The Shows That Really Show
In addition to gay porn films, I became an avid viewer of gay live performances. In the early 1970s, New York had a few male strip shows. One was at the Tom Cat Theater in the Times Square area of Manhattan. This was the sleazy old Times Square, not today's cleaned up Disney Square.
Male strippers usually appeared several times a day in between gay hardcore film showings. As somewhat of a regular, I became quite familiar with several of the performers. The performances were usually uninspired, just young guys getting up on stage, and stripping to music. Sometimes there would be an attempt to dance to the music, sometimes just a slow sensual strip. Often, the pace was maddeningly slow. But I kept going back.
In all of the shows the boys stripped at least to brief underwear, posing straps or g strings. As sex show codes were loosened, they stripped naked. There would sometimes be increased enforcement of vice laws, and the g strings would reappear for a while. Eventually, the strippers began to touch themselves, and more. At the Tom Cat there was one talented guy who could suck himself, and that became the much anticipated climax of his performance. But to get to the flesh and the sex often took a mind numbing fifteen minutes or more per performer. With each song, some more clothes would get removed, until typically by the third musical number, the boys would be down to their birthday suits, or as bare as the law was currently allowing.
At some straight theaters, a male-female duo act would perform between porn films. The highlight would be when the woman would drop to her knees as the music built to a crescendo, and quickly remove the dick from her partner's jock strap, and suck it for a half minute or so. It was quick, and poorly lighted, and the woman had her back to the audience, so it was difficult to see much. One day I decided to strategically seat myself up front and to the side so that I could determine if the female dancer was actually removing her partner's cock and putting it in her mouth. Yep, she was. Rumor was that many of the men who performed in these straight shows were gay.
In the early years at the gay theaters, the boys never touched each other, or even performed together. By the late seventies and into the eighties almost anything was permitted. There were frequent "duos" on stage, and many theaters had a finale with six or more boys on stage, naked and hard.
Actual gay sex shows became available in the seventies in which two or more guys touched and masturbated each other. A few daring theaters began to have the guys get into heavier sex scenes like sucking each other, and I even remember viewing a mid-afternoon fuck on a fully lighted Manhattan stage.
A few of the theaters encouraged audience participation. By tipping the dancers, you could get at least a grope and often much more. One notorious "club" had appearances by famous gay porn stars, who would do some dancing on stage and then circulate among the audience, looking for tips. It was common for the dancers to put a foot up on the arm of your chair, lean forward and silently invite you to suck their famous cock. I didn't because I was afraid of bringing disease home to my wife, but many- maybe most- did. After the show, when the films were on, the live performers would often hang out around the theater, and try to earn some extra money in the dark corners and secret nooks and cubbyholes that were everywhere, -- downstairs, upstairs, even backstage.
These were performances in movie theaters. In bars, even wilder shows could be seen late at night or in the early morning hours. Sex bars had shows of guys whipping each other and even fist fucking. Some back room bars even had facilities (e.g. bathtub) for guys to piss on each other. Perhaps the most famous was the Mine Shaft, down in Greenwich Village, where reportedly just about anything went on. I have read, and heard from reliable sources, that many famous celebrities went slumming to clubs like the Mine Shaft, transported by limosines at 3a.m. For a long time I felt that my rather conventional lifestyle was depriving me of all kinds of excitement, such as bars like the Ramrod and the Mine Shaft could provide. Looking back now, I know that I didn't really miss out on anything much. The many reports about places I never made it to were probably more exciting than the actual experience. And I did manage to sample enough personally to give me a pretty good taste of New York's sleaziest era.
As the years and decades passed, there were periods of tightened enforcement of vice rules, followed by loosened enforcement, followed again by a return to stricter standards. As I write this we are in a more conservative and stricter enforcement period in New York City.