I remember when I
first heard that Splash was opening up in 1991. I had been going to Uncle
Charlie’s in the West Village and the word on the street was that the gay scene
was moving to Chelsea. In the last 20 years, I’ve seen the gay scene move from
the West Village to Chelsea to Hell’s Kitchen as each succeeding generation of
gay men prettied up the neighborhood, increased real estate values and watched
straight people take over our turf. Of course, it didn’t help that a lot of us
were also dying of AIDS.
One of the
features that defined Splash (apart from the go-go dancers dancing under shower
heads) was their videos. I think their most famous video was a scene from Mommie
Dearest where Faye Dunaway, as Joan
Crawford, slaps her daughter. They had spliced together a series of these slaps
so that it became a veritable windmill of slapping. The boys ate it up. There’s
nothing quite like being in a room full of grown men and watching them all
scream in unison: “Don’t fuck with me, fellas!”
I can’t say that
I was ever really a Splash boy. (In keeping with the gay community’s emphasis
on youth, all men are “boys.”) It was a bit too preppy for me, a bit too
upscale at first and, later, too bridge-and-tunnel.
But I feel sorry
for the generation of gay men that’s coming of age now. (Hell, I feel sorry for
the generation of people that’s coming
up age now.) It seems like, as a society, we’re becoming more and more isolated
the more social media claim they’re bringing us together. It’s one thing to
post your “likes” on Facebook and it’s quite another to be in a room full of
flesh and blood human beings expressing them. I feel like our lives as gay men are being reduced to a sexual act and
there’s no more room for witty conversation, something for which we used
to be famous.
I go back, once
again, to one of my favorite experiences at Uncle Charlie’s, watching the
season finale of Dynasty where the entire cast was gunned down. If that were on
TV now, we’d all rush to our computers or cell phones to tweet about it, each
of us isolated in our solitary apartments, alone in a city of eight million
people. Our shared experiences are now virtual.
I prefer to live
in the land of flesh and blood.
