Former TV newscaster reflects on being closeted during the AIDS epidemic & falling hard into the ’90s circuit party scene

The following is an excerpt from ANKRBOY by three-time Emmy® award-winning TV anchorman and best-selling author turned actor Mark Pettit. It is available now and can be purchased on Amazon or where ever books are sold. Autographed copies are available through the author’s website.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mark Pettit (@mark_pettit)

Palm Springs, 1992

My entire body tingled as we made our way through the desert evening. I’m not sure if it was the crisp, cool night (and the fact that I was shirtless) or if I was just really, really excited. Either way, it felt like I had stuck my finger into the outlet while shaving, and the current was firing through my veins.

We each took a half-hit of Ecstasy before we left the hotel room. I was flying solo at a cool mid-century hotel where I hoped to have company for at least part of the weekend, and I began to feel the synthetic courage to make it happen. I peered into the distance as the night sky’s lights danced like tiny stars among the hills beyond. Perhaps they were high, too.

If you haven’t been to Palm Springs, go. Just not in the summer. It is hotter than a whore in church, as we rednecks like to say. But in February it’s perfect. And I felt fantastic.

How about we take this to the next level?

Subscribe to our daily newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.

It was a long way from small-town Georgia where I grew up, and I was no longer a naïve child in Sunday school. I was a grown-a**-man now with the body to prove it.

In high school, I had always been a little chunky. A little too much junk in the trunk, if you will. One July, before we headed back to school in August, my mother had to buy “Husky” jeans for me from the Sears store over in Rome, Georgia. Chunky didn’t work for the guys I was now attracted to and whom I wanted to be attracted to me.

I started running in the park and working out at the local gay gym. Slowly, my body began to transform. Hundreds of arm curls resulted in apple-like biceps. Rep after rep, bench pressing my body weight gave me a chiseled chest. Thousands of dips on the Roman chair helped tighten my flabby abs.

It was a necessary evil. I once read a quote from a guy who said, “If you can’t look at yourself in the mirror and jack off, how can you expect someone else to?”

So, hi ho, hi ho, off to the gym I’d go.

In fact, things were going so well that I got a little cocky. I had T-shirts made for my gang of friends, with “Bar Stars” on the front and “Circuit Certified” on the back. The circuit referred to a series of all-night, and often all-weekend, gay dance parties. They were typically denoted by colors and, in most cases, fueled by drugs and sex (for example, the Black Party in New York—always dark and seedy). But what was to become the mack daddy of them all was the White Party in Palm Springs.

It began in 1990 by a party promoter named Jeffrey Sanker. The first year, it attracted about 500 of his friends. This year there would be 5,000 people in attendance.

I adjusted my little angel wings as we approached the front entrance of the Marquis Villas Resort and flexed my biceps for a bit of a pre-party pump. My formerly dyed-brown coif was now a gleaming stream of silver hair that moved oh-so slightly in the cool breeze. I thought that younger guys, to whom I was always attracted, wouldn’t like me with silver hair, but it was the opposite. Many younger guys love the daddies, and I now fit the proverbial bill.

I was averaging three tricks a week and was on my way to a hundred for the year. (“Trick” is the word for a one-night stand or a hook-up in the gay world.)

As my late mother once said, “Don’t pick the first watermelon you thump.” And trust me, Mama knew what she was talking about. She was the Elizabeth Taylor of North Georgia. Married at least three times and had movie star looks when she was younger. I’m sure the cute boys were all chasing her.

My brother Don summed it up: “Mama loved men. She just didn’t like ’em very much.”

Amen, brother. I obviously got it from her. Born with a silver mattress on my back.

“I’ve heard this sh*t is crazy,” my friend Diego said to no one as we joined the line to get into the party.

Out of my closest of four friends, Diego, twenty-nine years old, was the only one I was really attracted to—sexually. Standing right at six feet tall, he had sumptuous brown skin, dark hair and a billion-dollar smile. His dad was from Mexico but ended up marrying a beauty queen from Kansas (or Kentucky, I was drunk the night he told me) and, eight months later, Diego was born, a perfect combination of his parents. Diego radiated sex appeal and I was drawn to him from the first night we met at a neighborhood bar.

