D O G P O E T

The porn star wanted me to meet him at Blow Buddies.

“Well,” he said, “not exactly in Blow Buddies. Above it. There’s a meeting room. You should come to the discussion group. It’s pretty informal – you know, folding chairs and chit chat.”

He told me this all over email; we’d met on a local BDSM-related personals site, where I was, you know, just checking things out.

The porn star had a bunch of hot pictures; he was a sexy little guy, and sexy little guys are often near the top of my list. Especially ones who act all tough and threaten to tie me up with rope. When I told him that I’d, like, hardly ever been tied up with rope, he suggested that I meet him at a discussion group for leather men, and sent me a link. I clicked:

Protocols in Dominant/Submissive Relationships: Master/Slave, Daddy/Boy, Dom/Sub…Power based relationships stimulate the mind and the libido. But how do we maintain that erotic charge through the scene and between scenes?

Cool, I thought, I can learn some hot, twisted shit to mutter during playtime. Besides, bad boy sex pigs aren’t just born. A little education goes a long way.

The porn star seemed to agree. “This is the perfect topic if you’re just starting out. And if we like each other, I live nearby.”

Yeah, so, maybe certain bad boy sex pigs out there in my audience could face such a situation without qualms. But going to my first “official” leather event (I’m not talking one a.m. at the Loading Dock), where I wouldn’t know anyone…when I owned hardly any leather…above a sex club…before dusk…to meet a porn star who wanted to tie me up with rope…

Okay, okay. Nobody twisted my arm.

Briefly I considered calling Joe to get his advice about whether this discussion group was worth my time, but decided that I needed to see some things for myself. This would be a test of my courage. A rite of passage.

Stomach in knots, I laced up my Wescos (my only leather) and drove The Blue Devil (my new car) to South of Market.

I hoped to find a room full of leather-clad Colt Studio models just salivating at the thought of a new boy in town.

God, where do I begin?

The porn star looked just like his pictures. They were absolutely true-to-life, and not the slightest bit misleading. But if the internet has taught us anything, it’s this: it’s all in how you carry yourself. He was nervous, and aloof, and totally lacking in charisma: the idea of letting him tie me up with rope made me giggle. As we chatted he kept looking over my shoulder at the door. Maybe it was mutual.

The next two hours were excruciating, and half my fault.

The panel consisted of three homely couples engaged in master/slave relationships. Yes, homely. Ordinarily on dogpoet I try to practice humility, but please. Don’t even try to tell me that you’ve never sat in a crowded room and thought, “I am simply the hottest thing in here.”

One couple were lesbians. All of the couples practiced their roles 24/7. None of this daddy/boy-for-an-hour-in-the-bedroom crap. No, these folks took their roles seriously. The submissives called their masters “Sir.” Even the lesbians. Not “my master,” or “my sir.” Rather, “Sir likes his coffee with a teaspoon of cream and two lumps of sugar waiting for him at the crack of dawn.”

There was a lot of this.

“Boy must walk on my left side, one half step behind me at all times.”

“Sir does not allow me use of the living room furniture.”

Then everyone argued for like, an hour, about whether these things were protocols or rituals. An hour. I wanted to throw my folding chair and scream, “Semantics! You’re arguing fucking semantics! What about SEX?!?”

Yeah, what about it. Nobody talked about sex. Instead we learned that the slaves did the dishes, the shopping, and the cooking. One slave even managed Sir’s goddamned CALENDAR. No, strike that; the slave managed several calendars because Sir kept filling the house up with new slaves, and the first slave had to manage ALL OF THEIR CALENDARS! The slaves, of course, could only have one queeny, nit-picking Sir, but Sir could have eight boys polishing the silverware in their thongs.

“What about the FUCKING?!?” I wanted to scream.

Beside me in his folding chair the porn star was chuckling at stories of new slaveboys forgetting which side of Sir to walk on at Safeway, or slaveboys forgetting that only Sir tells them when to take a piss.

I know everyone thinks they are open-minded. But honestly, when it comes to sex, I’m more progressive than most. What two consenting adults do is blah blah blah. But I’d found my limit. I wanted to run up and smack all of the “boys” silly.

