SEXIS WRONG

But now with AIDS on everyone’s radar,
a declining number listened to the King’s
pitch. The city was taking action to fight the
plague, mandating literal writing on the wall:
Health Department signs forbidding anal and
oral sex were posted throughout the club.
“There was an effort by the city to ensure
safe sex, make sure people wear condoms,”
confirmed then-Mayor Ed Koch, who sent
undercover inspectors into city sex clubs to
investigate. “What the inspectors saw was
so shocking, we had to provide them with
psychiatric counseling.”
Courtesy of Plato’s Retreat Archive
Levenson shows off his moves in the ring.
reported that the disease had killed 136 people, including
thirteen heterosexual women. “We didn’t know if it was an
airborne disease,” says Captain John. Scared into marriage,
he says he threw himself into the safer S/M world. “I would
tie a girl to the floor, blindfold her, and have a bunch of naked
guys stand around her naked. I would splash water on her to
simulate an orgasm.”
For one night, though, everyone’s fears were put on the
backburner. After about 32 months of incarceration, Levenson
was treated like a rock star at his homecoming. “The
place was packed with 900 people. They were grabbing at
him, trying to touch him,” remembers the Prince. Once again
on center stage, with his mother René in the house, Levenson
asked for eternal unity from his extended “family.” “The
friendships we have made here are lifetime friendships,” the
King preached.
Amid the hysteria, Levenson desperately
tried to keep his club alive. Struggling to
stay afloat, Levenson resorted to breaking
the cardinal rule of swinging: the admission
of single men at least one night a week. At
one time, Levenson had preached that Plato’s
was about a couples’ movement; now
it had become about getting your rocks off
in a glorified, touristy, post-Cats peep show.
During these desperate days, a well-known
singer showed up with a pair of dubiouslooking
pretty women. “Not even a class
call girl,” groused Levenson. At this point,
working girls were a familiar, accepted part
of the Plato’s scene. “I started talking to a
girl there,” recalls an unescorted male. “She
made it clear that she was paid to be there
by the club.”
Not only patrons were staying away from the
club. Once the darling of the media, Plato’s
was passé and virtually ignored by television and newspapers.
With the cameras gone, Levenson took the cameras to
himself, hosting his own public-access show, Inside Plato’s
Retreat. For one show, Levenson, donning a knock-off blue
Adidas sweatsuit, interviewed two call girls. It did not go
smoothly. For most of the broadcast, audio wasn’t available
to audience members. Levenson smelled conspiracy. “I’ll tell
you one thing,” Levenson declared defiantly. “If it is done
intentionally, I’ll fight this right down like I fought everything
else. What can you do? The worst you can do is put a bullet
in me like you did to Larry Flynt. I can handle that as well as
anything else. If that’s what has to be, that’s what has to be.
I’m getting sick and tired of this nonsense.”
Later, Levenson turned his thoughts to AIDS, telling his audience
that “very influential” medical professionals informed
him that the transmission of the virus was unlikely at Plato’s
76 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG