Strip Tea Party

The San Francisco Tea Party that Became a Legend

You know how hard it is to get good service nowadays.

Chivalry is a corpse, discretion is unheard of, and bohemian elegance—where did it all go? A well-bred woman might spend her maturity never once hearing the words "May I be of service to you?"—although she may spend her life waiting on others, particularly children and men.

Such a predicament could make strong women weep and gnash their teeth, but when the going gets tough, the tough throw a party.

A very unusual party.

My dear friend, comrade and caterer extraordinaire, the late Tom O’Conner. Photo by Michael Rosen.

In the summer of 1991, (check that date for me!) I received an invitation to attend a salon of women artists. We were offered an occasion to read aloud, sketch, and indulge ourselves in a very proper high tea. Most intriguing of all, the invitation promised we would be served our scones and punch by naked slaveboys who would not speak unless spoken to.

The aspect of social nudity was of course titillating, but would ordinary men actually keep their lips buttoned for a five-hour affair? That had to be seen to be believed.

---

I first wrote this story in the 90s for the San Francisco Examiner Sunday edition, back when this was a two-paper town.

Everyone read the paper, this story must have been read by millions. It was thanks to Magazine editor David Talbot for letting me write something so risqué and radically feminist in a “family newspaper.”

Because the story was humorous, that’s what it got it past the censors.

We, the tea party hostesses, heard from people all over the world, asking us to recreate this party.

We said, “No, it was a once-in-a-lifetime perfect experience.” But people went right ahead and did their own versions in Ohio and Alaska and Nova Scotia.

I worked as a journalist for newspapers, magazines for decades, until much to our collective incredulity, that world disappeared.

Now I ask my readers to subscribe to my newsletter, so I can reach you, person to person. It’s our kind of tea party, eh? Thanks so much for supporting my writing.

---

Upon arrival, I was greeted by a nude doorman who took my coat. Alas, he was the only servant in sight, and in the meantime, guests were arriving by the score. What a delightful group of invitees they were, too. If I had been able to get a simple cup of hot Earl Grey, my afternoon would have been complete.

But unfortunately, although the company was sublime and the concept impeccable, only two slaveboys were on hand to provide services, and despite their best intentions, I don't think either of them had ever so much as poured a cup of decaf.

The guests were also uneducated in the fine art of being served in splendor. Though a couple of us were dressed in literary salon frocks, some came in sweatpants. One lovely woman offered to get up and fetch me a scone, and when I gently reminded her she was a guest at this soirée, she pleaded with me, "It doesn't matter, I'm a bottom in real life."

Ah yes, but real life is what we are trying to escape.

The ultimate affront was the vision, midway through the party, of an attractive girl on her knees actually giving the so-called slaveboy a neck massage!

It was all I could do to restrain myself from slapping both of them to their senses.

I departed with my friend, Laura Miller. We reviewed the afternoon and agreed it had been a wonderful, yet insufficient, experience. Wouldn't it be perfect to have a party like that in a grand mansion, with slaveboys who looked like Greek gods and served like altar boys?

"I'll dream of it," I told her as we parted, but Laura wasted no time in wistfulness.

The very next day, she called me. "My friend Amy Wallace, the novelist, has a beautiful home in the Berkeley hills, and she would love to hostess the kind of tea party we have in mind. The living room is absolutely Byronic, and there are even special servants' quarters."

I blinked. The first hurdle, getting out of our filthy, tiny, crime-ridden neighborhood apartments, had been overcome in the twinkling of a phone call. Now where on earth would we find the slaveboys?

Laura was at the time, the book review editor at the San Francisco Weekly, where personal ads of all persuasions abound. She agreed to place an ad for four weeks, but I had my doubts about getting much of a response to anything so bizarre. I was more confident that in my Rolodex I would find lots of liberated boys who would love to serve us tea.

Little did I know the raw nerves our search would scratch. I got my first glimpse of the normal redblooded American male reaction during a trip to my auto mechanic.

