For my 32nd bithday weekend, I was treated to a visit by one of my best friends on the planet, Jeff Rainey from Greensboro.

Jeff showed up at a little after 2PM, on the only USAir flight in history ever to arrive early. There was shopping and boy-watching in Union Square, followed by afternoon nap time. The evening was filled with David’s excursion to the laundromat (Mr. Excitement strikes again!). Then off to the bars of Planet SOMA, where Jeff was introduced to all of David’s freak friends, and was treated to a bit of anonymous oral sex in the back of My Place. In the end, Jeff slept, and David and Tony didn’t (much).

Sleeping continued on until 1PM or so, at which time Jeff was introduced to the joys of real Mexican food in the Mission. A little thrift shopping followed, and then there was Baskin Robbins, a drive through the hills, and a trip to one severely foggy Ocean Beach. Dan and Jeff went to dinner at Tad’s Steaks while David stayed home and wrote HTML. David had arranged a late date in an alley at 2AM (it was well worth the wait). Jeff hit the local bars, occsionally bumping into David and the date. After a couple of beers at home, Jeff hit Blow Buddies (final score 12 encounters) and David planned a last-minute birthday bash.

The second of the historic west coast blackouts of 1996 occurred today, rendering grocery shopping difficult, transit unpleasant, and driving damn near impossible. The non-functional ATMs were a special added blessing. Planet Hollywood had power, although the food took so long I think it was cooked over an open butane lighter (but loved that Cap’n Crunch chicken…)

The birthday bash was…well…low-key. Let’s just say there’s lotsa beer and munchies left. That’s what David gets for planning a party at 5AM on Friday and sucking dick in an alley when he should’ve been out inviting. Jeff managed a little fun at My Place while smoking unknown subsatnces which made him dizzy. Derik was not at all pleased with the country music at the Lone Star (nor was David). After five minutes and one beer, Jeff had had enough too.

Derik and David went home (Derik being a wee tad fatigued) while Jeff trudged to Blow Buddies again: “more peering than action, but the peering was good!”. Extra points to the completely hairless boy in the jail cell (at Blow Buddies, not a real jail like where Jeff spent David’s 29th birthday).

David, being a dicrete sort, will reveal no further details of his evening…

About 3:00, Jeff and David attempted to take a Market Street historic streetcar to the Castro, but settled for a bus. Jeff shopped while david whined about the complete sterilization and gentrification of the Castro. Beer at the Detour, dinner at Welcome Home (yumm…), then home for the Simpsons.

The evening progressed to the Stud for 80’s retro night (which actually was much more fun than David expected), then to the EndUp (which was as scary as David thought it would be) and back to Hole in the Wall and My Place. Quick beer at home and then off to the Power Exchange Main Station. David was most favorably impressed with the changes. Jeff was thrilled to have sex in a tent. David met a very cuddly 22-year-old tow truck driver from Sacramento. It was a late night.

The day started earlier than it should have and ended much later. The early afternoon saw David guiding Jeff through a last-minute shopping extravaganza in the Haight. There was also a trip to the very top of Buena Vista Park, where the views were great and the cruising was unconsommated. In the early evening came Macy’s and Union Square, so Jeff could exercise his credit cards (which were, of course, positively dusty from lack of use).

Dan drove the vacation boys to Twin Peaks about 11, and then dropped them in the vast mall known as the Castro. The evening’s bars included Badlands, the Phoenix, and the Detour (which was surprisingly entertaining). A quick cab ride led to Planet SOMA, Hole in the Wall, and My Place. Jeff picked up two strays, J’Tao and John, but lost them trying to crash the oh so trendy “Piss Party” on Ringold Alley. Bedtime came late. The morning, and Jeff’s airport shuttle, came really early.

Jeff has returned to Greensboro, David must return to work, and vacation season is over.

A memorial to my car…struck down by an arsonist in the prime of its life on 17 September 1996, at the tender age of six.

On Tuesday afternoon, I went out to my car, hoping to drive to Safeway for a reckless grocery spending spree. Unfortunately, my car wasn’t there. Being the jaded city dweller I am, I didn’t think much of it. “Guess I hit that five parking ticket limit”, I thought, as I walked to the police station a block away to pay my way out of the tow yard once again. Only this time, the Department of Parking and Traffic was not involved…

“Sir, your car was towed on an arson hold.”

