See The Sleaze

[I was touched by Olin's recent entry about his first California gay pride event, even more so after coming off the bizarre buzz of San Francisco's Dore Alley Fair yeserday. His sense of alienation amid all that buff, tan flesh reminds me of my first couple of fests in West Hollywood. Even after going to college in Santa Barbara, home of the Platonic ideal of the golden volleyball player, I remember being shaken and then numbed, circa 1991, by the endless cut cavalcade. After a while, they stopped being real people, and I got a chuckle from Olin's offhand comment that he managed to "doze off for an hour near the main stage." Even with CeCe Peniston (or whoever) wailing? Yeah, just maybe.]

[Oh, dear I am old: Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Sargent (the second, inferior Darrin Stephens) were the grand marshals of the WeHo parade that year. RIP.]

[So, yeah, John H. and I dragged my John to Dore, one of the two huge streetfests S.F.'s leather types throw. Why do we need two? Who knows? Dore is billed as less commercialized and just plain smaller than the massive Folsom Street Fair, coming up in October, and I guess it does cover fewer blocks. Certainly not less commercialized, however. Anyway, my John decided he'd had enough fairly early on (we'd already checked out the surprisingly ungay Polk Fair that morning), but John H. and I knew we wanted to see some sleaze. We went to where I knew we wouldn't be disappointed, the Powerhouse, saw what we needed to see, saw a little more, decided maybe we wanted to see a little more...well, I used to really enjoy South of Market, so it was good to revisit, after what has been a long hiatus and with an appreciative companion, what can be a marvelous spectator sport.]

[Anyway, it did eventually wear thin, and one of the most pleasant parts of the afternoon was drinking a final beer at the Hole in the Wall (outside the festival gates and therefore less crowded) with Patrick and Harvey. John H. decided maybe Patrick isn't so bad after all (old bad blood from the Rochester days), and we hiked home. And I have my first official sunburn'd forehead of the new millennium.]

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