Category: Gay

Posted on

The End of the Festival, and What Else?

Today was the last of the Film Noir festival at the Castro. Actually there are two films playing tomorrow, but I’ve seen them already, and too recently. I saw many films this week that I haven’t even read about, and usually this means one of two things–they’re either not worth knowing about to begin with, or they’ve been sitting in some vault for 60 years. I was the geek standing at the front of the line an hour before each movie started, to assure my 7-11th row center seat, in the hope of discovering some forgotten gem, but, unfortunately, most of the films fell into the category of not worth remembering, but I, as a completist and student of film, had to see The Woman on Pier 13 aka I Married a Communist, just to witness the comic depiction of waterfront communists in the mid-40’s. (As really mean Chicago-style gangsters.) I didn’t revisit the films that I’ve seen a gazillion times (Out of the Past, Dark Passage, Lady from Shaghai, etc…), but focused on the rarer treats. Today’s movie featured a very young and very tasty Tony Curtis in leather police drag (!) and Gilbert Roland’s big face and hairy forearms–widescreen and luscious. The programmer of the festival really pushed the boundaries of film noir, and included many features that were more like film gris, including femmes fatale who actually loved the men they destroyed, really meant well, and didn’t even die in the end.

So what will happen in the next exciting episode of Big Chris/Little Chris? Last night I was told that “It was over,” but tomorrow we’re supposed to entertain a gaggle of international bear celebutantes. A yo-yo, on Big Chris’ string, that’s me, and who knows how long I’ll spin and flip for my beloved big dude.

Stay tuned, gentle reader.

Posted on

They’re Heeeeeeeere!

The Daves have arrived. Last night after dinner out with Peter and Luis, I popped over and caught them all lounging around Big Chris’ in their scivies, watching The Graduate. I couldn’t rouse them for a more formal shot, so here they are, sprawled in front of Chris’ 10-foot screen. It’s not the most flattering shot of three of my favorite fellows. Chris is quite fond of his leather pillow. A close inspection reveals a partial peek at Big Dave’s special place, for those interested in such areas. The Daves also brought with them from Sydney a special product, which I am itching to try.

Posted on

Instant Intimacy

I’ve been exchanging e-mails with a guy that I recently met after viewing his racy pix on Bear-licious. It turns out that he’s from Gadsden, Alabama, the town that knew me when. My family moved from Gadsden to Birmingham when I was in 7th grade, so luckily I was spared the trauma of coming out there, or what I thought would have been a traumatic coming out. Coming out in Birmingham wasn’t a very big deal–everyone in my high school was gay, even the principal. I was very curious about Mr. Bear-Licious’ experience growing up gay in Gadsden, and it turns out that it wasn’t a big deal either–he had a great childhood with lots of support in his family (his brother and uncles were gay, too), and two gay bars in downtown Gadsden.

I’ve developed a real fondness for him, perhaps because he represents an alternate version of my own life, or because I’ve been exposed to his intimate thoughts and special places. The internet is amazing. He’s just a few words and pictures on my laptop, yet he occupies some place in my psychic life already. Safe intimacy?

Posted on

An Afternoon With Ann Sheridan and Armistead

The Ann Sheridan movie was astounding. It hasn’t been screened theatrically for about 40 years, and the Castro presented a beautiful print from the Universal archive. The film, Woman on the Run, opens as a man walking his dog witnesses a murder, and then goes into hiding when he discovers that the killer is a big mobster who will most likely bump him off before he can testify against him. The police race to find him before the killer does, and his wife, whom we find out has been fairly indifferent to him up to now, also tries to find him and in the process discovers her love for him. She is aided in her search by a supposed newspaper man looking for an exclusive, but he’s actually the killer himself! The searchers converge on Playland at the Beach in the final minutes of the film, where Ann Sheridan finally figures out that the newspaper guy is the killer, but as she’s riding the roller coaster and he’s down below meeting her husband for the promised exclusive and a shot in the head! The perspective in this scene is all from the roller coaster as we catch dizzing and quickly caught brief glimpses of her husband below. Great San Francisco location shooting, snappy witty dialogue, Ann Sheridan’s beautiful face, and excellent tension and photography in those last few minutes.

On the way home from the movie Armistead Maupin walked by and said “Hey.” !! To me! He’s so cuddly looking. I said, “Hi.” Should I have said more? Did he think I was someone else? Does he remember meeting me a few years ago when he sat behind me at the Castro? Didn’t he come to the party that I and Bob threw for Ed White? Was he cruising me? Did I blow my chance to create a thrilling new chapter for his tales of the city? Or my cameo walk on in the next series?

Posted on

iSpQ

I’ve discovered iSpQ. Perhaps you all know about this already, and haven’t told me, but if you don’t, iSpQ is a program that allows one to communicate with others over the internet via quickmessaging conversations or live video. Most people are scantily clad, or will drop whatever items of clothing are visible with the slightest suggestion. The other night while chatting with a guy from Canada about the nature of public art and the challenge of engaging the public, I was flashed by a very talented furry Italian with abstract closeups of all of his special places, discussed my artwork with Mr. South Bay Bear 2002, received numerous QMs from guys that said simply “hey,” and was berated by a guy from Lodi about the cyan tint of my image, which contrasted with the beautifully lighted crisp images of seemingly everyone else. Yet another guy asked if I were the artist Chris Komater (my user name is “chriskomater” so it wasn’t that much of a stretch), and then tore his shirt off and asked to pose for me. He seemed shocked when I asked him to put his shirt back on. I do try to keep business separate. Really. Okay, I don’t, but I want to.

