Whippoorwill

Is the Poppers Party Over? A potential crackdown on a readily available party drug seems to be afoot. But don’t panic just yet. Often marketed as nail polish remover or DVD cleaner, poppers are a popular party accessory.Credit...Tonje Thilesen for The New York Times By Jacob Bernstein New York Times Published March 27, 2025Updated March 29, 2025 Were it not for the fact that it was 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning and were it not for the blaring house music, one might have seen what was going on at HK Hall, an event space in Midtown, and at first glance said, “Is this a jock strap convention?” There were men in jock straps by Nike, there were men in jock straps by the fetishwear brand Nasty Pig, and there were men in jock straps by Bike, which was the kind Garrett Magee wore along with a fanny-pack-like contraption that went around his thigh and gave a butch garter belt effect. He was attending the Black Party, a yearly bacchanal that has been a mainstay of the gay social scene for more than four decades. As it happened, Mr. Magee — an influencer whose profile derives from his ability to pair shirtlessness with landscape work — was not under the influence of any mind benders, although he did have a little brown bottle of poppers in his fanny pack, the use for which he made clear was to seize the moment should he encounter a person of interest. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Popular since at least the early 1970s, poppers were thought to enhance pleasure in the bedroom and while boogieing on disco dance floors to anthems by the likes of Donna Summer and Loleatta Holloway. For the last several years, bottles of the substance could readily be purchased at most sex shops as well as at scores of bodegas in New York, where they tend to sit behind glass cases next to energy-shot drinks at prices that range from $10 to $30. Sometimes they were described as being nail polish remover on the bottle. (A reporter who tried them out for this purpose discovered they worked perfectly well.) Other times, they were described as being DVD cleaners, though prevailing evidence suggests their main selling point is their ability to temporarily relax the sphincter muscle. The writer Paul Rudnick recalled the ease with which people bought a bottle as being comparable to buying Tic Tacs. “It was right there, it wasn’t very expensive and it wasn’t technically illegal,” he said. “It was off brand, like Ozempic.” So enthusiasts took it mostly for granted that they’d be able to scoop them up when, on March 13, a company called Double Scorpio, a purveyor of poppers, announced it was suspending operations after a search and seizure from the Food and Drug Administration. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The exact reason for the raid is not entirely clear. A spokeswoman for the F.D.A. said in an email that the agency would not comment on a potential investigation. Emails to Double Scorpio received no response. Efforts to crack down on the use of poppers, citing possible health risks, precede President Trump’s return to office in January. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the Food and Drug Administration as the secretary of health and human services, has made it pretty clear that he is no fan of these products. Regulators in the United States and Britain have often banned the specific formulations contained in poppers, but the brands that make them have largely remained one step ahead, tweaking the formula to keep the product in a legal gray area and on store shelves. Or, as a tour of Manhattan’s most distinguished sex shops would indicate, in glass cases by the cash register. Rush is essentially the Coca-Cola of poppers. The label on the 3-inch-tall bottle at the Blue Store in Times Square is bright yellow. A bright red logo sits in the center of the bottle between a pair of bright red lightning bolts. In small letters at the bottom, the product is called a cleaning solution. Editors’ Picks How Healthy Is Your Social Biome? Take Our Quiz. Traveling to the U.K.? You Might Need to Apply and Pay a Fee First. Help! I Booked the Wrong Hotel Dates. Why Can’t I Get My Money Back? SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Image Rush is essentially the Coca-Cola of poppers. The label on the 3-inch bottle at the Blue Store in Times Square is bright yellow. In small letters at the bottom, the product is called a cleaning solution.Credit...Martyn Vickery/Alamy Other bottles with names such as Jungle Juice, Everest Premium and Double Scorpio are also commonly sold alongside Rush. This may be an inflection point for the Jungle Juices and the Double Scorpios of this world; so it’s worth understanding how the market evolved to where it is now. