London Bear and Leather Pride

Well, I'm back and fully recovered. Friday was more a day of fun than a day of debauchery, and that was just the way I liked it.

I rose slightly later than expected on Friday morn to the sound of BigPuppy ringing me demanding that I get up and get ready. Once I shook off the hangover from the night before, I did my thing and met him at Brighton Station at noon(-ish) and we jumped onto a train.

Hitting LondonBridge at around 3pm, we headed straight to Expectations to try on some leather gear. This store has a policy of no photography, but luckily the counter assistant disappeared off behind the scenes at one stage, and the Pupster was ready with his camera. Full advantage was taken - many outfits were tried on - and I wanted to upload these pictures here, now, but this stupid computer won't let me (in an internet café as all the college facilities are shut today). I'll have to wait until Tuesday. In the end I left the shop having bought a red jockstrap.

Once we had that done, we headed to Soho to check out the gay strip. We settled on Comptons first, where I could have stayed downstairs all day drooling over the hot bear couple across the bar from us. We went upstairs and settled into a big pair of armchairs next to a window that looked down onto the street. You can see these in the photo on the website. We eventually headed off to take in the Kings Arms. We headed upstairs to the poolroom with our drinks, and I salivated over the hot bears playing. After that, we headed off to Italian Graffiti to eat (nice!) and then back to the Kings Arms. At this point the bar had filled up with masses of hairy beasts, and the sensory overload was making my head spin, probably because of the blood rushing from it to go somewhere else. There was just so many men I didn't know where to begin! Having said that, I did manage - after much deliberation - to march upto one guy and tell him he had a great arse...

Then it was on the bus to Chunk, where they were having the friday night bear social. This was more of the same: loads of big hairy men everywhere, and we got talking to two guys I recognised from Brighton and stuffed our face with the barbeque food. We eventually got talking to one of the hot bears who I saw playing pool earlier, who turned out to be nice and chatty, though unavailable to me, *sniff*.

Later we boogied (Even Phil! Alas, no camera) and I locked lips with two or three different bears, including a hot Belgian one who was quite a vociferous kisser. At the end of the night, I hooked up with a small stocky cub, and it was decided that I would go back to his. It was only in the taxi queue that I realised that he was coked out of his head, so I jumped ship and quickly re-connected with Phil, and he walked me down to the Chariots sauna in Vauxhall.

It was at this point, regrettably, that things started to go pear-shaped. This was my first time in a sauna, and I was only there to while away some time until the trains to Brighton started running again. The customer base seemed to fall into one of two camps, twink or muscle boy. I've been a bit cynical lately about bear club's assertions that they are 'attitude-free', but the laid-back antics of Chunk were in stark contrast to the meat-market feel of this place. It was a bit of a catch-22 situation: The people who I fancied weren't into me, and equally the people who moved on me weren't my cup of tea either. You have to be pretty thick-skinned to cope with the goings on in a gay sauna, and I wasn't used to it. I got entangled, but the sparks didn't exactly fly. One thing I noticed was that one of the Brighton guys I was talking to earlier was there, and even though I'm still not sure if I like him, he is hot, and I checked him out getting hot n' heavy with some other guy for a while. After that, I tried the darkroom, and although I messed around with a couple of guys in there, I found the fact that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, never mind the face of the others, more than a bit irritating.

After about two hours or so, I got bored and headed for the video lounge and fell asleep there for a while. I was woken by a twink groping me at about 10:30 in the morning, and after throwing him off, I showered and got dressed and got the train back to Brighton. There I grabbed a few more hours of sleep, thus righteously cocking up my sleeping pattern for last night, so that was why I was still up at 1am watching the Amityville Horror for the twentieth time...

Bear & Leather Pride is still ongoing in London right now, but that's it for me. It was a fun Friday, discounting how I ended it, and I know where I'll be going next time I'm in London.

Back to earth with a bang. College on Tuesday. Exams only seven weeks away. Only my birthday on the 27th of this month to look forward to now. Onward ho...