“Oh great! Someone stole my car and started a fire?”

“No sir, that’s not exactly what ‘arson hold’ means…”

The next day, when I went to Pier 70 to identify the body, I was shocked. The car which brought me to Planet SOMA, among other places, resembled a charcoal briquette. I was not really prepared for the immense destruction. It was pretty ugly. I was really shocked most by the fact that what used to be the spare tire was sitting in what used to be the front seat. I was also pretty amazed that what used to be everything else inside the car wasn’t much of anything anymore. Looks like it was a pretty dang nasty fire. At first I thought a street person might have decided the car looked comfy enough for a cigarette and a good night’s sleep. Now I’m not too sure.

Maybe someone was pissed off by the ACT UP sticker. Maybe some some crazed tourist was retaliating against my “Mystery Spot” sticker. Maybe the commercial radio “powers that be” were not amused by the college radio ads. Could it have been a rabid environmentalist? Or perhaps a psychotic suit monster from Merrill Lynch or Charles Schwab upset that I turned down his request to do the impossible (immediately) one day at work? What do you think?

The Castro drives me nuts! Twenty-five years of building a “gay neighborhood” have resulted in building nothing more than a “gay marketing plan”, helped along by the so-called gay press (The Advocate, Genre, GQ, Men’s Fitness). The neighborhood strikes me as a sort of package tour aimed at one very strictly-defined type of gay (white) male who reads the right magazines, spends the required hours at the right gym, has the right job, and possesses the necessary cash (or plastic) to carry it off.

Recently, people have been horrified that homeless street urchins, skaters, and panhadlers have invaded “the mall”. I’m all for keeping them there; frankly, they add the only color to the neighborhood (aside from the ubiquitous rainbow flags) and they provide a crucial reminder to the shoppers, the residents, and the tourists that Castro Street is in no real way related to the rest of the world.

Read any mainstream gay magazine and you’ll see what I’m saying. There are no blue collar queers, most certainly no under-employed ones, and (God forbid) no homeless ones. If you’re in a band, it’s dance-pop. If you work the midnight shift at a convenience store, don’t know or care where the nearest gym is, or don’t have a tasteful and well-furnished home, you can’t be in the club.

Leatherfags and most dykes are not invited either, unless they’re discreet and know their respective places. Discussion of having had sex with more than three people in the last year, or in any public place, is not permitted. As a matter of fact, any discussion of sex is frowned upon. Pretty ironic, isn’t it, for a group whose only commonality IS sexual orientation?

I realize that I write from some sense of privilege myself. I’m a white boy, on the cusp between the Boomers and the X-ers, earning a thoroughly middle class living (albeit not at a “prestige” job), and I have pretty much everything I want and need. Maybe it’s liberal guilt, but I don’t think I fit into this package either. I know I don’t WANT to. I wouldn’t know how to do anything but cruise in a gym, and I doubt I’d be successful even at that. I’ve never made a purchase at the Body Shop.

Do not for a moment think that I’m on a “gay culture bores me…I want a straight acting and straight appearing lifestyle”. That is most definitely NOT what I want. People who are obsessed with their “normalcy” and “masculinity” bore me no end. Give me the choice between a date with a tight-assed butch football player and a date with a cute boy who may be a bit “effeminate” and I’ll tale the sissy any day. But the currently media-packaged, corporate and retail-driven version of “gay culture” doesn’t hold a lot of interest for me either.

My idea of a “gay community” does not involve a strip full of stores all my straight friends (hell, even my mother) would feel comfortable in. Frankly, even most of my straight friends find the Castro a tad sanitized.

So just what is my point? I don’t know for sure. I think I’m just a little disillusioned that decades of fighting for the right to be ourselves and to love as we see fit has evolved into such a de-sensualized party line of fitting into cute little assimilated pigeonholes, with Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren providing our role models. Maybe, as some suggest, this means our movement is “growing up” and I’m just lagging behind. Could be some truth in this; people my own age are starting to bore me tremendously. But if being grown up means becoming nothing more than a demographic profile, I want no part of it!

No sooner do I return from Minneapolis and points midwest than I am treated to a visit from one of my oldest friends and closest soulmates (i.e. we laugh at the same stupid stuff and fibish each other’s sarcastic and ironic sentences…). I’ve known Duncan since we were idealistic young radio gods at WUAG in Greensboro, and we presided as Program Director (Duncan) and Music Director (me) during what some people — especially us — refer to as the “golden age” of the station. Duncan and Jeff (who visited earlier this summer) are just about the only two friends with whom I’ve kept in touch in uninterrupted fashion since 1982.