"Look what I'm up to," I said, pulling into the garage and waving my carefully typed personal ad:

Genteel and Bohemian gathering of women writers requires comely slaveboys to serve at our tea party.

You will serve nude and will not speak unless spoken to. Standards are high. Food and beverage experience a must. No sex.

Please send photo and qualifications to Madam Tea Party.

"What the fuck do I want with waiting on a bunch of broads?" asked Jake, leaning against his greasy desk. "You're not paying anything for this? No way."

Some little lost feminist emotion in me snapped. "Women have been waiting on you from the time you were born," I said. "And you can't imagine switching sides for a couple of hours?"

The next week, I saw Jake again, and he asked how my search was going. The ad had not yet appeared, and I was getting nowhere.

My gay friends said they wouldn't have any fun waiting on women. "Why not?" I asked. "Whatever happened to your sense of classic theater? This isn't a pickup scene, it's the tea to end all teas!"

My straight friends, even the most sympathetic, went into a panic about penis size and fantasized far more permanent humiliation than anything I had in mind.

"I wouldn't have called you if I didn't think you were gorgeous," I told one friend. "If you think this is going to ruin your career, how do you imagine the richest men in America get away with all their shenanigans at the Bohemian Grove?"

But all my reassurance were in vain. Jake felt a little sorry for me, and maybe, just maybe, he was intrigued. He took me for a spin on his Harley and, halfway down the freeway, yelled the most encouraging words I'd heard yet: "I don't have a tan."

The Sunset neighborhood fog closed in around us. "It doesn't matter," I yelled back. "No one has a tan anymore."

But fate was about to turn her head. The Wednesday SF Weekly edition hit the streets. I was so pessimistic I didn't plan to check the answering service or the mailbox for a couple of days.

But Laura called me only hours after the Weekly was on the stands. "Get your pen ready; you've got to call these two. The first one's a European model and the other one works at the Fairmont Hotel."

"We got two calls?" I was stunned.

"We got six calls," she answered, "but the others sounded like geeks." She rattled off the promising phone numbers.

We got over one hundred calls and letters in two weeks. I believe that is what is called a staggering response.

The photos and descriptions offered a textbook case in broken stereotypes. Car deniers from San Mateo, computer millionaires from Marin, professional leather slaves who could only be contacted through their mistresses, and surfer dudes who could only be contacted though their bartenders.

Punk boys, bus boys, sailor boys, and above all, would-be, wanna-be, I’ll-Do-Anything-To-Be-Your-Ever-Lovin'-Slaveboys.

© Michael Rosen

---

Wow. Now we had to interview them.

My partner in the highly sensitive interview process was our fourth hostess, Lisa Palac. Lisa was brave enough to offer her living room for our onsite questioning, and she made no bones about the necessity of nude auditions.

"But how do we even bring it up without sounding like sleazebags?" I asked. I could not see past the embarrassment.

I did realize I knew who to ask, someone who specialized in frequent nude auditions. With that in mind, I headed over to the Mitchell Bros. O'Farrell Theater, one of the last great strip clubs. I went to see Vince, who managed the dancers' schedules. He was completely laid back. "It's professional, like a casting call," he said. "You ask them all your questions first, then you tell them you'd like to take a Polaroid of them undressed, and that's it. Tell them to put their clothes back on after you take the shot."

I hadn't even considered that it might be harder to make them get dressed than undressed. If our attitude was the key to smooth interviewing, I decided we should prepare a few questions on a form and devised the soontobe notorious Slaveboy Questionnaire.

Do you have experience serving tea?

Hors d'oeuvres?

How about hand or foot massage?

Brushing hair?

Painting nails?

Building and tending fires?"

The applicants were informed that the costume would be a simple bow tie, black shoes and matching socks.

Of course, we were interested in why a man would want to serve at our party.