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT According to “Deep Sniff,” an exhaustive biography of poppers by Adam Zmith, their origin dates to 1844, when a French chemist named Antoine Jerome Balard passed nitrogen fumes through amyl alcohol. The result was a substance with a pungent smell — an odorizer that wiped out an offending odor by creating one that was arguably even worse (think: chlorine, but several times stronger). As far as Mr. Balard knew, inhaling the compound did nothing more than produce a bit of a rush, but other doctors began to study it. One was Thomas Lauder Brunton, a physician who, in the 1860s, discovered amyl nitrate’s ability to lower blood pressure upon inhalation, and began prescribing it to angina patients as a pain reliever. By the mid-20th century, the substance was sold over the counter in a number of pharmacies in Britain and the United States, according to Mr. Zmith. Word spread that, in addition to being a remedy for heart pain, amyl nitrate produced a nice high that lasted generally more than 30 seconds, and generally less than a few minutes. After the Stonewall revolt, poppers proliferated in newly opened gay clubs around the United States. They were largely made by the Pacific West Distributing Corporation, which was owned by a gay man named W. Jay Freezer, according to “Deep Sniff.” (The colloquialism “poppers” owes to the fact that they were initially sold in ampules, a single use glass capsule or bottle, that when broken or cracked open, made a popping noise.) Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Jim Morrison, the frontman for the Doors, was described in the book “Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison” as popping “amyl nitrates right onstage” and then collapsing on the piano. Patti Smith, in the book “Just Kids,” describes visiting the piers on the West Side Highway in the 1970s with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and “the smell of patchouli oil, poppers and ammonia” in the air. Image For the last several years, poppers could readily be purchased at sex shops as well as at bodegas in New York, where they tend to sit behind glass cases next to energy shot drinks at prices that range from $10 to $30.Credit...Tonje Thilesen for The New York Times The onslaught of AIDS in the 1980s created a stigma around poppers. This was partly because, during the first years of the epidemic, the precise cause of the disease was unknown, said the AIDS activist Peter Staley. But, given the patient base, it stood to reason that sex was somehow involved in its transmission. The theory that poppers could be a cause gained some popularity, despite the fact that there turned out to be no scientific basis for it, said Dr. Jerome Groopman, a veteran oncologist and a professor at Harvard Medical School who spent much of the 1980s and ’90s caring for patients with H.I.V. And during the next two decades, they remained easily available, though Mr. Zmith believes their popularity waned, at least somewhat. (“There aren’t a lot of studies,” he said in a phone interview.) A cultural resurgence in the 2010s coincided with the advent of Prep, an H.I.V.-prevention protocol for people who are H.I.V.-negative but in high-risk groups. As Prep was widely adopted in cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, sex parties began to abound again. Poppers did, too. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In 2017, the clothing line Nasty Pig made swimsuits emblazoned with bottles of poppers. In 2021, Mr. Zmith completed “Deep Sniff,” his book about amyl nitrate’s place in the history of gay culture. By then, the Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing. Mr. Kennedy published “The Real Anthony Fauci,” a book full of baseless claims about Anthony Fauci, an immunologist who became the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984 and whose life and identity had been shaped by his research into H.I.V. Image Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the Food and Drug Administration as the secretary of health and human services, has been publicly critical of poppers.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times The book contained 45 references to poppers, slyly connecting them to AIDS without outright blaming them for it. Last summer, Louisiana instituted a statewide ban on poppers and whippets. In February, David Lauterstein, the co-designer and co-founder of Nasty Pig, received an email from a vendor named Clint Taylor. Mr. Taylor owns a gay bar in New Orleans called the Phoenix, which operates a store that previously sold poppers, along with fetish gear and various sex toys. Stores like Mr. Taylor’s have suffered over the past few decades, a result of the declining DVD business and consumers’ ability to buy lube and sex toys over Amazon. That made poppers one of their last remaining points of distinction. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In a phone interview, Mr. Taylor recounted what he said to Mr. Lauterstein: After the statewide ban on poppers, foot traffic at the Phoenix dropped by more than 60 percent. But in an age when Viagra and anabolic steroids can be purchased online in minutes without a prescription, Kevin Aviance, the well-known drag performer, said at the Black Party that he thought there was little possibility poppers would really be going away, raids or no raids. Gay people, he said, using a more colorful term, “are resourceful.” Mr. Aviance was standing by the bar in a nude-and-black bustier that he had paired with thigh-high boots that looked a lot like the Balenciaga pair that sells for $8,700 but that really came from China and cost what he said was about $8,600 less. He said he did not want to get overly worked up about the possibility that the Trump administration was “coming at us about the little things,” not when it was also doing things far more serious to trample the rights of trans people. Still, it grated at him that Mr. Kennedy had such a high-profile platform, especially when he had made false claims about the link between poppers and AIDS. “Girl, are you serious with that?” he said. “Come on.”

