Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:24:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Palazzo <apalazzo198@yahoo.com>
Subject: vintage thrills  7. Dramatis Personae

			     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.