The tag line for this year’s Black Party read “the final assault”—and let’s face it, you haven’t climbed the circuit mountain until you’ve packed up your kit bag and donned your uniform and headed to Roseland for The Saint At Large’s annual scout jamboree.  Scared and worried?  Well, you should’ve been—it was a Dangerous Black Party for Boys—and you needed your wits about you—as well as all your equipment. 

There was snow at the entrance—and birch trees and evergreens—as well as chalkboards with the daily camp schedule—and school desks scattered with marshmallows and night lanterns.  Men in uniform were everywhere, brandishing whips and cat o’nine tails, dangerous games implied.  And from deep within the cavernous ballroom came the sounds of Stephan Grondin, werking “Do It Naturally.”  Follow your instinct; be a good scout—and do it.

It was after two am, and troop leaders and scoutmasters were pouring into base camp.  We made our way upstairs, past the boxing ring where two men in leather were being obedient and dutiful to one another’s junk.  Set a good example for youth, that’s a scoutmaster’s motto.  And then we turned toward the floor, peering over the balcony—

Three massive lighting rigs were raised nearly to the ceiling, expanding the sightlines of Roseland’s massive ballroom.  The lasers (controlled by the lighting genius Guy Smith) were in ecstasy, chasing each other around and across the room.  There were campfires glowing within caves at the bases of small hills.  Eagle Scouts sent out smoke signals as they danced wildly beneath the shadowy arches high above the floor.  It was Tom Sawyer and Hunk Finn madness and mayhem—the all-fag scout jamboree at the base camp on the ascent to Shangri-La.  

And Monsieur Grondin, in touch with his Montreal darkness, caught the spirit of the night, werking “Calling All Peoples” and “I Need a Miracle” and “(Too Late to) Apologize.”  There were scouts climbing rope ladders and boyz supine in hammocks and slung up in slings.  And there was energy—a summit conference of a league of boyz—all partying at their peak.  Because standing there, overlooking the massive gathering, one thing was immediately clear: the technical prowess of this Black Party team, this squadron, this troop of Scouts and Masters—they were all of them consummate pros working at the peak of their (dangerous) game. 

That first view of the floor—seeing it spread out before you, with the music pounding dark and heavy, and lights speeding like shooting stars atop the mountaintop.  Finally, you’d reached the peak: there you were—and there was nothing left but to join your fellow scouts on the floor.  And so you went—into the fray, where there was obedience and subservience—and Joe Caro, in army green Behaviour shorts and red bandanna—the most angelic-looking Boy Scout imaginable—and also the Boy Scout who coerced you into everything you feared—and loved.  And meanwhile, on the video screens above the floor flashed images of boyz in compromised positions and the scrambled Alan Marshall Beck message “There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”  Hidden treasure, hidden treasure—it was there for the finding; all you had to do was search. 

And with that, it was time for Jonathan Peters.  The changeover happened, and it was “Listen, bitch, girl”—and dominance prevailed.  Like the Boy Scout who created the after-hours party after lights out, after taps had been blown, JP took the party deeper into the woods, away from the tents and cots—and out into the wildness, where nature prevailed.  He was the scout wired for sound, the “watch this” kid, the Pied Piper music man who led his troop where he wanted.  And once there, he unleashed his “Mister Man,” a full-on symphony of desire and demand, sung by his ward, Sylver who ruled a couple years ago with JP’s “After All This Time.” 

Deep into the woods, freed from all authority, JP forced his three Macs to do his bidding, shaping something like 1979’s Skatt Brothers “Walk the Night” into an orchestral orgy of updated sleaze and forcefulness.  This was music that demanded listening—and concentration. It was a challenge to the focus, to find out where, and how, the beat hit you.  There was nothing spoon-fed about it, nothing immediately recognizable.  This was not music for muscle memory—nothing that would allow your body to fall into predictable patterns—but instead, music that forced you to keep living in the moment.  If you wanted it, you got it. 

And in fact, what JP was doing (and the feelings he provoked for some) brought to mind Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 “Rite of Spring,” Stravinsky’s fantasy vision of pagan fertility rites—and the riots that followed its 1913 Paris premiere for its barbarism and sexuality.  Iconoclastic, without a doubt, JP werked his way into a version of Abba’s “The Visitors,” a Black Party standard, which reworked that classic into something nearly unrecognizable, even as it was completely magical and modern. 

And meanwhile, in the front cave, the pig roast continued—complete with smells of sizzling bacon (a smell which one study recently revealed is the biggest turn-on for males—d’oh!) Sear that piggy and get down on your knees!  Or as JP put it in “Alright,” “My heart says yes, but my mind says no”—or was it “my mind says yes, gonna give in to you tonight”?

Everywhere on the floor, there was giving, and giving in.  And, in spite of the Saint At Large’s “no cameras/no cell phones” dictate, both were everywhere—along with video cams.  As one youthful posse put it to us, “We don’t go anywhere without our cells.  How we supposed to hook up?”  Um, face to face? 

And then it was show time, like the scene in Apocalypse Now when the Playboy Bunnies were helicoptered down into the forest of men—only this time, at this camp, it was rappelling men swinging down the face of the mountain, and scaling it again, to the sounds of JP’s version of “Stairway to Heaven.” 

At that hour, you might have thought This can’t get any more intense—and yet, that was precisely what happened when the second changeover of the night occurred at 10:45 am—and Joe Gauthreaux became the gay national Eagle Scout, leading the tribe to the place where “The Streets Have No Name.”  Never has a group of scouts followed a leader with such enthusiasm and fervor.  Out of the forest—and into the “Hills of Katmandu”—where they played with abandon well into the afternoon.

In the end, it was not unlike the best of scout camp—but this time, in this incarnation, with this troop of boyz, nearly all fantasies were fulfilled.  And who wouldn’t want to return next year—to find that one scout you might have missed—and initiate him to the tribe.