The Sex Cult of Venice Beach
 
by Jason Caruso

  Preface

  The story that you're about to read falls under the classification of truth
  being far stranger than fiction. It involves several of the men glorified as
  heroes in the pages of physique magazines like Flex and Muscle and
  Fitness - pro bodybuilders who are the icons and inspirations to the
  current crop of budding young weight trainers in much the same fashion
  that Steve Reeves, Arnold, and Lee Haney were for generations past. Their
  names have been omitted, for if the details of this interview were linked
  directly to them, I have no doubt that the bodybuilding careers of these
  men would almost certainly be destroyed.

  It isn't so much for them that I conceal their identities, but rather for their
  fans. Bodybuilding has always been a sport with a revered pantheon of
  role models to emulate. I wouldn't want the guilt of knowing that my
  writings were responsible for a part of that pantheon being forever
  associated with depravity and perversion.

  I've known these men on a very casual basis for several years, yet never
  suspected the secret lives that they were leading behind the gym and the
  posing stage. I'll never be able to see so much as a picture of them now
  without feeling utter, vile revulsion.

  Because I couldn't bear the thought that they knew that I've discovered
  their filthy secret, I opted to write this under an assumed name. To those
  of you who choose to label me a coward hiding behind a pen name, I must
  counter that, in this case, the stakes are definitely too high to risk
  disclosing my identity. It isn't so impossible to speculate that I could also
  be put in significant danger, as well, should I be identified as the one to
  break the silence of their clandestine forays into the darkest sins of the
  flesh.

  My source was an actual witness to all of this who regularly sees some of
  the players in this twisted scenario. He insisted that the identities of all
  parties be protected and, in fact, wasn't willing to talk until I'd given him
  my word that this request would be honored. Descriptions of people and
  locations are intentionally kept vague.

  All that you need to know about my source is that he's a bodybuilder, and
  the players felt as if he was someone that they could safely involve in their
  game as a willing participant. As it turned out, they were wrong.

  This is the story of the most disturbing night of this man's life. Be
  forewarned, all descriptions are quite graphic. If you're easily offended by
  sexually explicit discussion, you may want to skip this interview altogether.
 

  T: How did this night begin for you?

  Secret Source: We'd all just gone to a big show where I knew a few of the
  competitors, including the winner. Afterward, a few of my friends and I were
  invited to a party for the winner. He arrived in a limo with a bunch of
  people.

  T: What was the first thing to tip you off that this wasn't a typical party?

  SS: When I arrived, there was no alcohol and I didn't smell any pot, but
  everyone was walking around like they were drunk or loaded. Guys had
  their shirts off and wore these funny-looking crosses on chains. Some had
  snakes wrapped around their necks, too.

  As soon as I walked in, guys were introducing me and others to their
  girlfriends and wives. The girls would start checking you out, looking you
  up and down. Then they'd look at their man and nod or say, "Yeah, okay."
  A few minutes later, you'd see different guys fondling these other guys'
  wives. Or it would be women all over them. My buddy elbows me and says:

         "Look, this guy's over there on the floor about to jump that girl's
         bones!"

  I look over, and it was no girl. It was another guy. There was probably
  close to 500 pounds of naked muscle rolling around on the floor kissing.

  T: By now, you knew that this was a very different kind of party?

  SS: Definitely. Then, four attractive young ladies walked in the door. The
  first thing they said was, "It hasn't started yet?" One was African-American,
  two were Caucasian, and one was Asian. One of the white girls was walking
  around with a long-necked beer bottle, practicing her blowjob technique on
  it.

  As soon as they figured out that "it" hadn't started yet, one of the white
  girls and the black girl went into a bathroom. They didn't come out for half
  an hour and were laughing like crazy. The black girl went up to my
  girlfriend, got right up in her face, and said, "Hi." She winked and licked
  her lips at her.

  T: A friendly gesture, I'd say.

