A Better Class of Blond

by David Rees

  A NIGHT OUT IN SAN FRANCISCO. It’s as lovely after dark as it is during the day; again, geography is the great asset. You’re always aware of the city’s edges. London has no frontiers, only horizons of houses. And if you drove out to those houses, you’d know that there are still houses up to the next sky-line. And beyond that. Here there is shape, pattern; water the frontier on three sides, hills on the fourth.

  Chains of light mark out the streets, and the moving lights are traffic on the Bay Bridge: Sin City beckons. Castro and 18th are crowded of course, and so are the bars, but I’m not in the mood for alcohol or chatting a guy up, not in the frame of mind to go home at 3 a.m., drink-silly or perhaps rejected. I want sex now. So it’s the wild back room of the Jaguar, where thirty or forty men are hunting. One Latino kid looks superb—slim, tall, with big black eyes, high cheek-bones and dark hair. His cock is being sucked by a man kneeling on the floor, and five others are just about to move in on the act. I join in too and he seems to like me; he’s jerking me off—I’m upright as a telegraph pole. We kiss, and I run my fingers over his body. Young firm muscle and skin; smooth, smooth. I bite his nipples and he moans with pleasure. The man on the floor is still sucking, and mouth after mouth is lubricaiting my cock. I nearly come, but pull away; it’s too soon. I get behind the boy and he pushes his buns down over my cock; I wrap my legs round his and twisting his tits as hard as he’ll take, I shove up inside and fuck like mad. Come, and stay, throbbing, till his shoots in whatever mouth, and he gasps; his body shudders, sweats. And he turns, subsides on my shoulder, his mouth looking for mine. A long, long, sweet kiss. “Thanks, kid,” he whispers. “It was great!” And a guy, watching us, says “Beautiful. Beautiful!”

  I’m home at midnight.

  I want a lover, a kid like that, maybe. Who was he, where does he live, what is his job, is he amusing, intelligent? I must admit, however, I do find anonymous sex orgies in back rooms and bath-houses a turn-on, even if at times they leave me sad, as a one-night stand can do, the good experience as well as the unpleasant. I’ve had my share of unpleasant experiences; several, here in San Francisco, last visit. The drunk black who thieved my silver bracelet, the dishy blond who stole twenty dollars.

  And there can’t be a more likely situation than an orgy to get AIDS, herpes, NSU, syphilis, hepatitis, gonorrhoea, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…

  “DENNIS, THE SWALLOWS have gone,” Paul says.

  “Have they paid the rent?”

  “No. Bunch of ass-holes!”

  A year of teaching, sun worship, travel. And I have a full writing programme. Editorial changes in a novel, agreed but not yet done; short stories to think of let alone put into words; this diary; a commission to write a volume of essays on children’s authors, accepted a year ago and not properly started. A lover would help. A young man sharing my room, the same young man tonight as yesterday and tomorrow, with whom I can swop the working day’s idle gossip at dusk, curl round in bed, and when I wake in the small hours hear him breathe. And we’d screw, each and every revolution of the planet.

  Paul shouts from the kitchen. “Dennis, do you think the little ones made it?”

  “Well… they got to the Bayshore Freeway, I guess.”

  “Where they lift up their cute sexy wings and hitch a ride?”

  Today I’m going south, like the swallows. Only fifty-five miles, to Los Gatos, where I can rent a room till next summer in a house owned by two women. But I’m saying farewell to these good friends who’ve fed and alcoholed me since I arrived. Sad and joky, as with the departed birds.

