Dwerkfest 2025, Do You Love Me @ Resident 8.22.25

by :B323

      Roads and rows of streets and alleys lined with warehouse apartments, aggro gyms, paid parking lots, high bar cafe's, fancy restaurants, and high bar bars cover Hewitt's "Arts District". The spots on the street are full and the aforementioned paid parking lots are empty. I found a spot a couple blocks down and traced the absurdly narrow sidewalks to what I thought was the right place but was actually some sort of church converted into a coffee house by some dirt dick capitalist. Church coffee shops, warehouse domiciles, loading docks turned parking lots, everything in the area has been “converted”. Across the street was Resident, its front once a parking lot, now an open patio with planters, tables and chairs to drink beverages at served from a bar that used to be a trailer.

       I snaked my way to the back where Do You Love Me(DYLM) had two ping pong tables and a merch booth step up with people lined up for both. They kicked off at 9pm, I slumped in at 10:35. Still early in the evening and the place was pretty packed. Kevin greeted me with a big hug and introduced me to some friends, they were mid conversation so I left them to it, and  traversed my way down into the "actual" building, a brick room converted from some factory warehouse with booths and a nice sized stage. I saw Claire on the dance floor who asked me if I knew if anyone else would be coming. I said I could pressure George but I figured Marlon was working. She said something about thinking that I’d make a good DJ and should do a set. I told her how if I got the job at the guitar center I had just applied for instead of buying gear I'd spend time after shift figuring out how to use a DJ controller, then we would talk. We went outside and some of the crowd had cycled out. Brandon and I talked about gentrification in the area while avoiding the word, like a classic game of “Don’t Say Class War” and the nature of DTLA nightlife scurrying and scuttling from place to place. A bar will be packed for a half hour, almost completely clear out for 20 minutes then you hit the bathroom before you’re about to leave and you walk out to a packed room again. It’s as though the scene is being cycled and sifted over and over about the entirety of the metropolis to strip its soil of gold.

      DYLM has a residency at Resident every Wednesday night but they've also taken over this night. Providing a fun, challenging(at least for me) activity for people to enjoy at events and parties all over Southern California. DYLM that I know of is Kevin, Claire, Brandon, Marky and Sebastian but they have lots of friends so I could be missing somebody. I first ran into them attending events and parties at Gilmore music in Long Beach, they were kind to me then but after helping them load a truck after an anime-con “afters” that they put together they’ve shown me nothing but love. Residents' open patio is a perfect locale for friendships to be put to the test over a game of ping pong. At the trailer I ordered a Tecate over the Bud Light in favor of the slightly higher alcohol content and lime to help prevent whatever scurvy might be lurkin’.

     The extra special draw to this specific affair was a "Dwerkin" (or in certain circles “dong working”, I’ve also heard it called “dick twerking”) competition. I was offered a spot in it however my size, estrogen intake, and tight elastic underwear with extra feminine shaping made me fear I was at too great of a disadvantage. I had at the time no dong to dangle. I politely declined, despite there being a massive $100 prize and large check custom created for the occasion. Throughout the bar women covered their tongues with silver and danced them around their mouths trying to charm the scales of their boyfriends, side pieces, friends with benefits, emotional support simps, "friend" friends and other assorted Chordata Reptilia Squamata Toxicofera Ophidia to step up, showcase their skill in contest.

       Legend says the first Dwekin’ competition (koúnia fidioú) was thrown by Achilles himself in honor of his “roommate” Patroclus’s death, 15 tipods and a fine heifer went to none other than old man Odysseus for crafty usage of his Peyronie’s disease ridden phallus as an advantage, but here now a masterpiece of a poster board check was held up. The alphas of the “arts district” in the room held their quiet caressing their distance, dicks in the dirt they were as I doubt any had respect for the tradition of “svinicus circulous shlongernus”. Our DYLM hosts and the women in attendance cheered, shouted, even twerked attempting to coerce virile champions to participation. It drew on and on, and only one “Reese” had volunteered, until I could no longer stand such cowardice in the face of honest sport. The call of glory, the allure of the prize, the extra .005 alcohol content of the Tecate, putting me down to my last $30. We were halfway through the month and I had given the rest of my money to transgender strippers. Crippling insurance costs, credit card payments, loans hung over my head like the single bang of a Misfits members signature haircut. Of course today was the one day I wore underwear. I told Brandon I needed 5 minutes.

      It took me one. I rushed to the bathroom, slipped off the padded bloomers and stashed them in my bag. There I was, on the stage, my swiss-army bag under the PA. First I prayed to Athena: Goddess of all manners of craft give my shlong wit, and make it wise in all techniques of the art as you once did he who heard the siren's song and lived to bone his beloved again, for this I shall make it rain upon these hoes in your honor. Then I evoked in the depths of my soul the essence of another of her champions, World Wrestling Federation Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion, Macho Man Randy Savage. I beckoned the audience as he might, trying to entice more participants(my failure to conjure I would later attribute lack of strong cocaine and diet of sardines and stale bread). Sebastian gave us each a turn on the mic to introduce ourselves, but what introduction could “B” need.