A few times, Diego and I got sweaty and handsy on the dance floor. We’d kiss like crazy and fondle each other a bit, but nothing much more than that. All the boys wanted Diego and I figured I’d lose him anyway if we ended up dating, so great friends we became. What made Diego even more attractive was his personality. He was always excited. About everything, with an almost childlike wonderment.

“Guys come from all over the world for this party and I hear they even f*ck on the dance floor,” he said in amazement. Again, not language we would have used in Sunday school, but we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

“Is Dorothy here?” I asked my friend, Rick.

“Yeah, she just got here,” he said with a chuckle as he reached into his famous fanny pack and handed me the small bullet-like bottle, which I quickly put to my right nostril. I sniffed deeply, taking a bump of the white powder.

Rick was our Julie McCoy (cruise director of The Love Boat fame) and the oldest of us at thirty. We’d all chip in cash ahead of our travels and good ’ol Rick took care of the rest. He planned out all the details behind what pills and powders we would be taking and at exactly what time during the weekend. Rick was perpetually shirtless to display his fantastic chest and always wore a fanny pack around his waist where kept our party favors color coded in small containers and baggies.

“F*ck!” I whispered. “Is that coke or K?”

With another laugh, Rick said, “Both.”

I shifted the bullet to my left nostril and took another bump of the mystery mix. I then pulled the remaining half-hit of Ecstasy from my pocket, coughed up some spit and swallowed the tablet. As they say in Latin: ludi incipiant.

Let the games begin.

A security guard spied my bare chest, my crotch, and then cast his eyes upon my left wrist. Seeing the plastic armband that read “VIP,” he waved us into the hotel. My heart was pounding. I was in for the time of my life, or a heart attack. Only time would tell.

We pranced through the hotel lobby and down the hallway like we owned the damn place. With abandon, we pushed the heavy metal doors of the ballroom open and were welcomed by a hypnotic blend of house music like I had never heard before. A beautiful haunting version of the Oingo Boingo classic “Dead Man’s Party” played from huge speakers throughout the room. It spoke to me in a way I didn’t quite understand at the time. 

I was struck by lightning, walking down the street.

I was hit by something last night in my sleep.

It’s a dead man’s party. Who could ask for more?

Everybody’s comin’, leave your body at the door.

Thump, thump, thump, the music synched with my pulsating heart. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was an explosion of white. White jeans, white shorts, white clouds. Guys of every color and descent dancing, kissing and cavorting as far as the eye could see. A squad of drag queens sashayed by us, flogging us with their oversized feathers. I had to do a double-take as one of them looked exactly like Cher.

Hell, for all I knew it was her.

There was always the same rumor at every circuit party. “I heard Madonna’s here,” some random guy would say to us on the dance floor and our squad would spend the next hour of our high pursuing her.

I swear I saw her once at Warsaw in South Beach.

But Palm Springs was debauchery on a level I could not have imagined. And I couldn’t wait to dive in. As I led our posse deeper into the party, I could feel the hungry eyes upon us.

“Take me to heaven, daddy!” some guy shouted. I shot him a “maybe later” glance and edged closer to the dance floor. Not everyone was happy to see us. As we passed a bar, a ruggedly handsome queen flipped me the bird. “F*ckin’ hillbillies,” I heard him say as we walked by.

I turned around and looked him in the eye. I grabbed my crotch through my white jeans and mouthed “Suck it, f*ggot.” I returned the bird and turned back toward the dance floor.

That’s how we hillbillies roll.

An hour, two Jack & Cokes, and another half an Ecstasy later, I found my groove, grinding a hot Asian boy named Daniel up against the wall just off the dance floor. He was about five foot six, what some would call a “pocket gay.” Daniel was a former gymnast turned business consultant from Chicago. For some reason, Asian American guys were at the top of my to-do list, especially when they were smaller than me and I could manhandle them. Like tossing a bale of hay up on the wagon at my uncle’s farm when I was a teenager.

“God, you smell good,” I said as I lifted him from the ballroom floor and up against the wall. I think the drugs heightened my sense of smell.