  LOS GATOS. An old rambling timber house, room after room full of books and friendly worn furniture, a little untidy and much lived in. I’m in a far corner of it, a cool, shady place with a big double bed. A floor-to-ceiling window I can use as entry and exit. The garden is large, has a swimming pool, and so many trees that fences are invisible: we could be lost in woods. But are not, being on the extreme edge of town—one way, hills (faultlines, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, black widow spiders); the other, San José and its satellites, a vast, sprawling mass that stretches for miles. I’m not so sure about the other inhabitants, however. A young couple, straight, unmarried, live in the garden cottage: they’re fearsomely intellectual; she violist in the Santa Cruz Symphony and he majoring in Wittgenstein. Of the dykes, Sarah is big, soft, and sympathetic, but Harriet, who was married and has four grown-up children all living away with their live-ins, has lots of chips. She appears dissatisfied with everything and everyone. She doesn’t consider herself as lesbian, though she and Sarah have been together for thirteen years. She sometimes goes off with men—and other women. An ardent feminist, and—I’m amused—she dislikes gay males. Why, I ask. Because they won’t want me, she answers: though I don’t dislike you; you have good vibes. Or is it that she instantly finds me unattractive? I don’t sense that. Perhaps attractive? There’s a challenge here. Sexual, emotional, intellectual—I’m not sure which—but it’s a challenge I’ll turn my back on. I don’t want to know.

  They’re away for a week at Mammoth, and I’m house-sitting and dog-sitting. The dog and I soon come to an agreed modus vivendi: in exchange for walks, food, sleeping in my room at night and pats on the head, it leaves me in peace for hours. So there is silence and slow time: by the pool’s edge I write for much of the day, sweat, become bronzai in this ninety-degree heat, and plunge into the tepid water.

  I walk the dog up into the hills, terrified of every ssssss I hear in the undergrowth. But these noises are lizards, and I gradually learn not to be alarmed. Our route, most days, takes us through the grounds of a Jesuit monastery. The priests’ main activity, Harriet says, is their vineyard. For years they have been trying to turn a totally awful, undrinkable wine into one that is now drinkable but very poor indeed; as a consequence the monastery is full of red-faced jovial clerics smashed out of their tiny minds all day long. Drunk as a skunk monks. Perhaps she’s right; I can’t tell because I never see one, Early morning joggers, yes. Sloshed friars, no.

  Interesting vegetation: blackberry, escallonia and marigold are obviously familiar, but there is poison oak, eucalyptus, and very southern-looking cypresses and pines. The most common weed is fennel: its sharp stink fills the air. The really striking difference between this and England, however, is the dryness of it all. No rain since March: the grass is withered and leaves are limp and dusty. There are fields here where horses live, but they’re fed on hay.

  The dog and I climb up to a school built by the Jesuits. It was shut years ago; there aren’t enough children who want to make the trek up the hillside these days. Yet someone has turned on the sprinklers; lawns and oleander flourish. There is a magnificent view of San José on its flat plain with the parched, burnished Santa Clara Mountains beyond. You can’t see much of the city, for downtown is covered in smog and the suburban houses are hidden by trees. It’s like a mini Los Angeles. Only one building stands out; it looks like a Greek temple. For a moment I’m struck by the similarity not to LA, but to modern Athens.

  It’s clouding over. Intricate patterns, fish scales or white paint potato prints. But to no purpose—it won’t be wet till November. Tonight the crickets will bleep-bleep as usual, like a zillion radio signals from outer galaxies.

  GARY RINGS FROM SPEARFISH. He’s lonely and sad: in Rapid City a one-night stand is so rapid and so strictly for just one night. He ended with a lover two months back, a kid, a nineteen-year-old. I was bored, he says. The kid has no past, nothing of interest. His friends all laugh when he tells them he wants an older man, wants to settle down, find support and love, share a home, a life. You’re young, they say; enjoy yourself. But is sex with as many different men as you can get enjoyment?

  Of course it can be, but I don’t tell him that.

  I have a past. The dykes and I agreed that it was good to have a past, to be the sum total of what one was.