“YOU HAVE A LIFE!” I’d scream, shaking them by their shoulders until their heads rocked back and forth on their little necks. “YOU HAVE A LIFE AND A MIND OF YOUR OWN! FUCK THIS QUEEN AND HIS GODDAMNED OUTLOOK EXPRESS!!!”

I wasn’t getting it. Clearly, I’d reached the limits of my understanding. I didn’t care how “spiritual” it felt for Sir to send boy back to the grocery store for the receipt he lost. Or how much confidence it gave boy to make Sir a BLT for lunch.

The discussion made my dick limp. I took this as a sign.

And that’s when it became my fault. Because there was a ten-minute break, and instead of bolting for the door I actually sat there in my folding chair, and waited for the whole thing to be over. Even when the porn star, who had promised in his emails to put me “at ease,” slipped into the crowd and left me there alone.

“Maybe,” I thought, “they hide all the sex in the second hour. There has GOT TO BE SEX at some point. Aren’t there supposed to be demonstrations? Wait, do I want to see demonstrations with these people? Oh, dear God.”

To be honest, I was still stuck in nice-guy mode. It would be rude to leave during the break, I thought. This is how nice guys finish last.

The second hour was the same as the first. Around this time Blow Buddies opened its doors for the evening, and disco music thumped through the floor. I longed to slip down there and find some real action.

Someone handed out a flier of “camps” around the country where boys could be trained in the art of “service.” There weren’t enough fliers to go around.

“Could I see that?” asked the porn star.

“Please,” I said. “Take my copy.”

When it was all over the porn star followed me to the door, and asked if we could play. If not tonight, then maybe Friday?

“Yeah,” I said, “actually, this week ain’t so good for me.”

I clomped down the stairs in my boots, and sucked in a lungful of air when I hit the sidewalk. Sometimes, when figuring out what you want, you get to figure out what you don’t.

Shortly before I left New York, I told Norman about my plans to retire from this long spell of unintentional celibacy, and to, well, embrace everything that San Francisco has to offer.

“Oh God,” he said, “are you going to end up in the Bare Chest Calendar?”

As if being pictorially rewarded for your manly manliness was something to frown upon. Instead I did the next best thing, and went on a date with a Bare Chest Calendar model. We met at Cafe Flore, the default location of a million first dates.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked.

“I produce child pornography,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Just kidding.”

Inappropriate humor is a huge turn-on for me, so he’d just scored points. Later, when we discovered a mutual passion for Almodóvar films, he suggested that for our next date I bring my copy of Bad Education over to his place. Code for: let’s screw around on the couch. Which we did. I had occasion to wonder at some of the innate differences between gay and straight foreplay while watching the movie. At one point, Gael García Bernal, clad in nothing but a pair of skimpy running shorts, is doing push-ups on the living room floor, his hips dipping and rocking to the salsa music coming from the television.

“Look at that chair,” my date said. I was sort of lying in front of him on the couch: totally his idea. He was lying behind me, with his arm wrapped around my chest.

“What?”

“That chair.”

“What chair?”

“Behind him.”

I glanced at the screen. Indeed, behind Gael was some kind of wacky, multi-colored piece of furniture, as if Piet Mondrian had been let loose in Design Within Reach.

“Isn’t it fabulous?” my date said.

“Whatever, dude,” I said. “Go back to pinching my nipple.”

I first visited San Francisco in 1996, with my then-boyfriend, David. One night we ended up at the Powerhouse, in South of Market, on an off-night. Lamps fashioned from Crisco cans cast dim circles on the scarred surface of the bar, and on the video screens a disembodied fist entered a disembodied butt. We were two boys from the midwest, simultaneously thrilled and scared out of our minds. Around us prowled lone wolves in leather jackets, Rolling Rocks clutched in their fists. They leaned against walls, the bench, the pool table, and looked around like they wanted to kill you or eat you, probably both.

David leaned over and whispered in my ear, “What is this leather thing about, anyway?”

I’d been wondering the same thing. The Village People, and Al Pacino in “Cruising,” was the extent of my BDSM education. My first reaction, when faced with my own ignorance, was to always feign cool. I shrugged and said, “Whatever.”

