Feature

Party Favorites

Wild Style: Gay-nightlife renegade Dean Johnson.

(Photo: Ben Baker)

Nearly six feet seven ("six ten in heels") and sporting a clean-shaven head that makes him look like a white Shaquille O'Neal, Johnson, 41, has made a career out of anti-authoritarianism, from singing with foul-mouthed bands like the Weenies to promoting parties like "Rock N Roll Fag Bar" and "Pubic Hair Club for Men." His most notorious party was "Foxy," the Saturday-night get-together at Mario Diaz's East Village bar the Cock, where amateur exhibitionists strutted their stuff -- and did much worse -- for money from an eager crowd of voyeurs. "People lined up just to watch someone drop their pants," he says. "That's where I got the idea for the stuff I'm doing now. It's sexual, but with a sense of humor." And in some sense, Johnson's mix of music and sex recalls the culturally charged scene at bathhouses in the seventies (after all, D.J.'s Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles, not to mention Bette Midler, got their start at the Continental Baths in the Ansonia).

After seeing McGovern in his show The Wrong Fag to Fuck With: The Gay Pimp vs. Eminem in 1999, Johnson knew he had found the perfect cohort for his crusade to liberate gay nightlife. "I thought he was genius," Johnson says, "and besides, I'm middle-aged and I don't like to go out anymore. Jonny's young and he can do that for me."

Their first venture together, "Triple XXX," at the dingy Second Avenue bar the Hole, was a smash when it premiered late last summer, thanks in part to audience-participation-encouraged S&M displays. It was the kind of place where, if you were a gay man who liked to go out, you quickly ran into almost everyone you knew -- including people you'd rather not have stumbled upon in a basement back room. But the party -- which at first benefited from the fact that the NYPD was too preoccupied with Osama bin Laden to care about go-go boys -- rapidly became oversubscribed. And by February, they shut it down. "We didn't want anyone at the Hole to lose their jobs because of our party," says Johnson.

Like Johnson, McGovern, 25, is something of a postmodern libertine: He seems to send up the very things that turn him on, often wearing a faded red T-shirt that reads THANKS COACH. As "the Gay Pimp" (his performance-artist alter ego), he sings lecherous songs like "Hey Lil' Raver Boi" and "Soccer Practice" (which will be included on Larry Tee's upcoming Badd, Inc. compilation) at venues like Luxx. "I'm hoping to become a one-hit wonder in Europe," McGovern says, "because you know how much the Europeans love their homos -- and their soccer." He peppers his southern drawl (he's actually from Brooklyn) with the word homo so often that if you closed your eyes, you might mistake him for a pathological redneck.

"We're not hurting nobody," he says. "After all, we're just homos." A refugee from glam superclubs like the Roxy, McGovern is -- all irony aside -- bent on returning gay nightlife to its grittier roots. "At our party," he proclaims, "the VIPs stand next to the crazy homo who wears a lighted-up shirt." Indeed, at "Magnum," A-listers like Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana moved comfortably among the cruisey masses. Still, McGovern takes pains to distinguish his events from some of the seedier underground sex parties that have sprung up in recent months. "There's a fine line between cruisey and frightening," he says. "We're not interested in a party where you can't go ten feet without someone offering you a blow job." Devotees of Johnson-McGovern parties appreciate the distinction. "What makes their parties fun is that they're part 'Squeezebox' " -- the legendary nineties polysexual rock soirée -- "part wild sex party," says actor-director Jonathan Lisecki. "If you're not in the mood for back rooms, there's always good music."

Downtown at "John Street," however, music doesn't seem to be foremost on people's minds: A crowd of guys inches closer to the stage, where several performers are getting friendly with one another. From his D.J. booth, Johnson is having fun playing raunchy ringmaster -- as the live-sex show gets considerably livelier, he intones into the mike, "You're watching guerrilla theater, people." (A few days later, he sends out a cringe-worthy e-mail thanking "the cute nightlife journalist who got gang-banged on the pool table, giving new meaning to the phrase 'eight-ball in the corner pocket.' ")

But even with such beyond-the-pale antics, Johnson is optimistic that this party will last. "We learned our lesson from the Park: If anyone from the media tries to cover it, they'll be eighty-sixed from the party." Then he lets out a big, confident laugh. "Can I put you on the list?"