THAT'S WHY THESE LADIES LIKE IT CAMP

i would like to dispel a myth, namely the apparently widely held conception amongst the believers in the liberated homosexualities of the new century that everyone at the folsom street fair is doing it up and down the sidewalk (and not "fucking," because that can't be widely enough construed). i would like here to correct this misconception because i had also been operating under the spell of the myth and have been obliged to explain on multiple occasions in the days since last sunday's fair how that crab and all of the antibiotic resistant gonorrhea ended up getting spread if in fact folsom was not a great big public bacchanal -- although the truth is also that i might just have missed it.

i was there, of course, to star, but in a supporting role, and in the morning i was needed as support. a prescription called in from across the country, and i was off down market to pick it up. i dallied. i was one beer under, the song was good, and i didn't think that the hour until the prescription was ready was up. so i went searching for ghosts at the edge of the financial district. but no luck, no ghosts: the salad place on sansome street was closed. i was, however, almost unnerved when i turned around and came up against the flatiron building, not the green one near the transamerica pyramid, but still a reminder of the literal edifice of the publishing industry that i had left unvisited in new york. but i also still had a prescription to pick up, and panty hose to buy, which weren't for sale at the pop-up cvs where the script had been sent. so i crossed market and bought the hose and the watermelon gum that i needed at a walgreens. i forgot, however, to get a paper, so i stopped at a starbucks on the way back to the hotel. i tried to cut the line by just leaving cash at the register, but that wasn't happening in the smiling confusion of san francisco, so i waited, only then to see the stacks of courtesy papers in the lobby of the hotel.

i elbowed my second beer out of its wine glass and onto the floor as i was lacing a corset. numbers three and four went quickly down on the street, although at the street fair i don't think i remember seeing a single person going down. but as the tallest member of the entourage i was responsible for guidance. still, it wasn't like i wasn't looking. although maybe i wasn't. we located, we walked, they had photos taken, and i applied sunscreen to chests. we walked all the way down and out, refreshed ourselves and made one of our meetings. the other ones were back at the fair. so we walked back up, but by the time the other meetings had been made it was nearly evening, and i was given permission to leave. my eyes had been open, but i had hardly seen a thing. the fallout, maybe, of my obligations to my supporting role. on my way out, i did catch the end of a performance that involved some kinky boots and whipping (and at the very end an unmistakably tender hug), but nowhere had i found a place where i could have safely learned to sound before i arrived at the party on 8th street at the edge of the fair.

and the party was over. so the ones who were left and i went somewhere else. but the techie bear house picnic wasn't much fun either. of all the things to eat, they were going to eat fish. i didn't join them, however, as i was occupied in conversation on a couch. to be sure, though, i never felt the slightest inclination to scan the qr code that was above the passageway to the dining room on a wall at ninety degrees to the one decorated with a pink cow head and a giant painting of a brown my little pony (the current generation) plowing a purple one up the ass (the perspective, of course, from behind). i was occupied in conversation. and to be sure, it's easy to talk about privilege when you're sitting on that couch.

i continued that conversation later, back at truck, after the techie bear picnic had finished and the hosts had left to gayly gad about somewhere else. i'd left them a present. folsom was nearly desterted at ten thirty, but the bars were full of gym bunnies flirting in four hundred dollar once a year harnesses. folsom is nice, she said, don't get her wrong, but it doesn't feel as inclusive as it should, nor as representative, the same with pride; and i told her that i thought i agreed. it hadn't even been the bacchanal. but it was nice, i said, to meet a woman like her at a bar like truck. i was happy for both, and we shared a hug that was full of unmistakable tenderness. it was already several hours into the dance party at the public works, and the thirty dollar cover wasn't going down for the later i showed up. so since no one i knew and had gotten in touch with via text seemed to be there, i decided to stay where i was. plus, the crowd at truck had acknowledged that i was looking good in those latex hot pants. i didn't care that i had to make the explanation of my battered wife beater to almost everyone individually. the fallout of supporting the entourage, but simple damage control.

