In Which We Are Still Gay

 

Every year, volunteers erect a giant pink triangle on Twin Peaks, the biggest mountain here in town right above the Castro.  I dig it.

Allow me to be nostalgic and to gripe, two of my favorite pastimes.  This weekend is Gay Pride in San Francisco.  It's been pretty quiet today, but I'm sure this weekend will see my neighborhood, the Castro, the queerest hood in the world, will be stuffed with out of towners wandering around looking for the gay rides.  The Castro isn't really that different from any other nice part of town except for maybe the various sex toy emporiums (dildo stores in the local parlance) and the bakery that sells dick shaped cookies.  People think that's just hilarious. 

It wasn't always that way.  40 years ago, the Pride parade kicked off up here and ambled down Market Street to the Civic Center for the big party afterwards.  Eventually the parade just got too big to be staged here and instead moved down to the other end of Market Street where it could set up in the big streets there that were empty on Sundays anyway.  Part and parcel of the parade moving away from its community origins.  Here's a bit of trivia for you: when it started in the Castro, since the parade had to cross Van Ness Street to get down to the Civic Center, and since Van Ness is technically part of highway 101 and since you can't block a federal highway, getting the whole damn parade past that choke point was always a problem.  Also I'm pretty sure most of the people here in town don't know Van Ness is highway 101. 

Running up against laws was always part of the parade, just like most other aspects of gay life.  The parade was not only a celebration, it was also a protest, a determined effort to show people the gay world is here and we're not going anywhere.  Representation matters.  So it was probably inevitable that the growing presence in the parade of corporations and entities formerly opposed to queers and now embracing us was not a comfortable fit for a lot of the people the parade was supposed to be representing.  A group of lesbians (and who better to oppose the conformist attitude to parade was adopting) organized their own Dyke March, held the day before the actual pride parade, up here in the neighborhood to sort of return to their roots.

An impromptu party sprang up following the march and eventually it got big enough and organized enough to warrant its own name and that's how Pink Saturday was born.  It was a big, rowdy, casual event, very much along the subversive vein of the protests that sparked the original parade.  I liked it.

Of course, under the heading of Why We Can't Have Nice Things, poor little Pink Saturday became yet another victim of its own success.  As it got bigger and more well-known, knuckleheads started showing up and causing trouble, assaulting organizers and robbing party goers.  Eventually, in 2016, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who were running it, gave up and shut it down.  I was sorry to see it go, it seems like there's little enough of the old timey rebellious queer life left.  I understand acceptance is important and we should celebrate it, but it's also important to remember that we achieved it by struggling.

But you know what?  As I was writing this, and feeling sort of glum, I suddenly heard people laughing and somebody whacking away on a drum kit downstairs, enjoying the nice weather and being young during San Francisco Pride, which reminds me that the struggle I was talking about is important, but so is celebrating.  So much of the fight for equality is just showing up and refusing to be invisible.  So yeah, I need to remember that I'm an old man and cynical and that things do change, but that doesn't mean queers are giving up.  So good for them.  And good for me, and good for the random tourists getting in my way in my own neighborhood.  Yay.  Pride.

Guys who should be proud: 

The admirable William Mann, squirting.

Dimitry Averyanov looking all meaty.

Deserves his own parade.

Queer sports, another aspect of this life I do not understand.

I, for one, would welcome an all naked, all hot guy parade.

More of this and less of the politicians trying to suck up the gay vote.

Give this guy a baton and let him lead the parade.

In Which We Have a Chat

 

I only recently discovered that not everyone goes about their day chatting with themselves.  I think in whole sentences most of the time and when I don't, I still think in fragments and it's all directed to an audience inside my pointy little head.  Some of it may be delusional like "I have time to go have coffee, take a shower and get to the doctor's appointment on time," but it's still a conversation.  This kind of dialogue with oneself is called an inner monologue.  Apparently lots of people do not process their thoughts this way, instead they often just use images.  Weirdos.

I also use images like when I think "Imma take off for Peet's" I will have an image of the cafe and the trip there and the gang of loud homosexuals that hog a table in the hopes that they won't be there, but those pictures are just secondary to my rambling dialogue, illustrating what I'm already thinking.

What's more, I often phrase these inner sentences in the plural, such as "let's go to Peet's," rather than "I'm going to go to Peet's". Walt Whitman said "I contain multitudes" and he was a big ol' homo, so he must be right.  And speaking of multitudes, I will occasionally have a disagreement with myself.  "Oh you think you can go get coffee and still make it to the doctor?  Get real, queen."  I'm frequently very harsh with myself.  Alice in Wonderland had these same kind of inner brain arguments; I don't know if comparing myself to a fictional child having a nightmare is a good thing or not.  Let's just move on. 

Through the magic of the internet, I came across the concept of naming different aspects of my thought process as Present peenee, Past peenee, and Future peenee.  When, for example, I don't want to unload the dishwasher, I, speaking as Present peenee, will talk myself into doing it by telling Past peenee that Future peenee will appreciate it.  I even go so far as to have Present peenee thank Past peenee for putting the dishes away.  It goes the other way too when I indulge in the joys of procrastination and tell myself whatever I'm putting off is a job for Future peenee.  Future peenee is often very annoyed by this.  Yeah, Future turns into Present and they both get mad at Past who has morphed into Present and it gets awfully loud and uncomfortable what with all the yelling.  Pipe down, bitches.

We all want to assure you that we are not schizophrenic, we're not going all Three Faces of Eve or Sybil up in here.  It's just a way to organize my thoughts, such as they are.  I happen to think in whole sentences, and the sentences sometimes turn into conversations.  This blog is very much a reflection of my inner dialogue.  Sometimes I just crack myself up I am so hilarious.  I could go on, but one of my favorite peenees is demanding sour cream potato chips so I gotta go. 

