Out of the Blue

by Blue Blake

  “Gabriella’s still asleep, she was working until 4 a.m. She needs to get her rest because she’s having vaginal reduction surgery in a couple of days,” Betty offered.

  I stared blankly at her in disbelief.

  “She had her labia pierced a few years ago but now it’s pulled the lips out too much so she’s having them reduced.”

  I turned pale.

  “I think I’m going to be late for rehearsal,” I said, trying to change the topic. “And we’re finishing learning a song and dance routine to perform on the final night of the contest.” Of course, this was just as ridiculous as it might sound. Two dozen leather men doing a show tune in full leather drag. It was as tragic as you’d expect. The song was from Les Miserables and nobody could pick up the dance steps naturally. As we paraded around the stage, I suddenly realized that this show was going to be an all out camp fest.

  Betty raced me down to the rehearsal studios. Karen, the leather dyke who was running the whole Mr. Drummer event, glared at me.

  “You’re late again!” she shouted.

  “Oh, fuck off,” I thought. I couldn’t stand her. She was a miserable cow. I had been late every day for rehearsal but only because I was busy wallowing in the pleasures that San Francisco had to offer.

  “And where’s your leather sash?”

  Oops, I had given that to Al Parker in celebration of him fucking me with giant ball sack.

  “Oh, never mind, just get into rehearsal and you better remember the routine!” she barked.

  The other contestants adored me. They thought I was a total lunatic. Word had spread that when the judges had asked me what the next Mr. Drummer should be, I had replied: “Young.” I didn’t give a toss. I was feckless and fearless and I was in San Francisco to have a good time, and boy was I.

  By the time the night of the final contest rolled by, I was in love with The City. I had settled in for my final days there with Officer Betty and the stunning Gabriella amidst the bras and thongs and sex toys. Meanwhile Al had moved onto other conquests so I was footloose and fancy-free. I had shot my centerfold spread for Drummer Magazine and also a cover and article for a magazine called Powerplay. Me, holding a giant Rottweiler on the cover; not-so-subtly suggesting I was into bestiality, which I wasn’t.

  As it turned out I didn’t even place in the Mr. Drummer contest. They only announced the top three but I’m sure I didn’t even make the top ten. Then came the moment to present “The Golden Whip Award.” This was given to the contestant who every other contestant voted for as his favorite contestant, a sort of Mister Congeniality. The prize was a huge leather golden whip....

  “And the winner of this years Golden Whip Award goes to Glenn Marsh, Mr. Drummer United Kingdom. . . .”

  ME!!!

  I felt happier winning the Golden Whip than I would have felt winning the Mr. Drummer World title. Besides, I was already Mr. Drummer UK. And I always have believed you should spread the wealth. That night after the show, Mr. Drummer Australia came up to me:

  “What are you doing now the show’s finished?”

  Not strangling you, I thought. “Dunno, perhaps going dancing,” I replied.

  “No, I mean are you going back to England?”

  “Probably,” I said sadly.

  “Why don’t you come to Sydney? I have an apartment where you can stay and the leather scene is great.”

  Fuck the leather scene! Get me in Speedos on Bondi Beach fighting off all the ex-convicts. Bill and I had broken up so there was no one waiting for me to come home to London.

  I bade a tearful farewell to Officer Betty and Gabriella, who was recovering from her vaginal reconstruction and called up Quantas Airlines. Sydney, here I come!

  CHAPTER NINE

  I ARRIVED IN SYDNEY IN DECEMBER but it was the middle of their summertime. I found a great gym to workout in called City Gym and settled in nicely with Jack, Mr. Drummer Australia, and his boyfriend. The whole city was gearing up for Sydney Mardi Gras, and there was enormous buzz about a gay movie being shot around Sydney called The Sum of Us which starred a gorgeous young unknown actor named Russell Crowe.

  Australia was enormous fun. As if all the best of the UK and America were combined. I was living in Kings Cross, which was the gay ghetto. I trained each day at City Gym and then hung around on Tanarama Beach. The locals called it “Glamarama” because of the amount of gorgeous people who tanned there. My photo layout came out in the March 1991 issue of Drummer Magazine, my first proper porno layout, it read:

  “Glenn Marsh Mr. UK Drummer . . . As the first ever Mister United Kingdom Drummer Glenn Marsh has his work cut out for him. The Leather/SM community in his country, along with about everyone else who is overtly sexual, is taking a non-consensual beating of the sort Jesse Helms would like to see happening in the US. Just what a leather titleholder can do under the repressive conditions that exist in England remains to be seen, but no one doubts that Glenn is the man for the job.

