El Corruptor
The Darkroom review: The Cuckoo’s Nest
I’ve been waiting for ten minutes in front of the police building for Pepi to arrive. It is a bit cold, and I have been walking around the city visiting art galleries. I am not in the mood to be standing waiting for things to happen anymore, but she likes to do the putivuelta together and insisted that I linger while she comes from work. It is 7 pm. “Sorry, the gossips at the after-work drinks were good this week.” She is already happy. We walked up the square to the Cuckoo’s Nest, nobody was outside.
“Uuu, the bald guy convention!” says Pepi as soon as we enter. The first floor is packed mostly with older men, some groups of friends, two girls -that’s new-, and some young guys standing holding their beer. The atmosphere is talkative. We sat at the bar next to a couple in their 30s who were not the usual type of clientele of this establishment. They were conventionally handsome, more the type of guys you see at a circuit party than an old darkroom in the center of Amsterdam. We ordered our beer (4.40 each) and immediately headed downstairs to the darkroom. Freed from Desire was blasting on the speakers.
With Pepi, there’s a strict pathway while doing the putivuelta in Cuckoo’s darkroom. First, we walk to the left corridor with the cabins. When we reach the wooden seat, we peek into the darkroom, and if the cabin in front of it is closed, we check what’s happening inside through the glass wall of the next box. Then, we continue to what Pepi likes to call the predatory corner, a section with a group of cabins under a bulb, where you can barely see the people inside the boxes, but they have a clear view of you. We continue through a dark section with two cabins and an open space with a stool, and then to the corridor back to the stairs, where there are two more cabins, a screen, and a rectangular brick pen.
“Not even to sell kidneys in the black market we have material tonight!” I laughed, but I get what Pepi means. The truth is, in Cuckoo’s Nest, some patrons rather than loyal costumers are more part of the bar’s inventory. The old guy seated on the wooden stool, the bald guy who fucks everything that moves, the Brazilian guy who never interacts with other people, the arab guy who plays hard to get. No matter the day or time, you will always find them there. A sure sign of a good darkroom is seeing people you cannot imagine having a life outside of it. Does the desi guy always flashing his big cock at the predatory corner stand in line to get his statiegeld and have long Zoom meetings for work? Unthinkable! This darkroom has plenty of those cases.
It is no coincidence that Cuckoo’s have achieved breeding such a rich native fauna. Its darkroom is very well designed. For me, it should be declared a national monument of the Netherlands. People do not design darkrooms like that anymore. The spacious cabins, with lights that can be turned off, hangers for your clothes, long metal shelves for drinks, and solid wood walls with gloryholes, are a testament to other times. Yet, it is a pity that in such an inviting space, there is not much sex happening tonight. Well, at least for most of us, Pepi is already on her knees sucking a naked guy covering his face with his hair. I will never understand how she does it. “Just go for it, be yourself!” she told me once at the naked beach in The Hague. But for me, cruising is more of a telepathy game than being comfortable in your own skin. I don’t speak cruising, and unless the other person is giving clear, almost physical cues, I don’t get the hint
Often, if sex is off the table, you can easily talk with someone you wouldn’t meet anywhere else. I tried to start a conversation with the guy seated next to me on the bench in front of the darkroom, but I only got back smiles from him. It took me a while to realize he was deaf. Suddenly, a chubby guy decided to start sensually dancing for me to the rhythm of Leigh Howlett’s remix of Holding on by Michael Watford. He opened his mouth and moved his tongue side to side while walking backwards until disappearing into the darkroom. Although flamboyant, I guess that’s the type of signs I get. I could barely decide if I was amazed or horrified when I heard a voice with a thick Spanish accent saying “Not my type…. Not my type….. Not my type!”. It came from a tall guy holding a beer while pointing to everybody who crossed his path. My deaf fella was moaning somewhere in a cabin, and I envy that he couldn’t hear the comments of the entitled pricks that seem to be invading gay spaces lately.
