A video reading from (analog) Cruising. Provincetown was a place which taught me how to cruise and it’s the setting of the manual’s finale. It was an amazing experience to return to Bear Week sixteen years later and hold a reading for a wonderful audience at the iconic Gifford House. Video reading + text.
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Full “Bear Talk” and Provincetown travelogue coming soon.
Provincetown, 2010
The ferry dropped me off into a wet fever dream. The beach town was a ’50s Americana fantasy. White picket fences exploded with hydrangeas glowing in the July sun. As I biked to my campsite on the dunes, every pier, candy shop and seafood restaurant was inhabited by big, burly men. The streets were packed with bears. Hairballs rolled at my feet like tumbleweeds.
“Queen, you’re about seven days late, it’s the end of P-Town Bear Week. They’ll be gone by tomorrow, then it’s Dyke Week.” My friend had stopped cruising the dunes long enough to deliver the tragic news. This was my first time, on a last-minute invite from DJ friends who did not love bears like I did. He placed a consoling hand on my shoulder. “You can still catch the underwear party if you hurry.”
I hauled ass back to my tent to throw on a cute pair of undies, then booked it to the last party. I tossed my shorts and shirt at the clothes check twink and ran to the pool area. The party was sparse. The Top 40 circuit remixes couldn’t revive the sunburnt, grumpy bears shuffling around dead-eyed in jockstraps and tighty-whities, sipping their drinks and lipsyncing softly to themselves.
A bitter taste was forming in my mouth. The only thing worse than FOMO is being late to the party.
Then he came in. A towering, 300 pound, hairy pork chop of a man. He had a black beard and chocolate brown eyes under teen-idol lashes, with rib bones the size of my femur and a belly in golden ratio to his bubble butt. The Fibonacci sequence in bear form.
He looked around like he’d lost his bike. He wasn’t in underwear, just jeans, hugged by a blue-checkered lumberjack shirt, dark chest hair bursting out like the hydrangeas. He looked like Gaston’s thicker brother. He walked to the pool and the bears turned like zombies to a gunshot.
He was fresh. All around me, the cupcakes had all their frosting fingered off, but this one was still in its shrink wrap. Then, a queasy realization: this was the hottest bear I had ever seen. I wanted to run away, pretend I never saw him. The only thing more painful than his unattainability would be his rejection.
At 125 pounds when wet, when you’re my size you’re invisible at a bear party. Most bears would more likely try to order a drink from me than buy me one. But I cut my teeth on the dive bars of San Francisco, trained by fearless elders, drag mothers, and old bears who had survived more than a little rejection. They taught me the art of the bar cruise.
So I chugged my drink and marched my skinny ass over. Even over the tribal beat of Deborah Cox’s “Nobody’s Sposed to Be Here,” I could hear my heart pounding in my chest. I stood far enough from him so I could lock eyes without looking up.
“What’s your name?” I asked, staring into his deep, dark eyes.
“John.”
“John, I’m Leo. Where were you before you got here, John?” People like to hear their name.
“I just got off the bus from (a rural town I can’t recall now). My first time here or at any bear party. What about you?”
“Well, this is not my first bear event,” I smirked, “but it is my first time in P-town. I didn’t even know Bear Week was a thing.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t get the time off work, so I only made it here for this. I have to be on the bus by midnight,” he said sadly. “Looks like we’re both late to the ball.”
A long, shy silence. It was now or never.
Bars are built on little white lies. I’m not broke. I’m not socially anxious. I’m not painfully horny or insecure. I’m not here looking for someone to make me feel pretty. I’m not a nerd pretending to be cool. In a place built on facades, candor can be the sharpest weapon. I don’t know what came over me—maybe the tequila, the blue balls, or my friend staring across the bar giving me a thumbs up. I felt an undignified soliloquy of white-hot honesty pour out of me.
“Look John. You are one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen. I know I might not be your type…So I just want you to know...You don’t have to look at me now, you don’t even have to look at me during, and you sure-as-shit don’t have to look at me after. All you’d have to do is close your eyes and let me suck that dick. So take a look around and if by last call, you don’t find someone who wants to fuck you as much as I do, you find me.”
Before he could decide if he should be insulted, flattered, or intrigued, I patted him on his giant bicep and walked away, like a marine biologist sticking a tracking device on a dolphin.
“He is so hot. But he made such a weird face! What did you say to him?” my friend asked.
“Ya don’t wanna know,” I groaned, embarrassed with myself. I didn’t see the dream bear again for the rest of the party.
The pool closed and the event wound down earlier than I expected. I got in the clothes check line, planning how early I’d get here next year. The circus of sloppy bears was doing a balancing act on one leg to put their shorts on. The evening was a fucking flop. My last hope was the Dick Dock, the cruising spot I’d heard a few jokes about.
I put my shorts on, turned to leave, and there he was—an encore apparition, towering over me. He somehow looked even hotter than before.
“Ya know, all these big guys wanna fuck me but all I could think was, ‘Where’s that little guy?’”
I felt my ears flush and a schoolgirl giggle frog-leaped out of my throat. He laughed and blushed.
There was no way the cheap inflatable bed in my tent could survive what I wanted to do to this man. I pictured riding him down a river, like Mowgli and Baloo, leaving everything behind.
“Been to the Dick Dock yet?” he grinned and shook his head.
The town was like a Queer Cape Cod replica at Disneyland. We were lit by strings of lights and the moon as we walked down Commercial Street, teeming with life. Bears who were leaving tomorrow chatted with the lesbians who arrived early. Parents on day trips from Boston walked wearily behind kids feral with sun and sugar. Neither of us said anything; we just looked around, overcome by the town’s beauty and our own anticipation. The phallic Pilgrim Monument, modeled after Italian architecture, towered over all of us.
The Dick Dock was underneath a bar on a pier. We walked down the sandy stairs, past circles of bears jerking off and fucking on the beach. We walked away from the crowd and found a private little spot.
“I really want to eat your ass,” I blurted.
“I’ve been traveling all day, I haven’t showered,” he said politely.
“Trust me, I won’t mind a little tang,” I grinned. I poured my flask down his hairy crack and ate his salt and my whiskey to the sound of bear whimpers under the dock and tiny waves lapping against tiny boats.
When we finished, he walked me back to my camp, his giant, warm hand wrapped around my slender fingers. Every few blocks, we’d look at one another and grin. Neither of us asked to exchange numbers. Sometimes, perfection requires goodbye.
I faithfully returned to Bear Week for ten years after that, but I never saw him again. I’ve picked up many men and been rejected by many more. I’ve had countless wild nights at the Dick Dock and more romantic strolls down Commercial Street. But that was the closest I’ve come to a fairy tale cruise.
Fin.
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