An expiring frequent flier ticket at an opportune moment brought Duncan to Planet SOMA for the first time. I learned of this visit while checking e-mail in Minneapolis. It made for a good end to a haevy tourist season; seems all my long lost friends decided this was the time to visit the City.

Duncan arrived midday on Wednesday, just as I was in the midst of my “I’m back from my vacation and I’m now sick” moments, as well as my “I’m back from my vacation and I hate my job more than ever” moment. I fear this kept my energy level down and I hope that I still managed to be an effective civic booster. Unfortunately, my web energy level was down too, having just completed the Minneapolis pages. But here goes:

Some highlights:

• We ate well, with excursions to Tad’s Steaks, Welcome Home, the Palace, the Tonga Room (with mutual pal Mark), Ma Ma Wa, and (of course) Jack in the Box.
• A few romps through the Planet SOMA hotspots, including Hole in the Wall, My Place, Sissybar at the Powerhouse, Tops and Bottoms at the Stud, and a rare visit to the Castro by your host. Duncan’s comment about My Place: “there are lots of attractive unemployed men there in the afternoon”.
• The “Full House” tour of postcard row (pictured below).
• The obligatory visit to the Marin Headlands and views of the Golden Gate Bridge (also pictured below).
• Duncan’s trip — with Dan — to places where they keep all the nature. I don’t know the way to these places.
• The circular escalators at San Francisco Centre, a strange fight on Muni at Castro Street Station, the traffic system at KRON-TV, Brainwash, lotsa pinball, and the dang cable cars.
• Maybe the best part: taking transit all the way to San Bruno in desperate need of a Sears, and running into my landlords as we pondered how to get back. We came back in the back of their truck, very cold and very illegal in California. Of course, my landlord is a cop, so he wasn’t tremendously worried about a ticket…

I’m not sure Duncan was completely infected with my love of the City, but I get the feeling he was pretty fond of it. The neighborhood bars seem to be in a major state of tediousness, which several friends have confirmed is not just my opinion. But I gotta say that Planet SOMA in its worst periods is better than most places at their best. I think it was a good trip; I enjoyed it at least, which is after all the most important part. It was good to see Duncan; I have this plan to expose all my best friends to San Francisco and then have them move here. It’ll save me a fortune on vacations.

Just for today, I’m not going to rant or rave about much of anything! The only thing on the agenda is an update of what’s going on in my life at this point in time, in case anyone cares…

A few carefully lit fires — no pun intended — have started getting a bit of reaction out of my insurance company in relation to the pile of ashes which used to be my car. I’m expecting a settlement any day now. I think informing them that they’d be paying for a rental repalcement of my choosing until I have a check in hand may have helped a bit.

No job yet, but so far I’m pretty much convinced that giving Kinko’s the heave-ho was quite the right thing to do. Today was especially convincing; the yuppie slimebags were as annoying as usual. Yesterday I taught an Internet class at one of the outlying San Francisco stores. I was amazed at how different the neighborhood atmosphere was. People were actaully smiling and walking down the street at a normal pace. No one had the perpetually constipated look of the Financial Distrist corporate automatons. It was really nice. It’s a sad thing that so many people let work rule their lives to the point of making them such unbearable substitutes for human beings. Note to the Financial District crowd: take a Valium or at least take a break once in a while!

Side note: a rumor is floating about that Kinko’s is advertising on Pat Robertson’s Family Channel (formerly the Christian Broadcasting Network). I cannot confirm this rumor. Has anyone seen commercials on this highly offensive, rabidly anti-gay and pro-enforced childbirth network? If so, please let me know, and I’ll keep you informed of how my complaints are received.

Had dinner last night with my ex David at the new IHOP South of Market. It is, without question, the creepiest IHOP atmosphere I’ve ever seen. It’s in the basement of an old commercial building and is just too damned well-lit and pastel-tinted. It’s located next to Moscone Convention Center, but the crowd seems to be more “downtown drug dealer” than “conventioneer executive”, although one middle-class mother with teen-age son was inside and looked a little horrified when David and I began discussing watersports. Denny’s is scheduled to open a few doors down very soon. Should be fun to watch.