     I was given first, and last crack. One round was all that I needed, No blows exchanged……brother. I shook my shit best I could and the crowd cried. Reese danced a little but refused to give it a spin, I gave him stage space to strut, he wouldn't swing. We kept it moving though, for the people. The people want a show that’s what that shit Schwanz Schwingt, is about. My belt thick, heavy soviet standard issue, I loosened it as I pulled my tank up slow, gyrating my hips showing the Monopoly iron tattooed on my ribs. The weight of the belt dragged my oversized cargo pants down to cling at the very bottom edge of my hips, the tips of their aching fingers getting more and more encouragement to let go from our spectators. When I was about bored of the dance I threw in a Baby Freeze just to give the crowd and photographers a little surprise, show them there was a lot they didn’t know about me. I was awarded the $100 dollars cash prize in singles and immediately Reese offered me a couple crisp $50's to throw my singles into the crowd of pongers. Wad after wad, I kept my promise to kind Athena, raining spoils on the faces of those goodly ballers. Big check in hand, one woman started grinding on me as her friend stuck some of the loose singles in my clothes. As we danced one fell back pulling me down, her grinding persisted. I, now a reverse cowgirl, spinning on the small stage floor. After some time I tumbled out, and Sebastion gathered the spare bills for me.  

     Outside photographer Sammi Wong and I chatted for a long time. I joked about the irony of me winning the contest and that maybe it was the start of my new career. It'd been awhile since I won something. It’d been since I left Chicago that I had a long and in-depth conversation, sometimes it feels like people don’t know how to ask a question or like they only know the two big questions here in LA: “are you from here” and “what are you working on?” Both have certain assumptions built in. The first, you typically know the answer to, most of us aren’t from here, but you ask out of politeness and to get the ball rolling for the second which assumes you’re some sort of artist, business, or fitness person. Regardless, if you are here you are doing/striving for something and the person asking is doing/striving for something and maybe the two of your interests and networks may align in a mutually beneficial manner. I personally hate question two, but it is a sort of kindness to receive. Many people will only talk about their own work and life and never ask a question about yours. At the minimum getting question two is a level of reciprocation even if feigned. I dislike it though because it typically leads the conversation to a quick dead end. Question two takes us to the realm and mindset of our prospective businesses and typically when I’m out I’m taking a break from my business, this writing thing, it isn’t my business.

        I do it because I have a strange soul. She, despite knowing herself to be passably conventionally attractive, has the mental self image of something that would shake David Cronenberg. Sometimes she is proud and brave, charmingly charismatic and sometimes she is incapable of uttering a word let alone approaching a person. She likes to be around people, but not always in contact with them, it is rare they excite her. Spiders, snakes, rats it took me forever to realize her biggest fears are the people she loves and crowds/groups of people, having at a time watched those she loved turn on her for them. This is something for her to do while others network, it gives her purpose when she would feel otherwise bereft of one.

       You see, here, once you’re both in the mindset of your businesses you’re unlikely to learn much of anything else about someone unless you click really well or have some sort of motivation other than your business, and because you can’t count on anyone else to. At least with question one there is still good probability that the person will defy your assumptions, and there is still infinite room for the conversation to go anywhere making it a safe starter.  Of course we did talk about our business’ Sammi, outside her photography work creates sculpture and is into ceramics. I told her about how I avoid ceramics and pottery after one too many heartbreaks. Marlon and George appeared towards the end of the night, I’d completely forgotten to give them a ring in all the commotion and conversation. At one point Sammi asked if I always knew if I was trans. Questions along this line are often so thoroughly fumbled or spoken with a tone of doubt that they sour a conversation, her poise and genuine curiosity threw me off. A personal but not unfair question respectfully asked. Some people just KNOW. I wish my answer to her was as purple as such but I do believe she got the point:

I will always be transitioning, I will never be/am not “converted”, If I were create to serve a function it has remained the same since concieved. My father was a dirt dick, because of that I was raised and painstakingly trained most of my life to be something that, from the start, I knew inside I was so much more than. I was always a cathedral, and anlter for Athena. As I grew the world around me tried to bury her in coffee grinds to hide the smell of incense, and by any means necessary grow a dick in the dirt in her stead.

She and I are still learning, building trust. We can’t tell whether people are dirt dicks, or dicks in the dirt or something else but we all are raised to be something. I like to believe everyone is so much more underneath as well, because I can, and at one time I was convinced into believing I wasn’t, now I have some luxury of knowledge. She is more skeptical, she can , above ground she shakes cock better.

Love10fold,

B323