Innocent Debauchery Lost

Your Bucko at 18, 1978

I grew up on Boston’s South Shore, the Irish Rivera. It runs from the bleak and gritty urban wasteland of South Boston and Dorchester right through to the disappointingly familiar barnboard tourist traps of Plymouth. I lived in the chainlink jungle of Weymouth, part scruffy beachtown, part dead milltown, part Levittown of cramped capes and ranch houses. A bus ran on the main road at the end of my street to the subway in neighboring Quincy, and from there I could be in downtown in minutes.

South Station is an enormous granite crescent facing into what is now one of the main nodes of the financial district, now all fresh and shiny with sleek skyscrapers, a landscaped park, and beautifully rehabbed Victorian Gothic commercial buildings. It, and the commuter lines from the South Shore, has been recently restored with shining brass and terrazzo. But in the 1970s, when this story takes place, it was a grimy, hulking block facing weedy empty lots, boarded-up blight and treacherous surface roads. In winter the wind blew strong off the nearby harbor and one needed to negotiate through huge slushy puddles across an urban wasteland. In summer the heat and oppressive humidity could wilt the most determined pedestrian.

But determination had its reward, because the slog amid taxis and busses led to a decrepit movie house named, appropriately enough, South Station Cinema. SSC had an old battered marquis, the neon and bright bulbs long left in dereliction, a single dim bulb over the box office the only illumination at street level. Covering the façade was a large white backlit billboard with replaceable letters announcing:
“All Male Cast”
“Continuous Shows”
“Adults Only”

Posters for Boys In The Sand were posted long after the film had stopped playing. It didn’t really matter, because few of the patrons actually cared much which films were being shown on its two screens. One didn’t go the SSC for cinematic excellence. One went there for the men sitting in the bright vinyl seats, loitering in one of the johns behind the screens, or in that odd little room furnished with a cot and a single red bulb in the ceiling.

You paid your fare ($5, if memory serves) at the box office and quickly entered the gloomy lobby. The first thing that struck you was the smell of Pinesol. For years after just the smell of pine disinfectant would make my pants tent in anticipation, like some queer Pavlov pup.

I was seventeen the first time I ventured up to the door alone (I’d made one other entrance two years previously in the company of an Anglican Priest, but that tale’s for another day). It was a crisp autumn evening in1977. I encountered no resistance at the door and scampered in quickly, my eyes surveying the scene. The décor was early rec-room: greasy paneling, stained dropped ceiling suspended in a brassy aluminum grid, buzzing florescent lighting casting a bluish pallor on everything. The rug was an abomination, once red, white and blue, now mostly a well-worn grey. A large ashtray was the only furniture, and over it was a hand-lettered sign forbidding smoking in the theaters. The ambient noise was the moaning and bad music from the films being played beyond. There were two restrooms, one marked Men, the other Ladies, though obviously women weren’t welcome. They were equally neglected and nasty, with an overpowering urine stench mixing with the Pinesol. At the back were two swinging doors, each with a yellowed backlit sign overhead, leading to two smallish screening rooms.

Each screening room had seats for approximately 250 people. At times it was standing-room-only, especially on holiday afternoons. Other times one could count the patrons on both hands. It was the luck of the draw, and I was never able to establish a consistent pattern.

I’d make my way down til I found an empty seat, hopefully not too far from the aisle. Up on the screen would be a porno somewhere half-way through. I preferred to come in in the middle of a scene, as the exposition and set-up were rarely of any interest. I’d settle in and look around, surveying the scene.

It’s easy now, with the ubiquity of home porn viewing, to write off the scene in a porn theater as the “Raincoat Brigade”, and of course, there were plenty of coats to be seen. But the crowd was amazingly diverse: young, old, all races, all ethnicities, all backgrounds. Some were obviously there for the anonymity, others could be very friendly.

As I’d survey the landscape, looking left and right as much as on the screen, I’d catch the face of someone who, for whatever reason, I found interesting. The occasional spark from a lighter or matches up off in the chairs in the distance defied the admonition outside. If I were lucky, there’d be a guy nearby with an interesting face whacking off slowly. Sometimes there’d be someone standing against the pegboard wall, intently looking about and rubbing his crotch. Frequently there’d be a couple of men reaching into each other’s laps, but that was rather poor form. Generally one refrained from much physical contact with others in the actual theater. That was reserved for out back, for the area on the other side of the door next to the screen marked “Restrooms”.

Should an especially fine ass or pair of shoulders saunter down the center aisle, I would note his clothing and make a remind myself to examine the guy more closely when I got back there. Other times, eye contact would be made with a neighbor. Should I be interested or curious, I’d get up and walk down toward the screen, hard-on anxious against my jeans, to that magical door.

At first it was hard to make anything out in the dim shadows. There was a small corridor with several doors: a padlocked fire exit, one marked Men, the other marked Ladies. There was usually a small crowd milling about, some men leaning against the wall smoking, others keeping moving in and out of the toilets. The stalls inside would be the scene of frantic movements, low moans and occasional piercing screams of delirious pleasure. The action made the cinematic sex nearby redundant, distant, and clinical in comparison. The atmosphere was electric!

As I have always been quite aggressive, I’d be one of the ones milling and looking into faces. Sometimes I’d be grabbed by someone and groped. If I found him sexy I’d open my pants and let him stroke me a bit. If not, I’d pull away and shoot a withering glance. Because of my age and looks, I held a special power over most of my compatriots. I had my choice, and I reveled in it. I could be picky one minute and part of a gang fuck in the Ladies room the next. Crowds would gather, and I’d pick from the lot.

I have so many warm (and wet) memories of times spent in those darkened rooms.

I remember the short, sweet-faced Italian man with the beautiful ass pulled tight over his blue Dickies, his short sweet uncut dick bouncing off his belly as I fucked him silly.

I remember tag-teaming a man in a suit, his pants around his ankles on a filthy tile floor, with half a dozen different guys. He got my load in last, already fucked open and oozing the other’s semen.

I remember the glory hole between the stalls of the Ladies room, which in my innocence I used as a window to peer through, sitting on the throne with a cock in my mouth and one in my free hand.

I remember discovering the cell with the cot, a biohazard of a place, which quickly became my environ of choice for one-on-ones.

I remember vividly the cold water in the sink as I try to wash the “Parisian Manicure” out of my cuticles, with little success.

But my fondest memory will always be meeting my first boyfriend. He was a clever, sweet and very cute man in his mid twenties. I can’t remember his name, but I shall never forget his face. After our tryst in the cell with the cot, he suggested we go out for a drink. When I told him my age, he almost fell over and laughed gleefully. He knew of a place where I’d be quite welcome, and offered to take me there.

The establishment was opposite the Public Garden where the Four Seasons hotel now stands, and it was called, quite simply, The Bar. The Bar was a disco, with a dancefloor lit from underneath. The crowd was an odd mix of leather, drag queens and hustlers. I think that he was testing me, seeing to whom I’d gravitate, seeing if I would be recognized by any of the regulars. I wasn’t, as I wasn’t much of a barfly until I turned eighteen (the drinking age at the time) and hadn’t been out much. Due to my age and the atmosphere, it would have been easy to mistake me for a hustler, and I was indeed approached by some very unlikely characters that evening, whom I rebuffed. In my naiveté it never occurred to me that I could get bids on what I so gladly gave out for free.

I guess that I passed the test, because we left after a couple of drinks and went back to his Beacon Hill apartment for an encore. I left just in time to catch the last bus out of Quincy back to Weymouth. In the train, I remember noticing the smell of sex on my hands and curious if anyone near me could smell it too.

I was happy. I was sated…until the next time.