2007-02-22 - 10:09 p.m.
Back in the day, when Ebineezer Squeege was staying at my parents’ place – this was before he shot himself in the head, leaving 50 identical suicide notes reading “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” thrown around his body – he decided to teach himself a new trade and so he purchased this famous Mavis Beacon Typing CD so he could bone up on his secretarial skills.
Now, I don’t know if you remember, but Mavis Beacon’s Typing CD – and perhaps we should call the device by its proper name, which was “Learning To Type With Mavis Beacon” – was this ridiculous device which would pose little typing tests and time you while performing them. And as you typed, the kindly little voice of Mavis Beacon would occasionally peep up to offer encouragements, in the voice of a throaty, yet unthreateningly eubonic African American mammy.
“Thas’ riiight,” the voice would say. “Keep going. You doin’ fine.” It would not be an uncommon thing to hear the sound of typing coming from Ebineezer Squeege’s room, along with the “Thas’ riiiight… You doin’ fiiiine” voice of Mavis Beacon. Ebineezer Squeege was not much of a typist, though, I seem to recall. I daresay he never got his typing speed above 20. But this was before the Internet really turned us all into typists, isn’t it.
I don’t know why the voice of Mavis Beacon has recently started to haunt me of late. It’s odd. But maybe I have become somewhat aware that, as I go about the horrors of my day, I start to talk to myself in the Mavis Beacon voice. The truth is, I think we could all use some encouragement as we go about our lives. How pleasant it would be if we were just doing some odious chore, like paying bills or running errands, and the voice of Mavis Beacon would reassure us, saying, “It’s all right, baby. You doing fine. Just keep goin’. Don’t you worry chyle.” And so, some mornings, when I crawl out of my warm bed, I find myself muttering like Mavis, “It’s alllll riiight. You’re doing fiiiine” just to motivate myself. Is that overly nutsy? At least Mavis isn’t telling me to kill the president. Yet.
This weekend, I was up in Berkeley attending the wedding of some family friends. It was a delightful, offbeat and musical wedding, as the bride was the cellist in a pretty famous orchestra, and the groom is this quirky computer genius. The ceremony and the reception afterwards managed to combine intimacy with whimsy – but while the couple were most assuredly atheists, the wedding was both emotional and tasteful, usually an odd combination in the absence of religion.
We stayed at the Berkeley City Club, a gorgeous old social club that was designed in the late 19th century and which combined a slight decay with gilt, belle époque luxury. The beds were comfy and there was wireless Internet. I had the particular pleasure of enjoying a long swim in the club’s beautiful, mosaic-enlaid swimming pool, which was about 30 yards long, under mighty stone eaves of a cathedral-like ceiling. Both building and the pool were designed by Julia Morgan, who also designed the Hearst Castle at San Simeon. And it was like swimming in a pool that was situated for some reason in a Scottish castle. I loved it!
The wedding itself was completely charming – as I mentioned, the Bride was a professional cellist in a nationally famous orchestra, so all her friends really put out the dog to give her something special, musically speaking. There was a fabulous string quartet that performed a lovely Mozart concerto – which was followed by a lovingly executed rendition of the theme song from The Magnificent Seven. There was a pair of voice artists who read a lovely love poem about love which was resent from a Bach piece for the cello (in honor of the bride’s cellist talent). And then a blustery old Shakesperean actor stepped up to recite a sonnet – you know the one, “Let Not The Meeting of True Minds Admit Impediment...” It was quite delightful.
The one downside of the event was the fact that the newlyweds were vegetarians, and this meant that the wedding feast was all veggie, which was more than a little bit disgusting. I don’t know about you, but I felt positively cheated by the fact that we were served, instead of the customary Beef Wellington or Rack of Lamb, a gigantic Barbar The Elephant-poisoning mushroom cap, with a bed of rice and deep fried zucchini. Who the heck wants to eat a gigantic mushroom cap and a deep fried zucchini at a wedding? Deep fried zucchini is for watching the super bowl at Hooters, not a wedding.
