Last modified: Fri Jun 8 06:19:39 PDT 2001

Leather Lather : Folsom Weekend @ The W Hotel

Aging Porn Goddess: "You're a groovy boy. I'd like to strap you on sometime."
Harris (the boy): "If there's anything I can't stand, it's vagueness."
-- party chatter, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

"Who. Are. These. PEOPLE?"
-- stunned entrance line, woman in powder-blue Prada, W Hotel lobby, Sep 22nd, 2000.

Ahh, September 22, the first day of autumn. In some places, leaves begin to turn the color of hippies' clothes. People haul big cozy wool sweaters out of cedar chests for the nippy evenings ahead. They do cute things with gourds, pumpkins, and that creepy "Indian corn."

Well that's fine for all those people who HAVE four seasons. But we at Guerrilla Queer Bar wanted to herald the coming season in another way: a surprise-party celebration of cow-skin fetish clothing and sexual hurt-me. And holy fucking hayride, it worked!

By the appointed hour of 9:30 PM, the lobby of the W Hotel seen from the street was a vision. The three-story glass façade was dimmed from within by the clusters of black leather, vinyl, and PVC fashions. Both the suspecting and the unsuspecting were spun out of the revolving door into our midst. We were like a bunch of dirty long-haul truckers at a debutante ball: laughably out of place, but just as happy and horny and pleased with ourselves as could be.

The little lobby bar was three deep all the way around for a while there, but service was still pretty good. At eight bucks a cocktail, one would certainly hope so. (Promise: No wallet-busters for the next couple events at least. Hope you agree that the juxtaposition was worth the price.) The staff said they heard we were coming just before we got there, but they could not have known what it meant. We annexed the second-floor bar as well, and this created a nice runway on the stairwell for the evening. Upstairs bartenders were giving free drinks to some of the more fabulously dressed attendees, one of whom had a glow-in-the-dark dildo in her gun holster.

The second-floor lobby overlook was the spot for much impromptu go-go dancing, and then there was the lovely lady who sat there for a while, not realizing that the zipper on her vinyl dress was open from the bottom of the dress all the way up. She gave the lobby crowd quite a view, she said later, shrugging. It didn't really matter, because her date for the evening was the very broad and hugely muscled Chad (stage name), the weekend's Campus Theater star. He was a sweetheart, and quite entertained by the whole scene. Anyone who caught his show should send graphic descriptions via the website.

To continue name-dropping, other professionals in attendance included superstar dominatrix Mistress Midori (appearing in various sex-advice columns near you), wearing what looked like a vinyl SS uniform. Wow, nice to see you. And who could have missed billboard-sized drag queen MAMA in gold lamé, quite some sort of thing in Los Angeles, described by a guy in the business as "ChiChi LaRue, Jr."

And hey, rapture and epiphany, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence continue to grace our tawdry lives with their delicious guilt-free fun. Sister Gina Tonic and Sister Merry Peter were among the faithful Friday night. Straight from the clubs of Cincinnati, where they serve the sweetest Courvasier and Remy Martin, we beheld Roz. She was a vision in tragic Midwestern 80's (is that redundant?) evening wear. With those stunning bronze-colored nails, all she could hold was the thin stem of her champagne flute.

Anyway, that's it for roll call, back to the action. Spankings were liberally applied to eager naughty butts, all night long. An arrangement of bamboo twigs in the woman's rest room (W Hotel crappers are NICE!) became a ready supply of switches. As a wealthy middle-aged couple descended the stairs in a run for the front door, they had to sidle past a woman with her ass stuck high in the air, taking it with panting eagerness from an ecstatic girlfriend. Hot. Another 40-something couple from Carmel kept one GQB'er talking for almost twenty minutes. The wife was having so much fun she was going home to get on the email list. (So if you are reading this, lady, welcome to the hootenanny.)

The announced backup bar for the evening, in case the W wasn't having any of it, was the 711 Club a couple blocks away on Market Street. As the scene at the W began to die down, this charming little bar got to hopping. Spankings continued, thanks in part to the slinky young troublemaker with his leather strap. He started in on a couple unsuspecting guys while they were taking care of business at the urinals. Which was a really good really devious idea. Next thing you know, men and women are fighting over who would be the next to bend over the Ms. Pacman game (table-top version, great height) and have their turn being punished. S/M skating rink fantasies, I'm melting.

Then "Hey Jude" came on the jukebox and the evening's cumulative drinking began to show. It was a sloppy, sappy sing-along worthy of the Irish. Maybe "Hey Jude" is the closest thing we have to "Danny Boy," come to think of it. Well, except for "I Will Survive," oh my gay brethren. Ooh, don't know how I feel about that one.

Once again, Guerrilla Queer Bar comes off in fine fashion. The theme was perfectly executed, the range and scope was full-on Fellini, and the effect was mind-blowing delight. Thanks for the welts. See you all next time.