Читать книгу Disasterama! - Alvin Orloff - Страница 11

I NEVER WENT BACK TO POLK Street after that first, fateful pick-up, but a couple years later, I decided to try my luck elsewhere. By that time I’d graduated high school, moved to the city to attend San Francisco State, and was living in a squalid flat full of kids a mere mile away from the Castro, land of the Clones. Conventional wisdom had it the Castro Clones were rejecting the disempowering stereotype of the “Sissy” and reclaiming their masculinity: that the whole conflation of male-on-male love with effeminacy was a mistake based on 19th century pseudo-science and from now on the archetypical gay man would be a “Manly Man.” As a result of this thinking, the Castro resembled an open-air costume ball where everyone had decided to dress as either the Brawny Paper Towel Man or one of the Village People. This masquerade of manliness was not just ubiquitous, but mandatory. Clone sentiment toward non-Clones was summed up by the (allegedly) comical tee shirt slogan “No mustache, no banana.” Femme guys were about as popular as women, and in 1978 they actually outlawed drag at the gay parade.

I arrived in the Castro on a typical San Francisco summer evening, chilly and foggy, but everyone was dressed for heat. Lumberjack shirts were unbuttoned to reveal chiseled torsos, tee shirts were sleeveless to display bulging biceps, and shorts were cut high to showcase muscular thighs. All Clones were The Strong Silent Type, so there was none of Polk Street’s carnivalesque sparkle. Cruising was a serious business on Castro, not an occasion for giggling or screaming out “Hey girlfriend!” I desperately hoped one of these creatures might be so indiscriminately randy he’d give me a try. But, there I was, in my utterly wrong outfit: Beatle boots, black peg-leg jeans and mint green button-down shirt, Clairol blue-black hair, and my usual full face of make-up.

Oh, have I not mentioned the make-up? Well, it started in high school when I gave up trying to cure my horrendous acne with Clearasil and started hiding it with foundation. I could never find a shade to match my fair-but-blotchy skin and wound up looking rather wan and pasty. This necessitated subtle blush to liven my cheeks and a hint of lipstick. My eyebrows were already dyed black to match my hair, so, to make my lashes match, I gobbed on black mascara, which quite naturally demanded eyeliner, which then begged for a little eye shadow. Despite how this sounds, I was not exploring what we now call Gender Issues. I felt fey, but still 100 percent boy. Besides, my make-up didn’t make me look girly, but more like synth-pop superstar Gary Numan.

After a few small eternities of being ignored while watching the Clones around me hook up with breathtaking speed and ease, I grew bored and started peeking into bars. In every one, I saw guys posing like macho mannequins while their eyes scanned the crowd with robotic efficiency for attractive male flesh. There wasn’t a lot of chat, which made sense to me. If you’re just going to hop in bed with someone then leave and hop in bed with someone else, why waste time with socializing? So many men, so little time! This compulsive style of cruising wasn’t confined to the bars. All around were gay barbershops, gay restaurants, gay laundromats, gay everything, and in all these places the Clones cruised and cruised and cruised.

Eventually I spotted a fellow youngster loitering seductively next to a gay lamppost in front of a gay hardware store. He was extraordinarily ordinary with a forgettable face, medium blah hair, and a nothing outfit. His selling point for me was that, unlike every other male within a ten-block radius, he didn’t sport a mustache (I really didn’t care for mustaches). As I steeled myself to walk over and say hello, my palms grew clammy, my pulse raced, and my feet froze.

“He’s just a guy,” I told my feet. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

My feet remained firmly in place.

“Forward march!” I commanded.

No dice.

I tried humor. “Feets get movin’!”

Nada.

“Look,” I reasoned, “Someone has to make the first move. Maybe he’s shy.”

My feet remained unmoved.

I broke down and whined, “Is it a crime to say hello? Am I not a human being? We’re in the middle of a sexual revolution yet I remain trapped in the Bastille of chastity. Why are you destroying my life? Have pity on me!” My feet were having none of it. Realizing I was licked, I gave up and shuffled home to my empty, empty room.

Determined to try, try again, I began going to the Castro a few times a week to stand around. Usually I was invisible, but sometimes clones took time out of their busy erotic schedules to glare disapprovingly at my outfits. Once, a Clone with crazy, coked-out eyes actually spat on me! Eventually, in desperation, I tried butching up. Being eighteen, I felt I could still pull off a juvenile delinquent look and donned tight jeans, a black tee shirt, and black Converse All Stars, then greased my hair into a Rockabilly waterfall. Nobody glared at my outfit, but nobody said hello either. In my heart of hearts, I ultimately didn’t care for several reasons, mostly having to do with the aforementioned mustaches.

First, in my mind, mustaches were inextricably linked to adulthood, a condition I associated with home mortgages, light jazz, auto insurance, decrepitude, and death. Second, mustaches reminded me of barbershop quartets, which I have never enjoyed. Third, I felt unshakably certain that the proper accessory of choice at that moment was not the mustache, but the skinny tie. Fourth, the Clones’ uniformity revealed a herd-like disrespect for the hallowed tradition of expressing individuality through fashion. Fifth, the theatrical masculinity of the Clones reeked of trying too hard, indicating a level of insecurity that belied the very masculinity they were so intent on broadcasting. The Clones’ butch posturing looked to me like nothing more than ego assertion and emotional rigidity camouflaged in flannel and denim. Butch guys wasted so much psychic energy suppressing what they perceived as feminine in themselves (their vulnerable, nurturing, creative sides) they became enervated shells: virile and masculine outside, fearful and self-loathing inside.

Was I angry at the Clones? Well, yes. And yet, I also admired them . . . a bit, anyway. Their homogeneity was creepy, but it also made them super-visibly gay, which annoyed all the keep-it-hidden homophobes. When Dan White got his minimal sentence for shooting Harvey Milk, the Clones massively rioted outside City Hall, sending a clear message that from now on queer bashing had consequences. Go Clones! And there was definitely a playful aspect to the Clones’ masculinity. I mean, how seriously can one take grown men who walk around in cut-off short-shorts with mirrored sunglasses and yellow hard-hats? And, in all fairness, a lot clones were plenty campy when not cruising, enjoying old movies and worshipping divas like any good gay.

On some level I knew the time of the swishy, sissy fairy (the gay archetype with which I identified) was over. Sure, there would always be effeminate men, but the theatrical amplification of feminine traits as a means of broadcasting sexual preference was obsolete. I took solace in the realization that the sissy’s greatest spiritual consolation and most potent weapon—the camp sensibility—would live on. More and more hip straight people were imbibing camp’s glamtastic cocktail of amoral aestheticism, scathing wit, and the erudite appreciation of schmaltz. The queer lisp might die out, but there would always be people who found the earnest and mundane shriekingly funny.

Back to the Castro. After a few weeks I admitted to myself what I’d known from the start: Castro Street was not for me. I gave up going out all together and spent my nights at home, moping and whining. Most everyone is terrified of at least one thing beyond all reason: spiders, poverty, cancer . . . something. My greatest fear was solitude. Was I destined to sit alone in my room forever, unloved and forgotten by humanity? I was beginning to think so when I got wind of a development with the potential to change everything.