Still, Berkeley was beyond beautiful, and San Francisco was bathed with that kind of gentle golden glow that truly made it look like heaven. Berkeley, and San Francisco for that matter, where I had not been since I was 19, actually felt a little edgier than I remember it being. I figured that the city would be far more New Age-y and soft – but, in fact, the buildings all looked as though they were going somewhat to seed, and so did the people, wandering about the streets, muttering. The Street People of San Francisco were really much more abrasive and terrifying than the kinder, gentler ones here in the City of Angels.
At one point, I dashed out of some wedding thing a bit early so I could run on down to the Castro, where, as strange as it happens, I had never been before. Can you imagine? I took the BART right down to 16th and Mission, and quite efficient it was too. Though when I stepped out of the train, I immediately started walking in the wrong direction. Some kindly well meaning local couple, seeing that I was clearly a gay tourist, called out to me, “Oh, you don’t want to go THAT way. Not unless you want to get your head bashed open! You want to go THAT way! THAT’s the way to the Castro!”
Other, better writers than I will have written about the Castro so I shall not bore you overmuch about the details and description. But I was quite amazed at how the Castro actually felt like a gay city, not just a neighborhood in some other, wider city. By contrast, in West Hollywood, you are always aware that you are sort of in a gay theme park: People come from their “real” lives to West Hollywood where they gambol and play and then go home. You can tell that the Castro is just a community – it’s how gay folks would live if they ran the world. I wandered about a couple of bars, and had a quick ham and cheese omelette at a Castro greasy spoon, where the door was held open for me by the retired gay porn star Jack Ryan, who was leaving the restaurant having just had his own dinner.
Later, as I promenaded about the boulevard, I somehow mysteriously found myself outside a San Francisco bathhouse. “What an opportunity to sample the men of San Francisco!” I thought to myself, and, given that the admission fee was pleasantly modest, in I went.
Mind you, you and I both know that for the most part, the folks who go to bathhouses are usually hideous old troll tourists. But tonight, the place was full of delectable men, both young and not so young. The bathhouse was laid out as a voyeur’s paradise, with no rooms to lock and no place to have sex where other folks could not, I they so chose, watch you. This, of course, is a godsend for the hideous – though not always such a nice thing for handsome boys who want privacy. But if privacy is what you want, I suppose you really should go somewhere else.
I was pleasantly surprised by the high caliber of lad skulking and haunting the place. They were having sex everywhere! And a small crowd of lesser blessed mortals were inevitably to be found not far away keeping an eye on them. I had several pleasant moments – one boinking a tall and lean guy in his mid-30s who moaned and grunted while fingering the ass and hole of another guy, a hot, hairy chested (and assed) Greek boy in his 20s, who had the loudest orgasm I had almost ever heard outside of a porn movie for the blind.
As I wandered about a different area of the club, I found this almost jaw-droppingly beautiful young man, jet black hair and a chiseled face, with a perfectly toned body. He lay on his back, masturbating to a porn movie – and as I walked by I gently tickled his butt. He let out a low moan and spread his legs further, which, as you know, is Bathhouse-speak for “keep going.” And so I gently lubed up my finger and slid it inside his perfect rear end. His eyes promptly rolled up to the back of his head and his mouth fell open slackly. Really, it was rather gratifying. Another fellow came up along side me, bald and whiskery, and started muttering filthy things into my ear.
“Fuck him!” grunted the bald whiskery man. The cute boy shook his head – fingers only, he clearly was signaling.
“I wanna see him CUM,” croaked the whiskery fellow.
Obediently, the cute boy stroked his erection, moaned a little, and squirted a rather large load of semen all over his belly. A short time later, I ran into the young man again, in the shower room. He was even better standing on his feet than he was lying on his back. Standing up, he resembled a male model or a soap opera star, with speedo tan lines. He smiled at me, and gave me a wink.
The trouble is, with all the delightful and juicy sex, I wound up missing the last BART train to Berkeley. In fact, I found myself on absolutely the wrong train, period, and when I discovered my error I discovered that I was trapped at some godawful train station in the middle of an industrial lot in nowhere Oakland. I gaped in horror at my mistake. The station was closing up right behind me -- I had missed the last train home! The creepy Mexican bus boys waiting for the all night bus leered and glared at me, their golden teeth glinting in the moonlight. How on earth would I get out of this pickle – stranded in a strange city, in the middle of nowhere, in a bleak and dangerous neighborhood? How would I survive – and what would be left of me? I know the answer, but clearly, you do not.