But David was an entirely different creature. My stepsister once compared him to a sheepdog; big, goofy, lovable, and completely naive. When confronted with his own ignorance, he’d ask the closest person for an answer. Getting nothing from me, he leaned over to one of the lone wolves, who stood nearby, glowering and chomping on a cigar, and said, “Excuse me, sir, but what’s the deal with leather?”

Was anyone ever so young? I’m here to tell you that we were.

I can’t remember the answer to the question, relayed to me by David in another whisper. I do remember that Mr Cigar Daddy was quite generous and respectful with his answer, and I remember that, underneath my nonchalance, was a hunger for knowledge.

The other thing I remember was a boy my age behind the bar: bare-chested, two leather bands wrapped around his thick arms, a tattoo stretching across his broad back, packed tight into a pair of chaps. You could tell he’d worked there for a while; he could pour out a Foster’s, ring up a shot, and swap spit with a muscle daddy all at the same time. He was on stage, in his element, and I watched the lone wolves watch him hungrily all night. Putting the cart before the horse (something I was good at) I figued that if I could ever get myself hired to tend bar at the Powerhouse, then I’d know for sure that I was hot. I don’t mean cute, or handsome, I mean hot – attraction inextricably tied up with sexual magnetism. The kind, well..you get the picture.

Fast forward to 1999; I’ve been in San Francisco a couple of years. Tired of scooping cat shit at the animal shelter, and inspired by weekend ecstasy-fueled fantasies, I quit my job to “become a writer.” A smarter boy would have lined up another job, but I was an idealist. A month later, my savings near depleted, I walked into the Powerhouse and asked for a job, thinking maybe I could start out as a barback, and work my way up the Ladder of Hotness. A half hour later I walked out a bartender, with no idea of the difference between a Rob Roy and a Seabreeze.

Thankfully the Powerhouse was a “leatherish” kind of bar. Guys ordered bottles of Bud and shots of tequila. I had every right to sneer at queens who wandered in and ordered a fucking cosmo. Yeah, sure I had a deck of flash cards with cocktail recipes at home, but nobody needed to know that. I worked South of Market; I could whip you up a cocksucker, a screaming orgasm, and a golden shower. I’d pound shots of Goldschlager with you and the other guys behind the bar, and if someone wanted a mudslide I could flash my endearing, entirely-believable, gosh-darn, I’m-just-the-new boy-smile, and the guy would tell me how to make his drink, squeeze my bicep, and leave me a ten dollar tip.

I wanted to be a bad boy, always had. I wanted to be a twisted, kinky motherfucker. And though I could throw in a tape of fisting highlights from Hot House on the bar’s VCR, I couldn’t walk into a video store in the Castro and rent porn for my own filthy enjoyment. I could serve MGD’s to guys who had just ducked out of our notorious back room, but I myself never went back there. Truth was, I had some dirty, twisted fantasies, but I lacked the balls to say them out loud, so they stayed just that: fantasies. Worse, addiction made my innate fear of the world worse; the further I went with crystal meth, the more I wanted to stay home, alone, and hide from the world. Last thing I wanted was to get on stage behind the bar and take my shirt off for Pec Night.

When my mom got sick I quit the bar and left town, and led a quiet, monastic, miserable life in Minneapolis for a few months as she got worse. Then I came back, got worse, got sober, and started cleaning up my life. Since by now everyone in the world has written a couple of books about some kind of recovery, I’ll spare you the details. I’ll just say things got okay, then better, then I went to New York. And now I’m back.

Joe, my good friend and new workout partner, told me over lunch yesterday that it’s a joy to see me transform from the old, passive, barely-audible Michael, to the new smart-ass who can push him back when he gets too bossy. Which is, like, every thirty seconds. A native East Coaster, he thinks it’s all due to a couple of years in New York. Undoubtedly that helped. I think it also helped to hear from some great writers that I myself knew how to write, and that if I would just fucking keep writing, I’d get my book published. I also finally got frustrated with five years of near-celibacy, with fear of what my non-kinky friends would think, with needing to be a nice guy all the time. Whatever the case, I’m no longer a push-over, and thank God for that.

