![nyc gay sex club nyc gay sex club](https://gayletter.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/8x10-len-and-michele5258AF_GAYLETTER.jpg)
Yes, Studio 54 had also opened in 1977, disco-mania seized New York, and Plato’s benefited from that avid curiosity and hunger for nocturnal highs. That is why I was included in the aforementioned documentary, wherein I observe that I linked Plato’s to Studio 54 as elements that had made New York “the world’s most exciting city.” I was going to Plato’s now and again because I had arrived in New York just a few years before, and visiting Brit friends would often call upon me to take them to this worldwide notorious hot spot. This was Mary, who would soon be sharing his life, and the drollery was not untypical of Larry, who struck me as open, friendly, and somewhat ingenuous. She says she needs to go to the ladies’ room. In American Swing, an excellent 2008 documentary about Plato’s, codirected by Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart, a young woman is chatted up by Levenson who suggests that she take a dip. ALWAYS TAKE SOMETHING OFF: (From top) Letting it all hang out at Screw magazine’s 10th anniversary party four friends relax before getting frisky There was also a swimming pool, and this saw action too, natch. And, believe me, the rule that threesomes were not allowed was not too strictly enforced. So too was man-on-man action, though random displays of female bisexuality were very much okay.īeginners would often wear towels, but these would usually be shed as they wandered the available venues, such as the Mats: the Mattress Room, which was furnished with mattresses that could be covered with a couple hundred interlocked bodies on a busy night.īut there was also the bathhouse, the locker room, and private cubicles for the shy, as well as Ping-Pong and pool tables, which might also be unusably covered with heaving flesh. The crowd was largely couples solitary women were okay but single men were a no-no. The deliberately unimpressive front door opened onto a steep flight of steps, which led down to the action, which was impressive.ĭJ Bacho controlled the music, and there was sometimes dancing, most of the dancers being wholly or partially naked.
![nyc gay sex club nyc gay sex club](https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/600x600/NAOSsWk_v51kog2bS6cFGEBs9fnovie5HIgGfwYijYg.jpg)
Rules at the entrance to the orgy roomĪ couple paid $25. Also “NO ONE ADMITTED FULLY DRESSED” and “WHEN THE FEMALE LEAVES THE MATS, HER MATE WILL BE ASKED TO LEAVE.” More on “the Mats” shortly. Such a couple arriving at Plato’s was made aware of the rules at the door. Plato’s, Levenson said, was a “couples club.” His sincerely held rationale was that no man was monogamous, and that swinging would replace cheating. He was outspoken on this subject, saying he was bringing to the straight world the liberty of the gay clubs. As New York’s sex-oriented spaces were traditionally for gay men, Levenson was aware that offering a venue for public straight sex was breaking new ground. Until 1974, it had been home to the Continental Baths, a gay club where Bette Midler launched her career and a place where even Chubby Checker performed. Soon, Levenson was attracting such a following that the same year he moved his business into a more ample basement uptown, in the Ansonia Hotel, a handsome building on Broadway between West 73rd and 74th. His skills developed to such an extent that in 1977 he opened a space for swingers to mingle (and get down to it) in the basement of a small hotel on East 23rd Street between Lexington and Third Avenues. But after being plunged into the swingers’ milieu by a woman he met in a bar, he quickly decided he had found a calling that suited both his talents and his inclinations: swing parties. STRICTLY PLATONIC: Levenson in a bathrobe at Plato’s Retreat in 1980Ī friend of Goldstein’s from high school in Brooklyn, he had been working mundane jobs such as selling sodas in Coney Island and managing a McDonald’s. Larry Levenson was more than ready to ride this wave. In 1974, Goldstein launched the cable talk show Midnight Blue, and “porno chic” - a phrase coined that year by Ralph Blumenthal of the New York Times - was surging.
![nyc gay sex club nyc gay sex club](https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy85MjMyMDU2L29yaWdpbi5qcGciLCJleHBpcmVzX2F0IjoxNjgyMTE2ODkxfQ.J2R0m-icjrNCYPSdGIxb6BBB32yQnR-ZYqgXdB_Na74/img.jpg)
The following year Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door opened, making Linda Lovelace and Marilyn Chambers, their key players, cross-culturally known names. Germaine Greer, a Suck stalwart, was involved in a landmark event I attended in Amsterdam in 1971 - the second iteration of the Wet Dream Festival, a showing of international porno movies. Al Goldstein founded Screw magazine in 1968, and Suck, the radical feminist mag, was launched in London the following year. Going naked was like waving a defiant flag in the ’60s counterculture, as at muddy Woodstock.