Gay darkroom new york

A few years ago, I frequented a gay cinema in the East Village called the Bijou. It was hidden behind an unmarked black door debased by graffiti, easy to miss unless you were looking. After 8PM, a Puerto Rican drug dealer who claimed to hold the best coke Downtown loitered out front. You had to pass him and ring a doorbell to be buzzed in. 

Inside were hideous orange walls and a stairway that descended into a petite movie theater where they mostly played 2000s rom-coms and animated films. Once, I watched half of Ice Age 2 there, but it was unachievable to focus over the sounds of moaning men, most of them older and white, who gave each other hand jobs in the seats. Behind the seating area were about half a dozen stalls that smelled of unwashed balls where people went in to fuck. If you cruised through the dark hallway behind enough, someone would graze your crotch and encourage you in with a nod. Recently, I felt nostalgic for the Bijou and tried to leave back, only to identify out it had closed permanently in 2019.

The Bijou was an emblem of a pre-pandemic New York when cruising was confined to cum-filled basements and obscure sex parties you had to learn via word of mouth. But in the y