Month: May 2021

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An Impossible Task

Whenever I read a gay autobiography of someone my age—a child of the 60s and their subsequent trip through the disco 70s and the AIDS slaughterhouse of the 80s and 90s, I think that I really should record at least some of my own adventures posterity. I fear that those adventures—as salacious, funny, and heartbreaking as many of them were—won't ever measure up to the accounts that inspired me to do it in the first place.

I started thinking about all the people who have touched my life—family, friends, friends with benefits, brief and/or anonymous sexual encounters, lovers, partners, coworkers—people who each in their own way contributed to shaping me into the man I am today, I soon realized they numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands.

I mean, if you're in your 20 or 30s (I know no one reading this is, based on previous surveys), listing everyone who has passed through and influenced your life—would be a much more manageable task, but for me, someone who is just a few years short of retirement, the task is near impossible.

Hell, I tried listing all the audio equipment I've bought over the years and that task became so horrific I gave up.

What do you think? Should I write at length of my adventures in the Whispering Bushes at the end of Golden Gate Park? the nights spent looking for love and dancing the night away at HisCo Disco, Moons Truck, and Bullwinkle? how I met my first long-term partner and some of the other men who were to become lifelong friends?

As the YouTubers say, "Let me know in the comments below."

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Quote of the Day

I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling." ~ Haruki Murakami

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Wayback Machine

Al Parker and Will Seagers

This picture was posted on Instagram yesterday by @robzstuff57 and it immediately took me back to my first few years in San Francisco.

Sometime in 1989 I ran into Al Parker at the Whispering Bushes at the end of Golden Gate Park. He took a liking to me, following like a lost puppy. It was obvious he wasn't going to give up the chase and I ended up leaving the venue altogether just to ditch him.

I can hear you all now: "You turned down AL PARKER?!" Yes, my faithful readers. I did. I thought, "No way Al—I've seen what you've done with your dick and where it's been and NO THANK YOU!"

Around the same time, I was at aThai restaurant on 24th Street in Noe Valley one evening and Will Seagers (of L.A. Tool & Die fame) walked in with friends. We locked eyes and spent the rest of the evening flirting. Nothing came of it, but it was definitely an ego boost.

To this day I am gobsmacked that I survived the 20 years I called San Francicso home and somehow managed to come out of it alive and HIV negative…

Of course, it was also there that I probably came in contact with HPV and the resulting laryngeal cancer that sprang from it, so I can't say I was completely unscathed.