A little more on this story... "A San Francisco sex worker has been convicted of gunning down a customer who asked for a refund after finding out she was transgender." New York Post

When I was in my 20s, and relaying to my shrink my tales of woe with bad tricks, she said, “I know what your problem is, you just don’t like to sleep alone. Get a teddy bear.” So I did. And to this day, if there’s not a man in my bed, teddy is.

I haven't but I had a friend, who vascillated between straight and gay and bi for years, and hired a gay sex surrogate who tought him to be a fabulous forever gay man. His straight therapist recommended the "treatment" and the surrogate. Yea. While he now lives in Southwest Florida, this was years ago, on the other coast of N America.

Real life example. When I was a newbie client I contacted a masseur from one of the less sexual gay masseur websites who called himself, lets say, Joe. I expected a professional massage, with a happy ending. What I got instead was a mediocre massage and a cock up my ass. What I did not know was that he also had an escort add under the name Joe. While I am not adverse to the random cock up my ass, this was not what I was expecting and the result was less than perfect. I note he now advertises as Joe on the massage site and Joseph on the escort site in order to differentiate. This all makes sense, although I can't help "Viewing Only" except to say, there are "sites" and there are "sites". Given the fulidity in the definitions of masseur and escort, I can understand there is a definition of "masseur" I understand and a different definitian another may understand. And the recent blurring of "sensual" and "erotic" on Rentmasseur only makes this worse.

I always get patted down as I have titanium knees. I was flying from SFO to Honolulu a couple of months ago and my inner thighs/balls definitely got felt up. First time that has ever happened…I loved it…wish it happened every time!

Yes, Karl is my go-to regular guy...last saw him three weeks ago...he is absolutely tops in every category. DM me is you want more.

I don't know anything about this individual, but I do know that if he was working in a sex business to put himself through school, the last thing he needs as he embarks on his new career is for people to continue circulating his pictures. Thank him in our hearts for any pleasures he provided us, but lets let him move on with his life in new arenas.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, my parents sent me to the Y to learn to swim. It was naked swimming...in those days, bathing suits were wool, with a cotton belt. The lint from them gummed up the filtration systems, so pool swimming was always nude. Everybody was a guy, so there was nothing to think about it. I too am amazed by young guys in the locker room today...perverse. When I went off to college, I was there a couple of days when another guy came in my room looking to borrow some porn,...for an "emergency jerk off" with a bunch of us watching. No one else joined in, but he was happy to perform. Subsequently my more or less straight roommate and I jerked off together most every night.

They undoubtedly did not get permission. Probably, the hot gay night janitor let them in.

Thank you, Damn you, Danny Darko, for reminding me of all the hot undergrads I could have/should have been sucking off but for my damnable closet. They all knew I was gay. If I only I would have admitted it, we we all would have been happier!

It all depends on what you want to do on your vacation and if you are going alone or with someone. If you are looking for night life and/or sex, the only place that you will reliably find that is Honolulu. The other islands are beautiful and relaxing, but very quiet. There is Little Beach (gay nude beach) at Makena State Park on Maui, but again, may not be very busy. Honolulu has gay bars, park cruising, beach cruising, a video blow job arcade, and lots of gay guys. There are escorts and masseurs in Honolulu, but even that scene can be a little iffy because many of them are visitors from the mainland and you never know who will be in town. The escort scene is very iffy on the other islands....check out RentMen and RentMasseur. Also dig around on this site because Hawaii has been discussed multiple times.

When I was in my late '30s, my then-lover and I had the same gay GP. My lover and I were also social friends of the Doc and his lover, but there was never any sexual tension among us. One year, when I went for may annual physical, the Doc found a lump on one of my testicles. At the exam, he was also teaching a (straight) German exchange medical student. Being a thorough Doc, he examined the family jewels in great detail, manipulating them every which way, shining a light through the scrotum, etc. Then it was time for the med student to go through the same procedure, in even more detail since he was learning. As this beautiful bond Teutonic 20-something year-old was going over ever centimeter of my junk, I looked at the Doc, and he gave me a big wink. I cracked up. All above board, but I still think of it every time I see the Doc. Given half a chance, I would have loved to play doctor with that kid.

When I was in my 20s I had many a fine dalliance in the T-room at Bloomies...although not in the fitting rooms...at that age I didn't shop so upscale!