Future peenee presents imagery for us all to enjoy:

Our Chaturbate boyfriend Mikey looking all buff and stuff at the beach.

Speaking of being at the beach, I just love buttchops that are too big to be contained by a mere speedo.

Anonymous muscle pussy 

William Mann with all his big stuff.

This guy has more hair than the wolfman.

I'm glad this guy puts his name on his pictures because I forgot it.

Nick Poulos.  Pandering to my audience.

Ass, ass, ass.

We approve.

I forget this guy's name, which is just ungrateful.  He is one of those Colt Studios' sluts.

Rick Koch, cuz everybody loves good cop porn.

Past peenee thinks we may have used this picture before, but the rest of us don't care.

I composed this whole post on my phone because Octavia was snoozing in the sun next to me and I didn't want to get up.  It's a sweet life. 

In Which We Take a Trip

 

I was reminded of the following story by this charming illustration I stumbled across on Tumblr.  It is a sheet of blotter acid from back in the day.

One fine spring afternoon many years ago, a gang of miscreants with whom I worked on a small newspaper in New Orleans and I went off to spend the day at a cabin near the beach in Gulfport, Mississippi.  It was a tiny structure teetering on the brink of being a shack with a great big screened porch.  

These sort of shabby, but not chic, little joints were all over the Gulf Coast in the halcyon days of my youth.  They were comfortable but nothing special, usually sort of musty, and frequently built by somebody's grandfather with whatever crappy supplies he had lying around.  Putting any more effort or money into construction of something that was just going to get knocked down by some hurricane was regarded as laughable.  They were often referred to as The Camp.  I'm sure they are pretty much all gone by now, either flattened by, again, a hurricane or replaced by some ridiculously elaborate McMansion, which was also inevitably hurricane doomed. 

I'm sure this particular The Camp came fully stocked with crabbing nets and flounder gigs and probably some rod and reels for surf fishing because all of these places had those.  Oh and coolers for beer.  Definitely coolers for beer.  This one was pretty standard with a big front room with a kitchen in it and then a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms.  The first thing you did when entering was open all the windows to air out the mildewy smell and then immediately shut them all so you could turn on the air conditioner.  

The whole point of our expedition was to get there and get loaded by taking some LSD.  Since I'm easily amused, I always liked acid.  I enjoyed taking a break from the physical reality and the hallucinations which took my tiny little brain for a drive were always colorful and pretty.

The cabin had a huge hot pink azalea growing right next to it, actually taller than the roof.  Once I was tripping (like a million screaming monkeys, as we used to say,) I spent most of the afternoon sitting on the screened porch and staring up into the magenta flowers.  I eventually had to go pee and in walking across the main room to the toilet and back, I got lost.  You know why?  Cause I. Was. Loaded.

Hoohoo.  Good times.

Boys who look like they would be a good time: 

Tyler Otto and his lovely buttchops.

Glenn Isner, another one of those skinny-big-dick combos everybody finds so darn attractive.

And yet another.

Jadsen, from over at AllAmericanGuys, where the models all have sweet asses, but no last names.

Massimo Arad, daddy in the dunes.

Oooh, spooky.

Another mononymic beauty, Mathias and his low hanging fruit.

Look, a love story for Pride month.

In Which We Are Gay

 

Every June I mention here how struck I am by the sudden appearance all up and down Market Street, the main street of San Francisco and the street on which I live, of these gay pride banners.  They go up overnight; one day they're not there, the next, boom, they're everywhere.  It's magic.  Fairy magic even.

Every year I also admit to my shameful plans to avoid the actual Pride Parade.  I am plenty old enough to realize fully how astonishing the evolution of public acceptance of gay people is, even if it is not as accepting as I would like.  I can only imagine how amazed my 20 year old self would have been at a modern parade.  Enormous corporations lining up to participate? Queer cops? "I'm Proud of My Gay Son"?  Drag queens on TV? None of those things would have seemed possible to a young me. And yet here we are, surrounded by them and instead of celebrating them, I am looking forward to staying home with my cat and scrolling through naked guy Tumblr.  But that's a kind of gay pride, right?

Jon, from over at the Give em the Old Razzle Dazzle blog, participates every year in the London version.  He is a Good Gay and I stand in awe of him.  But speaking of standing, the very idea of spending all afternoon on my feet at the ginormous celebration that follows the parade makes my back ache.  Over the years, I've watched plenty of parades, marched in parades, helped organize them, and now I'm ok with just staying out of the way and letting anybody else who wants to enjoy themselves.

I understand acceptance of gay people is under attack and fighting back is important.  I have led my adult life unabashedly out and I'm glad of it.  It's just that hanging out down wind of the ongoing grease fire that is a fajita stand and wondering why anything as meticulously planned as SF Pride doesn't have any goddam seating isn't the answer.  San Francisco has a population of less than 800,000 but the attendance at the whole pride shebang clocks in at over a million people.  Surely they won't miss me.

If these guys were going to be there, I might reconsider: 

Salute.

Whoever this guy is, he should certainly be proud of his buttchops.

The always adorable Valentin with his boyish charms.

Tanlines are always a fashionable accessory.

You know what else is always an effective accessory?  A great big whacker and a hairy pussy.

Don't fall off sweetie.

I like smooth boys and hairy daddies and everything in between.  That's my idea of gay pride.

I suppose I should clarify San Francisco Pride Parade isn't until June 30.  Let's celebrate.