Thursday, September 28, 2006

VILLAGE CORPSE TWIST By LARRY CELONA, DAN KADISON and CYNTHIA R. FAGEN - New York Post Online Edition: Seven

I love the last line of this story. New York's West Village is one of my favourite places to hang out when in the city. If you get a chance, go to the Four Faced Liar on West 4th Street - cheap beer, fantastic juke-box, and a great mix of people.

Most of my early West Village experiences involve hanging out with gay friends for some reason. Usually being invited to someone's party and then having the 'friend' who invited me not show up. So there I am, the only straight male at a party filled with some of the most camp gay guys I've ever seen, every single one doing their best to convince me I must be gay, too.

"Look, you must be gay! Look at your long fingernails! You're drinking gin! You're kissing boys!" Etc...

Yeah, they'd usually have me convinced by the end of the night. But, cock-tease that I am, I'd always leave 'em hanging.

Some of the gay bars in the West Village can be a little intimidating if you're straight, though, especially when you have to take a leak - best advice: take a guide with you. Finally - stay alert - that way you're less likely to end up lashed to a railing in a rubber suit like this guy...


September 28, 2006 -- Only in the West Village, kids . . .

The body of a man clad in a kinky black leather mask and decked out head to toe in S&M gear was hanging from a chain-link fence on Hudson Street yesterday - as many passers-by ignored it, thinking it was a Halloween display.

The slightly built, fair-skinned mystery man may have been choked to death by a dog collar around his neck, it's other end strapped around a 3-foot-tall fence post, police sources said.

The 40ish, tattooed man was found kneeling, braced face-first against the fence in front of 424 Hudson St. at around 6:45 a.m.

In a bizarre twist, the body had been there for at least an hour, dismissed by some who walked past as a quirky seasonal display in an area scattered with S&M and gay bars.

"The body was covered with a black suit and he had a mask on his face," said deli owner Indra Patel, who first spotted the strangely posed corpse when he opened next door around 5:30 a.m.

"I thought it was a dummy. It looked like a dummy, because every year they do decorations like that. I was wondering why they put up the [Halloween] decorations early."

Patel said at least an hour went by before a woman walking her dog realized the sidewalk exhibit of a man wearing a pair of leather spiked gloves, chaps and a vest was a real person and called police.

Cops were investigating if the man had committed suicide or died during some sort of bizarre auto-erotic sex game.

An autopsy will be performed today to determine how the man died. Police sources said there was no sign of a struggle and they don't believe he was a victim of foul play.

Another witness, Kevin Samuel, 50, a porter for a building across the street, said he had looked at the body several times but it just never clicked that it might be a real person.

"I'm staring at him and I think, 'Is that a prop or a real person?' His legs looked like he was twisted on an angle and that he fell in it [the fence]. It looked like he was stuck there and couldn't get up, like he lost his balance," Samuel said.

"He didn't look like a person. I think he had a black mask on; I couldn't see his face.

"I was looking at him for a while. I've never been stumped before trying to identify people. I'm ashamed of myself in a way because, I didn't realize it was a human being."

A worker repairing a gas leak at Hudson and Leroy Street said "I thought it was a decoration for Halloween. I thought it was a scarecrow."

Another passer-by, Ralph Constanza, 31, said, "It looked like he had a bad night, I can tell you that."

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