TOO MUCH INFORMATION

Once upon a Tenderloin, a hook-up goes belly-up…

Who would have known that a hook-up on Adam4Adam would lead me wandering out of bounds? I just returned from a trick’s house that didn’t transpire the way I intended at all. There’s been a culture clash going on in my San Francisco neighborhood ever since Mayor Ed Lee gave tax breaks for Twitter to move into the mid-Market area. An inf lux of clueless techies have been invading my Tenderloin turf ever since. I am a proud long-time resident of the TL, which has maintained a reputation so loathsome as to prompt hotels such as the Hilton to warn tourists against wandering across its borders.

I met condoms Rboring, the tag from adam4adam, at his immaculate high-rise f lat that featured a sweeping, panoramic view of the gas station across the street. The building was smart-wired with digital community message boards while the finished concrete f loors glistened in the soft, recessed lighting. They had torn down an all-night diner to throw this building up like an Amish barn raising. The greasy spoon that was now gone had been the only place you could get a milkshake at 3am. My mind snapped back to the present when I was greeted by my host who opened the door in a towel, or was that a sarong?

Brian was a 28-year-old fireplug mesomorph with a tight little ass. Based on his cautious list of questions posed in our cat and mouse chase online, I should have realised something may go awry. Before committing to hooking up, he wanted to know a) if I had bathed recently, and b) what drugs I did, the way I did them and if I had any of my own? The latter questions were posed like he was playing a chess game. One wrong answer on my part could be a potential deal breaker so I watched what I said and tried not to sound too snippy in my retort. He was trying to find out if I shot or smoked crystal meth but wouldn’t come right out and ask me directly. Oh great, another light-weight, I thought to myself. I preferred to party hardcore and get right to the point (with needles) but I was willing to pretend I only blew clouds in order to get freaky with him.

When he saw my tattoos, he asked about the meaning of the number 5150 emblazoned in stencil on my bicep. “You don’t know?” I asked. He shook his head cluelessly. “It’s the California penal code for being a danger to yourself or others. You’ve obviously never been institutionalised in a psych ward,” I said.

“Hey, what are those,” he said as he traced his hand over the slash and track marks on my arms. “I used to cut… that was a phase, kind of a coping mechanism, know what I mean?” I peeled off my T-shirt to show him the vertical scar that runs from just under my chest to my navel. Before he could ask, I volunteered the truth with no regard for TMI. “I used to have this body dysmorphia issue that resulted in like this… kind of an eating disorder… see? That scar is from the surgery I had when my intestines developed gangrene from not eating. Anyway… yeah.” His eyes averted to something across the room as I sensed a shift in the climate.

I figured this was as good a time as any to break the news that although I was ordinarily a versatile f lip-f lopper, I wouldn’t be able to bottom for him because I had just had surgery the week prior. “There?” he asked. “Yeah, there,” I said as I slapped my ass in exclamation.

He mercifully didn’t ask for details and I refrained from elaborating. I shuddered to imagine what he would think of me if he knew the truth. The deal was I had just undergone anal dysplasia surgery to remove high-grade precancerous lesions that were a result of catching HPV aka condyloma acuminata (that sounds so much more glamorous than anal warts, which is what I caught seven years prior). I remember how horrified I was when faced with that bit of news at the STD clinic. They wouldn’t be as easy to cure as chlamydia or gonorrhea, both of which I experienced as the result of a whirlwind affair/ f ling/obsession with the first guy I met after I seroconverted to HIV. From Easter to the 4th of July 2007, I graduated from being smitten to stalker to slashing his tires before falling into the old habit of slicing my wrists up with razor blades in order to qualify the pain. To say that situation and subsequent wreckage was the worst emotional fuck-wittage I had ever… well… all the lovelorn Romeos I had ever pined over couldn’t hold a candle to the one that ultimately burned me.

But all of that had happened a long time ago and I was more concerned at the moment with the prospect of getting through the next three months without making myself available to be fucked. My walking papers from UCSF hospital had clearly stipulated I wasn’t to engage in receptive anal intercourse for at least 90 days. The news was fresh but I had already begun

“It’s the California penal code for being a danger to yourself or others. You’ve obviously never been institutionalised in a psych ward.”

resigning myself to its reality and was actually getting used to the idea of IAI (or strictly insertive anal intercourse, i.e. being a top). I had been a bottom longer than I had been versatile because I didn’t start getting appreciated for my dick until I had grown out of the chicken coop. I was used to being pigeonholed (no pun intended) as a twinky bottom up to then. Once I realised I had a commodity that could really work to my advantage in the gay sexual marketplace, being versatile was the way to go. My prowess, for all its merits, was evidently lost on my current companion judging from that way

“I graduated from being smitten to stalker to slashing his tires before falling into an old habit of slicing my wrists up with razor blades in order to

qualify the pain.”

he mechanically turned his attention back to his laptop already tuned to Adam4Adam and what looked like a bunch of Cam4 windows.