  SS: My girl figured out what was happening right away. Then, this famous
  pornstar comes down the stairs. She's known for being the world's greatest
  gangbanger (note, there are at least three women in adult film who
  currently claim this distinction). She approached another girl, a total
  stranger to her, and tried to take her upstairs to get it on. The girl didn't
  want to go.

  Then my girl wandered into the next room. On a chair was a famous pro
  bodybuilder with his shirt off, a big guy whom you all know. About eight or
  ten people, men and women, were sitting on the floor around him, like
  little kids waiting to hear a story. He was explaining to them how the
  "game" was going to start off. It was a game like spin the bottle. Whoever
  the bottle pointed to had to blow him. The winner was the one who could
  make him cum. He said that everyone needed to participate. This was so
  that nobody would tell anyone about it.

  Another big guy with no shirt was now trying to push me and my friends
  into the room to be part of the game. Either that, or he wanted us to
  leave. It was very obvious that you had to get involved or leave. At this
  point, once they saw that we weren't going to join in the game, they
  separated my group. They took me and my guy friend into a room with
  those four girls from before and wanted us to party with them.

  Meanwhile, the pornstar was now trying to get my girl to go upstairs. At the
  same time, one of the guys with no shirt and a funny cross tried to get her
  to take a hit of Ecstasy. She wouldn't. We seemed to be the only ones who
  weren't on it.

  T: What on earth was this pornstar doing there in the middle of all of these
  bodybuilders?

  SS: She was a friend of a group of foreign guys who really run this thing.
  They're not bodybuilders, but they're good friends of the contest winner
  and always seem to be at the major events and gyms. They could be tied
  into the porn business somehow, but I'm just guessing.

  T: Did you do anything with the four wild girls?

  SS: I thought about it, but then I thought about what I had to lose. I love
  my girlfriend and have too much respect for her to do something so
  meaningless and cheap right in front of her.

  On top of that, I got the feeling that after we did anything with the girls,
  the big guys would try to get us for themselves. It was like if we'd done
  the girls, it would have been anything goes. No way did I want to have a
  250-pound guy trying to force himself on me. There were quite a few of
  them, too.

  T: Out of curiosity, was it an equal ratio of men to women?

  SS: No. There were maybe two girls for every guy, and most of them were
  either really pretty or outright beautiful. But about half of them seemed
  much more interested in each other than in the men. I think that they
  were all bisexual.

  T: We've established that some of the men were top bodybuilders whom
  we all know. Were any of the women recognizable bodybuilders or fitness
  women?

  SS: Yes, there were both, and all names that you know.

  T: Were these women who we'd suspect would be involved in something
  like this, or would we all think of them as sweet, innocent Pollyannas?

  SS: Pollyannas all the way - nice, wholesome girls ready to fuck anything
  around that wasn't moving. You'd never guess the ones who were there.

  T: Unbelievable. Okay, let's back up a bit. You were invited to this party,
  even though they didn't know whether or not you'd be accepting of these
  types of activities? Doesn't that seem strange, even stupid, on their part?

  SS: As far as we knew ahead of time, it was just a party. I don't know why
  they thought that we'd get involved in all of the weird sex. Maybe they just
  wanted to have sex with us and were willing to take a chance. I found out
  that the party used to be at a different house. It's been going on for two
  or three years.

  T: What happened next?

  SS: I heard a noise in the bathroom. A big guy was screaming, "Give it to
  me hard, I like it hard!" I recognized his voice. It was someone that I
  knew. Everyone knows him from the magazines. I never even suspected
  that he was gay, or bisexual, or whatever he is. But there he was, getting
  fucked in the ass. A bunch of people were watching.

  When those guys finished, another big guy came in, pushed the "pitcher"
  up against the wall, and started kissing him. Then he went down on him.
  Now I was really ready to get out of there. They were trying to keep us
  there. It was one of those very uncomfortable situations where someone is
  trying to pretend that they're still friendly, but there was an edge of
  hostility. They were blocking our exit, saying, "Hey, you don't have to go."
  I didn't know whether they'd try to physically restrain or attack us, but we
  left, and nothing happened.

