You may remember that the day after the Blackout of 2003, Gay City News offered a dinner for two in Hell’s Kitchen at Chez Suzette on Ninth Avenue for the person who came up with the best account of what went on in the dark that night.
We wish we’d been with David Thomas…
In this newly sanitized era, Manhattan is more and more like Minneapolis and August’s very orderly blackout proved it. But the winner of our contest, set out for the West Village, hoping to re-live the famed, out of control Weehawken Street Orgy of the 1977 Blackout.
Thomas found out that the sex had moved indoors, away from prying eyes, and uptown to Chelsea.
“A hunky shirtless doorman straddled a bar stool to lure us all into a sauna-like candlelit bar. Only a beer could ease the heat of the steamy night… Thrusting, moaning, on their knees headed for a past decadence of sexual opportunity. Jorge [his blackout cruising buddy] too was glowing. He had only heard about these scenes and soon he disappeared into the sweaty wrath of his first such encounter.”
The best I could manage was standing in line for the Weehawken Ferry. Others of our readers had good yarns to tell, recalling their earlier blackouts, telling how they kept live radio alive in New York, smooching their boy-friend at the Crossroads of the World in Times Square, even protecting Loretta Lynn’s precious Christmas Tree Balls, purchased in Nashville, from a frustrated crowd at LaGuardia.
But in our book, Thomas’ story was the best. Congratulations, David.
––Troy Masters
