Bump in the Night

[October 29th, 2003] No one loves a good haunted house like I do.

I don't know if it's because I'm scared of the dark or that I'm in the company of other night creatures, but one step inside a spooky space can send a chill down my spine faster than a full-blown orgasm.

For years, though, I've been disappointed by what passes for a haunted house around these parts. I tend to get more freaked out inside a leather bar.

Imagine my delight when I found out about "Queens at the Beach." Billed as "Scream at the Beach" every other night, on Oct. 19 it was the one special evening when business owner Henry Miller (yes, that's his real name) turned his cavernous house of horrors into a huge homo haunt.

Much in the way Disney cashes in on the queer dollar with unofficial "Gay Days," QATB wasn't about gaying up the ghouls so much as encouraging queers to scare up some demonic friends--whether they were dressed in assless chaps or not.

Now, on any other night, a trip out to the island for my partner and me might mean cruising down the aisles of Target or Safeway. But on this particular Sunday, we headed straight to Jantzen Beach so we could get the shit scared out of us. Not by the street people who have set up camp in Safeway's bottle room, but rather by a bizarre-looking group of geeks who set up barracks in what used to be a computer store.

And guess what? It was a lot like being in a gay bathhouse.

From Paris to Portland, I've seen a few bathhouses. I'm not saying I'm a slut, but when in Rome, well...you know. And, truth is, these joints can scare the piss out of you. Not to mention that people have died in these places.

A friend who used to work at one of the local men's clubs told me this story: On a particularly busy night shift, a really big guy went bye-bye. Supposedly, after the authorities carted the dead dude out of the club, the same big guy came back as a ghost and began to haunt the locker room and halls.

But hey, who doesn't like a little danger--especially when it comes to sex? Can you think of anything more intriguing than finding out what's lurking around a dark corner, particularly when all you've got to protect yourself is a barely-covering-your-privates white cotton towel?

Back at QATB, I couldn't help thinking as I groped my way through the darkened halls of the main attraction, called the "Forbidden Temple," how bathhouses, like haunted houses, are a great place to escape the realities of everyday life.

Sure, you could make a case for how both bathhouses and haunted houses are nothing more than sad places full of lost souls. And you could even go a bit further and talk about how they promote death, not life. We all know the sordid details of how the AIDS epidemic shuttered most of the bathhouses, but that's a subject for another, more serious-minded column.

On this night at least, visiting this haunted house was all about letting go.

So what if the tarot-card reader in the pink beehive and beard was frightening us with his cards? Who cares if the little girl in the graveyard looked suspiciously like JonBenet? And who gives a rat's ass about all the rats scurrying across the floor?

Getting bumped in the night never felt so good.