BC asked me the other day what a pig was. Not the cute noisy intelligent pink mammal that people eat, but the type of gay man. I posited a half-hearted conjecture, based on my fairly brief encounter with the term. Fade to 20 years ago, when I worked at Marcello’s Pizza slinging slices at drunks all night, a guy walked in all decked out in leather with a little pig pin on his collar. I told him I thought it was cute, and he immediately perked up and said, “Are you into it?” It was a cartoon pig that I didn’t recognize, and I was a vegetarian at the time, but I said, “I love pigs.” He asked again, “But, are you into pigs?” “Sure,” I replied, “they’re really smart.” He picked up his slice midway through my lecture about nursing pigs and teat order, and went on his way. It was only a few years later, when I saw the word in a personal ad that a lightbulb went off above my head. There was no explanatory text accompanying the light, unfortunately, but I finally realized that the leather guy was asking if I was into him, having defined himself or his interests somehow in relation to the pig. If ignorance is bliss, then I’m content remaining in the dark under the light a bit longer, but someday I’d like to know what I passed up.
Second Choices, Missed Chances
Tonight Philip and I went to Nippon on Church for sushi. Our first choice, Warakabune, the sushi-boat place across the street, was closed. The second-choice theme continued as we were brought someone else’s food–which we ate not even noticing the distant similarity to our order until it was taken away by our waitress–and then bumped into Larry B on the way out, whose affections I unsuccessfully solicited about 20 or so years ago. (During my brief single cub-ness last year, he responded enthusiastically to my Bear-Net ad, and I couldn’t resist telling him that he had his chance 20 years ago.) Anyway, chatting with him in front of Nippon, I asked, “Hey Larry, how are you?” and he told me that he had lost his lover. I thought that he was explaining to me why he was standing in front of the restaurant alone, and I asked, like a total idiot, “What do you mean, ‘lost’ your lover?” “Dead. He’s dead.” I was completely mortified that I had conveyed a sense of lightness about a sadness the depth of which I know all too well. Marjorie Wood, stupid, stupid, stupid. He was very sweet about my clumsiness, and seemed to accept my apologies and condolences while eyeing my crotch with that same teasing curiosity of 20 years ago. He said, “I thought of you the other day,” and then couldn’t remember why. “Well, Larry, it was GREAT to see you again.” So I whisked Philip back to my pad for a viewing of Trouble in Paradise, one of my all-time favorite Lubitsch films, but due to a technical glitch with the initials “Big Chrissy,” our second choice, after The Conversation, which we’ve both been keen to revisit.
More later in the week. I grow fatigued.
Ennui
Not only does this guy seem incredibly distracted–did his partner not bother to take off his spectacles? Or is that a toenail clipper? A fascinating glimpse at sexual ennui.
Birmingham: The Men of Pinson–Eugene, Pat & Paul
My mom and dad take several walks around the block each day with their little mammal, Bootise. Occasionally a neighbor or two will wave and amble over for a little roadside chat. On one of our walks, just pulling up to a house around the corner from ours, in his black pickup, was the cutest little bear dude, who hollered, “Where y’all live?” I responded that my mom and dad lived around the corner, on Red Hollow Road, but that I was visiting from California. I denied my San Francisco home by omission, fearful that my homo status, too swiftly confirmed, would put a premature end to our discourse. In Pinson, everybody from San Francisco is gay. It’s a southern custom to embrace the general, and discard the specific if potentially uncomfortable. He introduced himself as Eugene, and said that he, his wife and “little boy” were living temporarily in his mom’s house since his own burned down a few months ago:
“I was making m’self some bacon ‘n eggs, and fell asleep, and when ‘ah woke up, the house wuz on fiar. Yep, we lost everythin’, ‘cept ourselves…”
I of course immediately fell in love, and imagined myself engaged in all sorts of intrigue to rebuild that house with me in it. He had the look of a Pinson man: easy going, slow talking, small beer-belly, sun-burned neck, round pink face, slight ever-present smile, baseball cap, t-shirt, jeans, unshaved–in other words, just dreamy. He’s what all of us queens try so hard to look like, he just does it by being. I suppose my attraction to his type mirrors the gun moll to the gangster–a dangerous attraction to the other and the extreme.
