Fly Like an Eagle (The Eagle Bar, that is)

I travel extensively on business and consequently have been to a lot of places in the United States and Canada. In all the major cities, and even some of the smaller midsize cities and college towns, there are often fun, cruisy, nasty gay bars. I have visited a lot of them. And I mean a lot of them!

I will do a blog post sometime about my favorites but today I want to talk about the Eagle. Many towns have a gay bar called the Eagle. Almost all of these bars have a very similar atmosphere: Dark, possibly a little scary, maybe a little dirty, and you always had the feeling that there may be sex happening in the corners (which there usually is.)

There is some common confusion that these bars are connected, but in fact Eagle is not a chain or a franchise. These bars are not related in anyway except by name and the atmosphere once you get inside. I would hate to unsuspectingly open a bar called the Eagle not knowing what its reputation is. Imagine the shock on that innocent owner’s face on his first Saturday night when guys in leather start showing up and stripping to their underwear. (Underwear, jockstrap, and singlet nights are popular at the various Eagles.)

I have been to Eagles in New York, Boston, Chicago, Providence, Palm Springs, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Portland, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver and a couple of others I probably forgot. But my very favorite one, and hometown hang out, is the Seattle Eagle.

Each bar has slight differences in their personalities. For example, the Boston Eagle feels more like a neighborhood hangout. It’s looks like it’s 100 years old, which I think it is, and isn’t quite as sexually charged as some of the others (it is Boston, after all). The Eagle in Manhattan is Sex Central. One time visiting there I stood in the middle of the dance floor and watched three blowjobs happening around me. I was in heaven!

Somewhere the middle is the delightful Portland Eagle. While it’s still has a neighborhood bar feel there is a huge sign on the wall that says, “Naked Pool Always Welcome.” And they mean it. Now I have been in other bars, say in Key West, were naked guys were walking around but here we were in chilly Oregon in January. There were naked guys everywhere. It was fantastic.

But the Seattle Eagle is home for me. While it is packed on Friday and Saturday nights, particularly late at night, during the day occasionally there’ll only be two or three people. Sometimes I like that better. Especially when there is a clandestine blowjob on the upper cruising deck (I received one recently.) In fact, they used to have both a sling and a barber chair upstairs. If you sat in the barber chair you were pretty much guaranteed a blowjob. If you got in the sling, well, you can guess what happened then.

It also has a garden/patio area. I remember once sitting out there having a beer when a hot young guy wandered out. He started chatting with me, mentioning he had a big dick. I laughed. “Sure,“ I said. “Prove it.“ He did. He dropped his pants right there. And by the way, for those of you scoring at home, his cock was indeed huge.

On one of the crowded nights my best friend and I were standing in one of the darker corners upstairs by the dance floor. We were chatting and laughing and at one point even clinked our bottles of Bud Lite together. Then my BFF looked down and said, “Switch!“ The two guys kneeling before us giving us blowjobs changed places and the one that had been sucking off my best friend started working on my cock. God, those were the days!

In all honesty, things have become a little less randy at the Seattle Eagle. I’m afraid the liquor board got involved and so things like open sex on the dance floor is, shall we say, discouraged. Even on underwear or jockstrap nights.

But I’ll always have the memory of the great times I had with my pants off at the Eagle. And on those days I really miss it, I head to New York.