and there, at truck, i smiled at the face of my own peculiar fetish pride as the boys and the old radical fairies felt my ass: one of the performers took the stage naked with her dick and her balls tucked expertly between her legs and behind her as she sauntered around collecting dollar bills in her every available crevice to the ecstatic inquietude of tori amos singing "leather." (previously, the guy dressed as a green bubble anemone had done his butoh freak out while gradually popping his costume and then having cartons of sugar poured over him in the bar shower, but a friend wouldn't believe me later when i told him.) we talked after the show, the naked leather performer and i, then we danced with her cohort, then i followed them at one thirty to last call. it's possible that the bacchanal was still to be had at the after party, but i declined the invitations. i must have been on beer twelve.

back across market and through the tenderloin. she couldn't have seen my bloody feet because i hadn't taken off my shoes to see them yet myself, but she was all sympathy. "it's cute...but baby, you look cold." i was close enough to home, though, i told her, i didn't need any crack. i'd been smelling that shit all day in the street. "child please." she rolled her eyes with her head, off in the other direction. unmistakably tender.

MEAN HOS, part 2

in the morning, at breakfast, we talked about the night before, and the story circled back around to storytelling. "a mermaid," the flamenco guitarist from istanbul had said, "is just a woman with one leg, and we have lots of those in turkey." and that's what i told them. my life -- her words not mine -- had been so interesting. but the thing was, we told her, it's just putting yourself into the situations in which you find yourself talking about mermaids in certain company, and the interesting makes itself from there -- and especially in the telling, as had been the case with the story of the night before. if we hadn't been talking about the ironic nuance of the most successful walk of shame outfits (the better the night before, the worse -- which is to say better -- the next morning), my morning's outfit might not have been as poignant. he'd dressed me in the fruit of the dogpatch so that i would have something clean for the walk back to the hotel where my bags were staying. then he'd joked that i would look homeless walking with my clothes under my arm in his neighborhood. i couldn't, as they say, have cared less...it's just that i liked his alternative more. so i walked the northeast corner of the tenderloin over geary and down o'farrell, waited in front of the mirrors between the lobby elevators and then greeted the ladies dressed as a certain kind of san franciscan, carrying my clothes in a custom commemorative bag, both sides decorated so that i had always to be showing one to the street: written large in black sharpie, "slut" and "whore," "folsom 2012." and i wore that walk large.

walking north from union square, i couldn't shut up about how i'd apparently never seen san francisco in at least half of a half dozen visits. not much of a story, but i saw tippi hedren run across union square before forcing the ladies to pose in front of the zara store so that i would have something from san francisco to send to the woman who wouldn't be getting the second mug that i didn't steal from ritual. then, although the crowd on stockton street never broke we came out of it, and just in time to see one of the ladies' mothers performing one of her hits in disguise and a tulip skirt. but at where we turned onto columbus, we were already too far into north beach to see city lights. and we didn't stop moving until we saw the piles of crabs under the one big one at the wharf. tomorrow, all the mens from all the cities would get a chance to fuck them off of each other in the street, but for time being it was just fuck it and on to the quarter machines. and i saw alcatraz, but not the bridge. apparently, i'd never been to san francisco, but i didn't mind that we didn't have time for anything else before getting ready to go to san jose to see the photographer, because our next destination would have been valencia, which in all of the times that i'd apparently never seen san francisco was the place that i'd never left. diuretics for lunch.

back at the hotel, back in a taxi, and in line for the train to san jose with the wigs and the rest of wardrobe. sped to the photographer's studio from the station in san jose. makeup, corset tying, boot lacing, ab crunching; then another pose, another outfit, our signature playlist luckily still on her phone. mean hos. canes, umbrellas, garters, all fours. praise be to editing software.

it's legal to drink on caltrain, he'd told us, and he left us at the station with a bottle of asti after he'd sped us back in time to just make the last train. our car didn't have a luggage rack, so wardrobe was crammed in the floor space between the ladies' seats and the ones in front of them. what would be made to sound more interesting with each subsequent retelling was slouched, sweaty, sore and hungry, chatting about beach squats in sausalito with the man who came through for tickets. she hadn't had time to pull her mask before we'd needed to pack back up and get to the train. i hadn't had the benefit, and could only hope for benevolent editing. the other assistant hadn't been forced in front of the lens. this vampire makeup...she flicked her fingers open at her face, so i popped the asti and poured us a toast to alexander skarsgård. at twenty-three of twenty-four stations, we probably looked like a bunch of real silly girls, but at the one, as we cackled out toast, we were people who could have been in our story. lipstick on a too big red plastic cup. a mean ho is just a person who's willing to take a taxi to the station to lace up and get in front of the camera, and on the last train back to san francisco the night before the fair, those were the only kind of people that a mean ho wanted to know.

