You’ll Be a Star as Quick as a Wink

There’s no getting around it. Everything about flirt, a Tuesday night confab of self-described “promosexuals,” conjures up an adjective. flirt, that is to say, is fabulous.

You know it before you even enter. No sneering door jock confronts you. Rather, you are greeted by the pompadoured visage of Les Stevens, Doorman Extraordinaire.

“Are you ready to be introduced?” he mellifluously inquires. You prepare yourself and nod.

“Hey, everybody!” he announces, swinging the doors wide. “It’s . . . (insert your name)!”

People cheer. Flashbulbs pop. Johnny Hollywood, the club’s host, shakes your hand. It’s a great moment. More than that, it’s a--that’s right-- fabulous moment. You have arrived.

Promoter Paul West converts the HMS Bounty (a fab . . . uh, magnificent nautically themed watering hole in the venerable Wilshire District’s Gaylord Building) into the weekly pit of high-energy mayhem called flirt. “In the gay scene, so many bars are about dancing or cruising,” says West. “We thought that it would be really cool to have a club where the attraction was the crowd itself.”

To accomplish this, flirt has nearly a dozen “table hosts,” who, each week, are responsible for inviting their share of guests. Hosts come from the gamut of gay culture and then some. Lawyers, club promoters, magazine publishers, porn stars, record companies and charities and foundations have all hosted here. The idea, West says, harks back to old days of Hollywood when celebrities would host tables at their favorite nightspots.

Coincidentally, each cushiony booth at the Bounty bears a plaque with a stellar--or at least familiar--name from the Hollywood Pantheon. Dragstrip 66, a cross-dressing club in Silver Lake, has hosted at Jack Webb’s booth since flirt began in March, while Walter Winchell’s table went, appropriately, to purveyors of the printed word, in this case, a gay zine called Spunk.

“Each table host brings a table full of people who know each other,” West explains. “And when that happens, you have an atmosphere conducive to flirting.”

This particular evening’s most flirtatious attractions are the current Spunk centerfold models, the Chanel Twins. Known as Linda Evangelipstick and Christy Girlington, the twins are perched atop a booth to try and achieve their goals of “appearing in a Madonna video, doing runway work for Chanel in Paris, appearing on CNN’s ‘Style With Else Klensch’ and liberating all from mental, social and physical slavery.”

They’re also here “to meet nice people. There’s no club that you can go to, especially in the gay community, and really talk to people,” says the Chanel-decked Girlington, taking a rare break from the twins’ frenetic autograph signing and vamping.

flirt doesn’t even have a dance floor. And in keeping with its yesteryear digs, the sound system has something of a Victrola quality to it.

You’ll find plenty of action all the same. Your pockets seem to fill with flyers almost by themselves. Your business cards are exchanged for others. The flirting, as one guest coyly explains, “is all done within the guise of promotional material.”

Not that bona fide entertainment doesn’t break out. Fire-eaters, stand-up comics, lip-sync acts and even gymnasts have been known to strut their stuff on the tables and in the aisles.

Indeed, flirt derives its energy from the urge to promote--self or otherwise. Even if you’re a chronic wallflower, you’ll succumb to the overwhelming urge to “work it.”

“If you’re new or you’re shy, you don’t stand a chance in this town,” West says. “We’re trying to foster an environment where you can be stars for a night. That’s why everyone gets introduced and the cameras always flash. We like to think of it as the Ellis Island of the gay underground.”

Name: flirt

Where: HMS Bounty in the Gaylord Building, 3357 Wilshire Blvd. (213) 243-8288

When: Tuesday nights. 10 p.m.-2 a.m.

Cost: Admission $5 for invited table guests, $7 for others. Beer prices start at $2.25, well drinks $3.25.