Feasts. "If the first lay wasn't so good, I'd just get laid again a few hours, or a few minutes later," a rutty, fair skinned Rick said about the 1970s gay sexual revolution through a thick bushy gray mustache, sipping coffee in a San Francisco cafe in the Castro.
We were in the front on stools at a counter facing the street through tall french doors that were open, letting in the crystalline clear light and thin cool breeze of the afternoon. Rick looked on wistfully, "I'm not sure why, though, we queens call it 'back in the day,' because that 'day' could be today," he laughed and gestured with a snap of his farm worker thick and rough fingers saying, "Please honey, we could stand up, walk two blocks, and with a few single dollar bills blaze through as many men as we want."
Of course I knew this, but I had steered my conversation with Rick toward this because I had a larger question; one that I thought he might answer with some stats or psycho-babble about gay repression or something. "Why so many though? Gay or straight or bi—men are promiscuous. We never hear women bragging about such things. What's with the trophy of 'blazing,' as you say, through as many women or men or both as we want to in a night?"
Rick cocks his head back sort of wisely, paused and nodded with a kiss of old age in his still bright blue eyes and just said it, "Because we can."
That, I believed.—M.T.