In junior high I had many many crushes on such guys. One such crush was on Pat & Paul, the Pauley twins. Already larger than life at 15, they totally idolized the Dukes of Hazzard–they even had the same car. They wore matching cowboy shirts and red handkerchiefs around their necks, and tettered around in big boots. They liked me because I talked different from them, and they would hoot and holler every time I addressed them as “you guys.” They formed the bulk of my early teen fantasies, me of course playing kissing-cousin Daisy to their Bo & Luke. There have to be gay versions of these beautiful creatures, I’ve yet to find them…
Not Much of an Angry Young Man
Les treated me to a classic San Francisco Cordon Blue dinner and a preview of Secuestro Express at the Lumiere tonight. We were those people who bypassed the long line and got to sit smack dab in the middle of the theater in the seats marked “RESERVED FOR THE PRESS.” Les reviewed his press packet while I prepared to say things like “I’m with Mr. Wright,” in case I was asked for credentials. Anyway, the movie was interesting, very testosterone-driven, with heavy nods to Robert Rodrigues and Baz Luhrman’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Ultimately, though, it left me wanting to escape to the Female Planet and drink herb tea and bake pies. A few boyfriends ago, I went out with this guy who took testosterone injections. Conversely, he was the most Stepford-like of my paramours, with highly developed nesting and cooking skills, but he’d flip birds at helpless soccer moms in Tower Market who cut in line at the deli counter, or curse people who didn’t recycle. Aggressivity makes me nervous, although when vacationing, I love to travel with aggressive people. Last night E. came over to watch Room at the Top. She’s taking testosterone, too. We’re taking a trip together in a few months and I can’t wait to let her chase cabs and open doors for me. The film features a knockout and subtle performance by Simone Signoret, as an older (35!) year old woman who falls in love with a younger man intent on marrying the daughter of the richest woman in the village. It’s almost Shakespearean: his desire to marry into a higher class his tragic flaw. She contains her desire marvelously, behind a cool facade of experience. At work today, the Boss and I were talking about intimacy, and his feeling that there is no real intimacy in the gay community. I mean longer than an evening’s worth. I took an opposite, but really agreeable stance, that there is indeed intimacy, only twisted into perverse and highly organized new depths through the medium of the internet with either no physical contact at all, or maximum physical contact with the least bit of extraneous emotional exertion. I guess I need to start a book group, or get a dog.
Active Not-a-Bear Weekend!
While you hairy ones are upriver spawning at Lazy Bear, I’ll be hosting this year’s first Active Not-A-BearTM Weekend! Activities include:
–Having sex with my boyfriend in my own bed!
–Making plum jam!
–Pruning my evergreen climbing hydrangea!
–Studying Italian!
–Going to the movies with Reese!
–Being spontaneous, and open to last minute suggestions!
–Being redundant!
–Doing something fun and intellectually stimulating!
Are you going to Active-Not-A-BearTM?
Research Team
This weekend BC and I took Davide down to San Gregorio to introduce him to the mating rituals of the North American Gay Male. A portion of San Gregorio beach is accessible through a private road, which leads to an enclosed stretch of beach where the older more experienced hunter-gatherer gays gather drift wood logs and assemble them into attractive nests where they introduce young gays into their complex mating rituals. Watching how ingeniously sex is organized on the beach reminds me of the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where our simian ancestor learns how to use a bone to overtake his enemy, tosses it up in the air, and suddenly we’re riding on the space station. One dark-haired gay hung a bright blue flag outside his nest to indicate his availability, a red-breasted south bay gay stepped outside of his condo and jiggled his flushed buttocks in the direction of a passing gaggle of baby-gays. Hot oily skin, sandy lips, and spandex stretched to comic proportions.
When the tide comes in, all of the nests float back out to sea, the gays scatter to carry their new genetic deposits back to their various homes around the bay, and the cycle continues.
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iSpQ, youSpQ
I’m horsing around on iSpQ, waiting for my projector to arrive. iSpQ fills the space while I run to the window every five minutes looking for the UPS man. Today on iSpQ, there are several gentlemen in Germany, married with children, who are looking for “older hairy bears and daddys.” I haven’t been online in a while, and I usually see IberianBear when I am iSpQing, whom I haven’t successfully convined to take his clothes off for me yet. Maybe I haven’t asked…? There’s one guy, an artist, who makes really fine drawings who’s always interesting to chat with about art, and there are about 100 Italians, cercono maschi, none, unfortunately, looking to chat about life, the universe and everything with a smooth femmy aesthete, but I did just got an instant message from a scantilly clad Italian, with a big square jaw. No note, just a picture. I sent him a note in Italian asking him how he is today, in the informal, assuming that one isn’t formal with people who aren’t wearing shirts–no reply. The thing is, I’m not here to have sex, and I do have my clothes on, all of them, even though I’m in an x-rated room for “bears, daddies, and cubs.” I like to have sex with real people, like my boyfriend. Anyway, I am a voyeur, so it’s fun to get flashed and to look at all this desire yearning to express itself in front of a little camera….
OMG, it’s here! Stay tuned for the home theater report.
Du Du Du-duna Du Du
So last night BC and I watched a bear porn movie. There was no intimacy at all, only inert preening and the stimulation of three specific areas. There was also no kissing, except for some lip biting and straight porn lesbian-like tongue wrestling. One verbal imperative consistent throughout the film was the instructive “Do this to that, yeah,” which doesn’t make sense at all to me, except in the case of the nipple–there are two to choose from so specificity may be in order, but mostly these directives were issued after the activity had already started. A correct statement would be something to the effect of “Continue with that stimulating activity.” I’m concerned that our younger gay brothers may actually think that this is the way that men make love. Sigh. I remember a run-of-the-mill gay film from the late eighties about some bicyclist who ends up with a group of guys in a barn, all stripped down to their tube socks and tennies, that had some convincing dialogue and action. The guy who plays the bicyclist really seems new to the scene, and is obviously excited by all the muscular nudity around him. When he finally gets to it, he keeps saying “Oh boy, oh boy,” and you can see that he really means it, like he’s genuinely excited and genuinely surprised by his excitement. I have gone out with guys who you could tell watched a lot of porn. One of my old boyfriends, Bill, used to describe everything that was happening, like the “Do that thing, yeah” kind of stuff, only non-stop. This was the mid-eighties so he also did poppers and would turn all red and start yelling “Do it to me, do it to me!!” while I was, well, doing it to him, and I never knew what to say, except “I am, I am, yeah!” He tried to coach me to be more verbal, but I just couldn’t. I kept thinking of Madeline Kahn’s “Sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you…” from Young Frankenstein. The only porn films I’ve enjoyed are the Gage Brothers films, which play a lot with masculinity, and the guys seem to really enjoy what they’re doing, and some classic straight porn, like Beyond the Green Door, which was made in the era when porn films were still art. I can’t remember the name of this other straight film that had a huge impact on me, but I remember a scene where this foxy black momma with mammoth mammaries is in some sort of hell-like place, surrounded by men in masks and huge erections. Today this would be a rape scene, as most of contemporary straight porn is even more screwed up and regressive, but this particular scene turned the tables around and was all about her pleasure. She was wild, so excited that she’d grab a guy, make him do this or that, and push him away to grab the next guy or two, voracious and starving. She needed that many guys to satisfy her, and her satisfaction was what it was all about, baby!
Glamour
Sunday I went to SFMoMA with Philip, a very nice day with an utterly likeable fellow, the Lichtenstein show surprisingly enjoyable, but the Glamour show a bomb, with totally not enough dresses and stupid architecture that had nothing remotely to do with glamour.
I did get cruised by this totally hot daddy bear–not in the way that I’ve ever been cruised by a totally hot daddy bear, either. Wait–was this the first time that I’ve ever been cruised by a totally hot daddy bear? Maybe it had to do with my own different relation to my newly middle-aged self. Typically, if a dude of this dude’s grandeur and pheromones directs any kind of desire my way, I assume it’s because I’m this young thing and he’s this tired old guy, and I hop to it and make it my mission to remind him of what it was like to be young and admired and virile. Well, sad but true, I’m no longer this hot young thing, but with a gray beard and in bed by 11. This time I felt a tension of familiarity, not of imbalance, like we were just two guys sniffing each other’s butts. I’m still anxious from the encounter, and of this new relation to desire and intimacy. It really is just chemicals, right? Perhaps my high blood pressure and challenged waistline are indicators of this new chemical reaction, too. What’s next? Cancer and love?
BC, my big bunny warmer, is snoring away on the kitchen banquette, speaking of age and glamor. Yes, he’s still sick, and yes, I’m still in dire need of the horizontal mambo. Won’t someone rid me of this meddlesome libido?
Having Les here is at least intellectually stimulating. This morning we talked of Marlon Riggs, Genet, socialized health care, gay representation, stereotypes, North Korean hair propaganda, Soap, the new California Garden, umlauts, and the objective “I.” He’s a treasure.
Alicia, my dear old Brazilian college buddy is in town, and will take over Les’ place on my office sofa when he departs on Sunday. Alicia is this truly glamorous mix of beauty and irresponsibility. We met in China in 1987–the rest of my group (we were students for the summer at the Zheziang Academy of Fine Arts) would be grumbling and sweating over our rice gruel at breakfast, and Alicia would burst into the room in a lovely flowing dress and sandals, scoop up some gruel, and exclaim, “I LOVE this delicious rice pudding, and how moist and ALIVE my skin feels here…” We’d all smile and forget our rashes and dysentery, and toss more peanuts and pickles into our savory breakfast mush. She just spent a month in Bali with her new lover, leaving her 7 year-old with the jealous father of the child, while she explored “being free.” I love Alicia only because I embrace her disdain for restraint. Like, I’d never ever meet her somewhere. Time is only a suggestion to her. As are traffic signals and recipes.
Well, it’s getting past 11….