When I was living in New York I dated a guy from Staten Island. I’m from Minnesota so I liked the way he talked. We were eating together once. “You know, people outside New York don’t fold their pizza slices in half when they eat,” I told him. He looked at me like I had just told him that people outside New York don’t speak English.

I was thinking about him today when I grabbed a slice of pepperoni and mushroom at Cybelle’s at 14th and Church, the Eagles on the radio. I was on my way to meet a friend who had racked up nearly 60 days sober when he happened across a meth pipe. Now he’s got five days. I told him that with over nine years sober I can be around alcohol, but if I see meth in the room I have to leave. I’m not the biggest fan of unvarnished life and will always prefer it slanted or tinted or lit with red lights.

Out here in paradise there are still boys scraping by in the parallel city, the one you visit but sometimes can’t escape, the dumpy apartments with the closed blinds and the porn on a loop. The phone lines and the chat rooms and the threadbare couches where someone crashes just for the night, man, I promise you. In that other city I got by on Kettle chips and Captain Crunch. I got skinny and itchy and mean.

That other city was oblivion, and oblivion can look like fun.

Here’s me after the last game. If you recognize the background, then you are probably loose and drink too much beer.

I’ve been studying up on sports psychology and “mental toughness,” reading a couple of books and listening to some free podcasts. One of them is hosted by an old ex-wrestler who sounds like the Santa Claus narrator from the Frosty the Snowman Christmas Special. I listened to his podcast on softball this morning while eating a bowl of oatmeal, practicing my mental butchness. You know – confidence, doubt destruction, positive visualizations, affirmative self-image statements. “Learning the right way to chill is essential,” he told me. “You have to maximize your downtime, so your competitive mind can recover and be ready for each clutch situation.”

Fair enough. Then he said, “Ladies, as I’ve stated before, being a true competitor is not about luck or some special mental gift. It’s about being mentally disciplined.”

My butch, positive self-image sort of took a hit there. Later he started talking about big dogs versus little dogs. “Maybe you’re a natural alpha bitch,” he said. I couldn’t quite agree, but he told me that I could rewire my genetic predisposition, visualize and therefore bring out my inner big dog. “Ladies,” he said, “We never earn respect just by winning. We earn respect by fighting, by constantly battling for every run. Will and guts define the size of the fight in any dog.”

Will and guts, bitches. Remember that in the batter’s box.

I’ll admit that when I joined the D league softball team, I fantasized that some formerly hidden talent of mine would emerge and I’d be hastily promoted to the C league. Our coach would shake her head: “I wish we could have kept him, but I can’t in good conscience stunt his natural athleticism and skill. In all my years of coaching…” and so on and so forth.

After yesterday’s game let’s just say that I’m lucky there’s no F league. Now, we are talking D league gay softball.  It’s not like the stakes are anything that should keep a grown man awake at night. But I don’t like to fail, particularly in public. Particularly in public on a team. With friends and fans and the Manly Fireplug watching from the bleachers.  Since I’ve shown a pattern of batting much better at practice than at games, I know I’m dealing with my own brain’s treachery.

When facing a problem, my first instinct is to turn to pharmaceuticals research. So I spent the night licking my wounds, surfing the internet, reading up on sports anxiety, mental toughness, and getting in the zone. In the descriptions of the zone I could see parallels with writing, the only activity where, when the going is good, I lose track of time. Knowing that I’m capable of getting into any kind of zone, even one as physically undemanding as writing, helps me a little. As will a few trips to the batting cages.

It’s not like I’m dying to share this with everyone. I like to look good. At all things. But somewhere over the years I realized that there is value in sharing the darker recesses of the human heart, even the small, relatively petty corner known as Fear of Gay Softball. One of my literary heroes, David Foster Wallace (RIP) said that good writing makes the reader feel a little less alone. So all of my Bad News Bears friends, take heart, I give you my foibles.

Even though the wingnut tea bagger movement reminds me in a half-paranoid manner of the early Third Reich, I haven’t yet bought my gun. This is probably for the best, as I’m still developing hand-eye coordination with a softball bat. If you live in San Francisco and would like to support me in this endeavor, you are invited to our first BEER BUST this Sunday, March 28th, at the Lone Star Saloon, a bar for the somewhat less-groomed gays.

$9 buys you all the beer or soda you can slam, as well as a burger or two. This money will help get us to some out-of-town tournaments, so who knows, we could soon be wreaking havoc in YOUR hometown.

The beer bust runs from 3 pm until 8 pm, though our D team won’t be getting there until after our game, probably around 4:30 or 5 pm. But there are some hot guys on the C team that you can ogle until then.

My roommate made me a cake the day I moved in, and for every birthday since then. He also leaves me leftovers. Today I opened the fridge and there was a big tupperware bin with a post-it that read, “EAT MORE PIG.” Since I discovered that yes, muscles do grow bigger when you eat more protein than you thought you could ever shove in your mouth in 24 hours, I now I have a small plate of ham sitting next to me. And a tub of cottage cheese. I’d rather be eating cake, but it’s 11:30 at night, and something tells me that Francois Sagat never eats cake after like 6.

There’s a common bit of advice given to writers: when you finish a book, put it in a drawer for 30 days. Naturally I ignored this and, 30 days after declaring my book to be finished, I’ve come to the realization that it needs more work. My secret belief, that I am special and therefore immune to the obstacles that normal people face, hasn’t gotten me very far. I didn’t believe the protein thing, either. Which means I have an unfinished book and I don’t look like Francois Sagat. I know there are people out there who have worse problems. Somewhere.

