Send no Flowers

Needles Jones likes her meat dark and well done. Well actually, I don’t know what Needles Jones likes because she is just a character portrayed by Ira, a 50 something year old Jewish man on stage. What I should say is that Ira likes his dick thick, heavy and Nubian and oh so much younger. At least that’s the impression he has always given me. Another one in search of the mandingo.


I have known and tried to avoid Ira for a hell of a long time now. We first met or I should say saw each other at the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival more than a few years ago. I was wearing a silly tee-shirt that I wear to the gym now that said Absolutely Fabulous across the chest. Ira made some comment about it as he ushered in the ticket holders. I don’t remember what it was but I do remember thinking, “just take the damn ticket and leave me alone can’t you see I’m with someone,” and with that he was out of my mind.

That is until the next day when I was at breakfast or lunch at the cafeteria, I worked in a hospital then, when who but Ira would step up behind me. Apparently he worked at the hospital too but in a different building and he proceeded to rant and rave hysterically and loudly about the movie and the film festival and gay and lesbian this, and gay and lesbian that and who else in the hospital is gay and who he gets along with and who he didn’t.

Now I wouldn’t say that I was closeted, but I’ve always believed that my private life was called private for a reason and not to be broadcast across 6 rows of tables filled with people who probably didn’t give a shit about me just as I didn’t about them. Also, there is only so much open cordiality and fake interest that I can muster at one time, so I decided then and there, I was going to start eating off campus. I would make it my best efforts in order to never have to speak to Ira again. But of course life is never that easy.

I would go on to see and meet Ira in center city in what seemed to be a monthly if not weekly occurrence. If I was coming out of Reading Terminal Market he would be going in. If I was looking for videos to rent from TLA Video he would be there dropping tapes off. If I was just walking down the street eventually there would be a point that I would run into Ira. He started asking me about things that I liked to do socially. He already knew that I liked movies and he thought that it might be nice if we went to see something together.

I would explain to Ira that even though I may or may not have been fighting with my boyfriend at the time, quick note if I’m fighting with someone I’m probably sleeping with them to, he was a filmmaker and so we always saw movies together. But I would thank him for his interest and his telephone number and tell him that I would call him some day. Although I’m not sure how that would have happened since usually the number was tossed and lost as soon as I turned the corner after leaving Ira.

Eventually we started to lose touch, well I mean we would run into each other less and less and when I did run in to him I would see Ira walking with black men who seemed to be a little younger than I was. I made my assumptions but I kept them to myself since I seemed to be no longer the interests of his eye.

I hadn’t seen Ira for about 4 or 5 years until yesterday when I decided to get a ticket for the Film Festival from TLA. Just as I was walking in, there he was. Ira. He looked pale and his face was drawn in. He was unsteady on his feet and looked very weak. I tried to get away, but he had already seen me so I walked up to him and shook hands. Right away he told me that he was recovering from encephalitis and that the virus had eaten away half of his brain and that he couldn’t remember half of his life but he wanted to know if I was still with the Broadway dancer, the one after the filmmaker. “He was in the Lion King wasn’t he?”

Funny that. He can’t remember half his life, but that shit, the shit that I want to forget, sticks in his fucking mind.

I’m swearing, I have to step a way for a minute.

So Ira then tells me how he was on disability because of his ailments and that his boyfriend had put him in the ICU after he had beaten him up for “no reason” and that he had almost died. He was no longer being hired to do his one man show because he felt that he as being discriminated by everyone and even his so called friends were no longer interested in being around him and who was I seeing now and what movie was I going to see. I told him and he said that he had not thought about it but now he probably would go and see it and maybe he would see me there. I think I have a date.


In a previous post, I had said that if I ever found myself homeless I would drown myself. I have to amend that statement. If I ever found myself involved with Ira, I would have to go for a hanging. Not the execution style quick snap of the neck kind, but the slow strangulation kind with the legs kicking and twitching KKK lynching style. And if you should ever hear of it, please send no flowers.

The Bikestop

At the Bikestop Vernon said “I haven’t seen you in a while.” The Bikestop is a leather bar on the edge of the ‘Gayborhood.’ I think that I have been going there for the last ten years maybe once or twice a year, sometimes even skipping a year or two. In other words, I am not what you would consider a regular. This was the answer that I gave Vernon as I tried to remember where I knew him from.

“Carrot Cake Man,” that was his name. At least that is his professional name. This was the name that I knew this baker by and this would also be the topic that I would talk to him about. I no longer needed to look like an idiot standing by myself waiting to see someone that I actually recognized, or was attracted to.

So we talked. He told me about how his business was getting bigger and better and that he made his sales at a farmers market centrally located near all of the major highways. He said he was pulling in so much business to the area; he no longer had to pay rent. He sold carrot cakes from the Mennonites to minorities, from Catholics to celebrities. Patti LaBelle and Robert Wagner were just two of the personalities he named.

Robert Wagner? In Philly? …Don’t ask, I didn’t.

Getting completely bored with this, I remarked that Vernon seemed to know a lot of the people in the bar. He said he knew them from various adventures and that it only seemed like a lot because the bar was extra crowded that night. He then said that the bar was usually kind of slow unless there was a special event going on and that the owners really did not know how to push their establishment. Even Butch’s Bulge Party, a party every Wednesday night for men in underwear, had turned out to be a dud. If Vernon was running things, he would have much more success at it. He would, as he looked at me, have us both come in wearing nothing but a sock and a smile, and I don’t think he was referring to our feet. We would pull in such a crowd since we were so dark and that I, being darker than him, would get most of the attention. There’s that Mandingo thing again.

Now I’ll admit the thought of me walking around with both my butt cheeks flapping in the wind attracting white folk is not something that I haven’t thought of or done before and I probably will do so in the future, but... not with Vernon. He never said that stuff when I was living with people he was friends with. Why now? Plus I am getting to an age where I no longer want to be the center of attention and if you can’t hold your own then play with someone else. With that in mind I excused myself and went to the Pitt.

The Pitt is the bar in the basement of the building. In addition to the bar, there is a leather and toy boutique cubby hole that you can buy clothing, trinkets and aids for those of us who need them. But when I got there, there was no store. Or if there was, it was not open. What was I to do? I just got another beer and stood out in the middle of the floor, trying to think of what my next move would be. That turned out to be pretty simple.


I had downed about half of the mug of beer I had, you have to drink out of a mug in a leather bar because anything else would be just pussy or as the patrons there call it, