Saturday, November 17, 2018

Kinky Gay Life in the 70's, Part 1: The Bonaventure Brunch

I can't help but notice that CLAW 2021 is a kink-oriented event being hosted at the Los Angeles Bonaventure Hotel:

Now called the Westin Bonaventure...

I am proud to say that I am the guy who hosted the VERY FIRST kink-oriented events there, back in the 1970's...

My boyfriend David (twice my age of 21) was a party boy (notice the license plate), and we always hosted big, well-organized fuck/flog/fist parties, just about every single weekend.

I had very nearly overdosed on some really nasty drugs in the previous years (it WAS the 1970's), so I was the only man who was absolutely SOBER during every one of those parties.

The parties would start on Friday nights, and wind down by Sunday morning.  Guys would be draped all over the furniture, utterly worn-out.  

Me?  I'd be perky-perky, because I was the only one getting regular food, sleep, exercise and fresh air during my breaks. I was pacing myself sensibly.


So, the new Bonaventure was a gleaming new local landmark, and I had heard that they served sensational Sunday Brunches there. 

I'd go into Border Collie Mode on Sunday mornings, nagging and aggravating these sexual athletes into getting up and getting dressed...

In the head-to-toe leather party gear that they had arrived in. (This was a Norwegian man wearing my leathers after one of those parties - he didn't know a word of English, but he surely knew what he liked!)

SOME guys had to wear their raunchy t-shirts inside out (there ARE limits), but there would be twenty or thirty men in well-used, worn-black leathers, boots and hats, standing in the buffet line with plates in our hands.

The tiny, blue-haired ladies in front and in back of us would start out being TERRIFIED of these raunchy-looking men:

- Tattoos everywhere (decades before it became common)

- One guy with a bone in his nose

- Shaved scalps with one tiny pigtail were the fashion then.

I'd start charming the sweet little old ladies, followed by the other guys, and soon, the folks around us completely accepted us, calling us "Nice Young Men", which was 1970's code for "male homosexuals".

After showing up in kinky leather gear for nearly every Sunday brunch, we became beloved by the entire staff, who would put us in one of the banquet rooms, and bring us extra servings. They made us promise to keep showing up, because we were so silly and fun, and we were all heavy tippers.