“Well that sucks” he said, “I wanted to fuck.” “Yeah, I’ll fuck you,” I said, trying to keep the exasperated duh tone out of my voice.

I settled back on the living room pullout and appreciated the opportunity to jack off to his vast collection of porn, all of which were from genres and studios I had never seen. Suddenly, my meager, threadbare little efficiency in the Tenderloin didn’t seem all that special. Perhaps it was my impending 40th birthday that sat on the calendar like an anvil and hallmark of my quarter/ midlife crises. I hearkened back to all my previous life crises, all the while stroking, stroking…

“Help yourself to the cock-rings,” he offered, splaying out a plethora in various materials and sizes. Leather snap-ups were aligned with an assortment of kushee-stretchies and stainless steel CBT devices. Embarrassed, I pumped a squirt of his expensive Swiss Navy lube and lost myself in the task at hand, so to speak. I had a full view of the back of his head and earful of his biographical sketch. He regaled me with a story that outlined a Mormon missionary boy from Salt Lake City. The nubile, tight-assed little Latter-Day Saint wasn’t exhibiting his best-preferred trait, in my opinion. He adopted the alternate meaning of the descriptor “tight-assed” that had nil to do with his proclivities in the sack.

“Have you seen Book Of Mormon?” I asked. My attention was only half focused on his words until his monologue meandered into Mormon matters. “Andrew Rannells is so hot,” I proclaimed. My long time crush on the Broadway actor and co-star of the defunct New Normal sitcom overtook me: “Hello, my name is Elder Price… and I would like to share with you this most amazing book,” I harmonised. “I haven’t seen it,” he confessed in a f lat monotone.

“Have you heard about the All-American Prophet? ...And God said, Joe what people really want to know is that the…”

“I haven’t SEEN it,” he interrupted. “…bible isn’t two par…” Okay.

“Oh, Elizabeth Smart…!” I shared my recollections of the blonde, angelic harpist who was kidnapped by the freaky family handyman and forced to amble around Salt Lake City wearing a burka with his shell-shocked wife for 90 days. I also mentioned that I had a couple of cousins who hailed from the Salt Lake area. This tidbit piqued his interest as he probed me for questions about my relationship with a male cousin. He wanted to know if I had ever gone down on him or fallen prey to his rape. “No,” I recollected. “He was too frail and wouldn’t have been much fun.”

“So what is it you do for a living?” I finally asked. He launched into a sob story about how he was this close to walking out of Ebay until they paid him “what he was worth”. Realising I was laid out in the lair of techie scum, my dick instantly went south. “Isn’t that in the South Bay?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “And how do you get to work?” I challenged. “My car, what else? You think I take Caltrain?” he laughed. He laughed? Did he think it was funny that his techie scum consumer and carbon footprint was guzzling gas and ruining the physical environment as well as the cultural integrity of my neighborhood and the entire city of San Francisco?

“I gotta jet,” I said as I peeled off the kushee cock ring and doused it with hand sanitizer. I told him to add me as a friend on Facebook and pecked him on the lips. I could smell the minty fresh scent emanating from his lips that smacked of Burt’s Bees. I wondered if I had ever been that high maintenance. I knew I had always pushed the envelope to left of center into the margins. I was decidedly, unapologetically, marginalised. The only thing that gnawed at my conscience was whether or not this warranted oppression without me knowing it.

I speed-walked back to my apartment as the sky turned from black to beige. When I entered my ghetto 4th f loor walk-up, I was greeted by my Tippi. My three-year-old feline tabby erased all images of the higher economic bracketed Brian out of my immediacy. It was nice to be home amid my belongings, my Elvis Presley doll that had been rescued from the hoard my New Jersey grandmother had kept before her death. “Barbra, please…” I acknowledged to the light switch cover that featured Judy and Babs from the October 6, 1963 episode of The Judy Garland Show. I wouldn’t trade my eccentric kooky taste for all of his shellacked concrete and terrace with the simulated California wildlife even if I had a cushy tech-centric job at Google or Twit-for-brains. Picking up my iPad, I touched the Camera app and switched the screen to selfie so I could look at myself, “I’d rather die first…”

I pulled out a tube of Burt’s Bees from underneath a throw pillow, rolling its wheel to allow the lip balm to rise. Not too low… not too high… until it was just right. Then I started at the corner of my bottom lip and worked all the way to the other lip rolling the waxy texture along. I pressed my upper and lower lips together, closed my eyes and ran my tongue over my teeth and then the outside of both lips until they felt soft and smooth. Then I did it all again with both eyes open as I stared at my ref lection in the screen. “Of course, I wouldn’t mind the salary… I went to USC for chrissakes,” I muttered to myself.

With all the alacrity I could muster, I yelled, “Techies suck!” while rolling the mint-f lavored tube over my lips from the opposite direction and finally blew myself a kiss.