Friday Nights in L.A. are usually dead, at least from my perspective, so the Black Unicorn Ball presented itself, as Judi Dench would say, as an oasis in the frozen tundra of my social calendar. The event was hosted by the Boulet Brothers; a creepy duo of Queer Party Peeps who wear futuristic S&M bodysuits with French Pre-Revolutionary face powder, wigs, and makeup. Marketed as a Fetish Ball, it had a lot to live up to. On some routine Bootie L.A. shopping last week, I had come upon a ten dollar spandex Nightwing costume with glittering blue streaks through the chest, arms, and thighs. It had a rip in the chest and arms, which I corrected into a “purposefully” exposed cleavage zone and open hand space for leather gloves. I couldn’t find an eyemask in time, so I just painted my eyes and nose green. I looked like Stephen Amell without the six pack, so basically, I looked like nothing. I picked up Raz and we drove down Santa Monica Boulevard. I couldn’t seem to find the bar, so I kept turning back and around. Finally, we passed by a platinum blonde Gay in flesh-colored latex. “That’s it,” I said. “How do you know?” Raz asked. “Trust me, that’s it.” Indeed it was. The Boulet Brothers needed a grimy, dark dungeon, and they certainly got it with the Dragonfly. I wouldn’t call it much of a club; just a large bar. The lights were very low but through them I could see passing hordes of leather-clad minions and pierced up power-skanks. A faint, dusty glow permeated the place. One dancer, whose wig was constructed of white condoms – which made her look like Plavalaguna from the Fifth Element- danced in a latex romper that had blue, light-up piping on the edges. She was Tron gone wrong. A 50-something man with a paunchy belly and glasses stood casually in a polo shirt and a leather jock strap. He was having a nice time. There were a lot of girls in kind of traditional(relatively speaking) burlesque outfits of lace, feathered shoulders, and leather bodices. The music was kind of dungeon-lite; it wasn’t too hardcore to handle, but it wasn’t exactly catchy either. I suppose it was near the desired aesthetic. As we got our bearings, an all-American photographer of my height approached. Dressed in nothing but a latex apron, he sported slick blonde hair, a nice smile, and big arms. I felt like Shoshanna on Girls, when she meets a sexy doorman and exclaims: “You’re like really cute for a doorman.” For a photographer, he wasn’t bad. He took pictures of us, then took one with us, and moved on. Before I could really say anything, Raz cut me off. “You wouldn’t think he was cute if he weren’t in the smock.” Touché, Assbag. The next room played host to a public flogging exhibition of sorts. On stage, two x-shaped crucifixes and a host of whips and lashes sat waiting for the next volunteer. A gruff 40-something dude with gray hair welcomed his ostensible girlfriend, a waify blonde with a Mohawk, onstage. He bent her over on a stool, took her pants off, and started slowly gracing her backside with an expensive Cat O’ Nine Tails. Of course, the shallow slaps soon evolved into full-on whips, each sending a ripple of jiggles on her supple skin and causing Gay men like me to watch with total suspended fascination. As the older man put a baton in her mouth and took things to the next level, I let my eye stray over to an outrageously bodacious Hispanic guy in the corner of the bar. He was standing with his shirtless male friend and their two hags. He must have been my age, and he had the body of someone who would act in a porn biography of Ryan Lochte. I made a little eye contact with him, but he was so disinterested in the proceedings of the night that he clearly wasn’t going to make it easy for anyone to get in. He wore cargo shorts and nothing else. His shocking lack of fetish clothing and his traditional good looks made him a kind of fetish onto himself in a place like this. Once the blonde waif’s tush was bright red and her screams had reached a breaking point, the show was over. We moved on. Raz looked over at the guy I was eyeing. “You know,” he said, “in a place like this, we could totally go over to those guys and just start talking to them. The social norms are totally different here.” Yes, I pleaded with myself. Break your own rules. I let my fear bubble up and smother me up to my neck and gurgled, pitifully: “I’ll take that under advisement.” I’d like to tell you that this was one of those nights in which I forgot about my neuroses and my history of rejection and just fell into someone’s arms; when, five hours later, I realized that I was on a scooter or on top of a film producer’s roof. But it wasn’t. We long so badly for something to come and shake us away into a story of unlikeliness and wild adventure, but we are so often confronted with the lonely truth that we can’t make it happen. As a socialized Gay man in our brutal society, I was obsessed not with any of the interesting personalities or deviant bodies of the night, but by the one heteronormatively masculine man in the bar, who probably didn’t even notice me. We returned to the dancefloor, which was now much fuller. I think my costume was kind of doing well. I get that it wasn’t the most well-constructed and it clearly didn’t take much to make, but it was certainly original, and, at least, playful. Raz and I got to dancing. It was fine. I looked over to the entrance. A greasy Italian with long hair and an Ed Hardy shirt glided in with his lady, a slim blonde with