Author: Mark Alexander

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I Was Incorrigible

Doorman at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, March 1989

…even when I was using a film camera.

I lusted after this gentleman on the daily since I walked past the hotel on my way home from work.  He was always very friendly—bordering on flirtatious—so I finally got up the nerve to ask him out. He ever-so-politely turned me down.

I suppose I should also add the Palace Hotel to the list of venues from my previous post, although I never really frequented the place. It was one of those locales that had a reputation for a very low tolerance for menz gettin’ busy in the restrooms, and arrests were commonplace. I happened to stop in for legitimate reasons once, and immediately understood why it was so popular—and so risky. The floors were a mirror-finish marble, and you could easily see everything going on in the stalls.

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Trade Center

Like many gay men of a certain age, I have my own salacious stories of the clandestine (and not-so-clandestine) venues that catered to this sort of activity in the 80s and 90s—albeit in San Francisco, not New York.

I can hear you now, “Do tell!”

• The Shaklee Building, 2nd Floor
• 255 Bush, 2nd Floor
• The Russ Building, 11th Floor
• Rincon Center, 1st Floor
• The Sir Francis Drake, Mezzanine (the only place I ever almost got busted)
• The Hyatt Regency, 2nd Floor…and of course, pretty much every public restroom on the shop level of the Embarcadero Center, of which the Hyatt was a part.

But like one of the contributors in the video above pointed out, after 9/11 all these buildings slammed shut to casual comings-and-goings. (Or should I say, comings-and-cummings.)

Some day I may go into greater detail regarding my adventures—and misadventures—my own Tales of the City as they were, but I’m in no hurry, as much as I’m sure you’d all like to read them. I don’t want to shock my husband after all these years. I mean, he knows I was a slut when I was younger; I’m just not sure I want him to know how much of a slut I was…

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Disgusting

“Host Bodies.”

And so, the Axlotl Tanks were created…

The Axlotl tanks were living organisms within the original Dune series of novels.

Axlotl tanks were the means by which the Bene Tleilax reproduce a living human being from the cells of a cadaver, producing type of clone called a ghola. These tanks were also used in the creation of genetically engineered assassins known as Face Dancers. Later in the series, the Axlotl tanks are engineered to replicate the spice Melange, previously only available on the desert planet Arrakis where it is created naturally as part of the life cycle of giant Sandworms.

The Bene Gesserit suspected that the Axlotl tanks were what remained of female Tleilaxu, since no Tleilaxu females had ever been seen. Moreover, the Reverend Mother Darwi Odrade, during the time of the Honored Matres, had declared to Tleilaxu Master Tylwyth Waff that neither she nor any of her sisters would become an Axlotl Tank. This remark elicited shock from the Master, a reaction that indicated that the Bene Gesserit suspicion was true, especially since he did not deny it.

Genetic information could be coded into those bred in Axlotl Tanks. As a result, the resulting organisms could be bred for certain aptitudes, skills, and reflexes.

Despite the revulsion Axlotl Tanks caused in many groups and cultures, by the time the Honored Matres had conquered the planets of the Old Imperium, the Bene Gesserit had adopted them for the creation of gholas to further their own cause.

I have a feeling Frank Herbert is either rolling over in his grave or laughing uncontrollably at his own prescience.

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