Posted on

A Bum Knee, Solaris, and Manny 18 Years Ago

I fell down my stairs, again, on Sunday, a few hours after banging into my “health chair” while grappling for the light in my studio downstairs. It didn’t bug me until tonight, my knee, after doing a little Christmas shopping, well, actually buying myself the new Criterion release of Contempt while shopping for my loved ones, and then after climbing my hill and the flight of stairs to my flat and, whammo, instant inflammation. I made a long entry last night in my blog about Manny–I spent an hour or so on it–but then inadvertently deleted it. So I’ll try to recap, although the throbbing in my knee and the half bottle of wine I drank at BC’s will surely temper the sentiment of last night into something perhaps less sappy and hopefully less lengthy.

So I went to see Solaris with Bob last night, a fairly decent stylish and moody remake of the Tarkovsky film, directed by Steven Soderbergh. George Clooney plays a psychologist, “Chris,” who is called to investigate the strange goings-on in the space station orbiting the planet Solaris. Upon his arrival, he discovers that two of the inhabitants of the station have killed themselves, and after a night of restless sleep filled with unsettling dreams of his recently deceased wife, who had also killed herself, he wakes to find her, his wife, actually there with him.

Last night was the anniversary of the night that I met Manny, 18 years earlier, while working at Marcello’s Pizza on Castro, when he picked me up (saying he was 40), despite my protestation that he should be picking on someone his own age (I had just turned 19). The movie made me think of a dream that I had of Manny in 1993, about a year and a half after his death, while renting a freezing cold apartment in Florence with Bob from the Marchsesa Frescobaldi. In my dream, while driving down Market Street, the sun setting, the city bathed in that late summer golden haze, I noticed a man on the side of the road who looked like Manny, seated in a wheelchair with a blanket over his lap, soaking up the last of the rays of sunlight. As I got closer I realized it WAS him, slammed on the brakes and ran to him, ranting hysterically, unbelievable. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing there, why he was alive, but I was so happy to see him again and to hold him. He held me for the longest time without saying anything, and then said, “Ya know, Christian (he always called me that, but it’s not my name), I’m really happy here, very cumftable (he grew up in the Bronx), and I’m going to be okay. And you’re going to be okay, too…” I got back in the car, drove away, and woke up, feeling that sadness that’s like a boulder on your diaphragm. Something was over.

For months after his death, I had thought that I had seen him here and there, and even once leapt from my car and chased a guy down, thinking it was Manny. I had so deeply and intensely loved him, a love bound to his physicality, the smell of his breath and the taste of his skin, that I couldn’t convince my senses that they were to be deprived of his molecules. Waking from my dream, I understood that he was completely gone, and more importantly, that I was letting go of him, too.

Posted on

Two Saints, Godard, Work and a New Haircut

Überbearpornstar Jack Radcliffe gave me a big sweaty hug at the Castro Street Street fair on Sunday last. The crowd parted and the sun revealed his dazzling smile and outstretched arms. He’ll always be a Bellini saint to me. I spent the following Thursday evening with a less-hairy and more-than-likely less-hung saint, Messaien’s Saint Francois d’Assise at the SF Opera, which aside from being melodically challenging and brilliantly staged, Neue Sachlichkeit meets the Franciscans, and five hours long, introduced me to the ondes martenot, an electronic instrument dating from 1928 similar to the theremin, but with fixed notes and a keyboard, which Stravinsky described as “the musical equivalent of a colonoscopy.” I’m not sure that I would agree with Stravinsky, unless he thought colonoscopies were stimulating fabulous experiences. Seeing the opera in San Francisco is so much more comfortable than what I imagine the experience to be like in other big cities. First of all, you could wear a t-shirt, or khakis after Labor Day, or a pink tuxedo and nobody notices, not even the society people, who all wore black, as they don’t deviate from what’s expected of them seasonally, and would anything they say about me get back to me anyway? Their little world is very closed and their behavior very apelike–all posturing and preening and feral. I was very hot, as in sweating like a pig, in my Dolce & Gabbana chartreuse velvet suit. (80% off at Wilkes Bashford.) I am definitely dressing like the little dude in line at the bar downstairs next time and going for the t-shirt and gap khakis look. I’m sure that all of us non-society people who saw him thought the same thing–forget this velvet designer crap, I’m wearing my underwear next time! The opera was pretty stunning, with a rotating stage consisting mainly of an S-shaped ramp with a detachable snow-covering which hovered a few feet over it in the winter scene. On either side of the stage was a 3-level open tower, out of the second floor of one a blue angel with one wing appeared cantilevered over the stage below.

Last night I saw Godard’s new film, In Praise of Love, which I can’t honestly say I liked or not. I and the audience (all 5 of us) slept through half of it. I think I’d like to see it again, for what I did see seemed intriguing–a film about a director making a film about the four stages of love, and the obstacles that frustrate creativity. The first half was black and white, and looked exactly like a new wave film from the early 60’s, but not self-consciously. The second half was filmed in digital video, but that’s where I got lost in slumberland, so not much else to say about it. There did seem to be no joy, and a lot of anti-American sentiment which, while a necessary plot device, left me feeling slightly battered.

His Contempt is still one of my favorite films.

Today at work I set up an e-mail account for my boss’ friend, who is traveling to Bali next week for a month. She runs a travel service offering scuba tours of Indonesia. She’s currently her only client. She and the boss have property in Panama and are planning on building a house together. Their joint ventures remind me of Bob’s parents’ 2 big investments; Israeli oil and California City. After his parents’ Israeli oil stock became worthless, it was discovered that their property in California City couldn’t be developed because of the desert tortoise.

Yesterday I got my hair cut by the same barber who sexually harassed me a few haircuts ago. (Little Dave calls him “Big Red.”) He’s purchased the shop down the street from me and is going to make it into the haircutting equivalent of the Starbucks on 18th Street. A bear barbershop. His demeanor was disappointingly subdued, but he did shave my neck with a straight razor. Hot!