"I want you to cum on my shirt", he says to me. We're
standing in the backyard of a little house on the edge of MacLaren
Park, along with a hundred other men, each of us clutching a beer
or a Coke or a bottle of water.
"Yeah, right," I say.
"No, really. I'm going to wear it to Folsom tomorrow."
He
means the Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco's annual leather-themed
block party, an event that draws nearly half a million leather and
fetish aficionados and accompanying gawkers from around the world.
Deciding what to wear to Folsom is a major part of the experience,
and the guy talking to me already has it figured out. Apparently he
wants me to help with the accessorizing.
Feeling a little put on the spot, I look past him, over his shoulder
as Luke, the hunky fireman, lifts the lid on the barbeque and a cloud
of sweet-smelling smoke lifts skyward. Luke, like myself and nearly
every other man here, has a buzzed head and facial scruff. It's
a little humbling to realize that I look like everyone else here.
It's also a little humbling when everyone asks me if I'm
from out of town.
"No, I live here."
"Then how come we've never seen you before?"
Because I've spent more time in AA meetings than at the Eagle
Beer Bust in the last three years, I want to say. But it's too
many words and there're too many men crowded into this backyard.
The backs of my knees are pressed against an empty lawn chair; there's
no further retreat available. I just shrug my shoulders, hoping that
maybe I'll come across as mysterious. There's only so
many times when you can be considered new meat.
Mark is waiting for an answer, and I can't quite think of anything
to say. "What color is it?" I ask dumbly.
"What color is what?" Mark says.
"Black. And it's a tank top."
"You're serious?"
"Yeah."
"I don't believe you."
He turns to Armando, his boyfriend. "Give me the car keys."
Mark slips away through the crowd. Armando lifts his red plastic cup
of beer and leers pleasantly at me while guzzling it down. Armando,
upon meeting me for the first time about a half hour ago, gave me
an open-mouthed kiss. "He does that to everyone," my friend
Jeff had said. At the moment Jeff seems to be watching the ground
with a half-smile, doing his best to avoid all eye contact. I decide
to defer to him on the matter of the tank top. After all, they're
his friends. I look past him and watch a bearish-type guy slide naked
into the hot tub.
"C'mon," Armando says, picking up where his boyfriend
left off.
"You're serious," Jeff says.
"Hell yes. C'mon."
"No."
"C'mon."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No!"
Armando turns his focus to me. "C'mon, please cum on his
shirt."
I blush too easily.
"C'mon."
"Uh, no thanks."
"Please"
"No."
"C'mon, what will it take, I'll help you out."
I look at the ground, shaking my head at each request. But I can't
wipe the smile from my face.
Mark's back. He holds a black tank top folded up in his hand.
For some reason the sight of the shirt makes it all real, and I have
to surpress a giggle.
"Armando and I already came on it, but we need a lot more."
He says, unfolding the shirt.
Accepting Jeff's invitation to the pre-Folsom barbeque (or "boy-be-que"
as the E-vite called it) meant issuing myself a challenge. I was spending
too much time alone, and a party with lots of hot men would be a welcome
distraction. But parties always guarantee one thing: extroverts will
show up.
Surveys indicate that 2/3 to 3/4 of the world's population are
extroverts. According to Jung, who is credited with inventing the
terms, extroverted people draw energy from external sources, such
as people and situations. Conversely, introverted people prefer to
find renewal within themselves; they are oriented internally. Their
"batteries" get recharged during times of quiet and introspection.
These numbers seem low to me, perhaps because extroverts seem to take
up more space in the world, and because many of them like to talk.
A lot. My friend Brian is a fellow introvert, and one of our favorite
activities is to make fun of extroverts behind their backs. Especially
those I like to call rabid extroverts. All sorts of people can fall
under this category. There is no scientific method to labeling someone
a rabid extrovert, it's a self-confirming diagnosis: look for
them, and you'll find them.
These are the people who will walk up to you at a bar while you are
minding your own business and tell you to "Smile!!" These
are the people who select John Phillip Sousa marches as their cell
phone ringer, and who set the volume on "high". These
are the people who will answer such cell phones during a live performance
of Shakespeare. These are the people who will walk late into an AA
meeting, as the speaker is sharing their story, clomping across the
hardwood floor in their boots, crossing right in front of the speaker
in order to claim that last empty seat in the front row. Then they
will remain standing as they take off their coat. When they finally
settle into their chair they'll ignore the speaker, preferring
to look around the room for their friends, making cute little waving
gestures and smiling, thinking that as long as they stage whisper
"Hi there!" they're still being polite. These are
the people who will corner you at a party and pepper you with questions,
interrupting as you try to provide a thoughtful answer so that they
can tell you their thoughts on the matter. They're also the
ones looking over your shoulder the entire conversation, scanning
the party for more attractive people. These are the people who tell
you that you make them nervous because "you're so quiet
all the time!!" These are the people who willingly become infomercial
hosts, the kind of men and women who look like they bent over their
sink and snorted up a big fat line of meth as they were blow-drying
their hair that morning.