I decided to walk again. I saw a shirtless Pepi stealing a dick that someone else was sucking. The couple of handsome guys we saw at the bar upstairs were now in an open box, putting on a show for everybody to see. Thick beards, toned bodies, Calvin Klein briefs, perfectly shaved pubes. Unfortunately, there was not much to see. Soon, I made friends with a Romanian guy who showed me a handwritten sign in one of the cabins’ ceilings: SUGE PULA, suck dick. Did someone bring paint and brushes into the darkroom? Eventually, I managed to hook up wth an indian guy. “It’s my first time here. Why is everybody walking?” “It’s the putivuelta” I answered. He looked at me confused, and I explained to him that most people were expecting the fuck of their life to come walking down the stairs next. “You are bad at sucking dick” he said after he came. “I am sorry, I am not the fuck of your life!” When I went to the bathroom to freshen up, I realized that he not only insulted my skills but also gave me a hickey. I guess it’s dickhead night at the Cuckoo’s Nest.
I went looking for Pepi to say goodbye. The same people we saw when we arrived were in the same formation, still not interacting with each other. I finally found her being the Lucky Pierre of the hot circuit couple. I pushed myself between her audience and waved goodbye to her. She sent me kisses with her right hand while keeping up the show. What a blessing to have extrovert sluts like Pepi in this world, or we wouldn’t have anything to comment on from the darkrooms. When I was leaving, I saw a DJ at the bar playing for an audience of 5 people. It is almost eleven, and the other sleazier and more naked bars in the city are opening, triggering a migration of all the guys who are still looking for the fuck of their life, that one that would make all the time waiting, all the steps walked, worth it.
Sketches Batch No. 1
We try to draw daily, even a short set of quick poses. For us, drawing is like working out, more of a habit that is part of your life than an activity that requires a special moment. We wake up, work out, work, walk the dog, cook lunch, do the dishes, and draw. It is part of the routine, and just as your body misses movement when you have been still for a long time, we miss drawing when we have not done it for a while. In that sense, we are not particularly precious about our drawings, because there are tons of them. So it was a big surprise to realize that many people who have followed the project for years didn’t know that we draw… which is on us, we are currently working on our communication. Hence, we started publishing a selection of the sketches we’ve done during the week every Sunday at 3 pm on Instagram. We are going to start sharing them in the blog too, taking advantage of the fact that here we can go full naked
CharlesFred’s Shower series
We became familiar with CharlesFred’s through Tumblr, where their photos of Turkish wrestlers were common material shared by accounts dedicated to publishing images of hot guys. Since then, the 272-page Flickr account has turned into an important source of reference photos when we feel like drawing men with different facial features, far from the boring homogenization of what’s considered beautiful on platforms like Tumblr or Instagram. With an increasing presence of AI-generated hot guys, CharlesFred’s photos feel like the product of another time, almost refreshing. Here is one of his series dedicated to what we think are Turkish wrestlers showering after a match.
We do not know much about the authors. We assume they are a couple living in Amsterdam, maybe of British origin, and frequently travelling to the Middle East, which draws attention to the type of men is usually portrayed in their photos. We’ve lived in the Netherlands long enough to know that there are certain types of features that Western Europeans find attractive on Middleaster men. This account is a perfect example of that gaze. Do people in Oman find those men also attractive? We don’t know. Yet, we have to thank CharlesFred for shamelessly taking hundreds of photos of all the types of men they were horny for.
Things we like in men: Napes
There are few more satisfying sensations for us than running our hands on the back of a freshly shaved neck. The nape might not be the most eroticized part of the body; still, by being overlooked, it provides a chance to focus on what is important when appreciating bodies: to admire the shape without trying to fit it into ideas of beauty. To feel the shape, a nicely formed neck, a pattern of hair, how the ears frame it. There is also a mystery factor. Don’t know what’s gonna be on the other side, a revelation? a disappointment? Boredom? We might be wrong, but the main character in Borstal Boy used to admire the back of the neck of the guy in front of him while walking in circles, so we know we are not alone in the nape fetish
This is a selection of our photo reference archive. Unfortunately, we lost the author’s names.
Snax’s flyers
Most people know Snax as the biggest party taking place twice per year at Berghain. What most people don’t know is that Snax preceded and shaped what later became Berghain. Long story short, Norbert Thormann and Michael Teufele organized parties in the Reichsbahnbunker Friedrichstraße (current Boros Foundation), combining fetish sex with techno called Pervy Party by Snax Club. Later, the party found a permanent location called Lab.Oratory, eventually expanding into two adjacent spaces: Osgut and Panorama Bar. When those buildings were demolished, the club moved to its current location, Berghain.