  I have a month’s holiday at Christmas, I say to Gary. I’ll come up to Spearfish and sweep you off your fee
t. I’m easily swept, he says, laughing. And I’m an experienced broom, I add. I’m already swept, he replies. Into bed with me, I hope, is my answer. Oh, yes, he says, yes… please…

  THE NINTH ANNUAL CASTRO STREET FAIR. Market, Castro and 18th are closed to traffic. There are stalls in the middle of the streets selling every conceivable kind of junk, from quilted pot-holders to stained glass and ceramic vases. Political booths—the gay Republicans (not much of a crowd at this one) and the gay Democrats, information desks, a mobile VD clinic, beer stalls, hot dog stalls, lost and found children. And entertainment: an official opening to the fair by that well-known drag nun, Sister Boom-Boom of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, followed by cabaret from Sister Media and the Cassettes. Half an hour late this, a bit inefficient and not very original. The nuns seem to have got their loudspeaker wires twisted up with their wimples. I wander away, and find the professional standards of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corps rather more impressive. But it’s the crowd itself that is the real delight. Twenty thousand says the Chronicle next day; one hundred thousand claim the organizers.

  It’s a huge drag show: heavy leather, bare buns, construction gear, a centaur, a delirious blond in nothing but vine leaves, a hunk in nothing but chains, Roman togas, ballet dancers, bishops, cowboys. And drag queens; how many men are women and how many women are men? The star of it all is a guy who spends hours leaning on a parking meter drinking can after can of beer, a beatific smile on his face. His head-dress is a stuffed pheasant with deer antlers from which quails’ eggs dangle.

  Not everyone is gay. There are plenty of straight couples, families, and tourists taking photographs. But it must, nevertheless, be one of the biggest gay gatherings in the world. Warm, friendly, amateur… and the cruising…

  “Which side of the bed do you like to sleep?” asks this terribly polite Chinese kid.

  “That side.”

  “Would you prefer tea or coffee in the morning?”

  “I don’t mind. Coffee.”

  “With milk?”

  “Please.”

  “And sugar?”

  “No thanks.” I laugh. “Has the inquisition ended?”

  “One more question.” He grins. “What do you want to do to me in bed?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Which is entirely satisfactory for the two bodies concerned. And their minds: next day we both feel good, very relaxed. Kid! He’s thirty-three, a well-to-do dress designer from Quebec, and his apartment is in Pacific Heights, upper-crust snob San Francisco. He has a lover, out of town for the weekend…

  “But you have now experienced the joys of rice,” Dennis says when I tell him.

  IT’S THE JUNIPERO SERRA once more, and I’m driving back to Los Gatos. THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL FREEWAY, a hoarding announces. Well… the M5 near Bristol is pretty spectacular, but, nevertheless, I’m enjoying the scenery very much and thinking about nothing special when, near Los Altos Hills, the car radio plays “When Will I See You Again?” And suddenly in my mind’s eye is Andy, ex-lover and one of my closest friends. He lives in my house in England; occasionally he comes into my bed when Ulrich is absent and we make love, gentle and affectionate, as old friends should: I see him now at the moment of our parting, the night before I left for California, in London, in a street near Harpoon Louie’s.

  “I’ll miss you more than you can ever know,” he said. I miss you too, Andy. A lot.

  III

  THE PHONE RINGS at 8 a.m. Dennis. “David, how did you like the earthquake?”

  “What earthquake?”

  “Last night, of course. The epicentre was at Freedom, near Watsonville, not far south of you. Jesus, you must be a heavy sleeper! It woke us up, and we’re ninety miles away!”

  “Was it severe? Anyone dead?”

  “Four point five on the Richter scale, a medium sort of quake. No, no one died.”

  “The dog barked, about two o’clock. Was it then?”

  “Yes. Your first earthquake this trip, and you sleep through it!”

  The shock waves were felt along the San Andreas, which is half a mile from here. Cups smashed in downtown Los Gatos and beds slid across floors, but I felt nothing. It’s the third jolt in the Bay Area this week, and I haven’t sensed the slightest tremor. I’m disappointed.

  I was surprised when I first visited San Francisco to see so much Victorian architecture; was all this rebuilt after 1906? No, I was told, it was never destroyed. The 1906 disaster affected only a small part of the city; the damage and loss of life was almost entirely the result of explosions in severed gas mains and fires caused by wrecked electricity cables. That couldn’t happen now, people say—San Francisco has learned its lessons. Maybe the predictions of the horrors to come are the fulminations of those who see the place as a contemporary Sodom, who’d like it wiped off the map, evidence of the hand of the Lord punishing the unnatural. Castro, however, looks to me as if it’s here to stay.

