The Virtues of Vice: An Ode to O Street

Every city has its pocket of vice, a region of ill repute, its neighborhoods of inequity. O Street Southeast was DC’s own. In the shadow of the Capitol, a street bookended by bodegas and a Metrobus lot held a collection of sex clubs and drag bars. Zeigfields and the adjoining Secrets was an establishment that held, in separate wings, drag shows with lipsynching divas, and go-go boys who danced to remixes and waved their dicks in your face. Next door was the Glorious Health Club, a combination sex arcade and traditional sex club, with a maze of wooden booths outfitted glory holes. Above was the porn theater the Follies, with x-rated movies, go-go boys, and nooks and crannies for rendezvous. Next to that was the Club O. This flea bitten joint was a dump, rooms of dingy bedspreads and half-clothed men prowling in steam rooms and around flickering porn rooms. La Cage Aux Folles was the final place, another go-go club, with boys allowing you to touch their turgid members.

O Street was an area of blight. The clubs weren’t updated since the 70s (save for La Cage, which underwent a name change to Heat). Modular furniture in harvest orange still graced the Follies, with its institutional gray carpet and gummed linoleum. The floor of the Glorious Health Club was seething with filth, old cum and spit and lube that even the most ammonia wash couldn’t destroy. Homeless men, and thieves preyed on horny guys and smashed car windows. It was a seething cauldron of disease and crime--a Genetesque voyage to the underground. Both John Rechy and Samuel Delany have written extensively about the social phenomenon of the Red Light District and gay culture. The film Prick Up Your Ears, about Joe Orton, showed a sordid side to gay life that has been scrubbed clean with advent of shows like Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's placement in mainstream society. My inner libertine misses the lost squalor, even as my outer Puritan nods in approval.