“What are you, making a porno?” Isis asked me.
“Only to the extent life is a porno,” I said.
“Hmpf.”
Ensconced in leather, the crowds stood predominately still, costumed devils and animals and policemen and divas peppered amongst them. As such, it was almost hard to continue our walk up Folsom Street toward SOMA. Everywhere we stepped we crashed into leather-bound, exposed, generally hairy persons. The beer lines were too long to permit us to drink enough to make it worthwhile, really.
At one point I got pinched between two men with bulging muscles and hairy shoulders and leather straps supporting their genitals, and barely escaped without gallons of their sweat dripping onto me.
“Gods, I think every leather bear in the City is here,” I moaned.
We’d slowed to a stop behind the stalled crowds around 8th Street, so Jackson and Ben and Aaliyah were actually within earshot.
“What’s a leather bear?” Isis asked.
“That,” Jackson said, pointing to a stout man with oversized pecs, a leather speedo, abundant body hair, a goatee, and a harness around his chest, “is a leather bear. A subset of the larger type of gay men ‘bear,’ generally a large, hairy specimen.”
We stood still for so long that we decided to turn around and get another double-pint of beer at the last station.
Along Folsom during the fair, a number of the adjoining houses become sex clubs. Lines of risqué individuals form to enter some of them, and most are partially concealed behind heavy walls. A few provide a window through which people on the street can watch the exhibitionists fuck. But there is one, a well-known-one, that is two stories of wide, open windows through which one can watch the individuals blowing and fucking and rimming and riding and whacking inside. Our course reversal, having already resulted in beer, brought us back to its front, and Jackson and Ben paused as they watched a muscley man pinned up against one of the windows, a leatherbound bear ramming him from behind.
Crowds of men and women, straight and gay couples, masses, stood below, watching, occasionally bellowing encouragement. Other couples in this collection of porno picture windows were engaged in various stages of fucking through the various frames, two of which outlined the backs of men pressed to closed glass as their dicks got sucked by others.
In the course of this display, a boy in only a rooster mask and jock strap poked his head out of an opening along the side of the façade, cooing at the crowd, then reversed himself to hang his balls out of the window, then climbed back inside, turned, and hung his entire body out, pecking at the open air. We were so distracted by the poultry that none of my companions seemed to notice when another strapping boy appeared at a different window, unleashing his gargantuan cock and beginning to stroke it for the crowd. A new round of cheering must have caused Isis’ eye to wander, because she abruptly cried, “Oh my.”
I looked to her, as did Aaliyah and Ben, and she pointed us to the whacking occurring just north of our heads.
The performer smiled at the crowd as he stroked, jutting his hips forward so that his cock stuck out the window and cast a shadow on the building’s front. He ignored the occasional overtures of the men inside, some of whom tried to reach around him and take over the jacking. He waved them all off, as if to say, “Bitch, this is my show.”
There was something enthralling about it, the size of his cock and the fluidity of his stroke, as though he’d trained to whack for people. It could have easily been his day job. I’m acquainted with a gay boy or two rumored to have a “perfect” dick who make several hundred dollars a week whacking themselves on webcams for anonymous PayPal donors. Maybe he did make his living this way. With expert hands he pulled the inches, goaded by jaunts and hollers from below, and we all stood captivated by it, perhaps unintentionally.
Maybe four minutes had passed when his hand quickened around the lengthy member, drawing renewed cheers from below with the occasional catcall “come!” or “let’s see the jiz!”. His head fell backward on his neck and he began a glorious unending ejaculation onto the crowds below, sending cum ten yards from the face of the building. A collective gasp rose from the subordinated hordes, and the landing places of his many drops of jizzum alternated screaming delight and cursing misfortune.
I felt a brusque grab on my arm, and turned to a horrified expression on Isis’ face.
“I’m getting out of here,” she declared.
“Why – did you get cum on you?” I regretted the tone of the question as soon as I’d asked it.
“No… I just… I don’t belong here!”
“Well we really don’t either…”
“No, look… I just wanna get out of here. Honestly, I don’t even like the naked guys that hang out on Castro Street. This is beyond…”
“Okay… okay. I understand. I’ll walk you out, this fair is no news to me.”
“Fine.” She turned to begin her exit, and I followed.
Sunt lacrimae rerum…[†††]
Aeneus, Aeneid
Synecdoche[‡‡‡]
“That was too much,” she said simply as we walked down 11th Street, toward Market, away from the revelry of the fair.
“Too much what?”
“Just, too much. I don’t want to see your ugly naked ass, thanks.”
“Hey, you’ve never seen my naked ass, and I therefore object to its characterization as ugly.” I smiled sheepishly in her general direction, but she only glanced at me for a moment.
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t! I’m certainly not saying that this is a day of models strutting naked in the streets, but I don’t see what’s so offensive about ugly naked people who are proud of their bodies. My opinion of their bodies is but my opinion. I don’t think it should be a basis for denying these people the right to showcase themselves in a welcoming environment if that’s what they want to be doing.”
