was here as a college undergraduate that I was in awe of the first man I saw in chaps.
At Tiffany's Restaurant, on West Fourth near Christopher Street, you would find leathermen having a burger and fries at 7 a.m. after a night at The Saint and Mineshaft. Dressed in their leathers, black T-shirts wet and torn, they'd eat and listen to conversations by drag queens bragging and moaning about their lost loves of the night before.
Around the corner on Christopher you'll see Boots & Saddle across the street from Citibank. That establishment was usually my first stop on my s/m trips into the Village. It was always sleazy enough for me to get "warmed up," but never interesting enough to stay for the evening.
Walking further down Christopher but turning left at Bleecker Street just a few doors in from the corner was the Marquis de Suede. In its day, it was a terrific little leather shop. Now it's a tchatchke shop. Further down Christopher and (thankfully) still in business, is the Leather Man. Prices are pretty high there, but the stock is extensive and staff courteous and knowledgeable. The front display window is frequently changed making for interesting comments (and judgments) by gay vanilla or straight strollers/tourists.
Across the street is Ty's. Although this bar never pretended to be part of the leather circuit, I liked to go in and maybe turn a head or two. Getting cruised there usually got me in the headspace for a great night. Not getting cruised there would put me into a funk.
Christopher Street can be long. Too long. It ends at West Street and what once anchored a cluster of bars: Keller's, to the south on West, Badlands at the northeast corner (now a XXX video store), and a few doors up of course, the Ramrod, which is now a restaurant. I never scored too often at the Ramrod, but I loved to go look at the scenery. For some reason, the men (who reappeared at other haunts the same night) looked better there. Here, on a Thursday night in November, 1980, the bar was shot up by a homophobic man. He did it from his car. One man was killed and reportedly 3 others injured. I can remember a friend of mine woke me that night, calling me minutes after it happened and hysterically babbling about being there.
Crossing over West Street to the river, a series of piers in varying degrees of decay are seen at intervals up and down the Hudson River. Believe it or not, several of them had huge pier housings on them and this area was known as none other than the piers. It was an extremely dangerous endeavor to cruise the piers. The structures on them were in all sorts of states of collapse, and one never knew who or what sort of person would be met there. If you weren't killed by falling through the rotted pier itself, then there was the risk of being mugged by someone lurking in the shadows. It made Central Park seem like child's play. Yet, many of us were attracted to this darker corner of our underworld. Remains of those times could be seen in a series of s/m photographs shot there seen in old issues of Drummer.
Now is the time to make a detour and get yourself up to Greenwich Street. At West 10th Street one could see one of the sites for the trucks. At what were once parking areas for trucks, sexual activity could be found. At nearly anytime you could count on participating in an anonymous sexual encounter. What is it now? Some lovely apartments. The trucks were only for men with tastes for a specific kind of sex. And though the trucks were not a true cornerstone of s/m New York, it was definitely part of the structure.
Get back over to Washington Street and start hiking north. You'll pass another parking lot on Washington and Bethune - more trucks.
Keep walking and there, at Little West 12th Street, on the northeast corner, now painted pink (and most recently used as a backdrop for a Lands' End men's clothing ad!) are the remains of the Mineshaft. Talk about a story! On any given night, there was fodder for many a novel.
You'd go up the stairs, pay the fee and enter the bar. From there, you could check your clothes and go into the sex arena. The first part had stalls, slings and some glory holes. In the center was a steep wooden stairwell to descend below. Or, at the other end of the play area was a more conventional stairway. Going down the stairs you'd enter an empty concrete room with men hanging around. Some waiting for action, others creating it. Through a doorway there was a tub in the middle of a large room. More men, some of them very wet. This could have been Mecca for GSA. Up ahead was another small area with several stalls. Shadows became real when they touched your tits. Hands were strong when they pushed you down to the floor. The arms were so protective when they held you tight. Cross through one more doorway, and there was the space: the last, the darkest, and the most hard-core area of the Mineshaft. I don't even know if it had a name other than the "downstairs bar." This area had a bar, play space and the best of sex music. For some of us, the "downstairs bar" defined sex music. As far as the action went, whipping, flogging, bondage, humiliation. You name it. Drummer also documented the Mineshaft's famous Black Mask parties of the late '70's and early 80's.
One block over to the east and another to the north at 13th Street and 9th Avenue is a triangular building. Bounded by 9th Avenue, 13th and Hudson Streets, this building housed a series of s/m clubs of historical value. One was, and at this writing, still is, J's at street level on the Hudson side. Back in the early '80's, a game of pool and some backroom action all in the same place could definitely make my late twenty-something libido very happy.
On the other side of the building, down a flight of stairs was a space that has had many names but always remained true to the s/m New York scene. Its names at times were Hellfire and Manhole. Certain nights it was gay, other nights, straight/mixed. But it was always s/m. The club was actually under the cobblestoned street. Its vaulted brick and concrete rooms housed cages, stocks, tubs and slings.
Enough reminiscing here; time to go further uptown. Head back to 14th and West Streets and you will see a hotel. There, in the basement was The Anvil. In its heyday, the Anvil was a place which combined male go-go dancers with a variety of s/m acts. I never got to witness these acts, but I heard it was pretty explicit especially when the asshole was involved.
The Spike Bar was once New York's premier leather bar. It still stands at the corner of West and 20th Streets. My cruise night would never be complete without standing outside and pissing against the wall. While you were pissing or talking with some of the regulars outside of the bar, you might hear a catcall from the Women's House of Detention across the street.
While on West Street continue walking up to the northern corner of 21st Street. There, the Eagle's Nest still rules as it used to, hosting bar nights for handballers and other special interest groups. The Eagle's Nest was always one of my personal favorites. I loved going from the back to the front and around by the black painted johns. For me it was the epitome of a leather bar: dark, masculine, stark and almost rustic.
No recollection of New York's s/m scene would be complete without a mention of the "mamma" bathhouse of them all: The Everard Baths (fondly dubbed the Everhards). It closed for a period in the late seventies when a fire took its toll on this bastion of gay male sexuality. I never experienced its riches, but I loved (and still do) hearing men recount their nights of fisting, bondage, whipping and servitude. It reopened after the fire, but slowly faded into gay history.
Though the leather scene today is different from that of the seventies and eighties there are new places to create one's own ghosts: the LURE, Rawhide, Dugout, the Tunnel Bar, Zone DK and the Cellblock have become home to many men. TRUST and F.I.S.T. socials, GSA parties, Bound and Gagged meetings, Pork at the LURE and Sunday beer busts at the Dugout become this generation's building blocks for stories of rich and mind-boggling experiences. We now have GMSMA Wednesday night programs, Dungeon Demos and Workshops to educate us. Leather Pride, Leatherfest, NewsLink, pride parades, create events and voices for us to gather and talk as a community. David Menkes, the Gauntlet, and The Noose dress us up, decorate us with jewelry and provide our toy chests with goodies.
What has changed over these past years is our approach to responsible, safe, sane and consensual sex. What has not changed are our desires and abilities to acknowledge our sexuality.
-- Don V.
