This week, I had exactly two missions to complete in one of New York’s remote boroughs: Chicago. One was to demolish my first major domestic DJ set at a prominent underground venue after a year of European bookings. The second was to get touched on. In my Instagram post promoting the show, I used the hashtags #OutOfTownBodiesDontCount and #TouchedByAnAngel. There is just something about stepping out of New York that turns my freak all the way up. The stakes feel so low, and there’s a distinct sense of privacy when you’re not fucking in your own backyard. 

Lately, I’ve felt a new kind of sexual presence seeping out of my pores, filling every room I enter like club smoke. I don’t know if it’s the G in my regimen or the hypersexual gays I’ve been surrounding myself with, but I’ve never felt quite this erotically charged. Maybe it is the Gays rubbing off on me… and rubbing up on me. I admire their innovative blurring of sexual and social boundaries. Recently, at a packed afterparty, mid-gossip sesh with one of my new favorite gays, he slipped his hand down the pants of a gorgeous trans guy—spilt tea soundtracked by breathy moans from his living room boytoy. At times, I find myself feeling so envious of how easily sexuality seems to flow between gay men—even in public. 

On my flight into O’Hare, I took a sensible dose (my standard 1.5ml from a vial labeled Calming CBD Tincture) and ran through my playlist for the gig. I’ve been developing a new sound for myself over the past few months, channeling the sonic identity of spaces where gays go to both dance and fuck. The platonic ideal of that mixy, juicy world is the gay circuit party: huge, densely packed spaces full of barely clothed bodies touching on each other under the swirly aphrodisiac influence of GHB and other drugs. My new sound is raucous and nasty, carnival music for a circus of extreme hedonism. My second inflight dose psychically transported me onto the dancefloor. Listening to my playlist, I bit my lip and squirmed in my airplane seat. 

That eroticism seeped through my primetime DJ set at the Chicago club later that night. In the past, I’ve struggled with sheepishness at the decks, but that set hit like I was riding the equipment and making the whole packed-to-capacity club watch—hands in my hair, shaking my ass to the beat while I pushed volume sliders up and down and up and down without mercy or hesitation. 

As soon as the next DJ took over, I hit the dance floor. I don’t know if it was the confidence boost of a set well slain, the freedom of being hundreds of miles away from Brooklyn, or the drug cocktail in my system, but I was dancing up against the wall like the wall paid my rent. With one down, my second lascivious mission remained But this club’s crowd was a little younger and not quite my sexual taste. Plus, it was my gig. I have a rule about fucking fans—they can only break my back in case of an emergency.

The following night, my last in Chicago, I feared all hope was lost. I found myself at possibly the most wholesome dance party I had ever been to. Set in a church, with an intergenerational crowd of experienced Chicago House devotees dancing joyfully as incredible oldhead DJs wove uplifting gospel vocals into the music. I felt rude in my outfit, stroll-ready stiletto heels and a sheer little dress that kept riding up and revealing my ass. Flashbacks of my southern youth filled my mind, vignettes of myself as a sexually precocious black sheep every Sunday at the spirit-filled megachurch my family founded. As I tugged the bottom of my dress back down (a faux-bashful gesture I find so sensual) I knew I needed a different scene. 

The next spot, a mainstay Chicago dance club, instantly felt promising. The moment I stepped onto the floor, eyes—male and female—locked onto me: a platinum blonde lamb among wolves. Fresh meat. A boy soon approached. I could tell he was nervous and intimidated, typically grounds for immediate disqualification, but he suddenly gripped my arm with a surprising firmness. Something about the sensation of his rough and commanding hand on my soft flesh turned me on. We were dancing, my body pressed up against his, for the briefest flash in time when he panted in my ear that he was too worked up. He grabbed my hand and dragged me to the seating beside the dancefloor, dimly lit but in full view of the entire club. Something came over me, and I slipped one finger under the waistband of his Calvin Klein boxer briefs. Before I could make any meaningful contact, he came violently. A high of sexual validation hit harder than the four intoxicants in my system as he excused himself, running off with his tail between his legs.

I was grinning with self-satisfaction when I realized we’d had an audience—a very attractive couple sitting next to me had witnessed it all. His clothes fit taut on his muscled body and the text on his shirt read “Cult Leader,” her wide doe eyes were framed by bright bleached brows. Within thirty seconds I was on her lap, with his strong hands around my throat. I could feel her erection through her skirt. He transferred me onto his lap, and as my legs wrapped around his waist I whispered a plea, “can I bite you a little?” With my teeth in his neck, he slipped his fingers past my thong. He thought I might be nervous about onlookers, but I didn’t give a fuck who was watching. I wanted to be seen. Security flashlights landed on us like spotlights, but the guards made no effort to stop us. Free entertainment. 

As the club closed, she headed home, and he came back with me to the beautiful penthouse where I was staying as the guest of one of Chicago’s sexiest couples. While deep in faded conversation with my hosts in the penthouse home theater over a plate of beautiful needle-shard ketamine, my new trade from the club pulled me back onto his lap. I felt his warm palm someplace tender and inadvertently moaned. I had come full circle—a rhyming reversal of the exact situation I had with my gay the week before. In that moment, I understood just how alive and free the gays must feel by not sequestering sexual experiences to private moments behind closed doors. It makes perfect sense—I’m so open in every other area of my life, why should I compartmentalize my experiences of my many vices? Dually stimulated by the fierce trade and the fiercer kii, my eyes rolled back in my head. I asked him to give me a hickey. Get ready NYC. I’ll be setting a new example this summer.