Dramatis Personae
For quite a while in the 1970s there was a successful off-off broadway show called BOYS BOYS BOYS. It was a review of songs, skits, comedy and dance performances, all done in a gay and sexy way. There was a strong reliance on Broadway musicals, which were encapsulated, exaggerated and sometimes eviscerated. Drag performances of characters like Daisy Mae from L'il Abner were a real memorable hoot.
The MC did a great job each week of warming up the audience, relaxing the closeted queens from Queens who were daringly sneaking off to this show they had heard rumors about, and dishing with the regulars from the Village and Chelsea who returned week after week. He gave a little foreshadowing of what was to come in that evening's performance, and sometimes interviewed audience members, asked for a show of hands of first-timers, etc.
Many of the performers were extremely talented and very serious about their art. But the thing that kept the audiences coming back were the good looking young men and the frequent nudity. The show became such an underground hit that it soon went into an indefinite run and seemed like it would never close. The director, writers and cast would change it considerably each week, with a new comic, stripper, dancers, and usually a new skit based on an old musical or play. Most of the cast returned week after week and became a repertory company of high merit. Returning to the show after several months you would see virtually a completely new show.
But there were elements that changed little. A highlight of each performance was the sex scene. Midway through each performance two young men would lie on a big round pillow in stage center and make love. The sex was partially simulated since the guys would almost never get hard and the whole scene was done in a very artsy-fartsy way with low mood lighting, evocative music and exaggerated emoting. But there was kissing and touching and towards the end of the 10 minute scene some actual sucking visible to all but the very worst seats. Getting good seats to view the blowjob became a priority for many New Yorkers as well as for knowledgeable tourists.
It was a good show to bring visiting gay friends. Even the most jaded gay Philadelphian was impressed with this uninhibited, entertaining New York show. The show played weekends only. The theater had the somewhat pretentious name Dramatis Personae, and was in an old second floor loft on 14th street on the west side of Manhattan.Early in the run, the Village Voice advertisements offered free admission to patrons who agreed to wear diaphanous robes during the performance. Later on in the run, you had to present yourself nude to get in free. Some daring patrons would enter the building, climb the stairs to the second floor, disrobe on the 2nd floor landing, and enter the theater doorway naked. There were always 1 or 2 guys more than willing to do so, and it added to the excitement and naughtiness of the evening, especially during intermission. Seats were similar to the benches at a basketball game. The performing space was in the center of the
raised benches so half the audience faced the other half. Women occasionally attended but the audience was 95% male. The ticket taker was, oddly, an old woman. I heard that she was the director's mother but this was never verified. She remained calm and noble amidst all of the licentiousness about her. She had clearly seen it all and was the epitome of worldliness. She smiled benignly on the humpy young men who stood before her at the ticket table, balls-naked, seeking free entrance.
"What do you say to a naked gentleman?" she'd ask (parodying the then-current film, "What Do You Say To A Naked Lady?"). "Here's a free ticket!" she answered herself, beaming and handing over the reward to the bareassed customer.
I was delighted to see her perform in a couple of walk-on roles when a skit called for a mature woman. She either liked performing or the young boys had their limits of the type of drag role they would accept.
Some of the performers, particularly the strippers, interacted wildly with the audience. One Friday evening I attended a performance after work. I was alone and very horny. There were several nude performers that evening including two male dancers who did a classical ballet number together, a fun, older, leathery stripper, named Jack the Stripper, and a young dancer who seemed happy and more than a little stoned. The last guy started dancing with a thin dressing gown, soon got rid of it, and eventually began to wind himself through the audience, kissing, fondling and teasing selected patrons. As he approached me, I was very attentive and excited. Having come to the show directly from work, I was one of the few in the audience dressed in a business suit. Looking a little formal and up-tight, while at the same time probably sending out horny and welcoming vibes, I smiled at the gorgeous dancer who proceeded to climb up to the second level of
the benches where I was seated. Shaking his lithe body, he began to rub my thighs and unbutton my shirt.
Embarrassed but game, I smiled weakly at the dancer, and caressed his shoulder, back and butt. The dancer did not back off or move on as he had with earlier audience members, but was clearly enjoying this interaction. He groped me through my suit pants, and found me hard. He quickly unzipped me, and took out my cock, stripped it back and displayed it to those in neighboring seats. The audience was enjoying all of this immensely. There was scattered applause, laughter and hoots of encouragement.
Normally I would have called a halt to this, being a cautious and basically shy type. But I was hot, and was enjoying it too much to think about stopping. The dancer, hardly shy or cautious, went down on me with a gulp. I felt the young man's wet mouth on my dick with surprise and pleasure. I grabbed his half hard cock and manipulated it slowly as the dancer continued to suck. After a few more moments, the dancer came off the dick, kissed me, and moved on through the audience.
The older gentleman to my left continued to be fascinated with my exposed prick and grabbed it possessively. I gently extricated it from him, and put it back into my pants. Following the dancer's bawdy show with me, others were grabbing him boldly and trying to engage him sexually. He let them touch him good naturedly but did not again become as blatantly sexual with any of them.
I wondered later why the dancer had chosen me, since there were many younger, better looking guys all around. Of equal wonder to me as I re-ran the events of the evening through my head later was how I allowed myself to participate in such a bold and unrestrained way. I had been part of the show!
The fact that a sexually free guy had blown me caused me much anxiety in the following days, as I waited to see if any of the signs of sexually transmitted disease would appear. (I had memorized all of the early symptoms of most types of VD and sometimes imagined one or more of them following a sexual encounter, but the symptoms always turned out to be just a case of guilt.) As the guilt and worry faded, I returned to the memory several times with a warm glow, focusing on the happy, free manner of the young guy, and his sexual attractiveness and generosity. I got an added kick from recalling with amazement that I had been the recipient of a brief blowjob in a public performance, even if it was off-off broadway.
I returned to BOYS BOYS BOYS a few years later, but regrettably could not recapture the sexy fun of my previous visit. The performers seemed peremptory and tired. The talented MC was gone and the physical plant had deteriorated. I saw a roach scurry up the wall at one point, and everything seemed really dark and scuzzy. Replacing the good feeling of wholesome sex, was a scummy raunchiness that went beyond attractive sensuality. Customers were now encouraged to "mingle" with each other after each performance as the lights were turned off, and the scene deteriorated into a few desperate men giving blowjobs on the farthest part of the bleachers anonymously, wordlessly and to my way of thinking, kind of pathetically. I was sorry that I had gone back to see this deterioration, and I never returned after that. But as I write this, the remembrance of earlier times with the talented and sexy repertory company called Dramatis Personae warms still.