Fridae

It's 10:30 on a Saturday night. The electric wall-candelabra are off. The disco lights are on. My boyfriend is beaming. He's got the big, broad, open-faced grin that only comes out when he's really happy. Albert likes the Red Dragon Party; he likes looking around the room and seeing who came out - almost all gay men, almost all Asian.

In many parts of the world there would be nothing unusual about that, but this is LA. California is the most diverse state in the US, but only 7% of us have roots in Asia. For many gay Asians and Asian-Americans, like my lover, there's a trade-off: the sexual freedom that comes with being gay in America comes with the marginalizing effects of racism.

Asians aren't stigmatized like blacks and Latinos can be over here, but images of Asian gay men being presented as attractive are few and far between. Even the delectable Donald Wong, who promotes the party and worked the door the night we went, says that he sometimes feels overlooked when he goes to other clubs, where most folks don't expect to see sexy and Asian in the same person.

The crowd that night was very cute - young, trim, toned, dressed to kill, or, in many cases, undressed to kill - this is Los Angeles, after all, the city that brought superficiality to profound new depths. (Just so you know, a few blocks down from Red Dragon, at Wahoo's taco shop where Albert and I ate dinner, the menu listed the main ingredients, the price, and the fat- and carb-content of each dish.)

But not everyone was local. People from as far south as the Mexican border showed up, as did people from the far northern suburbs of this giant, sprawling city, and beyond. People drive hundreds of kilometers to get to this party, and many do it every month. Artimus, who lives in San Diego, came up to hang and party with friends from Orange County and planned to stay the night with another Angelino friend.

So it's a far-flung crowd at El Rey Theater on the second Saturday of each month. John Burney, the brains behind the Red Dragon Party, estimated that about 800 folks show up. The majority were from East and Southeast Asia - China, Hong Kong, the Philippines - but there was also a small cadre of Caucasians who (like John, and myself, for that matter) are comfortable in that crowd, and a smattering of African-Americans.

The theater is a bit out of the way - not in downtown West Hollywood, gay-central LA. It's on Wilshire Boulevard, a few blocks from the La Brea Tar Pits ("The most famous tar pits in the world!") and the LA Country Museum of Art, which is where I left Albert browsing the Botticellis while I went down to meet the makers - or the promoters, at least - a few hours before the doors at El Rey opened to the public.

John and Donald did not fit my image of Los Angeles party promoters. John describes himself as the antithesis of a professional party promoter. "We're two guys who want to have fun once a month." He seems a little surprised by the party's enduring success. "I'm in awe that people actually show up," he adds.

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John says he started hosting the party a bit over four years ago. He was tired of the attitude he was finding at the clubs in LA. "There was a second agenda about the go-go boys, or what you looked like or who you were with." So he decided to open his own. Donald modeled for the ads for the first party, and he's stayed around ever since.

El Ray is a great space - "grand," John calls it - for it looks like an old-time remnant of the days early in the last century, when Hollywood had spawned dozens of movie palaces as Los Angeles emerged as the film capitol of the world. Central seating has been replaced by the dance floor, but the deco d�cor lives on. Giant chandeliers hang from the ceiling and cast dimly glistening octopudinal shadows upward in the reflected dance-floor lights.

The doors at the Red Dragon open once a month, at 10 p.m. on the second Saturday, and this, Donald thinks, has helped it stay in business so long. It happens often enough to keep in people's minds, but not so often that they get bored. There's a variety of entertainment from month to month as well: singers, drag shows, the occasional go-go boys, and even more occasional go-go-girls.

The headliner this particular evening was Cece Peniston. (No, honestly, Peniston.) The show was brief - started just after midnight and ended about fifteen minutes later. The DJ this particular evening didn't do much for the boyfriend and me, either - but that didn't really matter. There was a meat market scene, of course - something you find at every late-nite venue, but there was also a lot of easiness. People kept running into friends. Couples would turn into threesomes and then mobs of friends and acquaintances. This isn't surprising.

Red Dragon is a landmark on the gay Asian scene, and they get a lot of repeat business. "For people who like Asians, it's a good haven for them," says party promoter Donald.

And in the end, that's why Albert was so happy to be there. It wasn't the music, it wasn't the boys, it wasn't the booze (although that didn't hurt, either) and it certainly wasn't the long drive home we had ahead of us. "They're all Asians," he said, "and they're all gay." These are his people. There are things that they all share. At least, he feels that they all share things - and for him, and probably most of the others there that night, it felt good.

The Red Dragon Party is held on the second Saturday of each month at El Rey Theater, 5515 Wilshire Boulevard between Fairfax and LaBrea. More information is available on the Web at www.reddragonla.com