It was raining as Sam and I crossed the Golden Gate.
We still hadn’t decided where we were going to go, although as we navigated through the traffic to Folsom Street we knew that our mission was to find the skeeziest place we could.
At around Fifth and Folsom we pulled into this Blade Runner-esque car parking lot that had elevators for each individual car…hulking machines in the rain. A man came out of the shadows and gave us our parking ticket, which is still on Sam’s dashboard.
Braving the rain, we got out of the car and set off down Folsom Street. The water was coming down relentlessly, and the streets were empty save for the puddles. For a Saturday night, it felt like we had truly crossed over into another universe.
Three soaking wet blocks later, we huddle under a second-floor balcony to check Sam’s phone for directions to a place to go.
The one that sounds the best is called Hole in the Wall. The description mentions a place “where people of all cliques could come together in harmony and alcohol,” so it seemed like the perfect place to inaugurate our evening of debauchery.
Eager to escape Zero and my real Sacramento life, I had turned off my phone before we even left. We slogged through the rain for a few more blocks, so wet we couldn’t see out of our glasses.
I was in my pinstripe wool suit, which is impervious to cold, but my face was sopping wet. We entered through an opaque, thick plastic curtain to a place that I can only describe as the ultimate place for Rob Zombie to hang out.
Above the dimly lit pool table was a huge motorcycle suspended from the ceiling. Emanating from it and twisting all over the ceiling to the back of the bar was a massive “snake” of lights, tangled luminescent cables, industrial parts, etc.
It glowed every neon color of the rainbow and was terribly distracting. I had no idea what it was until someone came up behind me and started toweling me off. It was the bartender, he toweled off both Sam and I. Once we were settled in, we ordered drinks.
A shot of Stoli for me, and a lemon drop for Sam. We absorbed the atmosphere. The end of the bar was covered in what looked like a mass of wax from hundreds of candles, and every part of the bar was covered in skulls, hick, and punk memorabilia. The music was amazing. I had never heard any of the bands, but it was like if every band was Rob Zombie but in varying degrees.
Sam tried his luck at the pinball machine (it wasn’t good) and after about an hour we made our way over to the second bar of the night.
On the web site it was referred to as My Place, somewhere that offered an abundance of dark corners, and was a competitor to Hole in the Wall. We arrived at a darkened building that a bum told us used to the place that we were looking for.
The third bar on the list was the Powerhouse. I rolled my eyes, but it was indeed the level of ultraskeeze and ultrasleaze that we sought.
I had heard things about that place. Terrible and wonderful things. I had heard that my favorite porn stars frequented it. I had even seen a video in which Damon sucked off nearly everyone in the place (one that I’m having a bit of difficulty locating, unfortunately).
But the whole point of the night was to have fun. And if we didn’t go to the Powerhouse… what fun would we have been having? I was also in my suit, which meant my penis was safely behind like four layers of clothing. Walked three more blocks, and the unobtrusive sign glowed above us. POWERHOUSE. Sam and I made eye contact for a moment before we went in… I couldn’t imagine the state we would be in when we left.
The place was a lot less skeezy than I imagined (or remembered from the video), but at this point it was still about 8:00 p.m.
I got a shot of Jack Daniel’s (which I don’t even like, but the bartender laughed at me when I ordered a Mojito so I had to reaffirm my manliness), and Sam got coffee. There were only a few guys there, so we explored. I was initially pretty nervous, but Sam tried his luck at the pinball machine there, lost, and we went in the back to smoke.
The place has two levels, the first level that you walk into with the bar and then the second level in the back where it goes up five or so stairs and it’s a bit more… intimate. There are about five TVs playing Colt porn, with the red spectrum turned way up on the TVs so it looks like Vegas inside. The lights along the top of the bar were Crisco cans, and the back wall was painted with a DANGER sign that took up the entire back wall.
The whole place glowed red against black walls, and as I sipped my apprehension away, guys trickled in over the hours. Sam and I went outside to smoke, then in to drink, and out again. The smoking area was actually the best place to hang out with the best seating. We claimed a spot way at the very back with two facing benches and a huge painting of a naked man above us.
We smoked and talked about the whole situation of everything that was going on in Sacramento… the bizarro world of all of our friends and all of their varying degrees of doom.
We went back to the bar in the front for more drinks, and Sam recommended I get an Amaretto Sour. I never had one before, so we both got one. It was the most amazing drink. Two more later, Sam and I were talking about the reason that we didn’t like each other, and a thousand other subjects you never think of until you are completely wasted.