The most common motive expressed by the men in our interviews, was the excitement of being chosen to please a special group of women. For some, the idea that we were all writers was especially glamorous. One restauranteur recalled that he had seen a zillion parties where naked girls danced for Shriners, but never the other way around—it bothered him a little. However, guilt was not typical of our interviewees.

One particularly frank applicant, a 60-year-old merchant seaman, said, "I have been a male chauvinist all my life. In recent years I have come to acknowledge that women are humanoidal types as well, with the same needs and desires as anyone else...."

However, in his same letter, he stated, "There is no greater turn-on to me than a buxom, dominant woman."

Of course, we had to remind all our potential slaveboys that our guests were not necessarily dominant, or buxom, or in need of anything besides a piping hot cup of tea, served with quiet elegance.

For this, we had a disclaimer: "This is not a play party, nor a professional group. We are not interested in disciplining, humiliating, or topping you at the party. If you find yourself uncomfortable at the party, you may speak to one of the hostesses and make a quiet departure. If the hostesses believe you are behaving inappropriately, you will be asked to leave."

The boys were then graded on Face, Body, Grace, Service Experience and that ever-important swing vote, Personality.

I never realized before this process that I have the unfettered ability to judge people solely on their looks. It is a form of discrimination I have avoided my whole life, and yet here was a case where, in selecting a man who would not say anything more than "Cream or sugar?" I had to pay as much attention to his pecs as I did to his poise.

Men, unlike women in this situation, are not the least bit abashed to apply for the job whether or not they are physically attractive. One man wrote that the most that could be said for his appearance was that small children did not run from him screaming.

Unfortunately for him, his honest and amusing qualities were not enough to overshadow our search for the perfect Adonis.

Two men got erections during the interview, and with our standard tea mistress composure, we paid no particular attention to them. Three slaveboys came in French maid outfits, which were quite precious, but we were very strict about our dress policy.

One brought roses (extra points), one whined that he didn't see why he had to provide his own bow tie (immediate reject), and one had a résumé with the most impeccable statement of purpose: "An emphasis on service that puts your needs, not mine, uppermost in my mind." Music to our ears.

In the end, we picked the following six:

“Ken” was a Bon Jovi lookalike, the only one who had been "around the scene," as he put it, familiar with the nuances of submissive etiquette.

“Paul” was our dining room dream come true, an Italian American who serves at one of the most luxurious restaurants in town.

“Terry” was indisputably the most charming man we met, with a proper Welsh accent that made us want to give him special dispensation to say a few words.

“Jay,” my only personal friend to respond to the call for comely menservants, had excellent massage skills, sure to compensate for what he lacked in scone service.

“Roberto” was Hawaiian/Chinese, one of our youngest servers, and won our hearts in his interview when he turned his chin up and closed his eyes for his interview photo. "Just like a choirboy," I exclaimed. "I was a choirboy," he said.

Finally, “Stuart,” our blond, tan L.A. kid, who won his place only because he wrote a followup letter saying he would be the best slaveboy ever, summed up his interest with the Gestalt that he thought it would be a "real trip."

Now that our slaveboy acquisition was complete, I faced an unexpected problem: our two dozen guests were not exactly RSVPing en masse.

Now mind you, I only asked women writers of the finest bearing and Bohemian, open-minded standards. But when I called a close friend whom I expected would be picking out her hat and gloves as we spoke, she surprised me with the awful truth. "I don't know about this kind of treatment," she said. "I would never approve of naked women waiting on men, so why should I care to endorse the reverse?"

"Believe me," I told her, "these fellows applied only out of the most fervent self-interest. I'm not asking you to kick them; I'm asking you to enjoy a cup of tea without having to lift a finger!"

If there ever were a case to prove how ridiculous the idea of reverse sexism is, this kinky tea party was it. Women are unaccustomed to having their needs anticipated, or their desires understood and attended to without speaking a word.

Amy told me afterwards that even though she grew up in a very wealthy and doting family, she had never before experienced being waited on hand and foot.