  “Glenn is 27 years old, six feet tall and weighs 190 well packed pounds. His eyes are blue and he smiles very, very easily. He has a degree in physical training.

  “Mr. UK Drummer’s sponsors were H.I.M Magazine and “Expectations” (rubber and leather gear) in London and Marathon Films, Los Angeles. Glenn says his goal as a titleholder is ‘to promote a healthy sexual image of gay leather men in the 1990s’ ” . . . what a load of old bollocks.

  The article about me in Drummer Magazine was accompanied by a rather tasteful layout of me wearing about two hundred pounds of shiny leather harness, jack boots and spiky bicep bands whilst displaying the length of my foreskin and standing on a painter’s ladder . . . I was thrilled to the bone.

  I became an instant celebrity on the leather scene in Sydney. In fact, the local leather bar was building a float for the Sydney Mardi Gras and they had asked me if I would like to be featured on it wearing my Mr. Drummer outfit . . . of course I shyly accepted the kind offer.

  The night of Sydney Mardi Gras rolled around and I nervously climbed aboard the huge truck that had been covered in scaffolding for the leather men to dance on. As the parade made its way through the streets of Sydney I could hardly believe my eyes. There were literally millions of people screaming for us. I knew at that moment I wanted to make Sydney my new home. Years later when I was watching the Russell Crowe film The Sum of Us they featured the leather float in the film with me shaking my paps for the entire world to see.

  I had no idea how huge Mardi Gras would be. It turned out to be gigantic. Sydney gay Mardi Gras brings in millions of dollars to the city every year. There is an enormous parade that stretches for miles, full of amazing floats and it ends at a gargantuan space where three dance halls have been constructed to hold thousands of revelers who are off their heads on various stimulants. The following morning the “recovery parties” begin in all the bars for the hardcore partiers and everybody looks weary-eyed yet content.

  I had met a hot bodybuilder in Sydney called Ross Whittaker. He was a doctor from Melbourne. He reminded me of the lead singer from Right Said Fred and everywhere we went cars would pull up and people would lean out of the car windows and sing the hit “I’m Too Sexy” at us. We were stars . . . in our own minds.

  “What are you doing after Mardi Gras?” asked Ross.

  “I don’t know,” I said as we lay in each other’s arms full of chemical pleasure.

  “Move to Melbourne and live with me.”

  I looked out of my bedroom window and saw the now-empty streets of Darlinghurst, full of litter and drag queens lying in the gutters covered with glitter.

  “Melbourne . . . ” I gushed. “It sounds like a dream. When do we leave?”

  Melbourne wasn’t a dream. It was like living back in Nottingham. I felt like a caged beast. Ross was really sweet, however he knew he couldn’t hang on to me, and so he set me free. I flew right back to San Francisco. But first I made a little detour via London to pick up Sean. I had big plans for both of us, and I took him along as my w
illing accomplice. There would be no more Glenn Marsh and Sean Garret. There would be only Blue Blake and Gage Blake . . . the Blake Twins (insert crazed, devilish laughter here).

  CHAPTER TEN

  PEOPLE ALWAYS ASKED IF SEAN AND I if we were brothers. And why wouldn’t they think that? We took the same steroids, did the same workout routines, dressed the same and even got our hair cut in Nottinghill Gate by the same barber, “High and tight please, Giuseppe.”

  Sean and I had both gotten similar tattoos on a trip to Amsterdam a year before with Harry Giesler and another bodybuilder called Chris Hayler when we ended up so high from eating marijuana-laced space cakes that I couldn’t climb up the stairs at the crummy Hells Angels hotel that Sean had booked us into. I never could figure out why he had booked us into there until I noticed the brothel next door specialized in pre-op transsexuals, Sean’s favorite guilty pleasure. Sean and I both looked like ex-marines, so that would be our identities in America. The Blake Twins, fresh out of the Royal Marines, was to be our M.O.