I have had a couple of experiences. When I was just out of grad school I was living in Philadelphia, and preparing to take a cross country trip with my mother. I needed a new bathing suit, and went to a cute little downtown mens' shop. The proprietor was an older gentleman, clearly gay. He sent me to the dressing room, which was upstairs, and said he would bring me suits to try on. He started with the skimpiest of skimpy. He would turn his back, and then check out how it looked (and felt!) on me. Of course I immediately got a hard on, which he was only too happy to take care, swallowing every drop...wouldn't want to soil the merchandise. I ended up with a relatively modest boxer suit. As I traveled with my mother, it amused me when wearing that suit, what she would have thought if she knew how I got it. As an adult, I had a bf who wanted a leather harness with cockring. We went to MR S Leather in SF and tried on harnesses, me on my knees getting him hard for the full effect, as the clerk helped. This was half out of the dressing booth, in the aisle where all could see. But this being Folsom Street Week in San Francisco, hardly anyone bothered to check out the action...as everyone shopping was undoubtedly preparing for their own piggy times.

I used to do 1 hr first time, and if it was good, 90 minutes thereafter. However if he is well reviewed on C.O.M. and I perhaps had some positive private chat with the reviewer, I go right to 90 minutes.

I have to second LaffingBear. San Francisco and San Jose are very different places in very different locations. It makes no sense to travel between them for a couple of hours meet up. Do your research.

Asterisk’s comments are right on. The name “The Deli” is insiders speak. And the description is more about what it isn’t than what it is. Perhaps rename it “Specific Providers in the US and Canada “ and follow with the description as Asterisk suggests. How is it different from “Spas & Masseurs”? By Provider do you intend to mean escorts and by Masseur do you intend to mean individuals who are primarily masseurs with all the inherent wiggle room there is in those definitions? And how about the little used category of “Male Strip Clubs.” Isn’t this really about “Venues “ …but then how does it differ from half of “Spas and Masseurs “. And what does the title Daddy’s Den” mean and help with understanding the categories? I love COM and am really grateful to those of you who do so much work to keep it up. But I find the organization very confusing. My 2 cents.

Saw him twice a couple of years ago when our travel schedules meshed. Would definitely see him again if we are in the same city. Warm, intelligent, personable, and hot. Fine massage, terrific extras.

In my experience, the guidebooks to Europe call it darkroom; in the US it's more typically backroom. Anyway, as the bard said, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet". I have had some great times in them.

Speaking of hotels not caring what you do in your room, when I was young I used to stay in cheap hotels in Paris...there were many hotels in tourist friendly neighborhoods, in fine old Hausmannian buildings, with formerly luxurious rooms now a little shabby, that had not yet been "Americanized"...iffy elevators, no room service, etc. One time I was coming back from a sex club at four in the morning and had to ring the bell as there was no doorman and they locked up at night. After ringing many times, a naked guy finally stood up behind the front counter, and buzzed me in. Then his naked trick for the night stood up next to him. If I hadn't been fully sexed out, we probably could have had a three-way right behind the counter. And they would hardly have been shocked if I'd had a companion with me.

Why would a hotel care who you are fucking in your room? A major purpose of hotels has always been a place for guys to be getting a little on the side. Believe me, you won't be the only one there doing the same thing. Pay your bill. Don't cause any hassle. Don't destroy the room. In less you are staying in a mom and pop run by religious fanatics, they don't care who you're bopping in there...which reminds me, in the 1960s when I was maybe 20, my "roommate" and I and two girls took a weekend trip and went to check into a small rural motel, asking for two rooms. The female inkeeper said "I don't rent to unmarried couples". We had to convince her we were not two couples but "two boys and two girls, and the boys would be in one room and the girls in another". She relented. And that's what we did. This was in the era before "gay" would have ever entered her mind, and grand old times were had in each room.

It may also be some of these guys think they still look like that. This is what friends (or maybe, COM commenters) are for...to tell you when you are fooling yourself when you think you actually look like you did twenty years ago. We've all known folks like this. I see naked 60-year olds walking around on the streets in the Castro, and think, "Girl, don't you have any friends who will give you a full length mirror?"

When I try a new masseur whose ad I find particularly hot, I am tempted to show up wearing a cockring. Other clients done this? How did things work out? Masseurs, what do you think? Good idea or bad?

Yes it pays to think with your big head not your little head. Every gone away for a weekend with a friend you thought you really knew but did't? Even without the dynamics of sex, much less the escort/client dynamic, try it out first.