Back in 2007, the Manly Fireplug was awarded Irish citizenship, and I joked that he was now much more valuable to me. For if things went to utter shit here, we could escape to the EU, get married in Spain, and live the expat life – Gertrude and Alice with better footwear.

Ah, 2007, before we had a Muslim president, before our African-American congressmen got anonymous faxes featuring pictures of nooses, back when we thought the Patriot Act was scary. Before we’d even heard of Michele Bachmann. But then we were so young.

Am I the only fag these days thinking of buying a gun?

In the beginning it was kind of fun but now I freak out. They look at you. They look at what you wear. They look at what you buy, what kind of credit card you pay with, and I just want to escape.

Francois Sagat is my favorite porn star. Mainly because of the weird art stuff he does outside of porn. He’ll dress up in a bug costume, maybe. Or shoot strange little videos involving labradors or washing machines. The camera captures him in various states of undress, while text poking fun at his narcissism rolls across the screen. Of course if he were ugly none of this would be very compelling. I don’t know why I forget how powerful a beautiful body can be sometimes, or why I think I would be immune to its effects. I once sat at the same banquet table as Francois during a leather fundraiser, where we were waited on by “boys” of various genders. Boys who had to face the wrath of an entire table of masters when drinks ran low. On stage Joan Rivers told some really ugly jokes. I spent most of the night figuring out an opening line with which to introduce myself to Francois, a line that would present me as something other than the typical porn fan. Smart, artsy, completely compelling. Naturally I couldn’t think of one, so I spent the rest of the night studiously not staring at him. Three feet away, I was having a relationship with him, while he knew absolutely nothing about me.

He loved the stage and was vigorously involved in the production of Folsom Follies. He enjoyed music, was a collector of fine wines, and loved to travel. He was often found singing show tunes in his squad car. He loved three men: Jesus, Mozart, and Rob. He lived in San Francisco for 22 years and worked as a bellman in the Four Seasons Cliff Hotel. He was beautiful and shy, and heads would turn when he walked down the street. He treated this casually and was not impressed by the attention of strangers – well, not often. With a surprising bass voice, a twinkle always in his eyes and his great red beard, he was affectionately known as Little Red Bear to his many friends South of Market. Always a creative person, he loved nothing more than puttering around the house, tending his plants, painting and making a warm and inviting home for his lover, Julio, and his cat Pookie. He also enjoyed photography, at both ends of the camera. All of his close friends knew him for his bad jokes, his cowboy hats, his toothpick, and, most exciting, his outsized tool he was so proud of. Creativity was his middle name; he could make anything look beautiful. Born in Pawtucket, R.I., and raised in Providence, he joined the Army after high school but got his pay docked for punching a sergeant. The 42-year-old Georgia native was an important part of the San Francisco cocktail piano circuit. He was heard at private parties by Gordon Getty, Liberace, and Frank Sinatra. At a clinic a nurse suggested he dance at a local nightclub, and a career was born. He got out of the service by sleeping with a colonel and continued dancing and stripping in New York City, where he moved in 1988. His lighting bolt butt tattoo and matching nipple ring were his trademark. Leaving the weak and painful body, I hope he is with the Christ Jesus that he was so devoted to and made it to Heaven, a place he looked forward to visiting even more than Hawaii, where we almost got to go.

I moved to San Francisco in 1997, having missed out on the age of disco and the worst of the epidemic. I have friends who were here then – they tell me about everyone disappearing. Twenty years on I wonder about the long-term effects of living in a subculture and losing half your friends in the space of a few years, in a country where most people lived a different reality. I started going through the old obituaries from the Bay Area Reporter, from the years when I was still in college in Florida, ’89 to ’93. After reading a few dozen I noticed a pattern of mustaches. So I went back and kept a running tally: of 263 photographs, 75 were clean-shaven. 50 had beards or goatees. 138 had mustaches. That’s nearly 53%. I started this tabulation with tongue in cheek, maybe to keep a little distance between me and what I was reading. And before I started the tally I barely glanced at their photos. But now I had to look closely at each man’s face. I don’t know for sure when each photo was taken. Their friends and family picked photos from before each man got visibly sick. It took me two days to read 263 obituaries. They are from the men whose last names began with A, or B.

(With apologies to TV.com)

Marcia is distraught after getting braces and becomes convinced she’s ugly. This leads to Greg dressing a whole new way and talking a whole new way, including calling his parents by their first names. However, an overconfident Bobby doesn’t study at all and fails while Cindy is chosen and her ego alienates the rest of the Brady kids. Meanwhile, the girls try to decide on a wallpaper for their room. Later at the mall, a hopeful Cindy asks a Santa Claus to bring Carol’s voice back by Christmas. The Bradys puts on a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Marcia’s sense of security is shattered when Cindy inadvertently gives away her diary to a book collection. This leads Cindy to make up a bogus letter stating that Bobby is dying and his last wish is to meet the football star. However, Peter lets all the attention go to his head, annoying his friends and his brothers and sisters. Meanwhile, Mike sets out to make a family dinner. Later, the family is thrown into a panic when Bobby and Cindy get lost in the canyon. The Bradys prepare a dunking booth for a carnival.

Marcia comes home from school in a daydream and the rest of the family can’t figure out her problem. This leads Peter and Cindy on an all-out search for the missing earrings. However when the Bradys encourage her, she lets it go to her head, which causes her to become unbearable. Meanwhile, Tiger goes on a rampage and begins snatching everything he can get his fangs on. Later, Cindy suddenly feels important when she suddenly gets a mysterious letter from a secret admirer. The Bradys prepare for a Roaring ’20s party.