Ran into Ron, a guy I “went out” with a few times, at lunch today and found out that his band (which was one of two whose debuts I attended recently, the other being Lucifag) is fizzling. We did the “lost your number…give me a call” routine. I never know when that’s meant sincerely or not (sometimes I really DO mean it); we did have fun…

Speaking of bands, I’ll be seeing The Third Sex at Faster Pussycat tonight. It’ll be kinda cool seeing a band on the midwestern end of a tour and then at home on the same tour. Love them…they’re great. (Note: missed ‘em…the show moved…found out too late…hate life…)

As for the weekend, I’m geeting back together with this guy named Rob who I recently met in a dark back corner somewhere. He’s terminally cute, fun, shares some of my perversions, and is a pretty danged OK kinda guy, despite being from L.A. He follows orders well, and he scores major points for suggesting — without prompting — Jack in the Box as a food stop on the way back to his apartment Sunday night. More points added for being suitably worshipful about Planet SOMA…I’ll work on pictures soon.

Mom and Dad’s anniversary yesterday. Forty-seven years. Scary. I somehow doubt I’ll have a relationship last quite that long.

Gotta run now…food calls.

Thanks for checking in…

The rainy season arrived this weekend. Specifically, it arrived as I was walking around Union Square Saturday morning without anything resembling a raincoat or an umbrella. Happens to me that way almost every year. The opening of the rainy season is a new West Coast ritual I’ve had to adjust to since being here. On the East Coast, of course, rain is something that happens on and off throughout the year. In California, it’s pretty much confined to a four-month period. And there’s always one thoroughly soggy, gray weekend which — although it may not be the first rain of the year — is always a dramatic introduction to the months to come.

You can always tell when this weekend hits by the volume of e-mail. Saturdays and Sundays are usually pretty low-volume for me, but this weekend I was flooded. When it’s raining in Internet Central, it shows.

As luck would have it, the beginning of the rainy season was accompanied by my first really nasty winter cold (thanks, Mr. “I’m Not Contagious”). It’s one of those really knockout ones; I feel like I’ve been run over by a freight train. I’m on my second day out of work and I’m BORED!! Aside from Lucille Ball in the remake of “Auntie Mame”, which I’m watching right now, TV has sucked. Even if I felt like leaving the house, I’d be worried that work would call the second I left (OK…not that worried…)

A few ideas for how to spend time home alone and sick:

• Make a Kleenex sculpture.
• Answer all the e-mail you’ve been avoiding like the plague.
• Start working your way through that Quark book, even though your “borrowed” copy of Quark has become corrupted, making it hard to follow along.
• Scan the Sunday paper for jobs you aren’t qualified for.
• Organize and catalog your pornography by fetish.
• Identify and label the stuff in the back of the refrigerator by species and creation date.
• Alka-Seltzer Plus cocktails at 10 and 3.
• Write another long essay about the nature of sex, love, and relationships. Or don’t, and save yourself lots of pointed questions…

It is good to be back in San Francisco. I missed my neighborhood, my friends, my computer…

It continues to be freezing cold here. Granted, freezing cold in San Francisco means the temperature dips into the 30’s occasionally. But we’re all major weather wimps here, so if it’s below 45 or above 75, everyone sort of freaks out.

I love San Francisco. It’s as if the cream of the crop from around the country — the deviants, the psychos, the geeks, the skaters, the punks, the sluts, the artists, the musicians — all converged here in order to pay ridiculous rents to live in old buildings with less than adequate heat but to have stunning views (and viewpoints) thrust on them constantly.

Got picked up on the subway yesterday by a way cute boy who has not as yet called back. Neither of us had time to do anything right then and there (pity…), but we did manage to play the game and moved really fast into the conversation stage,etc. This doesn’t happen so easily other places. In most other cities, you have to go through the “is he queer or just trying to sell me drugs” phase, which wastes precious time. Depending on your tastes, there’s also often the “does he just want to rob me” stage. Here, you can be pretty certain that (a) he’s queer and (b) even if he wants to rob you or sell you drugs, he’ll probably have sex with you first.

I love San Francisco.

E-mail last week:

I’d think a hip cat like you’d be more into their version of things than some tired academics who are just jumping on the caboose of a rapidly leaving bandwagon.

Oh. Woops. You’re in San Francisco.

That explains everything.

