“Two Jack’s in the Bear Lair”
The Titanic Seventies
before the Iceberg of AIDS
(An Epic Narrative Poem of Body Invention)
by Jack Fritscher
Under the Stars of Ursa Major,
it was a brilliant San Francisco season
sun-drenched with drought and sweat
men everywhere on this peninsula of men
that Bicentennial Summer of ’76
before the Titanic Seventies party cruised
innocent into the iceberg of AIDS
us sitting together at his kitchen table
my first visit in his handsome bear lair
tall garden-windows, six French doors
in pairs winged open, floor to ceiling,
framing the Sunday afternoon golden hour
of Vermeer light, yellow smoke yellow fog
sliding drifting across the waters of the East Bay.
I have known such virile afternoons
lingering in chambers by the sea.
Tankers down from the Alaska Pipeline
crewed by hairy roustabouts
floating at anchor motionless below us
with builder-grade roughnecks on board
far out against the widescreen horizon
spread out against the skyline with
the smoke from his cigar
bluing blurring the view,
his hiking boots kicked up on his coffee table,
trousers rolled, his big back curved deep,
settling a pillow into the slouch
of his wicker chair.
He inhaled his Oliva Robusto and
gave me face, smiling through his beard
smoking and toking cigar and joint
taking two hits of the Castro Blitz
he grew in his kitchen garden
that summer when we and everyone
and everything were all so new
to the city the world the universe
almost so good it was unthinkable
to ask the overwhelming question:
How long can this joy last?
His grass lifted us twin namesakes.
“Jack,” he toasted basso,
over longnecks of beer.
“Jack,” I toasted profundo.
“Here’s to full moons on dark nights.”
We laughed joke-toasting our pet beards,
the easiest thing men have to morph
imperfect shapes of face head and look
adding jaw and chin and cheek bones
masking acne scars and sunfried wrinkles
trading hits on the joint
whorls of smoke rubbing
against the window panes,
music coming from another room.
His turntable spinning
love songs of county rock,
the Eagles thrumming
thirty-three-and-a-third revolutions per minute
mermen singing each to each
the soundtrack of our rainbow revolution,
new kids in town, life in the fast lane,
the long the lean the mass the muscle
the short the fat the brown the black
sex immigrants escaping suicide
in hometowns of body shaming
playground mean girls and bully boys
assault weapon straight mouths and fists
killer bears and closet brutes
perversely hot
red-meat red-state rednecks,
neighborhood chunks
of locally-sourced Neanderthals,
village idiots bragging
I’ve lived here all my life
because I’m a moron,
so don’t let the sun set on you, faggot,
rowdy punks with their own redneck gaydar
search parties attacking our bodies
our gay body language
hooting hollering spewing the toxic waste
of their Pentecostal inhuman voices
waking us to drown us
shaming our bodies
making Yoo-Hoo Cooee Faggot flaws
out of our natural gifts never straight enough,
depressing us, causing us
to flee our homes
escaping the pale of their inbred gangs
validating our queer bodies with new ways
of freeing seeing being our bodies our selves
in gay sanctuary cities.
Welcome to the Hotel California
where you can check in to San Francisco,
but you can never leave
and why would you want to?
We walked shirtless through
his House of Hibernation,
meticulous, the E-ticket tour,
opening doors to rooms,
talking, smoking, eating peaches,
explaining his brother Esau was a hairy man,
kissing necking nibbling nippling
rubbing sperm-spackled fur of bellies,
him thinking after a stoned bear hug
of another nook, another cranny,
another room, downstairs, a playroom, a den.
(Was it time to turn back,
or descend the stairs for sex?)
A bear’s house is his body and
he was house-proud sharing his burly privacy
the way a stripling teen
in a highschool locker room
first dares show off
his amazing new changeling body
sprouting first fur as his inner bear
grows out of his smooth boycub skin
in his Spring Awakening.
We sat together, him a Jack, me a Jack,
a pair of Jacks in a world of Jokers
and Queens and Douches wild,
two men from the clan of the cave bear
dealing poker hands in the full house Jack built,
trading stories of homes, prices, interest,
of gays moving into neighborhoods,
claiming territory, the geography of our bodies,
good yet that summer, good enough,
both thirty-seven, facing forty,
not our fathers’ straight forty,
the new gay forty: thirty.
Squeezing the universe into a fistful of sex,
bears sacred to Odin, the God of Berserkers,
we made ritual of the afternoon harmony,
stoned satisfied silent, teasing, tripping
on the afternoon hanging over the Bay,
watching a white cruise ship
caught in a gauze of haze,
navigated to port by an escort of tugboats,
crews of horny hirsute able seamen,
hairballing deck hands and stewards
itching to hit the city, new tits in town
with thoughts of 24-hour shore leave
lusting for Castro bars Folsom baths
Tenderloin gloryholes
the Embarcadero YMCA
ship pennants waving flags fluttering,
under the X-braced trestles of the Bay Bridge,
top-deck radar inching tight
passing under gray girders,
we two born bears watching
rubbing and tugging
our genes in our own rub-a-dub tub
our handkerchief flags of yellow and red flying
skimming under the trestle bridge of forty,
still cool yet, hale yet, hearty yet,
inventing our bearish futures,
hirsute sex the bonding between us.
