Cruising East of Alvarado

West Hollywood, September 1993

"Where are all the Hispanic guys?' I asked Lane one day. "The population of Los Angeles is about 50% Hispanic, but you never see any here in West Hollywood.  We don't even have a Mexican restaurant."

"I can buy some Old El Paso at the Safeway if you want," Lane said, "And make tacos tonight."

"I'm serious.  We bring home lots of Asian guys, and lots of Anglo leather bears, but no Hispanic guys"

"What do you expect, when you cruise at Mugi, and I cruise at the Faultline?  If you want to meet Hispanic guys, you have to go where they are."

He was right.  The Hispanic gay population of L.A. had its own distinct culture, pre-dating West Hollywood.  If I wanted to meet them, I had to head east of Alvarado.

So on Saturday night, I dropped Lane off at the Faultline for his weekly cruise, and drove a mile farther to the corner of Sunset and Hollywood, and a bar called Basgo's.

It was not like the semi-darkness of Mugi: it was loud and gaudy, the walls painted an effervescent pink.  There were murals of naked Aztecs, plastic palm trees, stuffed parrots.

Pumped-up bartenders in their underwear gyrated to salsa music:

En la vida hay amores
que nunca pueden olvidarse
imborrables momentos
que siempre guarda el corazón

Drag queens made the rounds, flirting and kvetching with their huge brandy snifters sloshing with ruby-red margaritas.

Rent boys slouched by the pool table, displaying sock-enhanced mega-bulges.

The cruising protocol was closer to Catch One than Mugi.  Few Anglos, no English being spoken, few people by themselves except for rent boys and drag queens.  You saw someone you liked and drew him away from his rowdy group of friends to the dance floor, where the pre-hookup conversation occurred.

Con los anos que me quedan
Yo vivire por darte amor
Borrando cada dolor
Con besos llenos de pasion
Como te ame por vez primera

I was drawn to a very handsome young guy with an impish grin, talking nonstop with his friends.   Shorter than me, dark skin, a round face, and black curly hair.  Frayed jeans with an enormous bulge and an yellow shirt with most of the buttons undone, revealing a hard smooth chest.

I approached and asked -- or rather yelled -- "Quires bailar?"  He grinned and nodded.  I took his hand and led him to the dance floor.

We spoke -- or rather yelled -- in  clipped Spanish.  His name was Dario.  He was 23 years old, from Peru.  He came to L.A. last year with his brother and two cousins.  He worked in a warehouse.



Nice background story.  Time to seal the deal.  I led him to the bar and ordered two tamarind-flavored Mexican sodas.   He grinned.

"Que quieres hacer en la cama?" I asked.  What do you like to do in bed?

"Oh, me gustaria que tu me maman!" Dario said, eyes gleaming.  "Y otras cosas, por supuesto.  Y cojerte..." 

Getting oral, topping, and "other things," not bad.

I knew that closeted guys were sometimes only into the act itself, not the preliminaries, so I specified:  "Pero, mi amigo y yo, nos gustan besando y abrazando, tambien."  Kissing and hugging, full body contact, making out.

He nodded.  "A mi me gustan muchas cosas."

And one more thing: "Y es absolutamente necessario que tu duermas con nosotros."  No grab-and-go.  You have to spend the night, or no deal.

He nodded.  "Si, si.  Dormiremos."

Dario didn't have a car, so he drove with me to pick up Lane at the Faultline, then to the French Quarter, and then to our apartment in West Hollywood. 

We sat in the living room.  I ran my hand over his chest, cupped his crotch, tried to kiss him.

No besando.

WTF?

Well, maybe he was shy.

We brought Dario into the bedroom, stripped off his clothes, and put him down on the bed.  He had a beautifully curved, uncut Bratwurst.  I went down on him while Lane fondled his chest.

Were they kissing?  I looked up.  No.
  

I gave Lane a turn at the cock and tried to kiss Dano.   No.

Well, could I at least fondle his balls?  Ok.

 He pushed Lane's head down on his crotch, jerked his hips, and finished with a groan. 

Ok, so how about mamando us?  No.

I wasn't particularly into anal, but he said cojerte, so I turned over onto my stomach and asked "Hay condones?"  Do you have condoms?

Dario was pulling his shorts on.  "Hey, I thought you were spending the night!"  I exclaimed.  "Dormiremos juntos!"

Nope.  "Tengo que venir a mi casa.  Necessito levantarme temprano."  I have to get up early.

So we left Lane in bed and got dressed, and I drove Dario home -- to Silverlake, eight miles away.

"Why did you tell me that you are into besando y mamando?" I asked in frustration.

He stared out the car window at the glittering lights of Santa Monica Boulevard.  "I told you I like many things," he said.

"And spending the night.  You said voy a dormir contigo."

"Dormir...tener sexo, si?"

I smelled a rat.  Dario had played me, agreeing to anything just to get into my bed.

Then we arrived at the address he gave me -- a glass-and-steel building on Hyperion, in the heart of Silverlake's gay neighborhood.

This was the tiny, rundown apartment that Dario shared with his brothers and cousins?

"Could I come in to use the bathroom?" I asked.

It was a beautifully furnished one-bedroom, with hardwood floors and antique furniture.  A framed print of a bullfighter.

A coffee table book about painter Joan Miro.

"Porque me dices que eres pobre?" I asked.  Why did you tell me that you were poor?

"I didn't say I was poor," Dario answered -- in respectable English!  "You heard what you wanted to hear."

The brothers and cousins came to the U.S. with him -- they didn't live with him.

And his job in the warehouse?  He was the general manager, with a salary double what Lane made.

"You wanted a poor little Latino boy who says 'si, señor' and agrees to whatever you say, and I wanted a hot, built Anglo to go down on me.  We both got what we wanted, right?"

The next weekend I returned to Basgo's and met Manuel, from Nicaragua, who spoke almost no English -- I checked.

And I made sure we were besando and abrazando before we left the bar.

See also: The Waiter in the Mexican Restaurant; I Bring Home a Teen Hustler.