HELLO WEST COAST!...AGAIN; or, THERE...AND BACK...(AGAIN)

it wasn't the same, but i knew going into it that the weekend wouldn't be the same if it turned out to be (the same, that is). and from the very beginning: i'd only ever arrived in the city by car, and i'd only ever ridden bart from the airport once before, long before, when the car was dead in berkeley and we'd had to ride the train out to the airport because we'd made a promise to her mother that we'd ask after her wallet at one of the airport hotels. so even that first ride was something new, and even if only because this time i wasn't making the trip at night and could see -- and could see that i was back on the west coast. i didn't, however, opt for the entirely unprecedented experience of stepping off for whatever adventure i might not find in south san francisco or in daly city, and i left them behind with almost nothing more than the terse regard i'd given them for the reminder that they'd given me of where i was. but i'd been reminded of something else as well, because the reminder of where i was -- or, more correctly, of where i was approaching -- had caught me off guard with an early suggestion of the diffuse melancholy with which i'm always left by (or that i seem to always feel when i'm leaving) san francisco. not a feeling of loss, exactly, but a certain feeling of losing out; and this weekend wasn't, it seemed, going to be different in that respect, although it wasn't going to be the same.

and it had already started out differently, and not only because i'd flown in or because i'd ridden bart from the airport to the city, but because i got off the train at the same stop that i always had whenever i'd ridden from downtown or the east bay, and the difference wasn't that i walked up the stairs to 16th and mission alone, but that the people i wasn't with in that moment weren't the same. then i walked up mission to taqueria cancún, the same place i had always stopped before walking over to ritual on valencia, and the people who weren't with me there again weren't either the ones who were my sense of losing out since the last time. i definitely needed a burrito.

and then i can't say that i needed another coffee, but i had one, because how else was i going to be able to steal another mug from ritual? the one i'd gotten the last time had made it to spain from portland and then to portugal from spain, but it stayed, chipped, with a friend in montenegro because it was already all of the weight of its journey and had, as i realized only in the moment that i hefted it and decided not to add more contraband to another border crossing, gone as far as its story needed it to go. so it stayed as the beginning of someone else's, and then, in the story that i had been telling, i flew across the country to steal myself another one. it turned out in the meantime, however, that i was going to need two (which is another different story), and i'll say here that the difficulty i foresaw in getting back to ritual in that same particular weekend for the second was what kept me from taking the first. all or nothing. in the moment, though, i might have admitted that i just hadn't positioned myself appropriately to be successful without raising suspicion (especially with the cupping going on), and i was going to need to execute a perfectly clean operation if i wanted to make sure that i could pull of another one later. as i took a photograph of the mug i'd been given for my coffee in order to send to the friend to whom i had gifted the one i remembered having taken the last time with much less deliberation (although, admittedly, aided also by a now absent accomplice), i regretted not having the foresight just to pay for a pair and lie about their origin. insult to injury that i'd ended up simply paying for a featured coffee that i didn't consider to be very good.