We talked about what happens when we get drunk (and, mind you, this is the night after the Hamburger Mary’s situation). Okay, I’m going to admit it. When I’m drinking, I’m easier than normal. When I’m drunk, I’m 10 times easier than normal. And I’m pretty easy to begin with… so being drunk in a leather bar…not such a good idea. We resolved not to get drunk at all costs, our true cocksucking natures would manifest themselves.
The point came where we were severely trashed and were back at our haunt near the back of the smoking room discussing any sort of secret we had ever harbored against the other, when I noticed the door to the back room open.
Damon.
He had all of the presence and grace of Princess Diana, except for that he devoted his elegance to the art of sucking cock. The earth faded away as we moved into the orbit of a new and happier sun.
I looked behind Damon, and it’s Jesse O’Toole. Both. In. The. Same. Room.
“I need a cigarette. NOW.” I said to Sam, wide-eyed. Damon squeezed past us to get to the back of the smoking area, and I literally almost passed out.
I chain smoked the rest of the night…I didn’t even wait for Sam to light his cigarette before lighting mine. We did this double fisting dildo cigarette lighting procedure where we lit both with one lighter…something we discovered is really hot.
I was able to overhear Damon’s conversation because he was only about a meter away from me the whole time. You know how you have that internal health bar that tells you how horny you are? Well, it had been rising all night long.
At this point all I could say was “oh my God omg omg omg”, “why does HIV have to exist” and “whyyyyy?”
Sam talked at length about wanting to trace Jesse O’Toole’s tattoos with his tongue, while I tried my hardest not to stare at Damon. (After a while it was just too much. We had to leave the smoking area. Pushing our way through the crowd (there was a crowd this point) we went back inside. Where before there had just been a few skinny guys in assless chaps drunkenly faux-wrestling, the place was packed now. And where before it was standard overweight afternoon-bar clientele, all of the hot guys were starting to show up.
You know the people that are there at 8 p.m. or either from out of town, bored, or just plain desperate, but the ones who show up at 11:30 mean business.
We got to the bar and I ordered a shot of Jagermeister. I only drink Jager with Christen, but this was an exception. PORN. STARS. IN. SAME. BAR. AS. ME.
Slam down the shot, and at this point I realize that I am forehead to forehead with Sam as he sits on one of the stools in the back of the bar. I was a nervous wreck, but he wasn’t much better, both of us mumbling about how hot Damon and Jesse were, both of us talking about how we had to control our baser instincts at all costs.
The music was pumping, the red light seemed to seep into everything. All we could see was lust. The rub of a crotch across the room, a long tongue kiss down at the bar… sex just seemed ready to break out at any moment. Ultimate, all-encompassing sex that would leave no orifice unfilled.
Sam and I were close approaching the point of no return. The point where we really would suck off and fuck every guy in the place. I don’t know how long we were forehead to forehead, but before long we realized what we were doing. It was a strategy to block out all the cock around us.
And then it happened.
The spark lit in the vacuum, and the flame spread across the world, consuming us. I staggered back, and we caught each other’s gaze. It was there. We would have fucked them all, gangbang of all gangbangs…accept AIDS and death and and rot just for that one moment in the bath of the ruddy lights and the attention, the cocks of hundreds of men.
He grabbed my arm and we ran.
Ran out of the bar
Ran out of San Francisco.
Ran for our lives.
We fought the urge all the way back to the car. Every guy we saw… it was all we could think about. Some 16-year-old looking kids asked us to buy alcohol. Those were bad thoughts. We got back in the car, the doors slammed, and My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult blasted.
It was all we could talk about. We couldn’t form sentences. We stopped at the In-N-Out near Richmond to eat, then continued back. The whole night we talked about cock. About how it was a religion. About how we had seen the end.
The end of everything was in that bar. The AIDS… the filth… but the desperate need to do it. To destroy everything for one need. We had found the abyss. We looked into it and couldn’t be more turned on. It was death but it was life too… we would have killed to be able to do the things that Damon does, but we had to struggle to justify not dying for it.
Damon would. Which makes him not just a porn star. It makes him a God. A sex God.
To die for sex.
He is the modern Adonis that we kill so that we might live. We watch him martyring himself for us, but he would do it if there was a camera or if there wasn’t. He is his alter ego. Jesse O’Toole, Christian, they all are. To be able to live like that is amazing.
We couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.
It was by far the hottest experience of my life, even though we had sex with no one.