In his rooms where chasers come and go
talking of Michael and Angelo,
we asked what is it about bodies
and fur and muscles and health,
vitamins and minerals, poppers
and Quaaludes and ether,
drugs spread out upon a table
by dealers of insidious intent peddling
magic mushrooms and acid and
steroid stacks of Dianabol to build bulk
over margaritas in sawdust restaurants
with oysters on the half shell
in fern bars on Polkstrasse
in leather bars on Folsom
in clone bars on Castro
where come Saturday night
without pecs you’re dead.
If life ever fucks him over,
deals him a bad hand, a sick Old Bear,
he wants marmalade tea and cakes and ices
and intravenous vitamin C every hour.
In his office, on his desk, we flopped open
the “Physicians Big Book of Drug Reference,”
asking the overwhelming question,
so stoned that Sunday on his organic Blitz
searching the index, looking up steroids,
the wild card, the most secret
most transfiguring
most used drug on Castro,
seeking a loophole for a risky roll of the dice.
Do we dare?
Do we dare lay a bet to bulk and buff
born baby-bear bodies of boyhood
(a tiny month’s tiny dose of body positivity)
for transformative musclebear glory?
Despite lickety-lickety gossip
of side-effects and impotence
and weeping and prayers
and blue balls from little blue pills,
heart cries of boyhood dysmorphia
caused by scrums of boys playing ball sports
cries escaping full-throated from slender
youngyoungyoung Castronaut cubs
in 28×30 Levi’s, red hankies right,
in search of physiques and avoirdupois
feeling how their arms and legs are thin,
too thin for Saturday night fever.
What a comedy of Ursus Erectus.
Two Jacks shuffling cards of medical advice
like Adam and Eve a bit obtuse
in a Paradise casino
making decisions for radical revisions.
Do we dare eat just one itty bitty bite
of Eden’s magic steroid that will turn us
Bear Spirit animals godlike?
His handsome features frowning fair,
his burly arms laid along the table,
downed with thick brown hair,
he emerged from the cumulus of his cigar,
amused, smiling at our conversation,
his blond moustache ticking to gray.
Do I dare presume tell/remind him/me
how his/my head of hair is growing thin
as mortal bodies betray us
who may be nothing more
than a pair of ragged bear claws
scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Talking dirty while we stroked,
I confessed my lechery for voyeur fuckerie
with men in authority fluid with sperm,
eye-balling a California Highway Patrol
motorcycle cop walking
with Command Presence
into lunch in my office cafeteria
golden helmet tucked like a football
under the crook of his big arm,
noticing everything,
never noticing me sitting near him,
my necktie asserted by a simple pin,
me from my desk chair, him from his motorcycle,
sitting at right angles to him wearing
his blue-and-gold CHP shoulder patch
embroidered with a grizzly bear.
Good God! I’d be his tool, deferential,
glad to be of use, peering at him
over the perfect gay hunter’s blind
of my newspaper “Sporting Green”
gay-gazing into him,
memorizing his moustache,
five-o’clock shadow visible at high noon,
badge, tan shirt, short sleeves, big biceps,
sky-blue tie, gun belt,
bike breeches striped blue and gold
tucked into lickable black-leather riding boots,
the camera in my head recording
virility verite fuck films
of testosterone worship saluting him
eating two burgers two tables away,
flexing my thighs in a zipless fuck,
cuming quietly, a silent scream in my suit pants
a trick stealth hands taught me young
how to cum being slow jerked in the third row
of a crowded movie theater.
With Jack, our Bear Cult story,
twenty million years
after the first bear appeared on earth,
started months before this blue Sunday afternoon
cruising each other’s fur upholstery,
stalking the strength of stature
among the hottest hottest in the heat
of the Barracks bath roughhouse, 2 AM,
another gorgeous restless night
in a gorgeous cheap hotel,
my Saturday night ending meeting
his Sunday morning beginning,
coming face to face with his fresh attitude
(Let us go then, you and I)
that in my Barracks room, number 336
(first left at the top of the stairs)
got slapped back and forth frolicking
in mutuality between us,
a courtship of bears, beasts,
idealists under the acid-red light,
bear shadows flicker-fucking
on the wall of Plato’s cave.
(There is more to reality than senses grasp.)
Neither kneeling,
rearing up roaring up on hind legs
beard to beard sportfucking,
primal in a black room,
a chivalry of sex with the proper stranger
jacking off in mutual raging satisfaction
of homomasculine respect
wondering if repetition domesticates
growling tricks into husbears.