Joe’s an International Mr Leather, from, like ages ago, and one of the most twisted, kinky fuckers I’ve ever known. Thus our work-outs are full of foul-mouthed banter, and my fantasies get aired in his company. He likes this new, smart-ass me. Of course, what I don’t tell him is that I keep smarting off to him in the hopes that he’ll eventually take it out on my ass.

Yeah, so the bad boy sex pig hath risen. If only in minor increments. Last week I fucked around with America’s Favorite Horndog, as he indicated on his blog. A day later I got an email from a friend in New York, who took me to task for getting in bed with someone who held rather, er, controversial views on HIV, reinfection, condoms, and sex, some of which I share, some of which I don’t. This friend also mistakenly believed that Geekslut had posted this without my permission, which wasn’t the case. I told Geek I didn’t care if he posted it, and that I was tired of the image people had of me. Which I told my friend, just before I told him to mind his own fucking business.

But after I sent that email I did a lot of talking, over a lot of coffee, with Jeff, and a lot of hard thinking on my own. It’s hypocritical to agree to allow my sex life to be broadcast over the internet, and then to say that it’s nobody’s business. And my motives were disingenuous. It was a cop-out, letting Geek do the work to tarnish my reputation, rather than doing it in my own words, on my own blog. And where’s the fun in that? It’s one thing to associate yourself with a bad boy, it’s another to admit I’m one out loud. Not that I assume anyone cares. Only that I have a lot more than books on my mind these days, and boy would I love to talk about it.

Bronx Man Arrested In Subway Station Power Saw Attack
July 06, 2006

“A Bronx man was arrested Thursday in connection with a portable power saw attack on another man in an Upper West Side subway station early this morning.

Investigators say 33-year-old Tareyton Williams has been taken into custody in connection with the attack on a man at the Cathedral Parkway and 110th Street station around 3:30 a.m. Thursday.

According to police, 64-year-old Michael Steinberg was attacked by Williams, who was yelling and waving two power saws in the air. The attack was apparently unprovoked…”

Thanks to my friend Todd for sending me this story. 110th was my subway stop. This is what NYC does to you. You live like a rat in a dark, noisy place for long enough and you end up running around a subway station waving not one, but TWO power saws.

In other news, protein shakes are kind of gross.

But they are a crucial component to my new, superficial approach to life. I go to the gym a lot. I work on my tan. And I flirt with a lot of men. I also spend a lot of time on the back deck with my growing garden. I can stand there for hours just staring at my little plants. I put out a bowl of water and I’ve seen the same dove land there and drink every morning this week. This thrills me. Sometimes I think I’m an elderly retired lady trapped in a young, studly body.

But it gives me a sense of purpose, something I’ve been lacking now that my coursework is done. My book should be giving me that sense of purpose, but between you and me, it’s an awfully abstract concept. And lest you think that I’m engaged in entirely petty concerns, I managed to drag myself to a panel in the Marina put on by Media Bistro a couple of weeks ago.

The Marina is one of those neighborhoods I rarely visit, full of nice homes populated by a large chunk of the city’s young professionals. They come home from the law office, throw on fleece vests and t-shirts from old Bay to Breakers races, and speed-walk resolutely through the fog down to Crissy Field with smooth little Vizslas trotting at their sides. Last week I finally met a gay person who lives there, and this made me feel better. Still, the whole neighborhood is erected on land fill, and it’s not where I’d like to spend my final moments when the Big One hits.

But I had lived in San Francisco for seven years and never made it to Fort Mason, and this was my chance. The panel was held in a renovated firehouse down at the water’s edge, with a killer view of Alcatraz just outside the front door. The panel was for people interested in becoming freelance writers. They were giving out free copies of a new book, Getting a Freelance Life, a title which had associations I preferred not to dwell on. There were several professional writers on the panel, handing out the usual combination of inspiration and depression (i.e. don’t think you’ll get published in The New Yorker. Also, making a living is rilly hard).

One piece of advice we were given: make sure you have a nice, fully equipped home office. Now that is an idea I can totally get behind. You get to buy things and, like going to a panel or reading a book, it gives you the feeling that you’re working when you’re really not being at all productive.