Seems to be a common bit of knowledge that San Francisco is pretty well insulated from the realities of the world.The population here tends to be — how should I say it — a tad left of center. Diversity and eccentricity are the norm here. The intelligence, literacy, and education levels are higher here than in most of the country. Queers and other minorities have “nothing to worry about here”.

Of course, anyone who lives here knows that last statement is anything but true, although — at least for some minorities — life is somewhat easier here. Particularly noteworthy is the phenomenon known as the Castro. I’ve written a lot about the Castro. Most of it has not been complimentary. As a matter of fact I’ve often described it as sort of a “reality-free zone”, where the troubles of queers in the hinterland, people on the wrong end of the socio-economic scale, and unfashionable people are no longer a concern.

Could this is true of the whole city?

Well, of course it is. I’d venture to say that a fairly large percentage of the San Francisco transplants moved here to escape the “reality” of the places they came from, be it suburban North Carolina, rural North Dakota, or even the Phillipines or Central America. This collection of backgrounds has produced a wide variety of knowledge and awareness within the city. Unfortunately, it also may have produced a strange sort of insulated cultural vacuum wherein all these individuals fleeing from their own realities have lost touch with large parts of them as well.

I would not disagree with the statement that San Francisco as a whole strongly overestimates its own importance in the world. The things that we believe and hold dear are not the same as those which are important to the rest of the world. Our influence on society is waning, if not close to nonexistent. New York, Los Angeles, even Houston and Atlanta are much more important on a national scale. Contrary to what we may tell ourselves, the world doesn’t generally follow our example, nor does it even particularly care what we think or do.

San Francisco is the capital of muliti-cultural thought, tolerance, and “PC’ (God, I hate that overused term…) Every issue, no matter how inane or trivial is perceived by someone as indicative of society’s oppressive nature. If I get my order ahead of someone else at McDonald’s, it must be because I’m a white male, not because the other order was for a “Big Mac, no salt, light sauce, well done, on a cruelty-free bun”. If I refuse to break the law and reproduce copyrighted material en masse for a customer, it must be because I don’t agree with his politics, not because I fear for my job. Everyone here seems to have an “oppression complex”: gay, straight, male, female, WASP, Latino, Asian, whatever… It gets a bit silly. And people laugh at us, even though many “oppression complexes” may be based in past truths.

The “single issue” politics in San Francisco are astounding and disturbing. Particularly in the “gay community”. This may be our biggest means of forgetting that there is, in fact, a world outside our little peninsula. Most of the world is far more concerned about keeping (or getting) a job which will allow three meals a day and shelter than about whether a school in the Castro is named for Harvey Milk or whether a Lesbian couple is featured in the Valentine’s Day story in the local paper.

We’re creating a city that fewer and fewer people can enjoy. Gentrification has destroyed neighborhoods worldwide, but in San Francisco, we seems to be doing it on a city-wide level. The upper middle class is taking over, raising rents, and pushing out the diversity (musicians, artists, ethnic communities) which attracted them in the first place. Our small mom and pop family restaurants and hardware stores are being replaced with wall-to-wall bistros, Gaps, Starbucks, and Z-Galleries. How livable is a city where it’s easier to buy a $125 framed print or a piece of FiestaWare than it is to find a $4 meal?

And our hypocrisies and inconsistencies are showing:

• We revel in our love of ethic cultures and foods provided and prepared by people who can no longer afford to live here. (San Francisco is the only city of its size and stature in the country where the African American population is actually DECLINING, and with the current rental market, things will get worse.)
• The gay movement was built largely on a platform of freedom of speech and association, but try posting a flyer on a lamppost in the Castro.
• Discount stores like Target or Home Depot face immense opposition from city residents who would prefer to drive to the suburbs and shop there, free of the hassles of anyone who might walk or take transit to them.
• Marin County contains one of the most “liberal” suburban voting blocks in the country. Funny that any form of affordable housing there is consistently voted down, as was the BART rapid transit system many years ago. Shopping centers are OK though, as long as they “look OK” and they’re located in the one predominantly black area of the county. It’s a special bonus if they displace an unsightly flea market or craft fair where “outsiders” can make money in a non-landscaped environment.
• A reviewer fro the Examiner applauds a show which glorifies urban street sensibilities while decrying the real street life — she refers to it as “human garbage” — which surrounds the theater outside.

