Cruise Control #1: East Side Club
Written by Julien Lenaz, founder and lead developer of cruush.
I went to East Side Club at 1 PM and ended up staying until 1 PM the next day.
Twenty-four fucking hours. I did not plan that.
I had been afraid of going to a place like this. It was my first time naked in a men's space. I'm a trans man. I've had bottom surgery, and my dick has scars. Big tattoos, visible surgical scars, a whole history that people can look at and make up whatever story they want about.
I still have a vagina, but no external female anatomy anymore. I waited until I didn't have any before going to a place like this, because I knew otherwise I'd get chased for boypussy, and I really mostly want to top.
On the way in I was already thinking about it. My dick is 5 inches flaccid. They were going to think it's huge hard, and I can't even top right now.
I had let people get in my head about that. Then I went to East Side and ended up being the most popular guy in the entire building.
Dude. I was scared for nothing.
Honestly, I came for research too. I'm writing a story, and I wanted to see this place for myself.
The place is three floors of little rooms lined up, with a hot room, a steam room, and showers. It's dark with red lighting. My immediate impression was that this is where the gay character dies. I could already picture it as a location in a story. The space has that kind of atmosphere.
The music is gay hits. Madonna, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, some house. They had the news playing in the lounge, and I turned it off because it was turning me off.
But the actual setup is very straightforward. You have your room. You can leave the door open and see who comes by. There are men in the building you can actually look at, talk to, and decide whether you want to do anything with. No catfishing, no flaking. The people I was looking at were already there.
A lot of men just sit in their rooms with the door open, jacking off, or face down with their ass up.
That alone felt like a massive improvement over spending hours trying to arrange something that never happens.
I got a small room and a 5-visit pass. I ended up using all 5 visits in 2 days.
It's cheaper than a hotel. Three stories of little rooms, and you just leave your door open and wait.
The rooms are small. By my second visit I already wanted a bigger room. But I liked the setup. A room of my own, the hot room, steam room, showers, and the option to go see who was around. I ended up spending a lot more time there than I'd expected.
The crowd when I went was older. The staff and most of the men were older queens. The staff were bitchy, the same kind of bitchy I've gotten from older queens at other gay places. I say that with love. It's part of the charm. They softened up when I told them I'm the developer of a new cruising app and asked to leave a note for the manager. They're queens and I'm str8. I'm trade. I pass as straight and I'm into femmes, so I had way more effect on the men there than they had on me. I appeared to be the youngest guy there. I'm 30, but I look 21, and I got a haircut after my post-op, right before I went. I felt hot. I was very aware of how I looked.
Some of the men there have been going for decades. It's the last gay sauna in NYC, and it needs a younger crowd if it's going to survive. I would hate to see it die.
A lot of the men there are DL. I heard one guy on the phone with his wife.
What I wasn't prepared for was how the men were going to respond to me.
They were staring. In the showers, in the sauna, when I came out of my room. I opened my door once and there were three guys standing there jerking off, waiting for me to come out. I said "excuse me" and they scattered. They thought I was some kind of gangster. Their eyes were following me, but they were waiting for ME to make a move.
In the showers, an older guy stood there staring at my cock with his jaw dropped. He told me he's been coming here since the 90s. I said, "You've seen one of these?" all offended. I didn't realize he was staring because it's 5 inches flaccid. I had the biggest dick there, flaccid. I realized they would have looked away if they were disgusted. They didn't.
Men twice my age and size were moving out of my way without me asking. Fucking finally.
I walked around outside my room in a jockstrap to see if anyone would approach me. My ass was out. And I still had to be the one to approach them.
That was new for me.
When I presented more femme, men would grope me in clubs. Here I was getting all this attention, but I was the one who got to speak first. I was giving trade. Grindr str8. Big-dick energy in real life, where someone can actually hear my voice and see how I carry myself.
This was the first time I was in a gay space and nobody groped me.
I was the alpha male. There's no other way to put it.
And my scarred dick? Like a wounded one-eyed wolf.
I had spent so much time being made to feel weird about those scars. Other trans people had used words like "frankendick." That shit gets in your head. You start imagining that everybody who sees you is going to see the thing you've been taught to feel bad about.
Then I'm standing there with these men looking at me, and I'm realizing the scars can read as rugged. Manly. Badass. This guy has been through some serious shit and he still has swagger.
Those are battle scars.
My tattoos and my scars were part of what made me look like me. I wasn't hiding them. My body says it for me: don't fuck with me, I'm a survivor. A wounded one-eyed wolf is still a fucking wolf.
Some of these men had no idea I was trans until I told them. When I did tell them, the reaction was "fuck yeah." I had been so worried about showing up, and there I was being wanted.
Do you know how badly I had wanted male validation like that?
I wanted a man to look at me, want my dick, and wait to find out what I wanted to do with him.
Before I left on Thursday, I was the one approaching men. I had sex with three men on that first visit.
There was a moment in the sauna with three men who looked about twice my age when I just asked, "Do you guys, like, find me weird, or do you just find me really sexy?"
Because seriously. You're staring, but you can barely look me in the eye. I'm right here. We can talk.
I had been so used to anticipating rejection that I had to get used to the possibility that somebody was intimidated by me. I could be the hot guy they wanted to approach but didn't have the balls to approach. I could ask what they were into. I could make the first move.
At the end of day 1, I met the femboy. He had long hair and was wearing a bra and panties. He was femme, the first femme I'd seen in about 15 hours, and that turned me on. He's the one who gave me the first orgasm I've ever had with my penis. That's the encounter that mattered most to me.