Because extroverts are the majority, many of them are under the mistaken
impression that there is something "wrong" with introverts,
that the way to cure an introvert is to thrust him into social situations.
Speaking for my fellow introverts, I implore you to leave us alone.
It's possible that some of these people aren't really
extroverts; they're just rude. But it's far more satisfying
to label them rabid extroverts, for the smug sense of superiority
it provides. Making fun of extroverts should be an introvert's
privilege, as payback for living in an extroverted world. Besides,
it can't hurt them. They're not the type to care about
the thoughts going through my head as they choose a seat next to me
in an otherwise empty movie theater.
I've been thinking about these labels a lot recently. Of course,
I'd like to think that I'm someone who defies categorization,
both in personality and in use. But the truth of the matter is that
like most people, I fall back on labels. And while I've never
appreciated being labeled anything, I've found comfort in Jung's
definition.
It was a comfort to read that my introversion was merely a method
for recovering and protecting my energy, rather than an indication
of social disorder. After all, I had spent much of the past three
years in solitude. I had gotten sober in 2000, which took me out of
the bars and the clubs that I frequented with friends nearly every
weekend for several years. I had also been single, and while I did
attend AA meetings a few nights each week, the vast majority of my
free time was now spent alone. Time spent writing, which had suffered
neglect during my years of addiction. Time spent reading and watching
movies and even playing video games.
As someone who's dealt with life-long depression however, too
much solitude can be detrimental to my mental health. I am reminded
of a passage from the recent novel, Life of Pi, when the
narrator, a boy who has escaped a sinking ship, ends up in a lifeboat
with a Siberian Tiger. He comes across a survival manual that offers
practical information for surviving at sea after a shipwreck. Apart
from practical information about edible sea life and water conservation,
it also offered this nugget of wisdom:
"Unnecessary exertion should be avoided, but an idle mind tends
to sink, so the mind should be kept occupied with whatever light distraction
may suggest itself. Playing card games, twenty questions, and "I
spy with my little eye" are excellent forms of simple recreation.
Community singing is another sure-fire way to lift the spirits. Yarn
spinning is also highly recommended.
An idle mind tends to sink. What an elegant phrase, and one
that I've proven frequently over the last three years. As much
as I need my solitude, too much of it leaves me depressed and inert.
Activities that bring me pleasure - writing, working out, talking
with friends - become the hardest to do. I've learned, through
much trial and error, that balance is necessary. I need my solitude,
and then I need to leave the house.
I watched the man lean in towards Jay, a panther tattoo rippling across
his back. The man wore nothing but a Speedo, and as Jay spread his
towel across a deck chair, the man asked him a question. I couldn't
hear the words from across the pool, but I could see his intention.
Jay looked somewhat shyly at him, nodding an assent.
Jay is my "sponsee", a man that I mentor in AA. We were
in Palm Springs for an AA conference called Hot-n-Dry, which attracts
five hundred gay men from around the country to the Palm Springs Hilton.
And as I watched the man speak to Jay, I felt a strange mixture of
jealousy and pride, and protectiveness. That first afternoon I sat
on the edge of the pool, my ankles and feet several shades paler below
the surface of the water. It was 110 degrees. I watched as the men
arrived, each one seemingly better looking than the last. Or that
was the impression; my eyes gliding past the more average bodies,
resting longingly on the beautiful, coveting their physical surface.
It wasn't so much a sexual longing as it was a comparison game.
Me versus them, and through my own skewed calculations I always came
up short. Despite countless hours at the gym, my inner six-pack had
refused to show up for the weekend.
There's something decadent about Palm Springs. I'm not
sure if anyone there actually has a job. I felt like a dissolute celebrity,
tooling around the city in Jay's convertible BMW. We'd
put the top down and drive the long, flat roads between the conference
and the little desert bungalow where we were staying. The morning
light hitting the mountains, just beyond our touch. They were all
dust and rocks.
Those were my favorite moments, when it was just the two of us, away
from the conference and the hotel. Sometimes at night he'd ask
me to drive. I'd shift from second to third gear, feeling the
rumble of the engine coursing through the car and up my spine. That
was when I loved the desert; the blood-warm night, the colors of the
city's lights rich against the dark sky, the brilliance of the
constellations overhead. Jay in the passenger seat, head tilted back.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched him watch the moon, as the palm
trees slid past us. I liked him for that. I liked our quiet conversations,
and the comfortable silence between us. I liked seeing so much of
myself in him, all of those same insecurities that flared up when
I was around five hundred gay men, most of them in swimsuits. I liked
watching him play with the fear, as he talked to strangers by the
side of the pool. I liked how he'd come to me, when he'd
had enough, and ask if I was ready to leave.
