Folsom Europe Fetish Diary

Checking my Poppers Privilege

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Checking my Poppers Privilege

This essay was originally published September 2023 for Folsom Europe’s 20th anniversary. Contains excerpts from my new book Analog Cruising.

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I came to Berlin last summer to "find myself" after so much pandemic trauma. I found myself alright: in the middle of another public health emergency, Mpox. I spent three months reporting on the Mpox outbreak, freaked-out, overworked, and celibate in one of the sexiest cities in the world. I figured Berlin owed me a redux. So I packed up my DoxyPEP and headed to Folsom Europe, for the fetish gathering’s 20th anniversary.

The truth is, Berlin doesn't need a Folsom; it’s already the global center of leather and fetish. The fair itself was modest compared to its much larger and older San Francisco sibling (on its 40th year now). The real action took place in Berlin’s many Gay nightlife spaces, darkrooms, dungeons, and parks in the final embrace of summer.

I eased into my Folsom at The Bathhouse*, a neon-lit, industrial chic men's spa with a soaking pool, saunas, a maze-like steam room/darkroom, a bar with a garden, and a cafe serving light snacks. Impeccably clean and modern (digital wristbands open lockers and pay for drinks and food), it was a far cry from the methed-out, run-down bathhouses I've explored in America, where sex clubs were either shuttered or criminalized during the AIDS crisis, and alcohol is not permitted. Berlin never closed these down, so sex club culture matured and thrived.

I caught up with a friend over a sparkling Riesling, soaked in the tub, and walked through the steam labyrinth, the centerpiece of the venue. In a brilliant design touch, the inside of the pool is visible from the steam room. I chatted with a handsome stranger from Spain over a fresh apple strudel, wearing only towels, transported to the 1970s, when the local bathhouse was as much for socializing as for sex.

I was refreshed for my Folsom kickoff: Naked Night at The Dungeon**.

The Dungeon is the most raunchy, elegant, and well-thought-out Gay space I've ever been in. It's not for the faint of heart. It's a brutalist, converted power plant; it feels a bit dangerous and disorienting, with hidden corridors, cages, industrial-strength slings, piss rooms, and massive darkrooms. There's an outdoor area of shipping containers stacked on top of each other, inspired by the Meatpacking district and the Mineshaft in pre-AIDS NYC.

Events at The Dungeon go until sunrise, but its policy keeps doors open for only a 2-hour window at the start of the night. When that window closes, everyone is "stuck" together inside (you may leave, of course). According to the owners, this prevents the "Prince Charming Syndrome," when men in sex spaces spend all their time waiting for the perfect man and refuse to interact.

I had never been to their all-naked party. It’s way out of my comfort zone but I pushed myself and made it through the 1.5-hour line without leaving. I expected a Muscle Gay circuit party, but every body type and race was represented, including transmasc folks. It was a full bacchanalia as soon as I walked in: casual fisting, piss gnomes parked at the urinals waiting to drink, a "bottom carousel," and men getting pounded as they ordered drinks. The sight of over a thousand naked men in all stages of fucking was jaw-dropping.

We like to throw around the words "liberating" and "inclusive" for Gay parties, but usually, I just see $50-100 covers to worship white muscles. This $15 party put them to shame. While the club could make ten times more money without its door policy, its success and notoriety depends on its consistency. Sex spaces can grow stale, but the energy of The Dungeon was as intense as my first visit over a decade ago.

There were a few large-scale circuit events, but I skipped those. My warm evenings were spent walking around the Gayborhood, Schöneberg, with its dozens of leather shops, bars, and cruising areas. The neighborhood usually skews older, cis, and white, with the disposable income for the expensive fetish gear, but there were tourists from all over, and most spaces were very welcoming, catering to every taste in cruising and music.

There’s a massive Top 40 club with a cavernous back area that has a movie theater. There’s a bar for nerdy bears, a bar for cute hipster boys, one for the happy hour, American crowd. There’s a bar for an older crowd, where I’ve never seen a man under 65 (it’s kinda nice to feel like chicken at 40). There’s a luxurious leather bar with a strict dress code, where men come to smoke cigars in problematic fascism chic to lick boots on a random Thursday. There’s a bar for the sex workers who frequent the nearby park, where their pimps and madams sit to smoke and joke with the bartender. Then there’s my personal favorite, a 24-hour bar with the filthiest darkroom everyone somehow ends up in, nicknamed “the drain of Berlin.” Suffice it to say, I left the neighborhood each night buzzed from cheap beers with a huge grin and sticky shoes.***

The fair on Saturday was more of a boozy fashion show and sidewalk sale, warm and mellow. Men paraded in their full leather regalia, rubber suits, puppy masks, motocross, and even diapers. There seemed to be more hazmat suits and gas masks too (we can unpack the ties to Covid later).

My Folsom highlight, however, was actually in a straight space...

My group of friends took a break from the fair to support a friend who was DJing at a straight party in The Garden****. We headed to a beautiful venue across town in our fetish wear. It was a huge, rustic garden with a dance floor that looked like an old barn, a food stand, comfy couches, and two hot tubs. The crowd was mostly straight, high, and relaxed.

The security guards, however, were like TSA on speed, conducting very thorough bag checks. My friend and I had poppers we couldn't hide in our fetish gear (he was in all rubber). Poppers are technically illegal here, though you can buy them from sex shops if you ask nicely. The imposing guard pulled out my poppers and told me that I'd need to throw them away if I wanted to come inside. Did I mention these were brand new, real amyl imported from France?

I was ready to grab my loot and call a car back to the fair when my friend, a Berlin local, stepped in. He calmly but firmly told the security guard that today was a Gay fetish fair, and that these poppers were "going to be a big part of our day." They went back and forth in German while I stood there waiting for both of us to get the boot. Then the guard grabbed our bottles, taped them together, and handed me a coat check ticket. I was speechless. That would have never flown in America, and my friend might as well have pulled a rabbit out of his black rubber gummi suit. We were disarmingly grateful, and the guard finally cracked a smile. We picked up our poppers on the way out after dancing for hours.

I’ve never been to a city that values my Gayness the way that Berlin does. The city has some of the richest and oldest documented Queer history in the Western world. The word “homosexual” was coined here in the late 19th century, after all. Queerness here predates the dazzling Weimar Era of "Cabaret" we tend to focus on, and it is so much more than the atrocities against Gays before and after the Holocaust. Berlin even had an alternative AIDS history: it implemented a different model of medical care and outreach (“The Schöneberg Model”), a holistic approach that used sex spaces for harm-reduction instead of closing them as America did. Even its rave culture has roots in Queer socialist and communist movements, and the most influential clubs here, like the notorious Berghain, are, in essence and history, Gay clubs. I feel a sense of respect and atonement for Gay culture here that I don’t feel as strongly anywhere else.

What made the moment with the security guard so powerful was that he wasn’t doing us a favor; he was actually worried about getting in trouble by going against a pack of Gays and their “culture.” My friend's “read between the lines, we’re not going anywhere” tone was a perfect balance of threat and opportunity to just let us pass. It was the same kind of tone that must have powered the bribes that have kept our spaces and culture open through generations.

My lesson from Folsom, aside from the raunchy sex, campy cosplay, and peacocking, was this: When we respect ourselves, when we truly democratize our spaces, when we value our pleasure as a tool for healing and liberation, others have no choice but to do it too.

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