I had a partial clitoral burial in August. That Wednesday I had my post-op, finally got the OK to masturbate, got a haircut, and went straight to East Side. So this was the first time anything like this was even possible.
He wanted my dick. He didn't immediately ask me to bottom or decide that we should use a different part of my body instead.
He was the one who kept trying to pump up my implant. He saw the graft and the scars, I told him I couldn't fuck him, and he begged to jerk me off instead. He gave me a handjob, paid attention to the sensitive graft, and I came from my dick alone for the first time in my life. I came so fast. Without dysphoria. It felt natural.
I wanted to fuck him so bad, but I was afraid because my implant is too long. I'm getting revision surgery for that. Honestly, I might fold and just stop if it hurts, because that orgasm was that good. It was the first sober orgasm during sex in my entire life.
I had been so scared and ashamed of it being different. He was interested in the body I actually had. He wanted the hot alt daddy in front of him.
That is why I couldn't stop talking about it afterward. I had finally had an experience I had wanted for years, in a place I had been afraid to enter.
It also wasn't as simple as every guy suddenly understanding everything about me. With some men, telling them I was trans brought the usual assumptions straight back. Suddenly they wanted my pussy. I did bottom with one guy, and he tried to dominate me. That's not what I'm there for, and it doesn't make bottoming the default thing every man gets to assume I want.
Ask me what I'm into. I'm standing right there.
I even joked that if somebody asked, I was going to say a shark ate my dick. So brave. That was where my head was at by then. I was making jokes about the thing I had been terrified to show anybody.
I have a dominant side. I want to top. My body has limitations I'm still dealing with, and having men interested in me didn't magically fix those. But it did make a huge difference to be wanted that way. The desire was there. People were looking at me and seeing somebody I recognized.
I'm waiting for when I can top, so the guys who humped me for ten minutes can see that my implant stays hard as long as I want. I'd be folding fags over one after another for hours.
Some of them were begging me to turn on my implant and fuck them. I couldn't. I'm still healing and it hurts right now.
I'm thinking about not disclosing at all anymore. They have no idea, even when they see my dick.
They saw me for just myself, finally.
Then on day 2, my second visit, there was the sex pest. Annoying as fuck.
He and another guy were in my room with my cock out, and neither of them knew I was trans until I told them.
He couldn't get hard, but he was still being desperate and killing the mood. Like, bro, it's a fool's errand. I want to have sex too.
Then he started telling people I had drugs, and men started coming to my door asking for drugs. I had to tell him to stop.
Bro. Stop going around telling people that.
I was there to have a good time. Now I had to deal with some guy talking about me to other men. That's a mood killer. I'm a chill dude, not a sex pest. I wanted to meet people I was into and have sex. This guy was making himself a problem I had to deal with.
That second visit, I stayed for 8 hours, starting around 8 PM on Thursday. I ended up working because I wasn't interested in the men there.
The staff had told me the manager would be there that day, so that's really why I went back. I talked to the manager basically all night, and the manager is interested in an ad deal. I interviewed people there too, and I came away with an idea for a new cruush feature.
So I coded on my phone.
Literally. I went back to the gay sauna and ended up working on my phone because I wasn't into anybody there that night. That's also part of my East Side review.
When I checked out that Friday morning, it had been fun, but I'm not really into most dudes. That probably explains a lot about why I could spend a night there and still end up on my phone.
I didn't even get to cum that night.
Being surrounded by men who might want sex doesn't mean I want sex with those particular men. I'm not going to force it just because I showed up. I can be interested, lose interest, or decide I'd rather get something done. The first visit had been this huge experience, and the next visit didn't have to recreate it on demand.
The crowd is the main thing I would want to see change. I want more younger men there. I knew that almost immediately. I also came away wanting an FTM night. I would love to see more trans men get to have an experience like the good parts of mine, especially the guys who have been afraid to show up with their bodies as they are.
In the future I'd like to host an FTM and admirers night by cruush at East Side, after I go a few more times and become infamous there. The guys I talked to loved the idea. These parties sell out fast, and it would be a first for this place.
I know how much those fears can take over before you even walk through a door. I had been carrying other people's opinions about my dick around with me. At East Side I got to see how actual men responded to me in person.
Unless Lou Sullivan wrote down being at East Side, I've never read a trans man's account of East Side Club. This might be the first one from a trans man with a dick in that sauna, so I'm writing it down.
By Monday I was still talking about it. Somebody there had said I looked like a young Johnny Depp. Obviously I'm telling everyone that. I got a haircut, went out in my jockstrap, and apparently had a whole new reputation to process.
Would I go back? I already did. And I want to go again.
Next I want to try the Eagle and the Cock, places I've always been afraid of. Now I know I've got huge tats and scars, and my body says "don't fuck with me, I'm a survivor."
I like the rooms. I like being able to see who's actually there. I like being able to make the first move and find out what somebody wants without spending the whole day negotiating through a screen. I would like a younger crowd, and I could absolutely do without the sex pest. Some visits, the men are going to do it for me. Some visits, apparently, I'm going to code.
But my first time at East Side lasted from 1 PM to 1 PM, and I left with a very different idea of what my body looked like to other men.
Big tattoos. Battle scars. A wounded one-eyed wolf.
I was the alpha male, and I had spent all that time being afraid to go.
If you've been curious, go check out East Side Club, and tell them cruush brought you there. Bring a power bank, because some rooms don't have outlets. Bring a water bottle too, because there's only a fountain and a vending machine. And check into East Side Club on cruush when you go.