Episode 2 ❤️🩹 1974: A Night At the Gaiety
Terry the Moose, old men & street whores
Hit the ❤️ button at the top or bottom left and warm my cold cold heart.
I follow Terry the Moose as he heads uptown to work the Gaiety Burlesque1 in Times Square; dancing for sad old men sitting in the dark worn seats of this rundown third floor theater, floors cum-sticky from the old men who jerked off in the dark at the last show. We stop downstairs at HoJo’s for some of their famous tendersweet clams on a bun (he cuts his soft eyes down to my own yearning-to-be-famous tender-sweet clam and smiles as he orders), before he goes upstairs to work.
Strutting out onto the small stage, that thick mahogany mane of his catches the light, falling softly in a feathered shag around his thin shoulders. A gold lame g-string sets against his warm olive skin. He winks at me and waves to the three street whores resting in the back row, feet up on the seats in front of them, airing out their own clams before heading back out to the street to work.
His thick moose-boy cock comes out swinging like a cop’s nightstick to a disco beat. He prances across the stage, a thoroughbred colt teasing and tempting the pedophiles, the perverts & chicken hawks, the straight marrieds in denial, all of them wanting him, wanting his cock in their hands, their ass, or their mouth. I wait in the dark after his show, watching the next beautiful boy dance, while backstage Terry lets old men grope him, worship him, lick his ass, suck him off for money, more if he cums in their mouth.
It’s a blessing to be young , he tells me, stuffing himself back into his jeans, his full lips smile, revealing teeth so perfect & white it’s like a toothpaste commercial whenever he smiles, a blessing, he says, to be able to cum again so quickly.
We tumble down the stairs, bouncing and rushing out into the noise and stench of Times Square, pockets stuffed with cash, ready for the night. I’d spent an hour earlier, panhandling Penn Station—
Please Mister, I lost my train ticket, my mom will be real worried.
He’s gotten his the old fashioned way, and the two of us are ready for anything.
We hit the streets, arm in arm, off in search of the tough boy whores that make us forget who we are.
❤️🩹❤️🩹
Thanks for reading the dirtygirl diaries! The first three episodes are public, feel free to share them.
What is it about girls and their gay boyfriends?
Historical footnote: The Gaiety Theater, at 201 W 46th Street / 1551 Broadway, sat above what would be one of the last Howard Johnson’s in the country. Before opening as the all-male burlesque venue Terry & I knew, it’d been the Orpheum Dance Palace, dime-a-dance hall aka taxi dancers (1917-1964), followed by a few years of live sex shows as the New Paris. I’ve found the Gaiety opening listed as both 1975 and 1976. My memory says it was 1974, the year I graduated high school. With the Disneyification of Times Square, management of the newly built Marriott Marquis hotel were less than pleased that their expensive suites looked directly out at the entrance to the Gaiety. It closed down in 2005, after thirty bawdy years. (Genuflecting in the general direction of, and thanks to, Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, still the best resource for info on what NYC has lost as it gentrifies.)
Forty years later, my life looks completely different, but I had to go through all of that to get here. ⬇️
That wasn’t McHale’s was it? McHale’s window on the street side had Gaiety etched into the glass. I was in a Giaimo and Giaimo tenement at 45th and 10th during the crack years. Not a user; just lucky to score a $295 a month apartment
"His thick moose-boy cock comes out swinging like a cop’s nightstick to a disco beat." This is now on my list of favorite sentences.