“Drakkar Noir,” he whispered as he wrapped his thick athletic legs around my waist.

“Take me back to your room and f*ck me,” he said seductively. “Your friends can watch.”

Hell no, they couldn’t. This was my all-you-can-eat Asian buffet.

I leaned in for a deep kiss to seal the deal and felt a stranger’s hand touch my chest, moving down my stomach to my belt. He pulled me away from Daniel and toward him.

“Get lost, he’s mine!” the stranger barked at my would-be paramour, who took the hint and sheepishly scuttled away. No gold medal for him tonight. I turned my hungry eyes to the stranger, a gorgeous blond-haired, blue-eyed stud. He pulled me close and purred, “Cool your jets, country boy. Don’t want you to boil over.”

He slid his hand over my sweaty chest, exciting me. With his other hand, he pulled a cold bottle of water from his back pocket and offered it. I ripped off the cap and quaffed the entire bottle in three rapid gulps.

“Ahh. Thank you. My name is Mark. We’re from Atlanta.”

His tone changed. He was no longer in a flirtatious mood.

“I know who you are. F*ckin’ hillbilly.”

At first, I was confused, but then recognized him from the bar where the other a** said those same words.

“Don’t be a d*ck,” I warned him.

“Take your country-a** back to Atlanta,” he fired back. “Nobody wants you inbred f*ggots here.”

I stepped up within inches of his face.

“Don’t f*ck with a country boy,” I whispered.

Sensing trouble, my friend Ace, the fourth member of our group, stepped in between us. Ace, twenty-eight years old, was African American, six foot one and built like a brick sh*thouse, as they say. He always had a nose for trouble and staying out of it. He grew up in a housing project in Augusta, Georgia, and saw plenty of trouble while living there.

“Hey! Let’s get out of here, Anchor Boy,” Ace said as he pulled me away from our bubbling fracas. “That’s enough dancing and d*ck for now.”

I backed down and retreated from the blond-haired bully. His steely eyes followed me as we walked from the dance floor back into the throng.

I halted, feeling woozy and lightheaded. My stomach churned and, for a second, I thought I was going to puke.

It was a cardinal sin to mix alcohol with GHB, a so-called “date rape drug.” I learned hard lessons before and always avoided G when out partying. I had felt this feeling before and knew it wasn’t good.

“I need the restroom,” I said to my friends.

“We’ll meet you out on the veranda by the pool,” Rick said.

I stumbled into the restroom and headed straight for the sink, where I turned on the water. My high had come to a crashing halt. I was dizzy and sweating, and not from the California heat. I tried washing my hands but could barely stay upright. My insides were churning, like my body was trying to repel poison. I almost sh*t my pants, which would have been a very bad thing at the White Party.

My brain felt like it was melting.

My hand hit the water. Water. The water! The blond-haired bully spiked my water. I knew I had to get out of there and find my friends. I made my way back out into the party area, all alone.

I staggered from the main room out onto the pool deck. Still no sign of my friends. I needed fresh air and kept moving. Another wave hit me. I thought I might pass out. I began to panic.

“Help me,” I said to a guy standing nearby. “He spiked my water!” No response. The lights, the sounds and the party goers were turning into a nightmare. The music began to warp. The laughter turned into a haunting chorus. I was terrified and losing all sense of reality.

I slipped, then stumbled, and fell onto the concrete below, but not before hitting the back of my head on a brick column. I landed flat on my back, crushing my angel wings beneath me. Slowly, I felt a warm stream oozing down my neck and shoulders, onto my wings.

“Security! Security!” one of the go-go dancers screamed. “Get him out of here, he’s ruining the f*cking party!”

I realized I was losing consciousness. Then I felt a hand touch the side of my neck.

The last thing I remember was heaving and throwing up in my mouth. As I slowly slipped away, I turned my head and stared into the night sky, once again seeing the tiny stars dancing above the hills.

Then, nothing. Silence and darkness.

At the TV station, we used to joke that there were three ways to get on the news: do something great.

Do something stupid.

Or die.

ANKRBOY by Mark Pettit is now available in hardcover, paperback, or as an e-book. Keep your eyes (and ears!) peeled for the audiobook version available next month.