Boys Will Be Wetboys

To really understand this, you must go back to 2001. Saba and Micah, both in their late teens, were on a return flight to Denver from San Diego. Saba had grown up here, moving between his mother's and father's houses before barely managing to graduate from an alternative high school in Lakewood. Micah had fled his home town in Alaska and bounced through various cities before meeting Saba and a bunch of the other skaters who hung around 303 Boards — people like Paul Azevedo, Sweets and Styles. Now Saba and Micah were coming back from a skateboarding trip and looking at a porno magazine, one of those glossy publications that features breasts the size of volleyballs. In the back, near the bottom of the page, was a small advertisement featuring a bare-chested, penis-gripping male model who bore an amazing resemblance to Mike Vallely, a legendary professional skater and belligerent meathead best known for pounding the snot out of security guards at skateboarding demonstrations. Call 1-800-WETBOYS, urged the look-alike. It was hilarious. It was perfect.

The name caught on quickly with their friends. They started writing it on the top of their boards in white paint. On their T-shirts, scrawled in black marker. The Wetboys.

When a bunch of the Arizona guys — skaters like Don Naughty and Twiggs — migrated to Denver, the local scene began buzzing about the Wetboys. It had as much to do with their style as their ability. There was something loose about it. Free. They seemed less concerned with mastering the stock skate tricks of the day laid out by professionals in videos and magazines than they were with discovering their own quirky maneuvers and doing them well. So well that acquaintances began referring to themselves as Wetboys. Kids at the skatepark began writing the Wetboys name on their boards. Dudes no one had ever met before began flashing the hand signal, touching the tips of their thumb and index finger in a circle while spreading the other three fingers to make a W and a B. Their gang sign.

Something had to be done to protect the Wetboys. They needed an initiation rite — an act that would brand a dude for life. Break a beer bottle over your head? Jump off a roof? Get jumped? It all seemed too easy for a bunch of skaters who take bone-crunching slams every day. Moreover, it all seemed too serious, too adult, and not at all in the proper spirit. They wanted something that would truly separate the men from the Wetboys.

And that's when it came to them. Since their name was inspired by a gay porn ad, Saba explains, "I think we subconsciously put it together and thought, 'You've got to kiss a Wetboy.'"

It's past midnight, and the party is starting to pick up as more Wetboys arrive, filling Sweets's house in Five Points with smoke and laughter. Saba is cradled in the bend of an elbow-shaped couch, remembering: "A lot of people would rather get jumped in than have to make out with a friend."

But in those early days, it was the only thing gnarly enough to "weed out the squares," as Styles likes to say. The kissing would most often take place at parties like this one, at the old Wetboys houses. Late, when everyone was properly sauced and shouting, stumbling across the linoleum. Sometimes a boy would make out with just one Wetboy, sometimes multiple. The latter was known as a "Kamikaze."

"It was like hijinks," says Sweets. "We thought it was funny. Nobody wants to kiss a dude. It's fucking gross. It was more of a charge, almost like skydiving or something. Like, 'Oh, God, this sucks.' It's scary."

Sweets's roommate, 23-year-old Marika Evanger, once walked into a room where two Wetboys were making out. She thought it was hot — and she didn't buy all that reluctant gross-out stuff. "I honestly think that's what's appealing," she says. "I think the fact that they are completely straight guys who just love each other — it's more of an endearing thing. It was always just, 'We love each other enough and we don't care.'"