It all comes down, I guess, to whether we want to live in a real city or a Disneyland-style sanitized version of one. Is it preferable to take the bus to the Western Addition or the fake cable car tour to Fisherman’s Wharf? Is Mission Street or Castro Street what San Francisco is really all about? I must confess to a bias toward the former in all three cases.

And I’ll skip a lengthy discussion of our own version of the costumed “greeters” here in “UrbanLand”: the stockbrokers who dress like gas station attendants on weekends, the trust fund hippies on Haight Street, the artists posing as gangbangers, antuque shop owners posing as longshoremen. However, I must congratulate them for producing an intersting — if not entirely accurate — version of urbanism in safe neighborhoods. Perhaps in a “city of freaks” it is necessary to punctuate one’s identity with an exclamation point.

I must add that I do not claim to be free or above some of the inconsistencies I’ve discussed here. I am also probably no less insulated from reality than anyone else here. The South of Market Area is not really all that high on the “reality index” either (especially given all the drugs down here). Who knows…maybe I’m more insulated than anyone…

All in all, I still love San Francisco and the Bay Area. At least there is an attempt at justice here. In most neighborhoods, it is not necessary to duck immediately after kissing your boyfriend goodnight on the street corner. People here at least feel guilty when they make bigoted comments. Hate-spewing Jesus freaks are regularly challenged when they preach on the streets. And as shallow as it sounds, it’s just pretty here!

Upon my return to San Francisco from the Northwest tour, I realized that I was not terribly excited to be home. This is pretty major; I’ve always been amazed at how excited, even relieved, I was to see the SF skyline when returning from a trip. I’ve never felt that way about any other place I’ve lived. In Greensboro and Charlotte, my returns were always accompanied by a sense of sadness and dread.

Could this mean that my four-year love affair with San Francisco (the longest romantic entanglement of my life) is nearing an end? It’s been something I’ve been considering for several months.

I have no idea what I want to do for a living. I’m not sure I want to continue living in San Francisco. I’m not even real clear on what I want to spend a given evening doing lately. What’s up here?

Three and a half months of voluntary and planned unemployment have convinced me that I’m no closer to having a plan than I was in December when I quit my job. This is a little scary, because at some point the money will run out. My vision of a life which is not dominated by career only extends so far, and it does not include fasting, sleeping on the streets, or giving up cable TV.

Not that any of these things are a pressing danger, but they remind me that I need to decide what I want to be when I grow up pretty soon.

Writing would be a good choice, but I don’t see being able to support myself that way for about a decade (if ever). But suggestions are welcome.I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should just get a low-impact job which allows me to survive while doing what I want to do. It is a given that the new “low-impact” career will in NO WAY involve working with the public in a retail-type environment.

OK…here’s how this rant started at 3PM:

Good weekend. The weather’s nice, I got laid, the roommate got laid, the boys are semi-naked and the tearooms are hopping in Central park (oops…wrong city), a friend in Georgia is emailing me some decent grits, the Tories lost control of Parliament, I saw a good movie with friends, and “Married With Children” finally ends tonight after an interminably long run on Fox. What more could I ask?

OK…things might be better if said roommate would get off the phone so I could go eat, but this is a minor thing…

By the time I got home from “happy hour” Sunday evening, this is how my mood had changed:

If San Francisco is such a fucking fabulous queer “mecca”, and is the “greatest place in the world to be gay”, why is it that so many of us feel such a need to perpetually anesthetize ourselves in order to enjoy it? Or would that be “to tolerate it”?

Kinda makes you wonder why I bother going out, doesn’t it? I think last night just presented me with one “drunken idiot” too many (with two of them being idiotic drunken ex-”boyfriends”, for lack of a better term). A few too many glassy eyes. Way too much reefer aroma. I’m even learning to ignore the tweakers. Again I ask, if it’s so wonderful, why does everyone have to get trashed and act like such complete slugs to deal with it?

And it’s not just the bars I’m talking about. Sometimes it seems like half the city is damn near catatonic for the bulk of the day. Everyone’s stoned here. Does this not suggest some slight problems with the reality of the city, causing people to try and esacpe it?

All this — combined with my current homophobic state of mind — has convinced me it’s time to take a little break from the neighborhood watering holes. And maybe from San Francisco. And DEFINITELY from the little ordered and segregated and self-destructive world of SF queerdom.