Much can be said about what is arguably the most famous and institutionalized club in the world, but one must admit that they are good at what they do. As a sex club, Lab.Oratory is very nicely designed. The bar, the slings with long chains, the lightning, the pissoir, and the candle holders (nobody talks about the candle holders), you can tell someone took their time to think about details. Thus, it is no surprise that the same rigor is applied to their flyer. When we found this lovely flyer for the 2015 easter party by Benedikt Rugar, we couldn’t help but fall into the rabbit hole of Snax’s flyers.
Berghain releases a monthly program of its parties, also inviting artists for each issue. Here is an example by Nicola Napoli
YouTube is fixated: Kevin’s Personal Hell
Although hot guys working out is an established genre in the current world of content, it usually follows certain rules of lightning, sound, hooks, and duration that are expected of videos to be engaging on social media. So, when our YouTube algorithm went on one of its fixations with Kevin’s Personal Hell, a handsome guy showing himself doing one exercise, with overhead lighting, no intention to explain or educate, in the most arid and straight-decorated space, we were drawn to it.
There is a lot to unpack here, literally. Considering the prevailing ideas in what people call the ‘manosphere’, we are aware that the main reason Kevin’s channel gets traction in the algorithm is that he fulfills the beauty standards of what is considered a masculine body. Yet, there is an unpretentious way to show off, to present himself as an object of desire, that reminds us more of the beefcake models in the 60’s photos, than the super-efficient, enhanced social media fitness model. We might be intentionally ignoring the problematic side here, but we are trying to say that maybe guys in general should show themselves more and enjoy their bodies, regarding shape or a clear goal??
Our favorite video is the watermelon challenge. We’ve seen an increasing amount -especially in some subgenres of porn- of videos that bring us back to our Art School days. Things that can perfectly be video art or a performance (or are already art). We can see it being displayed on a small screen, to make it more voyeuristic, on a wall of a huge, dark gallery room. Also, the channel is called Kevin’s Personal Hell; it cannot be more Sisyphean!
Versions of the same song
We’ve never been big fans of the 80’s; for us, it’s the decade when things stopped being fun. Yet this Raf song has been playing on repeat at El Corruptor HQ. Watching the AI retouched version of Baningna’s video, directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist), we can see some charm in it… which, again, is not a good sign of our current time. You don’t want to romanticize the 80s!
We are tired
We are tired. Tired of things we should not do. Of the products that do not sell. Of the mistakes that make our art worse. The recipes that are damaging our cooking. The movements that keep our asses flat or the strategies that will finally move our career forward. Tired of the flood of experts that, even in the isolation of our basement Headquarters, manage to shout at us, through thumbnails and catchy titles, the thing we should be doing with our time instead. In a world that is becoming increasingly complex, we are fed up with being the only ones who do not have a grasp of it, still missing a chance to make a profit.
We are tired of the salesy feeling of the internet. In a moment when everybody is an expert, we kind of miss when people were stupid, and their online presence was limited to posting their hobbies and the food they ate. Yes, we miss food photos. But those times are long gone, and now everybody has a Domestika course, is an online movie critic, and has fully transformed their hobbies into side hustles or freelance careers. And between the video hooks and clickbaiting titles, we just find a constant reflux of the same sources, methods, and ideas more diluted with every cycle, which makes us wonder: if everybody knows about marketing, where is the value? How many people do we still need to teach us how to be a full-time artist, draw from imagination, or invest? How many excruciating times do we need to hear about the Pomodoro technique, Atomic Habits, or Rick Rubin?
It might be our corner of the internet, but it was a feeling that began with OnlyFans videos. We grew up watching amateur porn on xtube, where people use the cameras they have access to show us a bit of their sex life for free. Sometimes you find someone with a profile that documents their horny adventures, and you will binge on their videos with a mix of jealousy and voyeurism. You would follow them to that house party, that toilet stall; there was a storyline, and you rooted for them. But all that is disappearing with OnlyFans, where you can actually feel the labour of the creators and tell that it might be the second of five collabs that person has that week. We don’t find labour sexy.
While the rest of the world’s expertise grows, our ignorance deepens with inefficiency that hits our profitability. We are not nostalgic people, but we wish someone would bring some sense of fun again, cutting the noise and guiding us on a trip where we can actually learn something -hopefully soon- before we are expected to profit from all aspects of life and record it on video as proof. Behind the glut of guides and opinions, there should be someone tired, lost, and inefficient; we cannot be the only ones.