More advice along the same lines; familiarize yourself with the magazines where you plan on pitching stories. More shopping in the guise of work! Awesome. So I took myself to Tower Video, which has an entire wall of magazines. So many magazines, in fact, that my hopeful little brain couldn’t focus on any particular title, and I fell into a catatonic state. Several minutes later I snapped awake and took myself across the street to Books, Inc, which has a much smaller selection. They have a nice window seat where I perused a number of titles. And slowly I realized something that I once knew and kinda forgot: I hate magazine writing.

All of those lists! Five ways to flatten your belly for summer. Seven absolutely essential items you must buy for your dog. Ten people who we promise will be so big next year that every time you hear their name you sort of die inside.

And all of those breezy articles written in the same smarmy, pseudo-savvy voice. Like you’re all in on the joke together. The men’s magazines are the worst. Here’s an example from Men’s Health:

“Road Biking Cultivates Cooperation:
Bikers call it ‘drafting.’ We call it a spectacular excuse to appreciate your lady’s spandex-wrapped caboose.”

Literally everything in the magazine lends itself to bad sex jokes. Always straight sex jokes, like the entire men’s magazine industry has a horrible case of gay panic and wants to prove how hetero they are on every. single. page.

Of course the gay magazines do the same thing; they just change a pronoun or two. Then they gush every time an attractive, straight celebrity says something remotely open-minded. OMG, David Beckham likes his gay fans! Isn’t that cool?!? And here’s some hot, HOT photos of him!!!

So I’m a little cranky. And unfair, singling out a few egregious examples and overlooking fine writing and insight available in tons of magazines. To be honest, my research day was short-lived. I was easily discouraged. Where was my niche? Those damn freelance people kept telling us to Find Our Niche! Write For That Niche!

I didn’t know what my fucking Niche was. “Write about your passions,” they kept saying, and I sat there, blinking and confused. My passions? My whole life had been about one thing for two years, one thing that knocked everything else off my list of passions. I couldn’t remember what they were.

After a couple of hours I ended up with only one magazine; BUTT. Is BUTT my Niche? What does that say about me? And could BUTT possibly pay a dollar a word? I mean, BUTT now features full-color ads from Marc Jacobs. And BUTT advertises on Manhunt. Not that I was looking. In the end I bought BUTT (one of the great things about a bookstore in the Castro is that they put a display of BUTT at the cash register. You will not find this in the Marina, trust me.) and walked home in a kind of daze.

My magazine research day reminded me of one of my more immature qualities. I have a few of them. Like with my mother; it’s been four years since she died, and apparently one is supposed to move through those stages of grief, you know, denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance, blah blah blah. Well I’m still stuck at anger. Can’t get past it. Can’t really accept that she’s gone. Still mad that we got cheated out of a good thirty years together. Being a kind of brat about the whole thing, but because she’s my mother I feel entitled. Joan Didion had her year of magical thinking. This strikes me as incredibly short.

Another immature quality that is still kicking and screaming within me is my reluctance to Face the Facts. Most people make a compromise when it comes to paying the rent. They do work they probably don’t love in order to pay the bills. I’ve done the same thing; we all have. And really, are those top-ten-list-writers writing that way because they want to? No! They’re making compromises. They are smart, lovely people who would be absolutely thrilled to engage in a discussion, rife with subtlety, on a thousand different topics. But readers love lists. So magazines love lists. So writers write lists.

I’ve done my share of list-writing, in one form or another, since I was 15 and worked in a yuppie pizza joint in Minneapolis. And yet, for the next twenty years, no matter where I worked, I never quite got over the fact that I had to do something I didn’t love in order to make money. This also gave me a tiny problem with authority.

“Fuck America!” I thought. “They don’t support the arts! And artists! They only care about money! And sports! Why wasn’t I born in France?!?”

Yeah, sure, Joseph Campbell said to “Follow Your Bliss,” but that just brings us back to the whole Niche thing. I think. To be honest I’m not still a little confused by this whole transition period. Which is why I go to the gym a lot. And flirt with men. And think that maybe I should go into teaching instead.