  T: I have to ask, in the age of AIDS, were these guys using condoms
  throughout all of this?

  SS: Believe it or not, no. Chalk it up to the drugs, or maybe they're just
  plain stupid. Maybe they don't care whether they live or die. You think that
  you know people, and then some bizarre shit like this shows you that you
  have no idea what some people are really up to. Secret lives, man, secret
  lives.

  T: It must've been the weirdest night of your life.

  SS: Yes. I was curious, of course, with all of the beautiful women so horny
  and everything, but it just got too scary. All of the sex stuff happened in
  the last half-hour that we were there. It felt like that scene in the movie
  "From Dusk 'Til Dawn" when suddenly everybody except the good guys in
  the bar turns into vampires. I was like, fuck! Biggest shock of my life.

  T: You had no idea before that any of this was going on?

  SS: Yeah, but I never saw it. You hear so much bullshit and rumors out
  here that turns out to be untrue. I recall when there was a big fight inside
  the Firehouse [a restaurant in Venice that's a big bodybuilder hangout]
  over it. One of the guys was jealous or something. This bodybuilder was
  mad at the other one and started calling contest promoters and judges to
  tell them what was going on.

  I also remember now that the two guys in the bathroom had been seen
  making out at a bar in front of at least 15 or 20 people, supposedly at the
  request of one of their wives. Come to think of it, I was at one of their
  parties had once, and two big bodybuilder chicks started wrestling nude on
  the floor. One of them had the biggest clit I've ever seen. They started
  getting it on, then he [the host] and his wife jumped in and joined them.

  Maybe that should've tipped me off about him. But who'd imagine that
  you'd go to a party and all of these people would be into this stuff? It just
  goes beyond what we're willing to accept can really happen. And these
  guys, I always thought that they were manly men - big, macho dudes.
  Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that they were into each
  other, as well as girls.

  T: I'm curious to know what happened the next day and since. Have you
  run into any of them, and how have you handled it?

  SS: The limo driver who drove to the party got into trouble with the contest
  winner the next day for telling about what had happened on the ride over
  there. He saw them all slamming Ecstasy and shooting Nubain. There were
  empty cartons of Nubain everywhere. Can you imagine how fucked up they
  must've been? Not that it excuses what they did, but that's quite a
  combination. It's basically like taking acid and shooting heroin at the
  same time.

  The worst thing, I heard that the limo driver also reported that one of the
  other pros had started yelling, "I told you what I was gonna' do if you won,
  I told you!" before going down and sucking the winner's dick right then and
  there in the back of the limo. It turns out that the trainer of the contest
  winner had instructed the limo driver to report back to him everything he
  saw. I guess that he had his suspicions about what his client was up to,
  hanging around with those shady little foreign guys all of the time. He's
  been going around the gym, pissed off, telling a lot of people about it. I
  don't know if he'll ever get that guy ready for another show now.

  I actually saw a few of the big guys who'd been at the party the next day
  at the gym. They didn't realize that I was right next to them. One of them
  complained about his asshole being sore. They joked that he must have
  been with "Mushroom Dick." He said:

         "Hell, no! Did you see the size of that thing? It was as big around
         as a water glass."

  My girl overheard that part and couldn't contain herself. She laughed out
  loud. That's when the guy saw that we were right there. He hung his head
  and walked away. He was ashamed. How embarrassing for him.

  T: You never mentioned anything about Mushroom Dick before.

  SS: I must've blocked it out. That was really fucked up. The night of the
  party, this foreign guy was telling everyone that his dick head looked like
  a giant mushroom. He was telling this to me and my girl, total strangers
  that he'd seen maybe a couple of times in the gym.