I could think of nothing but sex all weekend. All that heat, all those
men, the pool and the Speedos and the hotel, each room a possibility.
Back at the bungalow we had our own pool and hot tub. The fence surrounding
the yard was just high enough that no one could see in. When Jay went
to bed I'd dive into the pool, leaving my swimsuit on the lounge
chair. I missed having a boyfriend./p>
If you put five hundred gay men together in a hotel, someone is bound
to get laid. I was bothered, constantly, by the idea that I might
be missing out. And that may be the price of introversion; the fear
of missing out, the inability to live fully in the public sphere.
Maybe that's the price of being the eternal observer, forever
watching from the edge of the crowd. That weekend both Jay and I preferred
to go home early each night, leaving the hotel and all of those possibilities.
Maybe all introverts wonder if they are missing out. Or maybe they're
less conflicted than I am, less torn between opposing desires: the
desire for new experience, and the desire to be alone. But I am conflicted.
And so it was that Folsom Street Fair came along, stirring up within
me both desire and dread.
My experience as a gay man in San Francisco is that Folsom Street
Fair is like a tractor beam. Or a giant black hole. You can feel the
swirling vortex of South of Market pulling you in. Everyone is either
going or pointedly NOT going; everyone is defining themselves against
Folsom. They love it. They hate it. They wouldn't miss it for
the world. They're escaping out of town. They're there
all day. They're just going for an hour or two. They're
over it. They can't take the crowds. They want to meet new people.
They just want to get laid. They're tired of those half-naked
freaks. It's their favorite day of the year. I feel safe in
assuming that few gay men in San Francisco have no opinion on the
subject; it would seem that Folsom demands an answer from each of
us.
I was distracted the entire week before the fair. I could feel it
in the air; the tension and the energy, as more and more people arrived
in the city, intent on having fun. Suddenly everyone had boots and
buzzcuts. The gym was packed every day, and all week I overheard conversations
about the circuit parties and the private sex clubs and the dungeons
and I'd walk past the bars where everyone was spilling out onto
the sidewalk and it all made me nervous.
I remembered the nine months I bartended, down in the heart of the
Folsom district. I remembered working during the fair, and the thousand
bucks I made in tips. I remembered the energy and the heat and the
drugs I took. There would be nothing new for me at the fair. I would
only get tired and cranky, pushed up against a half million people
crammed into five square blocks. Most of them wearing leather. I didn't
want the sleaze and the fucking, the anonymous sex with guys from
out of town.
Or maybe I did. Why the conflict, why was I so distracted all week?
Maybe I do want all that. Maybe I want to let loose. Maybe, every
now and then, I want to stop observing. Maybe I want to stop being
so damn cautious. Maybe I want the sleaze and the fucking and the
beckoning figure of potential.
Is sex the most extroverted of acts? Isn't sex the opposite
of solitude: the joining of two (or more) people in a moment of heat
and passion? Not necessarily. To use a cliché, theres
a difference between fucking and making love, between anonymous sex
and intimacy. My aversion to Folsom Street Fair wasn't about
the content; it was about the context. Yes, I want sexual experimentation;
I want leather and bondage and role-playing. But I'm old-fashioned.
I want it with one man, someone with whom there is trust and affection.
And I want to do it behind closed doors. At least, most of the time.
There is the stereotype of gay men as promiscuous, compulsive sex
addicts who cruise for anonymous partners in places both public and
private. And, as with most stereotypes, there is a sliver of truth.
And while most gay men probably prefer privacy, many of us have tried
sex in the bushes, if only out of curiosity and availability. My first
sexual experience, when I was eighteen, actually took place outside.
It was spring in Minneapolis. I was walking along the edge of Lake
Harriet after school. A cool breeze cut through the weak sunlight.
Dark April water lapped at the edges of the thin, stubborn sheets
of ice in the center of the lake. I walked, exhaling my pent-up winter
breath. I made it, my last winter before I got the hell out of Minnesota.
I tugged on the straps of my backpack and smiled at the dogs passing
by.
I cut across the empty parking lot towards the woods. There was a
shortcut home through the Bird Sanctuary, between the boulevard and
the sprawling acres of Lakewood Cemetery. I pushed through the rusting
metal turnstile, into the dark and quiet woods.
I liked the solitude, the dirt path under my feet, the trees sprouting
pale green buds overhead. The woods opened to a small marsh where
red-wing blackbirds clung to waving stalks of cattail. Patches of
snow in the shade.
I had figured out that men cruised each other there. I was always
walking past some guy feigning interest in the wildlife, sauntering
slowly down the darker trails. The bolder ones leaned up against tree
trunks and watched me pass. They all made me nervous. But not enough
to stay away. It's an honest shortcut, I told myself.
