From the NYC Files: Remembering Queer TV Pioneer, Leather Daddy and Orgy Host Lou Maletta

He died in 2011, but people still recall the "light sheen" of lube on every surface of his Chelsea TV studio-cum-sex venue. And they recall the fierce activism and warmth beneath his perviness.

Lou around 1987 (photo courtesy of Robert Parker)

Hi, Caftaners! Hope you had a good weekend. I have some good talks lined up for this week, but I decided to make this particular post one of those slightly esoteric lookbacks pulling from a few sources. What sparked it was my hazy memories in the late nineties (okay, admittedly, a lot of my late-nineties memories are hazy) of occasionally going to a late-night sex party in a very un-sleek TV studio on West 26th St. in upper Chelsea NYC where—hm, how do I put this delicately for the above-the-paywall copy?—I first saw someone in a contraption we might liken to a fully recumbent, leg-elevating swing being, um, internally massaged by someone else. I remember standing there, both horrified and mesmerized, thinking, Oh, wow, I’ve heard about that activity in the abstract but that’s what it actually looks like in action. The TV studio in question was called Gay Cable Network (GCN), and it was run by a short, bald, mustachioed, sixtysomething Italian-American, NYC-born leather daddy named Lou Maletta.

Halloween 1987, Lou on the right (photo courtesy of Robert Parker)

Lou died in 2011 at age 74 but he is still fondly remembered by many New Yorkers who were either involved with GCN or the sex parties or both. Most people’s memories of him revolve around the fact that a studio he pioneered in the early 1980s to document via cable public access gay and HIV/AIDS activism and culture—at a time when mainstream broadcast media had basically no interest in it—was also a sex venue. When I reached out via Facebook for memories of Lou, the queer author and activist Sarah Schulman replied succinctly: “He had this couch covered in dried cum in his studio.”

Recalled my friend Nora Burns, a playwright and comic performer who had a gonzo early 1990s queer talk/performance show on GCN called Candied Camera: “You could always tell if there’d been a sex party there the night before because the place smelled rank—he was definitely a piss queen—and every surface had a light sheen on it. It was like The Mineshaft for people who missed that era.”

Lou and Nora (photo courtesy of Nora Burns)

Here’s a clip of Nora interviewing Lou for her Candied Camera show on Lou’s Gay Cable Network:

Recalls Andy Humm, whose weekly LGBTQ news show Gay USA (that since 1996 he’s does with fellow queer activist veteran Ann Northrop) started on GCN in 1985 and is still going strong today via online: “During the day when we worked on the show there, we’d sometimes see him with famous porn stars with whom he worked, almost all of whom are dead from AIDS.” [Lou also edited—and maybe also shot?—porn in the studio.] “And we would bring guests into our news shows who could see the accoutrements of the sex club all around—big murals of hot guys, slings, etc.—though not on camera for our show. That made a few elected officials nervous. :).”

The more, uh, buttoned-up side of GCN: Andy and Ann doing their “Gay USA” news show.

But people also recall Lou as someone who really cared about broadcasting gay/AIDS activism and culture high and low, taking advantage of NYC cable public access channels like (most notably) Channel 35, which was a late-night raunchy gay delight because it also aired the now-iconic Robin Byrd Show, with its endearingly tacky, lo-fi strip acts and Robin’s own raspy-voiced quirks, such as mugging to the camera while she pretended to poke someone’s breast nipple or (usually limp) penis in her own eye or ear. (Deliciously bizarre, believe me.)

Here are Byrd and Maletta defending their 1995 lawsuit (which they won) against Time-Warner Cable for trying to scramble their shows:

So let me jump right into some remembrances as well as some photos and even video clips generously provided by Nora and Robert Parker. Lou is actually survived by his longtime partner, Luke Valenti, but the folks here told me that Luke, now in his eighties, has generally demurred when asked to talk about Lou, so I didn’t try to reach out to him.

Oh, one more note: I want to write about the Lou Malettas of other cities—those gay guys [or those adjacent to them] who helped weave the particular queer fabric of various metropolises in the late 20th and very early 21st century—so if you have ideas, drop me a line at timmurphynycwriter@gmail.com. Thanks!

Lou on the right with Parker and another friend at the Roxy, late 1980s. (courtesy of Robert Parker)

Cathay Che (a dear longtime friend of mine—and of Nora’s—who was the film critic on Party Talk, a popular’90s nightlife show that ran on yet another queer network, Gay Entertainment Television):

“When I was Membership Director at GLAAD in the 90s, the office was located at 150 West 26th Street, the same building as Lou Maletta's studio. We would head up every week to shoot the GLAAD segment for the Gay USA news show. There was a big padded pleather-covered platform in the middle of the room because Lou also hosted sex parties in this space. The surfaces were always a bit sticky but I didn't care. I jokingly referred to his space as the gay service station—all were served! I respected him for being boldly sex-positive and out as both a gay man of a certain age and as a leather Daddy. Black leather assless chaps were his day look. And the nineties was still a time when the LGBTQ movement believed we would only gain civil rights if we presented ourselves in society as being ‘just like everybody else:”—i.e cisgendered, monogamous and married.

Lou never said much to me, but he was patient and generous and full of surprises. He once told my colleague at GLAAD—the communications director Donald Suggs [who died in 2012]—that he lived with two partners, his gay male lover and a blind lesbian. Donald was so tickled by this information, but it just underlined how expansive Lou was in a time when that wasn't as easy or accepted as it is now.”

Lou probably at The Black Party with unidentified others (photo courtesy of Nora Burns)

Andy Humm:

“Lou's clubs were shut down repeatedly, though I'm not sure by whom. The vice squad? The landlord? It did mean that he had to move around several times. But I believe the revenue he took in for the sex parties was a lot more than he was ever able to generate from his shows. I believe his bestselling video, which he advertised on his programs, was "That's Disgusting," about a sex party in San Francisco. And I think he was also involved in doing presentations on S&M—with lots of live action. (Again, I didn't witness these.)”

Andy and Lou (upper left), Lou’s partner Luke (lower right), Robert Parker (standing just above Luke) and others at the 1987 Lesbian and Gay March on Washington (photo courtesy of Robert Parker)