slamming…parts. She was entirely naked, save for some well-placed silver rhinestones which were allocated sparingly to her exposed areas. Look, there were only about 15 rhinestones to go around. She had to get specific. A tall man in a black latex Rubber Man suit with a hazmat mask walked by. A leather mommy in a bustier with two giant balls of yarn on her head complimented my outfit. Suddenly, it was time for the show. The stage lights opened to reveal a blonde woman on a table, spread on all fours. Bowls of ingredients were all around her. A voluptuous tattooed chick with Kat Von D eyebrows and sexy librarian glasses came out. She inspected her meal, then started feeding her chocolate syrup. She then put some of the syrup over the blonde’s legs and backside. Then, putting a hand over her rump, she squirted a dollop of whipped cream. To top it all off, she placed a candle on top of the cream and lit it. “That’s Busy Phillips,” Raz stated. Before I could laugh, a horrific creature with stringy black hair, jowels, and a leather jumpsuit turned to us. He/She looked like Severus Snape. “I’m a fly on your wall!” he/she laughed. “What was that,” I asked Raz. Now, we were in the final act. A sexy stud with a shaved head and some nice eyebrow piercing was brought on stage, thinly blindfolded. The candle on the tush was lit and his for the taking. The librarian stripped him of his mask and let him bask in the delight of his surprise treat. He stroked the blonde’s back, wrapped his hand around her neck, and went back in to blow out his candle. With the wax out of his way, he dug in – to the chocolate, to the cream, and to the sweet flesh beneath. And then it was over. Now, it was time for the costume contest. I was a little offended that I wasn’t selected, but, you know, I’m bigger than that, and stuff. The Boulet Brothers came out to announce the show. They talked about the importance of letting out your inner fantasies and how we should all have fun and how they selected the top ten most inventive costumes and how there were 500 dollars worth of prizes and I realized that these two kind of spectral horrors who had so much previous mystery to them were just two homos with cool makeup. I admired their work, sure, but seeing them reduce a sexual/aesthetic culture/lifestyle into a Halloween costume contest certainly diminished my wonder. They were just like the others. They weren’t new or of another world. And they weren’t going to change the L.A. scene for me. I was reminded yet again that if I wanted something done, I had to do it myself. The best act on the runway was a couple dressed in matching latex bindings that exposed some rippling flesh and left little to the imagination of others. They were robbed. Some straight guy in an equestrian riding outfit won the title. Please: Betty Draper could do that in a minute Music resumed. Oddly, the dungeon soundtrack totally took a shift into Chris Brown, Grace Jones, and Die Antwoord. It was stunningly mainstream. We danced and took pictures and kind of hovered there. By the door, a new arena was opened for public spanking. Volunteers were welcomed onto a gorgeous oak table and paddled. The sexy librarian and her shaved-headed stud held a thick pink paddle and gave it to an unsuspecting heterosexual. It was hot and it was loud – you could hear each slap over the music. I told Raz I wanted to do it but he reminded me that it hurts much more than it looks, which made me reconsider. We were getting ready to leave. It was uncanny, but, without explanation, we were both able to agree that for a Fetish Ball, the party was… kind of conservative. Nothing really wild happened. Sure, the costumes and the performances were twisted and rotten and delicious, but they were planned way in advance. There were no moments of sheer shock for anyone in the audience. Nothing organically fucked up occurred, as opposed to preparedly fucked up. I wanted to sweat. I wanted to make out with a lesbian. I wanted to get a piercing. I wanted to be taken out of the expectations of my mundane life and to be given a radical new turn on a Friday night in the spring. And this party didn’t give it to me. But as I added the Unicorn Ball to a list of great parties that were only decent nights, I kind of felt a pang of guilt at the fact that I hadn’t given the night my all either. The hot guys were there, the hazmat suits were on, and the crucifixes were empty. Maybe I am not the person I think I am; the person who stirs the shit. If I were braver, or more creative, or less fearful of damaging my intelligent observer reputation, I could cut loose and let America show me a good time. I could do things that shock me, instead of waiting for the night to do that job for me. I could free myself, and the party would just be a backdrop. I am going to work on it. I like to say that parties in Europe or Israel are more exciting, but that’s because I’m different there than I am here. I’m carefree. I’m unleashed. I’m anonymous. I need to tap into that again. Otherwise, there’s only two ways this can end: I can look back on a series of well-written essays about nights that could have been better; or I can discover than no matter how hard I tried, L.A.’s nightlife left something to be desired. As much as I’d like to discover that this town really does suck, I’d like to think that with an attitude adjustment, I can become the arbiter of the party. I can change the course of a night. I just have to want to be surprised bad enough.