I didn't know what to do with them, anyway. I had never touched
another guy, though my raging hormones didn't want to wait any
longer. I was simply too scared to stop, to give them more than a
glance. Sometimes I wished I could.
I hid behind my headphones and my purposeful gait. I passed them,
as though I had someplace better to be. I didn't really know
what men could do to each other. My fantasies were vague and shadowy.
I imagined what another man's body would feel like, how I could
merge with him. A flash of underarm hair, sweat, Fruit of the Looms.
A heavy weight against me.
A thin path diverged from the trail. It pointed towards home. I followed,
ducking under a low branch, into the shaded woods. The path ran along
the edge of the cemetery, skirting a tall chain-link fence. I looked
out at the lines of pale headstones curving over the green, manicured
hills.
I saw someone ahead on the path, shrouded by the trees. A man, broad-shouldered,
looking out at the cemetery. He heard me approach and turned. Weathered
and handsome, something about him reminded me of a football coach.
Not the fat ones who taught at my high school, more like the ones
in the NFL. He even had a windbreaker on. Solid build, dark hair graying
at the temples. A little rough around the edges.
He watched me walk past. The path was secluded; thick woods separated
us from the road. We were barely a hundred yards from my house. I
walked past him but for the first time ever I allowed myself a glance
back. He was watching. I looked away but slowed my pace. My body was
in conflict, wanting to flee, my hormones surging. I stopped a few
yards away from him. I looked dumbly out at the cemetery's hillside
and the rows of headstones. I could feel him watching me, and again
I glanced back, blood screaming in my ears. I took a few steps and
sat down on the peeling trunk of a fallen oak. Remnants of a campfire
underfoot. I pulled off my backpack and set it against the tree. I
looked back at the cemetery as if studying a particularly beautiful
landscape. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him walking towards
me. He stopped a couple of feet away and I looked up at him.
He
smiled. "Hi there."
"Hi," I answered, giving him a brief smile. I pulled my
headphones down around my neck. I couldn't look him in the eye.
"Nice uh afternoon we're having."
"Yeah."
"Mind if I sit next to you?"
I shook my head and scooted over a couple of inches. He sat down heavily
next to me. I could smell tobacco and aftershave.
"You live around here?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"It's nice over here."
I looked down at the sooty remains of the fire. I kicked at a charred
log and it split in two. Ashes rose in the air between us. Someone
had thrown a crumpled can of Miller into the underbrush nearby.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Mike."/p>
"Mike, nice to meet you. My name is Carl."
I nodded mutely, nearly offering my hand as an introduction. I felt
strangely paralyzed. I wanted to run, but I couldn't. Suddenly
his hand was on my shoulder and I jumped. He laughed. "Didn't
mean to scare you." His hand was warm, rubbing clumsy circles.
My skin tingled under his uncertain movements. "You sure are
cute."
I smiled weakly. "Thanks." I glanced up at him and he
leaned towards me and at the last second I closed my eyes. He kissed
me and he tasted like stale cigarettes. I wondered if I tasted like
that, too. His wet tongue searched my mouth. I could feel the coarse
stubble of his chin. I opened my eyes while his mouth moved awkwardly
against mine. Suddenly he didn't seem as handsome. Suddenly
he seemed much older than before. Up close his windbreaker was cheap.
He was wearing polyester slacks. I pulled away. He kissed my forehead,
then took my hand.
"C'mon,"
he said.
I grabbed
my backpack and he pulled me further down the trail, closer to my
house. He stopped and turned to face me. He reached out and grabbed
my belt, unfastening me. He got down on his haunches and he pulled
my jeans down my thighs then lowered my briefs. I wasn't very
hard. I worried about this for a split second and then I felt the
warmth of his mouth, the surprising wet softness around my cock. I
could feel the cool spring air on my legs and ass, and I worried that
someone could see us through the trees. I looked out again over the
cemetery and rows of headstones. An angel carved from marble stood
over a grave, her head down as if grieving. His hands clutched the
back of my knees and his head bobbed up and down. I wasn't getting
very hard. Suddenly he rose back to his feet and he wrapped his arms
around me, his hands traveling up and down my back. "I'd
love to take you home, Mike, I could just eat you up." I stood
awkwardly in his embrace. He lowered his head and spoke softly in
my ear. "You just want someone to love you, don't you?"
I was too startled to answer.
He squeezed me once and then stepped back. "Take care, babe,"
he said. Then he turned and walked away, back into the bird sanctuary.
I watched him until he disappeared among the trees, my jeans around
my thighs. The cold metal of my belt buckle against my leg. I pulled
my jeans up and refastened them. I smoothed out my clothes and pulled
on my backpack. Then I walked in the other direction, towards home.