Now, many men will protest that they have never had this experience either, but only because they take service for granted. Who cleans their houses? Cooks their favorite meals ? Imagines what they'll feel like when they come home? How they would like to be touched? Very likely someone feminine, as that is what femininity is bred for—nurturing and forethought.

For the sexes to turn the tables on this state of affairs doesn't result in an equal reversal. In their new positions, men and women do not imitate their original role models, but rather wonder and wander in the extravagance of changing hats.

Others of my peers were more blunt and less politically correct about their fears. "What if one of them hands me a cucumber sandwich and I'm eye level with his dingdong?"

"The attention is not on them," I insisted. "The attention is on the women, who—if they follow the dress code to the letter (dresses or tuxes only)—should be far more stimulating to your eyes."

Another vexing query came from a couple of my lesbian friends, who failed to see how being waited on by nude men would be anything less than nauseating.

"This is not a party about erotic preference!" I repeated. "If it were, I would be the naked slavegirl and all the women would be in cowboy boots. This is a radical social event," I continued. "These men will certainly not be eyesores and, as for cruising, you won't find a more intoxicating gathering than the guest list we have drawn up."

Indeed, the sixteen women who did attend were all beauties, intellectually and visually. Rupa arrived as Cleopatra, with a golden snake headdress and sandals. Lily wore a corset laced over the most mind-shattering figure ever sprung from the foam. Honey Lee were a tuxedo like she was born to it, and Susan's creamy curves spilled out of a purple patent leather strapless. I myself started out in a black leather skirt that laced up the back, but ended up in nothing but my slip and my straw hat with the yard of veil. I got awfully hot.

My friend Tom O'Conner made the most exquisite feast for us: lox and strawberries and madeleines and nouvelle sandwiches and three different kinds of scones. Photographer Michael Rosen turned Amy's upstairs library into a Victorian portrait studio. Any exhibitionist could take a slaveboy in tow and sit for a formal photograph, her hands clasped primly and her feet kissed with appropriate photogenic fervor. I asked that Michael be nude too, but I drew the line at the cook—the position of ultimate dominance.

I believe our finest hours were the literary review, where several of our poets stood before the fire and burned suitable verse into our ears. Much of it was so erotic that I could barely concentrate on the lovely slave loosening my stockings from my garter. He rolled them down to warm my bare feet with oil, and my toes grazed the soft hair on his chest as he rolled and squeezed them. Very distracting.

My hair was brushed until it shone by our blond Stuart, who unaccountably disappeared two-thirds of the way through the party. In a shocking kitchen gossip revelation, Jay later told me that Surfer Boy "didn't think the babes were hot enough." All I can say is that he combed my every strand with utmost sincerity.

At one point Roberto came up to me in distress; beneath the kitchen window, he'd spied a group of men scrutinizing the house. "Oh them, they're just architecture students," Tom said. But the postman was another story. He took one look, then another, then ran as fast as he could.

I don't think I really relaxed until the end. No matter how many massages or sips of brandylaced tea, I didn't feel I could take my skirt off until the final hour, when we toasted all the company, particularly the servants, and went upstairs for a final hostess/slaveboy photo.

"Do you think you could all lift me up, like a human cradle?" I asked my five remaining angels. And to Paul, at my right, "Could I claw at your chest just for the camera?"

I collapsed as beautifully as possible into their ten strong arms. What a day. The youngest and the oldest guests left with the words that they had never been to such an elegantly wonderful party in their lives. How silly were those who rejected our invitation in fear of sexual pressure or humiliation! Has everyone but we sixteen souls forgotten the meaning of style? The meaning of fabulous? How was the Bay Area supposed to keep an avantgarde reputation if a few enlightened perverts didn't work their fingers to the bone?

I called my dear friends, Laura, Lisa and Amy, the next day. "I have only one regret," I said. "Right there at the end, when all of the boys held me up to the camera? I changed my mind about our rules. I would have loved a bit of sex right then."

---