The White Party

I'm a gay, native Californian who loves to travel, so it's beyond me why I'd never gone down to experience Palm Springs. Last weekend, the time finally came.

Even in April, the town is as sizzling as a 24 Hour Fitness sauna, and just as queer. From what I could see, Palm Springs is far gayer than San Francisco. The mayor is gay, as is much of the city council. Dozens of gay resorts dot the city, most of them clothing optional, which you hardly hear of in San Francisco, but that's surely a function of the cold fog and the associated shrinkage factor.

For the record, we stayed with our good friends Max and Jeff who recently bought a vacation condo there. A clothing optional facility would have been intriguing, but then we would have missed out on the hospitality of our wonderful hosts. We spent some time lounging at the pool among other gay men, a cute lesbian couple and their queer-friendly parents visiting from Sarasota, Florida (which caused me to be thankful for the clothing-strictly-encouraged policy).

But this was no ordinary weekend in Palm Springs. This was the biggest, fiercest weekend of the year. This was the annual explosion of reckless abandon, hedonism and body glitter. This was the weekend that convinces Larry Craig he can't possibly be gay (because he merely blows other men in bathroom stalls, not all that naughty stuff). If we were going to experience Palm Springs after all these years, we were going to do it right. We went to the infamous White Party.

The White Party is actually a constant series of parties that starts on Friday morning and goes on pretty much continuously until Sunday evening. On Friday night, an underwear party. Pool parties every day. T-dances every afternoon. One can get a VIP pass for $450 to get into all the parties. Yes, $450. But you get to go into the very special VIP lounge at the Saturday night party, so how can you argue with that?

It's the ultimate "circuit" party. Many guys save up all their money and throw their weekday suit, tie and caution to the wind, traveling all over the country, only to drag their strung-out asses back to the grind come Monday morning (if they're lucky, without a new sexually transmitted infection or meth addiction in tow). I've always been led to believe that just about everyone at these parties is high on something. You'd have to be to make it to every one of these parties. My partner, Robert, and I aren't into any of that, so we planned on going to just one of the big parties and spend the rest of the weekend exploring and hanging out with Max and Jeff.

We chose the biggest party, the Saturday night party, held at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The advertising claimed that the space would be transformed into a Studio 54 type club as the DJ's took us through the evolution of disco from the 70's to present day. All that for a mere $110 cash each.

When we entered the convention center ballroom, I'm afraid I had trouble feeling transformed. Yes, there were massive lighting contraptions, three huge disco balls and more lasers than a Beverly Hills skin clinic, but ultimately, it was still a convention center ballroom. The dance floor was that same parquet flooring that was probably last pieced together for the Rosenberg-Chan wedding two days earlier. It's hard to feel like you're in a magical time warp to 1978 Greenwich Village when you're standing right where a thousand actuaries just heard a plenary session on mortality tables and 417(e) (3) interest rates.

Yes, the ballroom is large, but the number and size of the speakers pointing into the dance floor area was at least equal to the number and size of the set-up we had at the Barry Manilow concert at HP Pavilion. (While that's a much larger venue, it too failed to transport me to the disco era despite a rousing rendition of "Copacabana.")

Hence, entering the dance floor area was torturous. Even Condoleezza Rice would have no trouble acknowledging that this was torture. Water boarding, she's not ready to judge, but the White Party? Yes. Permanent ear damage, long lines for the bathroom, $5 for a 12-ounce bottle of water. No doubt, torture. And the crowds of people packed together. Before long, I was smothered in sweat, none of it my own.

Robert and I took a break and made our way toward the bathrooms when we noticed a roped off area. We sauntered in, unaware that this was the aforementioned VIP zone. In this exclusive area was a few cushioned chairs and sofas, several pitchers of ice water with lemon wedges and stacks of plastic cups. We poured ourselves cups of water, not yet realizing that our $110 entrance fee was not enough to elevate us beyond second-class status. $110 is insufficient to get you complimentary water, silly. But it is enough to allow you to stand in a line of 30 people to wait for the privilege of buying a mixed drink for $10. Fortunately, we made it out of VIP-land undetected.

Later, we made our way to the front of the ballroom to wait for the live performances. One of our goals for the evening was to see scheduled performer, RuPaul. I had noticed there were a couple of other performers slated, but I had never heard of them. We waited for about an hour up front, as there was nothing to indicate when the show was to start. Every time a song ended, everyone around us focused on the stage. People held up their cameras and snapped photos of what ended up being a stage hand. Then they did the same thing five minutes later. And again five minutes after that.

Finally, the show began and a highly decorated black guy came out with a slew of back-up dancers. He lip-synced two songs. OK, that was nice. Later, I found out that Robert, Jeff and Max thought that was RuPaul. It turns out it was something called Flava.

Next was a large-breasted woman in a tight white outfit and lots of fur and feathers who moved very little while the back-up dancers gyrated in a fairly impressive choreography. She sort of looked like Aretha, but she was certainly not Aretha. There had been a rumor that Janet Jackson was going to be a surprise performer, but I didn't buy that either.

At least this singer was actually singing. I'm sure she must be well known in the "circuit" for some dance hit or another. I don't think she penned this, but she threw out the worn-out line, "Put your hands up in the air, and wave them around like you just don't care." This was perfect. At $110 (and no Manilow or Jacksons in sight), this evening did feel a little like armed robbery, and now they have us putting our hands up in the air.

At about 2:30 a.m., we realized all four of us had had enough, even without RuPaul. Now, don't get me wrong. I had a fun time. I can think of many things I could spend $110 on that would have produced a funner time, but it's a once in a lifetime thing. Now we know.

The odd thing is I never sensed any of the debauchery I had expected. The atmosphere didn't feel particularly sexually charged. They didn't even have any go-go dancers in thongs or porn showing on video screens like many a gay night club. I have no idea who or what proportion of the crowd was high. I never saw any of that.

But that's typical for me. I tend to miss out on things. It could have been right there in front of my face, and I didn't see it. Ultimately, I'm a square. I'm too pure for even Pat Robertson to blame me for causing a hurricane.

If I had been in Sodom, I would have been over in some corner playing Scrabble the whole time. God would be coming down to smite us, and I would have no idea why. "I'm not cheating. QAT is a legitimate word!"

The next day we had the obligatory gay Sunday brunch and lounged around until our flight brought us back to reality. I'd certainly like to go back to Palm Springs, but maybe instead of White Party Weekend, I'll go when there's something more my style going on. Like a bowling tournament. Perhaps a clothing-optional bowling tournament.