  He'd injected Esiclene right into his dick to see how big it would swell up.
  For a while, he was Dirk fucking Diggler. His wife loved the big new dick
  and was demanding sex with him constantly, he said, but it hurt him. It
  was also supposedly drawing too much blood and making him
  lightheaded. A girl at the party had tried to give him head, but he had to
  stop her after a minute. I later found out that he had to ice it to get it to
  go down to normal, and then he couldn't get a hard-on for three weeks.
  I've heard a lot of people do stupid things in this sport, but that takes the
  cake. What's next, Synthol?

  T: Are you worried that these people might figure out that you gave this
  interview?

  SS: Of course I am.

  T: What do you think that they'd do?

  SS: The bodybuilders would probably just get mad and never talk to me
  again. But there's also that group of foreign guys involved in all of this,
  some very shady characters who are into who knows what. They aren't
  really bodybuilders, yet you always see them hanging around the gym and
  at all of the big shows. They're all loaded with money and drive very
  expensive cars and trucks, yet they don't seem to work. I'm more
  concerned about them. I've heard that they're crazy.

  T: Do you think that, on a whole, they're afraid of being exposed?

  SS: I'd have to say that I don't think that they care very much. They were
  too open, and there were just too many people at the party. The way that
  they were all talking, it seemed like this goes on just about every
  weekend.

  T: Don't some of these people have a lot to lose if all of this came to
  light?

  SS: Definitely.

  T: Do you think that it was wise for them to invite you and your friends, not
  knowing how receptive you'd be?

  SS: No, I think that they were pretty stupid. But these aren't logical people.
  Lust and drugs cloud over their minds or something.

  T: What would the fans of these pros think if they knew about this?

  SS: Compare it to someone seeing Mark McGuire sucking a dick. You'd
  have a lot of shell-shocked baseball fans, wouldn't you? It kind of put a
  bad taste in my mouth for the whole sport of bodybuilding. These guys
  aren't who I thought they were.

  T: Hasn't there always been a big gay element associated with
  bodybuilding, particularly the Venice Beach scene?

  SS: Well, there's one particular wealthy old guy in the gym industry who's
  infamous. He's put up more top amateur and pro bodybuilders in his
  house than the Marina Pacific Hotel. Most times, he'd help by giving them
  a place to stay while they looked for an apartment.

  Other guys would go there a month or two before a show so that they
  could train in Venice. That's a big deal to someone from another country
  or places like Ohio or Boston. The ones that he really liked, he'd give
  them two thousand bucks a month for expenses. If you go through all of
  the guys from magazine covers over the past ten years, a ton of them
  have stayed at this guy's house at one time or another.

  T: What did the bodybuilders have to do in return?

  SS: From what I've heard from some of the guys, the main thing is that he
  likes for them to walk around with no shirt on, just shorts or underwear. He
  really likes having them around before contests when they're in great
  shape. Other times, he'd want them to let him watch while they banged a
  girl. I never heard about any of the guys having to do anything with him
  but, then again, I doubt that it's the type of thing that you'd tell everyone
  about.

  T: Back to the party that you attended. The strange crosses, the snakes -
  it sounds like some kind of cult or religion. What was that all about?

  SS: I don't know. To be honest, it scared the shit out of me. I really don't
  want to know. I believe in God, and this seemed evil to me. Some kind of
  cult, yeah. Satanic or something, maybe, maybe not. I didn't see any
  pentagrams or sacrifices, if that's what you mean. Maybe they just thought
  that it looked cool or hip.

  T: How do you deal with seeing some of these people at the gym all of the
  time now?

  SS: It's totally awkward. I just say to myself that it's their lifestyle. I don't
  agree with it, but who am I to say what's right or wrong?

  T: Have you had any nightmares about that night?

  SS: No, but it sure would make an interesting video.

  T: Suppose that there was a video or pictures, and it ended up on the
  Internet. What do you think would happen to the pro bodybuilders who
  were there?