“If this is their showcase, that’s fine, I just don’t want to attend the show.”
“Right, well, that’s certainly your prerogative. I just happen to enjoy being reminded that there is a fair full of people out there who believe that whatever the fuck you want to be is fine, and accept whatever you’ve chosen, and, frankly, that anyone would look at me with whatever gay vibe I send off and say ‘you look too normal.’”
“I thought you didn’t care to be normal.”
“I don’t care to be normal. I hope people will eventually recognize that normal exists solely in their own minds and is a concept that appears differently in the minds of all others. I think this day speaks to that reality.”
“At some point you’re going to have to admit that norms exist.” Her voice had grown snippy, with a tart edge.
“I do admit that norms exist! Of course they fucking exist. I’ve spent my whole life watching people conform to norms. I know they exist.”
“Sometimes the presence of that knowledge is unclear.”
“What is this, Ise?”
“What is what?”
“Why are you mad at me? Have I done something?” I made every effort to keep the desperation out of my voice.
“I’m not mad at you,” she said angrily.
“You’re clearly mad at something.”
“It’s not you.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m not mad!”
“Then name your emotion.”
She stuttered. “I – Distaste.”
“With?”
“God, I don’t fucking know, Bach.” It was almost certainly intended to dismiss the topic altogether.
I stopped on the street, grabbing her left wrist with my right hand, pulling her to a stop alongside me. I didn’t let go of her wrist. It was hot, and we’d been walking for hours, and we were both mildly intoxicated, but I needed to talk to her standing still. Once she was stopped I grabbed her other hand with mine.
“We always know,” I said, “and I think based on your voice that you don’t want to know, mo
re than that you ‘don’t know.’” I stepped toward her, but I dropped her hands, and I tried to lighten the conversation. “Breathe a little and play a game with me.” She just stared at me. “Easy game: just say the first thing that comes to your mind.” She lifted her eyebrows in doubt. “It’s just to loosen you up, shift your focus, so the issue becomes clearer.”
She sighed. “Okay. Fine.”
“Bacon or eggs?”
“What?”
“Just, which do you prefer – bacon or eggs. The game is just to answer by pure instinct. It loosens the right brain and appears to motivate insight. You know the role of the right hemisphere in insight, no?”
“Yes, I’ve read those studies.”
“Perfect. So, humor me. Just answer by instinct, don’t think about it.”
“Fine.” Now, at least, her voice was flat.
“Okay, bacon or eggs?” It was a random choice. I’d no plans for where the game would go, except I was hoping that at some point I would be funny by accident.
“Bacon.”
“Ketchup or mustard?”
“Ketchup.”
“Mountains or beaches?”
“Beaches.”
“Sunrise or sunset?”
“Sunset.”
“SOMA or Castro?”
“Castro.”
“Love or money?”
“Love.”
“Green or blue?”
“Green.”
“Mac or PC?”
“Mac.”
“Jazz or Pop?”
“Jazz. How long does this game last?”
“Until you stop looking annoyed without being able to identify why. Or until you tell me the reason why. But it’ll never work if you’re thinking about how annoying the game is.” She looked at me, annoyance splattered across her features.
“Ok, try this: slice or sphere?”
“Slice.”
“Nimbus or stratus?”
“Nimbus.”
“Stream or pond?”
“Stream.”
“Solar eclipse or lunar eclipse?”
“Solar eclipse.”
“Fir or oak?”
“Oak.” Subconsciously I noted that the questions were easier to generate in categories, and I focused on presenting shapes.
“Pancake or falafel?”
“Pancake.”
“Curly or straight?”
“Curly.”
“Wrist or ankle?”
“Ankle.”
“Female or male?”
“Female.”
I started to say “crater or hill,” but the words caught in my throat. I fell speechless. Now I couldn’t turn my brain away from processing that purportedly subconscious answer, the shape preference I would not have expected if she was wholly straight and women’s forms were simply “not for her.” I just closed my mouth instead of speaking, struggling to say something else, filling the space between my jaw with air but unable to form words to fill the expanse.
I watched her realize what I was thinking, tiny indicators of panic rolling over her façade, a twitch of the lip, a tensing through the neck, an expansion in the eyes. Her pupils contracted, pulling the waning sunlight into the Serengeti in her irises, reflecting the emergence of renewed anger.
“Why did you stop?” she asked suddenly, sharply.
“I… --” What am I to say? I can’t speak because I’m too confused by your answer? I’m afraid you just got me excited when I’ve been trying to stifle excitement for months? Even though you’re clearly angry, and probably angry with me for something I don’t understand? You want me to ask you the million questions you just raised?
She stepped forward, closer to me, and the smell of her slammed up against me, an unavoidable wave of arousal accompanying it. “Bacchus. Speak.”
I’m not convinced I got my bearings. I think I lost control of my mouth and my body for a moment. I recall vaguely the sensation that I had risen up outside of myself and was looking down on what I said then.
“Dude, do you realize what you just said?”
“What did I just say?”
“I was on shapes. You chose the female shape. By instinct.”