(Is it impossible to say just what I mean?)
That summer of sunny weekend afternoons
we two of a kind, with other pals, attendant lords,
foundational bears in our sleuth of bears
redolent musky odor of bear sperm,
standing shirtless in jeans sunning
in the habitat of Castro Street
where every bear that ever there was
was gathered there because, because,
a hug of rainbow bears
black brown red yellow polar and panda
butts and backs rubbing scratching up against
the white wood window sill of Donuts & Things,
a Teddy Bear Picnic of Daddy bears
hungry for chicken marinated in bear grease
scouting new cubs recruiting chasers
licking cubs clean
measuring our lives with coffee cups to go,
watching the madding crowd
the festive sidewalk pride parade
containing multitudes
of lions and tigers and bears
at the corner of gay vanity fair,
card sharps playing 52-Pickup at
the ground zero of 18th Street and Castro,
thousands of incoming gay refugees
one of every kind,
labeled abled mislabled disabled fabled,
legends before they became history
half of Noah’s ark,
sorting each other
under the tall blade sign
of the Castro Theater marquee.
We have known them all, those men,
as if hundreds would be enough
when thousands were never enough,
known the eyes of faces we’d meet,
crowds hanging out
passing time in mass foreplay
years and years
of Saturday and Sunday afternoons
before the nights of bars and baths,
cheering lovely shirtless men
young enough to think they’ll live forever,
leaning out open windows
of their third-floor flats
blasting disco on stereos into the intersection,
with nude men with speed-lean bodies
fan dancing for joy on rooftops
waving the Bear Flag of Free California
above cafes and shops and bookstores
where seven naked sun bears
acrobats in combat boots and jockstraps,
hairy butts furry backs tits and taints ahoy
mooning the swooning crowd,
climbing into position
up a fire-escape ladder, three stories up,
a sex circus act,
a daisy chain of dancing bears
each one being rimmed carnivorous for ass
rimming the butt on the rung above
to cheers from the intoxicating street party,
sex immigrants sweating out
old viral toxins of hometowns,
sex refugees celebrating the good luck
of finding and fucking so many
polymorphous versions and perversions
of gay bodies, cubs chubs otters transbruins,
bar-hopping in the girth and mirth
of a pub crawl
Midnight Sun to Badlands to Toad Hall
to Moby Dick to Lion Pub to Bear Hollow,
sizing up baskets, faces, bodies, minds,
comparing sexcapades over brunch plates
of Bears Benedict $2.22 with smoked salmon
at the Castro Cafe and the Norse Cove,
trading tall tales of tricks
the divine decadence of the decade,
raconteurs of our own lives,
character actors of our own devise,
and finally old billy bruins, curmudgeons
who prayed our lives would continue
like long days of heaven
like this languorous golden afternoon
hanging out happy in his kitchen
over tankers floating motionless,
hung out of all perspective
on the flat face of the East Bay.
What is it? This visit? This mancave?
A Sunday afternoon Vespers?
A communion of cocksuckers?
A taking of toast and tea,
Oolong, imported?
I’m old. I’m old.
I’ve seen this moment flicker,
a memory, again and again.
A pair of twentieth-century Jacks
kicked back like lords in a house of cards
threatened in a mondo disturbo universe
wondering out loud,
and re-wondering,
how long shit as fabulous as this could last
because nothing this good can last forever,
knowing our quickening golden hour
to be too soon our past,
knowing our past
will be a strange country to new boys
hairy cubs and hairless chasers
who will not likely sing each to each
of us because we did things differently,
and they won’t care
about the auld lang syne
of our flickering moment of greatness
because no one really wants
lectures from Lazarus
back from the cave of the dead.
Every pair of Jacks in a paradox of Paradise
knows when to hold ’em, fold ’em, and walk away.
Old card sharps know every hand’s a winner
till it’s gone with the wind.
If you haven’t gambled for love,
you haven’t gambled at all.
So I kiss Jack goodbye.
Yet maybe seven young smart bears
escaping bear traps,
seven Stars of the Constellation Ursa Major,
in a meme of Four of a Kind
plus a Pair of new Jacks
plus a Wild One
calling our bets, cubs yet unborn
accepting shaping celebrating
the born bodies dealt them
will stand grave vigil
gay gazing at the taxidermy
of our grizzled bodies on exhibit
vintage bears
in permanent hibernation under glass
at the Gay Unnatural History Museum
in our Gay Nostalgia District.
11 to 4 PM Daily
Closed Mondays and Holidays
Adults, $4, Seniors $2, Youth Free
Those retro lads
weeping laughing jerking conjuring
with the magical thinking of masturbation
fantasies of a time-travel return
to the lost Eden
of the auld lang syne
of our emancipating first decade
after Stonewall
when pioneer bears
making alt-bodies okay
came out to play tennis
before the ultimate
body dysphoria of AIDS
threatened our species with extinction
we acted up against.