To clarify, I’m not speaking from an “I don’t drink” soapbox. In fact, the scariest thing about the whole evening was how much I actually DID drink as a reaction. OK, maybe even scarier was the desire I felt to throw and/or break things. This sensation, alas, subsided before I could drag myself to the Castro, where it might have been more productive.

Lest this start sounding like an “origins of punk”piece from 1976 or a Queer nation pamphlet from 1990 or an AA brochure, I’ll move on now…

As for Friday night’s sexcapades, all I’ll say is that when this boy (who looked a little too much like a club kid for comfort on first glance) put in the AC/DC CD first thing, I knew everything was gonna be OK.

And as to the Sunday night fiasco, don’t look for me to be drinking on Folsom Street for a while. Time to find a new hobby.

An ideal personal ad I’d respond to (Spring 1997):

Cynical queer loner, 32, recently committed to polygamy and recreational sex, seeks individual to challenge my resolve. Thoroughly bored with bars and sex clubs, but be forewarned: I’m not convinced a monogamous relationship is the right move for me now. Interests: road trips, lowbrow culture, text-based communication, obscure pop music, The Simpsons, and more. Zero tolerance for drug drama, pretentiousness, career or gym addiction, or attitude. Understand that I will eat meat and smoke cigarettes in your presence, and that I will not be willing to spend every waking minute of my life with you. Do not expect adventures on the great outdoors or candlelit dinners. Do expect drive-in movies, noisy bands, and Pinky and the Brain on Saturday morning. Sexual creativity a plus. Ability to be happy eating at Denny’s and Burger King essential. If you’re “straight acting and appearing”, you need to go have an affair with a woman and leave me the fuck alone.

An ideal personal ad I’d respond to (Summer 1996):

Queer-acting, queer-appearing omnivorous male into sleazy bars, pop culture, road trips, and “The Simpsons”. Hate long walks in the park and the “great outdoors” means an alley off Folsom Street. Meet me for dinner at Denny’s. We’ll have sex first and then see if friendship develops. I’m sometimes moody but generally cheerful, feel love intensely when I feel it at all, and have no patience with one-sided relationships. No gym clones, granolas, fashion victims, or people who act their ages. If you need drugs to have a good time, please do so with someone else. Must understand the irony of MTV planning a new channel which actually plays music videos. Understanding irony in general is also nonnegotiable.

An actual personal ad I placed online (Fall 1995):

MY STATS: Sodomite WM 30 (look 29 1/2), 6′2″, 195#, brown hair/eyes, stubbly goatee and head, lousy housekeeper, employed and in no major financial difficulty (for a change)

LIKES: Fog, Dragnet reruns, sleazy bars, Target, the occasional sex club, fast food, almost any boy on a skateboard, Camel Lights, roadside culture, Henry Weinhardts Red, okra, offbeat music (KABL to KALX), Converse hightops, funny porn, long-haired boys, grits, stubble-headed boys, driving aimlessly, cartoons, group sex, old movies, and white trash.

DISLIKES: Nature, Republicans, severe potheads, the Castro, sushi, people who act their age, romantic candlelight dinners, country music recorded after 1965, the Dead (as in Grateful), rabid Vegans, overabundant sunshine, upwardly mobile persons employed in finance, most art galleries, little rat dogs, and white trash wannabes.

WILL NOT TOLERATE: “Straight acting/appearing”, speed freaks, Southern Baptists, and closets.

LOOKING FOR: Well…I’m not sure. Someone maybe to have adventures with, to explore San Francisco’s hidden alcohol subculture with, or even just sleep with on a regular, sporadic, or one-time basis. (You maybe figured out by now that a one-on-one monogamous thing is not exactly what I’m looking for, but it’s not entirely out of the question, I guess.) I would prefer that you be in the 22-32 age range, open to experimentation, and not full of yourself, but I’m willing to negotiate. If you’re intrigued, interested, or curious, e-mail me. If I’ve pissed you off with my dislikes and lack of tolerance and sensitivity, then DON’T, ‘cuz I don’t care.

An actual personal ad I placed (Fall 1989):

Slightly depraved GWM, 24, cynical, sedate, and relatively harmless, into unnerving music, shocking video, stimulating conversation, sleazy bars,and okra, seeks similar individual with whom to share these interests and perhaps others. Basic intelligence and political awareness a plus. Coke heads, Republicans, and other losers need not apply. Respond creatively.