Guess you musta liked what you
read! Great, bros, there's more where that came from... Here's
an article I wrote for the Summer '99 issue, another feature story--hope
you dig it!
| "This one’s on the house, pal--Finding
friends and more in the neighborhood bar of the new millennium"
Len Whitney "Jeez, look at you all CASUAL sitting on the bar. Hey, buddy, why are there poppy seeds in this pretzel bowl?" The reason I was sitting on the bar, wearing high motorcycle boots, and trying (apparently successfully) to look casual had something to do with the several large rodents that would have been scurrying across my feet had I stepped down and taken my normal place behind the bar. As for the "poppy seeds", don’t ask. After years as a gay nightclub bartender, this was my entry into "holding down'" a neighborhood gay bar. From that Upper East Side rat trap to tonier watering holes from Ogunquit to Venice, the cast of characters in any gay neighborhood pub remains about the same. If you let down your hair and surrender to the peculiar rhythms of its social give and take, you can have a funky, fun hang time. But even back then in the early nineties, on the good nights when the furry friends were fast asleep in the kitchen or hiding in the beer cellar downstairs, I had this discomfiting sense that little gay bars like these were a dying breed. Why? And what's going to take its place? Going out to drink and smoke all evening, when all you're really looking for is camaraderie or a few buddies--what an anachronism that is by now. You can't drink and drive, and the ashtray-lined bar is giving way to the litter of butts in the alley or under the awning. Since John Travolta proclaimed health clubs to be the singles bar of the eighties (in that cinematic classic PERFECT) pundits have been pointing to new successors. A couple of decades and a lot of technology later, the real answer is as close as the keyboard under your fingers. The Internet is like the world’s biggest, easiest pub crawl. No matter where you are physically, you can meet and greet guys or women of evey possible interest or persuasion, in settings rowdy or intimate, lofty or sleazy. Check out the array of chat communities at a one-stop gay web destination like PLANET OUT. At http://www.planetout.com/pno/people/chat/listrooms.html , you’ll find options like "Grrl Hood Chat", "PopcornQ Movie Chat", "Religion and Spirituality Chat", and even the "Bear Cave Chat (woof woof)". Twelve local community chat rooms span the distances from Atlanta to Australia, from Seattle to the United Kingdom. One of the greatest things about the Internet's global reach is the irrelevance of busy or slow times of day. If you're an early-riser in Santa Barbara, you can have a stimulating talk at 3pm PST with a niteowl in Manchester (11pm GMT). GayWired has a busy chat section at http://chat.gaywired.com:85/login, and About.com (the former miningco) has a whole menu of gay-oriented chat at http://home.about.com/culture/sexuality/chat.htm , with groups for BDSM, and gay- , lesbian- , and amateur erotica. Lately, plenty of websites include an in-house chatroom where you can meet others interested in the same subject. One of the funniest (strange and ha-ha) aspects of this is at the raunchier sex sites. Even in the most hardcore live-sex camera or exhibitionist sites, the regulars meet and greet with a hardy virtual slap on the back, and bore the single-minded wankers with buddy small talk about the weather, what's for dinner, and visits from out-of-town relatives. If you're the type who likes to find one person at an adjacent stool for a more direct personal talk with the possibility of it blooming into a closer relationship, or maybe just finding a good virtual "bar buddy", you don't have to limit yourself to chat rooms. Tens of thousands of gay men and women around the world have personal home pages, listed on directories like Qmondo's "Gay People on the net" page at http://www.qmondo.com. Most of the big gay general-interest sites have lists of homepage links, usually with a short description. If you turn up a gay metal-music buff in Maastricht that piques your interest, strike up an email friendship. Like an old-fashioned penpal letter on speed, you can email back and forth several times a day if it suits you, or move on to private online chats like Netscape Instant Messenger or ICQ. What's it like getting close to a virtual buddy? Alan has been in a committed relationship with his lover for several years, and wouldn't think of hitting a bar to meet new friends. But one year after moving into a home-based career, he feels a little cut off from the normal office social hubbub and conversational interplay. When he was having trouble a few months ago loading a racy gay webpage, he emailed Jim, the site's owner/operator. Liking the tone of Jim's response, Alan struck up a friendship that has turned into a four or five times a week correspondence. "Jim's my best buddy right now, and I've never actually met him. At first I thought in terms of getting to know him then meeting face-to-face. Now the closer we get, the less important actual physical meeting becomes. I think his being kind of sexually freewheeling on the 'net and a lot more circumspect in his personal life makes him wary of meeting his email and ICQ friends. I can respect that. But the great part for me is having a close friend who's on the