Good evening, peeps - hope you're staying cool in this heat. The other day someone posted that Satan was planning to be the keynote speaker at the GOP convention in Cleveland and my response was "no, he's way too busy frying us New Yorkers to waste his time in Ohio" :) The article is here, by the way, and what's really scary is that the "excerpts from Satan's speech" are actually things that Mr. Trump has said. If that doesn't frighten you, I don't know what will.
On to much happier topics - so this past Saturday night, July 16th, I ended my 19 year long emcee career at Rockbar co-emceeing Witti Repartee's annual 39th birthday party. Witti produced an amazing show featuring an incredible line up of fabulous performers. Between the door, the silent auction, the raffle, the progressive auction (for a truly beautiful piece of jewelry) and tips for the performers, the event raised a hair under $4500 for New York Lesbian and Gay Center's HIV/AIDS services. The money went to the fund of Team Eagle who will be riding in Cycle for the Cause later this summer. You know, that's the 9 billion mile bike ride from Boston to New York. :)
On a personal level, it was, of course, bittersweet - it was the right time to retire and I'd actually kind of asked Witti not to make a big deal about it because I was concerned that there'd be few WC fans in the audience and it would just look maudlin and weird. Besides, I got plenty of strokes at the Feb 26 2014 Final Bingo night, so I'm all set. (You can go to You Tube and type in to the Search box "Will Clark 50th" and see the video from the night .. there are 8 filmed by South Africa AIDS Ride's Bryan).
Naturally, my boyfriend was there (and he offered to take pictures! you see why I love him, right?) as was Shane Tate, the producer of the annual Fire Island Bear weekend and the upcoming weekly dance party at the Ritz (Thursday nights from 6 to 10pm) plus lots of friends from around the community. As a plus, the musical wonder that is Kylie Edmond (Facebook/ Rock and Rawhide!) performed and her pal Bailey (who joined us at Bingo all last summer and, with Chris Pagano and singer Kelly Brown became the final inductees to the Will Clark Show Porno Bingo family) threw some beach balls around (LOL) and singer Tym Moss joined us after hosting Staten Island Pride.
But it was especially awesome to have in the house, my long time friend Barbara. Those of you who came to Bad Boys on the Hudson know Barbara as the porn star wrangler. I first met Barbara as I was moving back to New York in 2003 and she's been in and out of my events ever since. So, it was fitting that she be there for this last chapter. And, it was she, who was kind enough, at the end of the show, to give me an Earth Mother hug, which just sort of allowed a lot of my pent up emotion to be let loose. Thankfully everyone was too busy hootin and hollering how great the show went to really notice.
Then the boyfriend and I danced to 80s pop and got reprimanded for dancing on the stage. That's what happens. You retire and get thrown off stage. :)
And that's that.
I started emceeing at a beer bust to benefit Aid for AIDS at the Gauntlet in LA Father's Day 1997 and ended at Rockbar in NYC on July 16, 2016 to benefit the Gay/Lesbian Center's AIDS programs. I'd say that there were about a thousand shows in between - 144 Cocktails with the Stars, 470 Porno Bingos, 26 Bad Boys events, 3 Folsom Easts, 2 LA leather Street Fairs, 4 Mr/Ms NJ Leather contests, about 40 People Will Talk (View Bar, NYC), about 40 Cocktails with the Stars in Long Beach, CA, and about 40 Wet Jockey Shorts at the Gauntlet, plus about 50 Porn Idol shows in NYC and well, dozens (plus!) of various other events around the country.
For those of you who joined me for any of these, thank you...... without friends, I couldn't have done any of this. And I wouldn't have wanted to.
So, for the next couple weeks, I'm going to be doing a little looking back in a series of blogs I call "Last Train from Clarksville". Hope that you will join me for this final ride.
Will Clark
July 18, 2016
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