to taqueria cancún and to ritual, but not to dolores park, not even alone, because this weekend was going to be different, and the park would be full of ghosts, smartly accessorized underemployment enviable repartee, especially on a sunny friday afternoon, a foggy picture of the fag, the lesbians, the trans man and the pansexual beauty queen. but this weekend's photo shoot was at a different location, and besides, the park was still on the meh list, at least until sunday. i did, however, brave truck. i'd had a coffee after all, and anyway the bar was in the opposite direction of the park on a more straightforwardly sentimental path toward the hotel, the foggy picture of an after party and a too late first date. one of the ladies had texted to say that they were on their way there, and i wasn't half done with my beer when i got a second message to say that they had arrived. so i said goodbye to the bartender, who hadn't worked at the bar long enough for my ever to have met him before, and to the only other two o'clock customer (or friend of whomever), having at least had the time to be told what was going to be happening at the bar for the rest of the weekend. then it was quickly down past the banners on folsom (because i'd taken an extra moment to finish my drink), a zag onto 10th and another onto market before recognizing the civic center for the very first time in however many visits and crossing into the tenderloin, on the back end of which i found the ladies and dropped my bags where they would be staying in that second floor room at the intersection of taylor and o'farrell.

and i don't think that i was very successfully communicative of the extent to which that certain sense of losing out, that melancholy, had absolutely -- and already -- diffused to solidly permeate the three hours i'd spent without them. of course, they hadn't been there, with me at that after party or in the picture at the park, and that might have been the real barrier to my conveying the strangeness of knowing that...i didn't know, actually, but what i can tell you i know now is that i was sweaty and i smelled and i was all of a sudden self-conscious. apparently, that certain sense of whatever i was finding difficult to articulate was randomly conducive to excitability, and that, apparently, was confusing. i needed to shower. then the picture gets foggy.

maybe it was only because the two of us had been recounting the part of the christmas saga that we'd shared in madrid, but when our long way back from unbelievably bland mexican and from the coffee place next to the corset place on linden being closed took me back through the civic center with the ladies in the dark, city hall was unmistakably spanish. the one who could see it agreed. we hadn't noticed or remarked on cool super discount at the southeast corner of taylor and eddy streets when we'd passed it earlier because she (the one who had agreed) had been telling us about how when she'd gone down to pick up her wig that stefan had been on the phone and on top of that busy with everything else and just hadn't been having it but had helped her with what grace you could imagine he could have mustered nonetheless. and on that earlier walk down taylor we'd agreed that that interaction should be a portent. then just before that, although i'd feared that the rest of my first attempt at this story had just left them confused while i showered, the other one had told me that my account of finding the leather pride flag flying over the mission armory had had the verve of a patriot's description of his love for his country. so i supposed that here, in some sense, and nonetheless concurrent with that lingering sense of losing out, i had a sense of home, however diffuse and melancholic.

i was, however, still afraid of being called out as the poseur as i followed the ladies around to the events. i was on solicited hire, yes, but unquestionably inexperienced. eagerness was, well, to be taken aside. luckily though, it got me company back to truck that night and then later the party invitation that i'd been hoping to elicit all day. for a glass of whiskey with him and his cat. luckily too, he had experience (and tea), and he told me that most everyone at the street fair would be posing, so i would fit right in if i wanted to, although it wouldn't matter to him either way because he wasn't going. (it would turn out that he had other plans.) was it that, then? on what, exactly, was i already afraid of having lost out? i didn't know -- exactly -- and hence the general nature of the problem...although he didn't ask. he'd lost out once in italy, but had he been to lisbon? that city had always reminded me of here. no, he said, he hadn't been, but he was definitely interested. and with that, it began again, that feeling that, later, the memory forgetting that in the moment it was somewhere else, levels stupid accusations of infatuation. but in fact no, just more of the same, only going forward with the stories, happily alone in the arms of the city, although like new and, like always, this time different. 

YOU CAN LIKE THE LIFE YOU'RE LIVING, YOU CAN LIVE THE LIFE YOU LIKE

tonight, the paris review is hosting a screening of "withnail and i" at the brooklyn book fair, and we're not going to make it. the ultimate coming of the cold in the midwest means the coming of a grey, unpopulated bleakness, but the transition period has its inspirational poesy too (the one noted by cernuda in "ocnos" -- although in regards to the same season in the very different south of spain), and even though it also often means colds. infected sinuses, more specifically. and so we're not going to make it to the screening of "withnail and i." we can't tell which of the discarded tissues in the house full of discarded tissues were used for snot and which for semen, which beyond what we've had to admit would only be the added confusion of having to change out itineraries to take us through new york for the film, might also present some interesting hygiene issues at folsom later in the weekend.