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LEAD
STORY IN
XES
Note: Gary Osborne is a pseudonym. |
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On a recent visit to XES, Portland's new gay men's sex club located at Southwest 13th Avenue near West Burnside Street, two friends of mine, Stephen and Danny, helped themselves to coffee served in Styrofoam cups. As they cruised the club, they noticed one man giving oral sex to another. "Is this legal?" Danny asked Stephen as they sipped their coffee. "Of course it's legal," one of the men replied. "This is a private sex club." "I meant the Styrofoam cup!" Danny snapped back. Entering XES myself, I must admit I was a little nervous. I hadn't been to a sex club or a bathhouse for quite some time. I'm 40 and, unlike a lot of my friends, have survived the first torrent of AIDS. The opening of this new sex club seems almost nostalgic. I recalled my 21st birthday, when some friends took me to New York City to celebrate at the now-defunct St. Mark's Baths. Although I had a boyfriend across the country at the time, going to the baths seemed a necessary rite of passage, a gay man's bar mitzvah without the reception and annoying relatives. I was overwhelmed and excited by the the club's tacky, excessive art-deco motif in all its black, white and silver grandeur. This was 1979, before "the plague," and the place was packed with horny, sexed-up guys of all ages cruising around in towels as Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way" rocked the sound system. I didn't get laid that night; in the end, it was all a bit too much for me. Of course, in the pre-AIDS '70s and '80s, sex venues for adventurous gay and bisexual men were almost as prevalent in big cities as coffee shops are today. In Portland, JR's Cell, a gay bar on Northwest Everett Street, had an active "backroom scene." Four bathhouses thrived in the city: The Club Baths on Southwest Park Avenue, the Majestic Baths on Southwest 12th Avenue and the Olympic Baths, which had locations on Southwest 4th Avenue and Southwest 12th Avenue. The plague ended all that. Pressure to close bathhouses came from within and outside the gay community. Today, JR's is long gone, and so are three of the bathhouses that for years catered to gays in search of quick encounters. Club Portland, occupying the site of the former Majestic Baths, is Portland's only remaining bathhouse. But in the past few years, the terror of AIDS among gay men has begun to subside, so it's not surprising that a sex club would emerge. Nor is it surprising that the man responsible is Tracy Blakeslee, who has singlehandedly transformed the adult-video-store industry in Portland. Until 1990, adult bookstores in Portland were generally viewed as seedy, unsavory dives. When Blakeslee, a former CPA, opened his first Fantasy for Adults Only superstore on Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Portland had never seen anything quite like it. The store was mall-like in its approach to selling sex, sporting a high-tech design that was clean, refined and well-lit. It also displayed Portland's largest selection of XXX videotapes for every taste and fetish, coupled with competitive prices and a friendly staff. Portland took to it, and now, despite occasional complaints from neighborhood activists, Blakeslee operates four such stores throughout the Portland metropolitan area. In August, Blakeslee, taking a lead from trends in larger cities, quietly opened XES (pronounced "excess"). The club operates from 7 pm to 4 am daily and since its opening in August has signed up over 1,500 members, who pay a $4 yearly membership fee and an $8 nightly admission. "I'd seen how successful these places had been in other cities, and I felt Portland was ready for it," Blakeslee explains. The first room you see upon entering XES is a well-lit TV lounge with vending machines, some chairs and a couch. XES is a comfortable space, despite the club's overt erotic intent. Housed in the building where the Kingsmen recorded "Louie, Louie," XES is a far cry from the golden age of well-equipped bathhouses, which offered numerous distractions besides just sex. XES is blunt with few frills. Men come here because they want to get off. Beyond that, there really isn't much else to do. The lounge is neutral turf where guys can take a break from cruising to sit, talk or watch some gay porn on a video monitor. Around the corner, a center room features 10 semi-private stalls for sexual play and a small S&M area, complete with a rack and obligatory chain motif. All were empty the entire time I was there. A darker upper level is furnished with half a dozen couches and a small video monitor playing gay porn. It has a quieter, more sexually furtive feel than the other areas. Several men sat on the couches watching TV or each other. The adjacent back room is where the majority of the sexual action happens, with five or six guys giving or getting head in the dark. For a sex club, XES doesn't really reek of sex. More often than not, at least when I was there, guys were quietly cruising around the club by themselves, occasionally taking a seat in the TV lounge, not saying or doing much--just hanging out. Over the past few years similar clubs have been slowly springing up in cities throughout the United States, and although only a small percentage of gay and bisexual men actually patronize them, these spaces have sometimes been met with criticism from within the gay community. But attendance appears to be good, and new clubs continue to emerge. XES does not enforce safe sex, and no one monitors sexual activity, although condoms are free and readily available. This is true of most establishments where gay and bi men go to have sex. At XES the average patron is around 35 years old and is more than likely aware of the risks of unsafe sex. The manager of XES, Scottie, says, "Sex is still legal, and people should be trusted to be on their best behavior." Andy, a boyish 28-year-old XES patron who lives south of Salem, agrees. "I feel safe here, and I always use condoms," he says. "I'm HIV-negative, and I want to stay that way. Sometimes it's hard, but overall most people here respect my limits." After my visit, I concluded that for a sex club XES doesn't really come close to achieving the carnal vivaciousness of the old bathhouses. It's a new era, and perhaps because I'm older and have lived through a period of sexual excess, XES left me quietly restless and a bit bored. Some don't see any city ready for the reemergence of these kinds of clubs. As AIDS fatalities decrease because of promising drug therapies and sex-club popularity increases, a backlash has begun, but not from right-leaning demagogues. Prominent members of the gay community have lambasted the return to what what writer Gabriel Rotello calls "the golden age of promiscuity" and the reemergence of unsafe sex. Thomas Bruner, executive director of the Cascade AIDS Project (CAP), says "We can debate morality, but CAP looks at the risks instead and chooses to be there." To this end, CAP started doing outreach in Club Portland in 1990 and began HIV testing at the bathhouse in 1995. CAP does provide free condoms at XES, and staff members say that eventually the organization will probably do outreach at the club as well. "Our role," Bruner says, "is to be present in a preventative way wherever the risk of AIDS is present." |