  SS: They'd lose a lot of respect, and especially money. Those contracts
  that they have, the endorsements, all of it would be gone in a second. I
  think that they'd care more about the money. If they really cared about
  being respected, they wouldn't be doing all of this shit.

  T: Do you think that these guys will ever get caught or exposed?

  SS: I think that it's only a matter of time. Like I said, there were a lot of
  people at the party, and we all know that bodybuilders aren't always the
  most emotionally mature people on the planet. I think that someone will
  get mad at someone else and start blabbing to the media to really ruin
  them.

  T: Would magazines print this, or would it be too outrageous?

  SS: Certain ones would, and others wouldn't. Some would lose money, like
  those that promote these guys and use them to sell products. It's a
  fucked-up sport. This really isn't so shocking when you stop and consider
  that the same company promotes the shows, has the guys under contract,
  and runs the biggest magazines.

  T: If you'd been invited and had known what was planned to transpire,
  would you have gone?

  SS: No. It was scary, and I wouldn't want to be in that situation again.

  T: What did you find most offensive?

  SS: That they were trying to push people into doing things that they clearly
  didn't want to do. It was very uncomfortable. I still feel sick to my stomach
  thinking back about it.

  T: Was it the gay sex in particular that bothered you?

  SS: That was bad enough. I'd never in my life seen two men together, and
  I never wanted to, either. What they do behind closed doors is none of my
  business, but this was literally right in front of me. I felt dirty.

  Another thing that still haunts me is the lack of respect between husbands
  and wives. These guys didn't care whether their wives started fucking some
  big meathead she just met right in front of them. I value marriage a lot
  more than that.

  T: Had there been no homosexual activity whatsoever, would you still have
  been shocked?

  SS: No. A lot of bodybuilders are exhibitionists and sex addicts. I've seen
  guys hook up with female groupies at shows a hundred times.

  T: Would you have participated, in that case?

  SS: Yeah, I'll be honest. If I hadn't had my girl with me and I knew for
  sure that she wouldn't have found out? Hell, yeah, I would've gotten down.
  I never claimed to be an angel. I'm just saying that the things I saw that
  night blew my mind and scared the hell out of me.

  Epilogue

  Since this interview was conducted, it seems that a gossip columnist for
  one of the top physique magazines has heard about the "cult" and is
  actively pursuing the story. Apparently, she's already printed a vague
  remark about a pro bodybuilder's wife partying with some of the
  contestants following a certain event. The truth, according to my source, is
  that the very famous pro bodybuilder and his girlfriend did, indeed, attend
  the party, but they were just as uncomfortable as him and his friends and
  never participated in any of the illicit activities.

  This female journalist has been probing around the Venice gyms looking
  for information and has already approached at least two of the partygoers
  in her search. Unfortunately for her, they feigned ignorance and have
  spread the word that she's out to ruin the reputations of all involved.
  Everyone has been asked not to speak to her should she come to them.
  It's highly unlikely that she'll get her story.

  However, as our source postulated, due to the lack of discretion that's
  employed by those who indulge in these bisexual orgies of muscular flesh
  and the sheer number of people involved, it's only a matter of time before
  this whole sordid story is exposed. At that point, the reaction will be similar
  to that of a rock being lifted to reveal the squirming worms, beetles, and
  larvae below. It will truly be a dark and humiliating day for the sport of
  bodybuilding and, surely, several of the men and women implicated in this
  scandal will be forever ostracized from the sport that once revered them.

  When that day does come, don't take pity on them - they won't feel
  remorse for their actions. They reveled in each and every bit of flesh that
  they were able to suck, stroke, lick, penetrate, or be penetrated by. Like
  the players in all of our modern scandals, their only regret will be that they
  were caught. Don't be overly shocked when it all comes raining down. After
  all, our heroes are only flesh and blood, and the flesh is weak.