computer a lot (like I am) and I can share a great deal of my life with, but without threatening my relationship with my lover. How jealous can he be of an email?" Though that correspondence turned into a mutual friendship, many times a gay webmaster serves as the virtual neighborhood bartender, listening to the stories, offering advice and a sounding board. My website, AAARRGH!! superhero training http://www.aaarrgh.com, is ostensibly a fitness and training page livened up with my Pop comic art. I freely offer exercise and training supervision and advice to my website visitors, but my fans and web friends generally end up wanting to talk less about health and fitness, and more about their lives and mine. It's almost better, in a way, 'cause I feel like they look beyond the subject matter of the website and respond directly to me. It's like reading a book and wanting to know more about the person who wrote it -- I guess that's a compliment. I recently added a bulletin board page so visitors to AAARRGH can communicate with each other, and I have a guestbook where they can send me messages and also see what others have written. But none of that has proved nearly as popular as one-to-one private email messages from them to me. As a flesh-and-blood bartender, the customers repay your attentiveness and interest with a steady stream of tips. The regular customers know they're going to face you week after week, and feel a little responsibilty to tip well and basically stay in line. Online, the rewards can be tangible or more abstract. Jeffypop, whose "Surfer Boy's XXX Mega-Site" at http://www.jeffypop.com attracts a far-flung legion of aficionados to his galleries and live webcam sex shows, treats his online buds, affectionately dubbed "Jeffypoppers", with courtesy and consideration. Conscientious about responding to emails and fan requests, Jeff has gone so far as to add morning performances to his oncam schedule to accommodate European time zones. His attention isn't lost on fans--when his weekly "Surf and Sex Report" emailed Jeffypoppers news of a freak lightning storm that fried his modem, within hours the "bros" were bombarding him with offers of help. When Jeffy expressed regret that his performances were unrecorded and getting "lost in the ether", one fan sent him a CD-rom of painstakingly grabbed, sorted and saved images from four months of past Jeffycam events, and another found and helped install a java application on the Jeffypop site to post a "best of Jeffycam" reruns page. According to the surfer/sexstar, "Just like a bartender counting on tips for survival, I have found people who truly want to help out of the goodness of their heart, and people who help with serious expectations attached. Usually the people with expectations literally disappear as soon as they sense that they are not going to get what they want." One big difference between engaging the guys down the bar in conversation and striking up a chatroom or ICQ friendship is self-evident, but bears repeating. The details of who you are and what you’re like are dependent on the honor system, and subject to exaggeration and outright lies. Online buddies come to expect a little "padding the truth", and if you're planning to keep the relationship virtual, what difference does it make if your randy 21-year old frat boy is really a 45-year old accountant whose imagination matches his overactive libido. My friend George tends to be a little shy, but still complains how hard it is for him to meet guys. In turn, his friend Tammi took up the matchmaking challenge and began posing as him online. I'm not sure if her incursions into the gay male chat rooms resulted in any dates for George. If any of his/her interested online beaus did finally meet him, they were surely struck with the difference between the soft-spoken, lanky Cuban and the fiery, hot-talking Latin lover persona dreamed up for him by his feisty friend. So remember, even in a dimly-lit bar under the haze of three or four beers, you can get the rough outline of your bar friend or dream date. Online, you can imagine him however you want (or he describes himself), but don't believe all the hype. Oh, and don't forget to empty the ashtrays in the morning, and wipe down the "bar". Another gay ol' day on the Internet, and happy hour's waiting for you. And on the pretzels--pure, clean salt! [West Hollywood personal trainer and artist Len Whitney offers an attentive ear and a big strong shoulder to cry on. Hoist a few with him at http://www.aaarrgh.com--it may even be good for you...]
|
Here's an article that appeared in the FALL'99 issue of
CYBERSOCKET!
|
Woodshed Training: Can You Make It on Your Own? by Len Whitney
When I was a kid, my brothers
and sisters used to catch me sneaking
When I did decide to work out
and build my body, fear of ridicule drove
That's still my feeling today,
but many of you may still fear the sting
The Internet is full of sites
where you can find great exercises,
Even if you'd rather die than
set foot in a spandex-drenched cutthroat
One of the biggest sources of
motivation to build or improve your body
You don't have to work out next
to the oiled demigods in a big health
Hollywood fitness trainer/artist
Len Whitney is adept at lifting weights
|
/ Bliss out in the AAARRGH chillin' chamber
/ Zone Bleu /
Rant of the Month
/
Rant
of the millennium /
The AAARRGH!! gallery
/ What is AAARRGH!!? /