  THE WEATHER turns out to be less reliable than those Victorian houses. Thunderclouds drift up from the Baja; a freak storm erupts at breakfast-time and lasts till noon. A really dramatic performance, this: crashing thunder overhead, lightning, heavy drenching rain. I’m walking the dog in the woods when it starts. What did I say earlier, that it wouldn’t rain till November? Suddenly everything smells clean and sweet; the leaves have lost that grey dustiness, and I’m soaked to the skin.

  AMERICAN BARS—often rooms without any character at all, their only redeeming feature the speed and efficiency of the people who work there. They can be ugly, depressing places: I long for the carpets of an English pub, the quiet corners with tables and chairs designed for conversation. I’d like my beer served in a glass instead of having to swig from the bottle, however macho that looks. Tricks in all the gay haunts if one wants them: but being gobbled in the back yard is limited fun. Why all this cock-sucking? I enjoy it as an exciting preliminary, not an end in itself; as I come in a mouth I think of what Oscar Wilde said about smoking—exquisite, but unsatisfying.

  I did go to the wrong beach. Friends take me to the correct place, which is much like the other: unstable cliffs, a long sweep of sand, a turbulent sea. There’s a huge quantity of driftwood, and over the years the patrons have dragged these bleached, torn branches above the highest tide mark and built them into shelters, little one-room cabins without roofs. Not so much to protect themselves from the wind, but in order to fashion a semi-private piece of terrain for making love. Semi-private: you can see everything that is going on if you care to look. The driftwood walls give the inhabitants the illusion of ownership, so you wouldn’t attempt to join in unless you were invited. It would be like breaking into another man’s bedroom.

  It’s foggy and cool today, but that seems to deter only the faint-hearted. To the inveterate cruiser, bad weather is of little consequence, even if he’s shivering from head to foot, his cock shrivelled, his balls frozen. This beach is full of naked solitary danglers. They spend hours walking, staring, exchanging glances, never giving up hope, occasionally finding a willing someone. Would they suffer the same discomfort in pursuit of anything else? I doubt it. The strength of the sex drive can make men ridiculous.

  There isn’t a great deal of action. A few lovers inside their wooden pallisades. They tolerate—maybe enjoy—the witnesses, but they don’t invite more participants. If I were one of them, I wouldn’t object to being watched, might even ask a third to our feast.

  What I don’t like is being a solitary dangler.

  A COLLEAGUE AT THE UNIVERSITY writes me a note written on the back of a “Grade Review”.

  I, the undersigned student, do not believe the grade given me on this essay is justified. Therefore I am requesting a review of my essay by my peers. I agree to accept their decision as final. For instance, if my instructor gave me a “C” and the class determines that I deserve a “B”, then I will receive the “B”. Likewise, however, if my instructor gave me a “C” and the class determines th
at I deserve a “D”, then I will receive the “D”. The grading criteria used will be those delineated on the sheet handed out by Mrs Horovitz at the beginning of the semester. The class responsible for the review will be Mrs Horovitz’s other class, not the one I am enrolled in.

  This is followed by spaces for the date, the student’s and the instructor’s signatures, the signature of two witnesses, the essay title, the grade given by the instructor, and the grade given by the class.

  A British university would regard democracy of this sort as chaotic, a recipe for revolution. How is Mrs Horovitz to cope with her students if the grade is upped?

  QUIET DAYS IN LOS GATOS. Warm enough to stand by the pool, sipping gin at ten in the evening, dressed only in shorts. My skin is golden brown. The girls have returned. We meet in the kitchen, the centre of this L-shaped house, or in the garden at the pool’s edge. They let me lead my own existence. They swim at midnight, get drunk once in a while, walk for hours in the hills, and—it’s odd—work most evenings in separate rooms.