Photos by Magnus Hastings, magnushastingsphotography.com
It’s an ordinary Friday night at Queen Kong. Onstage at Precinct, the Downtown L.A. gay bar that hosts the weekly gathering, a pair of muscle studs clad solely in French maid aprons and head pieces command the audience’s attention. A cursory glance at the crowd reveals a hodgepodge of L.A.’s queer misfits—Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, sporting habits and neon beards, stand shoulder to shoulder with GlamCocks, scruffy leathermen, chubby Latin boys and geek-chic types.
On the proscenium, one of those Adonises is laid over the other’s lap, his naked, chiseled ass receiving a series of spankings as spectators count along. The pervy pair are flanked by two identical figures decked out in white Sia-reminiscent wigs, fuschia lightning bolts for earrings, skintight evening wear and six-inch talons. Twins save for a noticeable difference in height, this dark duo holds dominion over the booze-soaked bacchanal. Ladies and gentlegays, meet the Boulet Brothers.
For the better part of the last 15 years, the Boulet Brothers have led Los Angeles’ alternative nightlife scene, birthing the likes of queer cabaret Queen Kong, pansexual extravaganza Miss Kitty’s, the macabre pageant known as Dragula and Hollywood’s covert hookup hub Beardo Weirdo. The common denominator for all of the pair’s events is an aura of excess.
“We always want to give people a place where they can come and go fucking crazy,” says Dracmorda Boulet, the taller of the pair, sitting in a booth at Joey’s Cafe in West Hollywood. The restaurant is a far cry from the previous Friday’s horror couture, and the couple hides in plain sight sporting civilian threads.
“It’s like partying with drunken abandon. That’s our vibe,” adds Swanthula Boulet, the narrow booth squeezing him comfortably close to Dracmorda, his partner in both business and life. To preserve their mystique, the Boulet Brothers have requested we use their nom de fêtes in lieu of their real names.
“Normal life is fucking boring,” continues Dracmorda. “People do not go out of their box.”
“Or they feel locked in their box,” adds Swanthula.
The conversation ping-pongs back to Dracmorda: “We give them a playground to do whatever the fuck they want, with no judgment.”
The pair first met at a polysexual playground that was not their own. In the ‘90s, the two were introduced via a mutual friend while at New York’s scandalous fetish restaurant La Nouvelle Justine.
“You could get whipped and get a burger,” reminisces Dracmorda. At that time he worked for New York’s gay nightlife magazine Next, which exposed them both to the then-prominent East Village gay party scene—a specific taste of queer nightlife the Boulets would retain when they relocated to Los Angeles in 2001. Finding a dearth of parties that satisfied their discerning appetites, the couple decided to launch Miss Kitty’s at The Parlour, a space currently known as Bar Lubitsch, on Santa Monica Boulevard.
“We were kind of like their premiere night there, and they hated us,” says Dracmorda, “but they couldn’t afford to get rid of us because we made them so much money. We would come in there and go insane. We’d mud wrestle …”
“… set things on fire,” Swanthula finishes his partner’s sentence. It’s as if the two share the same twisted psyche. “We really had no limits.”
Initially, the pair actually worked behind the scenes. “We wanted to create a club that felt like an old-school whorehouse with a madam character, but a modern, electro, cunty fashion version of that. Miss Kitty’s was complete concept,” Dracmorda says. “So we created a Miss Kitty character. We put someone in that role.”
Jennifer Jackson, a childhood friend of Dracmorda, assumed the mantle of the eponymous Miss Kitty. “The Boulet Brothers and I had this crazy idea for a hyper-sexual dance club back when we all first moved to Los Angeles,” Jackson recounts. “The party needed a hostess—a figurehead of sorts—and they dreamed up the idea of this larger-than-life, grand dame of the house. Once I slipped into that leopard skin dress they had made for me, Miss Kitty was born.”
One week, though, when Jackson was suddenly unavailable due to a family emergency, the two found themselves scrambling to fill a void. From that crisis emerged the first appearance of the Boulet Brothers.
“She had to go, and we were left without that mouthpiece,” Swanthula says. “Out of necessity, we had to create our own sex barkers in front of the red curtain.”
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