  Choosing our names was easy. Sean had seen the movie Pet Cemetery and liked the little boy’s name in it: Gage. Sean had always called me Blue, because of my blue eyes, so I became Blue Blake. I toyed with the name Blue Mason but then remembered at drama school that they had told us that a name with alliteration was always much more memorable. Sean and I found a two-bedroom apartment in the Castro in a building that had once been a Chinese laundry. We had a local photographer take pictures of the two of us and we put an escort advertisement in the local gay rag saying only “The Blake Twins” and we were on our way.

  The phone rang incessantly. Guys would come over for $400 and hour, convinced we were fraternal twins. As soon as I started sucking Gage’s dick, they would cum immediately.

  We bought bikes and in our spare time rode around the city. Gage got himself a transvestite girlfriend from the local tranny bar, and I slept around a lot, mostly with bodybuilders from the local Gold’s Gym or porn stars.

  One night I met Jon Vincent in a bar. Jon was my favorite porn star of all time. Italian, bodybuilder, huge dick and in all his films he talked filthy to the guys he fucked. He was supposed to have had a professional baseball career but had blown out his knee. That and his enormous addiction to cocaine had destroyed his baseball dreams so he became a porn star and escort. In bed that night Jon struggled to get hard until I stuck three fingers up his arse.

  “Yeah, daddy,” he moaned.

  Jon Vincent, it turned out, liked being fucked by black men while high as a kite. Sadly, Jon and I weren’t meant to be. Mandingo fantasies, yeah, cocaine addiction, nope. Jon died a few years later, penniless and hopelessly addicted to drugs. It was a terrible end for one of the sexiest men in the world.

  Every morning Gage and I would work out in one of the gyms in the Castro. One day a guy gave us his business card. It read Jack Fritscher. Jack owned a company called Palm Drive Video that made bodybuilder jerk-off films. He thought Gage and I could be huge stars. We went down to the Gold Rush to talk it over. It was Gage’s favorite tranny bar and I needed him in a comfort zone so I could persuade him to do the movie with me. Gage didn’t remotely think of himself as bisexual, although we both knew the reason we ‘escorted’ together was so that Gage and I had a reason to have sex with each other. Apart from that he only fucked girls with dicks or real girls that looked like boys. I knew I was madly in love with Gage but I was smart enough to know he would always disappear with a girl . . . and that would ultimately lead to madness for me. It was very Brokeback Mountain with me as Jack Twist. In many ways we had the perfect relationship. He wasn’t jealous about who I slept with, and I wasn’t jealous of who he slept with, because ultimately we both knew our sexual partners wouldn’t last but we would be together forever.

  I was the smarter of the two of us. While various Korean transvestites were pouring tequila down our throats at the bar, I convinced Gage we should do this soft-core movie for Jack Fritscher. We were just to be filmed working out and talking dirty, then jerking off . . . who would ever see it? (Men still come up to me today, eighteen years later and say it’s their favorite movie of all time.) It made a fortune for Jack Fritscher. We were to be paid a thousand dollars each, and the thought of cash for having a wank really appealed to Gage. What appealed to me was the thought of doing my first porno movie, nourishment for the “beast” otherwise known as my ego.

  We phoned Jack to set up the shoot for the next day. I learned years later when I started producing porno, if you find hot models shoot them immediately because invariably they will disappear or change their minds if you give them the chance to.

  We dressed in combat fatigues, boots and mirrored Ray Bans and off we went. Jack lived on a ranch just outside of San Francisco. Obviously his little homemade films did well because the ranch was huge and very rustic.

  We started with a workout, posing and flexing while Jack filmed us. His boyfriend did the lighting and sound. Gage and I were both pretty big at this time, weighing 220 lbs. each at six feet. We cut quite the imposing figures with 54-inch chests and 30-inch waists. We looked like big blow up action men.

  Filming began and Gage started slapping my chest and next thing we were kissing passionately. I quickly forgot that all of this was being recorded on camera. Gage began playing with my nipples and I pulled his rock hard cock out of his pants and started sucking it. Remember, Jack thought we were brothers so he carried on filming with a giant hard-on tenting his trousers. Gage shot a huge load, I spunked everywhere, the whole thing had taken sixty minutes and we were $2,000 richer. It had been so easy. Good God, if it was this easy starring in porn I thought, I could shoot a movie a day.

