noizemagazine - Index

noizemagazine - noiZe Magazine Issue 59 February 2009 - Index

and all based on ticket sales.” Walk
into Roseland, and you’re transported
from the big city into a fantasy
world of the hottest men, poured
into their form-fitting uniforms, assless
chaps, jockstraps, latex bodysuits
or just nothing at all. And all of
them are primed for a night of fantasy.
This year, for Rites XXX, Pevner
promises to pull out all the stops.
It will be hard to top the themes
of the past few years. Last year’s
“Dangerous Black Party for Boys”
was a chance for every grown-up
Courtesy of Robert Zash Courtesy of Robert Zash
gay man to act out all those Boy
Scout fantasies. “Lucha Libre”
meant go-go dancers and porn stars
dressed as Mexican wrestlers, and a
live donkey, chickens and a Mexican
musician. The next year’s “Nascar
Holy War” blended the macho subculture
of race cars with Americans’
obsession with brand names. The
most talked about, however, had to
have been 2006’s “Schwarzwald,”
or “Black Forest.” Female-to-male
transsexual porn star Buck Angel
overlooked the dance floor in a makeshift
castle, as he aroused himself and
participated in group scenes with the
other actors to the roars (and groans) of
the crowd.
Pevner sees the evening as a “story
arc” made necessary, he says, by shifting
tastes in spectacle—and music.
It’s part of a movement from a leatherthemed
event to more of fetish fest.
“We made a conscious decision to give
it some context, because the leather
scene was important in its time but
doesn’t relate to a new generation,”
he says. “Fetishes can be sexy. Fetishes
evolve. It’s not your uncle’s Black Party.”
The most (in)famous aspect of the party
has to be the live acts on a second-floor
stage. The acts began at the original
Saint, along with legends like the live
adult circumcision. There have been
strange uses of boa constrictors, pool
balls, firecrackers, food, various body
fluids and all manner of role-playing.
The emphasis increasingly is on kink
rather than the merely sexual. Mike
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Happy Am I! Healthy Am I! holy Am I!