“And?” My shoulders sagged with exasperation. I knew she was smart enough to see that her answer might reveal something about her, but I didn’t know why she seemed oblivious to that, as at a minimum I thought it obvious that I’d betrayed that I’d read some epiphany with my first hesitation.
“You remember when we were out with the boys at Haight Street, and we were talking about the choice between a person with a form and the opposite genitalia?”
“Yes.” And?
“You chose the male form with a vagina.”
“Yes.” And?
“You just chose the female form when no sexual inconsistency was cited.”
“And?”
“Fuck, man. You really don’t see it?”
“I really don’t see what the fuck you’re getting at.”
“You like women!” The floating, observant version of myself grimaced. Never in all of my endeavors to enlighten those of indeterminate sexuality had I been so blunt, so accusatory. I regretted it immediately.
She kept starting at me, shaking her head to ask “and?”. “Of course I like women. I am a woman. Women are beautiful.”
I breathed in quickly and then exhaled as slowly as I could, trying to decrease my heart rate, trying to catch up with my thoughts before I spoke. I don’t know that I did.
“Tell me something,” I started. “Tell me why the woman you kissed wasn’t your bag.”
“It just didn’t feel right. I didn’t like it.”
“How long did you kiss?”
“A few minutes, I guess, two, maybe three times.”
“So why kiss for a few minutes, repeatedly, if you didn’t like it?”
She paused. “I don’t know. But I didn’t.” Indignant now. “Why does it matter?!”
“Because.” Now I was angry, or at least I sounded it.
“Because why?”
“Because I’m in love with you, you bitch. Because I’m so hopelessly enamored of everything about you that I haven’t slept right for months and I can’t function and I can’t date and I can’t focus on anything else. Because I’ve been living in this cloud of disbelief at your magnificence for what seems like forever, and you’ve ruined the idea of anything less, anything else, for me, and I’ve been forcing myself to stop hoping for so long that the introduction of hope makes me patently insane, and you’ve made me hope. And if you really are just denying yourself for whatever the fuck reason people deny themselves this thing then I want you to stop, for the love of fucking god, because I want the passing opportunity to attempt to make you happy. And I don’t think I can live the rest of my life with the thought that you really are into women but you’re just not enough into me. Because I feel attraction steaming off of you sometimes, and I’m fucking sick of watching you deny it, because you’re too smart for that. Because at this very moment I feel like if I can’t kiss you I will shrivel up and die of wanting, because life can never be anything if the most perfect human imaginable is the same as every moron pandering about in a pool of ignorance, because then there is absolutely nothing for me anywhere.”
She’d leaned back as I talked. When I finally stopped myself, I watched as she fell onto her back foot, then moved her front foot backward and fell there, backward and backward, her eyes focused on me and filling with melancholy, moist, bright, hard, her lips pursing amongst themselves, pausing her retreat for a moment as her lips parted, gluing herself to the sidewalk in stillness.
“Bacchus, I am straight.” And the glue came undone, her left foot lifting over her right, turning, walking, almost running away, the space between us growing broader with each step.
I stood detached anew, watching from above, as well, as her steps fell on the sunny pavement, hot with sweat and fatigue and confusion and anger and stitches in my breast, closing
and opening my eyes, barely breathing. I supposed it would never be spoken of, that if I ever looked on her again it would be in the context of a grotesque farce wherein the discussion we’d just had never existed, and she continued about her life with purposeful ignorance and distraction, and she never looked me in the eye, and I never saw the green of mystical savannas reflect the light of a thousand suns, shining enlightenment upon the masses, and the world remained, just, the same.
I rejoined my body and stood still, at first to watch her depart and then in a purposeless paralysis, but a trickle of scantily-leather-clad festivalgoers came and went. Every once in a while, I heard the clink of a chain vaguely, but the conversations of these saucy passersby did not enter my ears. If I looked odd standing there staring at nothing, I didn’t notice or care.
Then, it was not the sound of a chain that permeated my ears, but a mere shuffling of feet and a wheezing breath. I wondered at it, turning my head. I was curiously unsurprised to find Grot walking up to me, there, in his bright hues, with his pupils and his irises indistinguishable in their darkness.
“Hello,” he said simply. He stopped and stood next to me, following my gaze to the wall in front of me.
“Hello. You just missed her.”
“Who?”
“Isis.”
“I wasn’t looking for her…”
“No, I mean, she just left. Me. Here. And I, I was just thinking, but not thinking to move, I guess.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking it’s ironic that I spend so much time preaching.”
“It’s ironic that anyone spends time preaching.”
I smiled at that, staring still into the wall. “What do all of my little tests really mean anyway? They’re just as subject to my historical memory as everything else. Hell, they probably tell me more about my historical memory than they reveal about anyone else’s…”
“What were you testing?”
“Gay. Or shades of gay. If you had to choose between fucking a female body with a penis or a male body with a vagina, which would you fuck?”
“Both sound kinda icky to me.”
“Right. What would you call a person who forced people to answer that question and then decided on people’s inherent personality based on their answers?”
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