  When we got back to Casa Sanchez that night the phone was ringing. It was Gabriella.

  “Blue, darling, I need you to do a shoot for Penthouse Magazine with me tomorrow. The guy I was supposed to do it with broke his legs falling off a trampoline and I know of nobody else who can do this with me.”

  “Sure,” I said brightly, “I love doing porn, it’s so easy.”

  In the future those words would come back to haunt me.

  The Penthouse shoot was actually an amazing experience. We arrived the next day at the studio of Jeff, the Penthouse photographer. He was a famous erotic photographer who shot beautiful nudes for various classy sex magazines such as Penthouse and Playboy. For the photo shoot I was dressed in a tuxedo and Gabriella in a cocktail dress. The layout featured us in sepia tones in various stages of undress. Penthouse readers didn’t buy Penthouse to see cock, so I didn’t even have to show my dick.

  Over lunch Jeff said to me and Gage, who had come along for the ride, “You know you two should be COLT models. I’ve got Jim French’s number somewhere. Why don’t you call him and send him some pictures?” There was no Internet in those days, so everything was sent by snail mail.

  The movie I had shot with Gage for Jack was called The Blake Twins: Raw And Uncut presumably because we both had foreskins and because Jack, the sly bastard, was selling the footage unedited and calling it the director’s cut. He charged $100 a copy, an astronomical amount of money for a porno tape, and made a fortune from it. A lot of bodybuilders in those days were making their own porno jerk-off tapes after the advent of the home video camera. This actually nearly destroyed the industry a few years later because anybody with a few bucks could make their own porno, and they did . . . and the market was flooded with badly produced, ugly model porn. Sold in the back of sex magazines, these backstreet pornographers were raking in the cash.

  The one exception to this rule was a guy called Dirk Yates. He lived in San Diego near a marine base, and he would pay young, hot marines $200 to jerk off in front of the camera. They would walk in, drink a beer and jerk off watching a straight porno. Dirk made hundreds of these movies, and with the money from them opened up his own studio called “All Worlds.” His is one of the most successful studios in the world, all created by one man’s unique vision. Those DVDs are still available today
and are still as popular as ever, although All Worlds is now owned by Chi Chi LaRue under his company Channel One Releasing.

  Following Jeff’s advice I sent a couple of pictures of Gage and I to “COLT Studios” in Los Angeles. A few days later the phone rang.

  “Blue Blake, please.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Are you and your brother Gage available to fly to Los Angeles to shoot for COLT Magazine?”

  I felt light headed. COLT was calling us . . . they wanted us to be COLT models! I couldn’t believe it.

  “Anytime,” I said.

  “Good, I’m putting air tickets in the mail. My name’s David, I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

  I was so excited I didn’t even ask him what we were to be paid for the shoot.

  When Gage came home I was doing the hula round the Christmas tree.

  “You’re happy,” he laughed.

  “Guess where we’re going,”

  “Dunno . . . do we have any tuna left?”

  We lived on tuna, pasta and Gatorade.

  “We are going to Los Angeles this week to be . . . COLT MODELS!!!” I squealed

  “Nice . . . now take that pineapple off your head and boil us some pasta. Cops is about to start.” Gage loved anything violent on television. He loved watching cop shows where small town sheriffs would raid crack houses in Bumfuck Texas, and women with no teeth and bruises on their legs would run screaming across the screen. I think it reminded him of Liverpool. He wanted to wallow in his working class roots . . . I was fleeing mine.

  I knew Gage wouldn’t be excited about being a COLT model. He never got excited about anything like that. This was probably good because I was overexcited about gracing the pages of the esteemed magazine so somebody had to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground.

  All we knew about L.A. was that people from San Francisco sneered whenever Los Angeles was mentioned. They said it was full of stuck-up, steroid airheads who were only concerned with how they looked: spending all day working out and tanning. This was music to my ears. San Francisco was having a detrimental effect on how Gage looked. San Francisco was all about body modification, tattoos, piercing, even branding. Gage had gotten more tattoos than I could count, and he had rings in his ears and his dick. I put my foot down when I caught him trying to have his nose pierced with a bone through it.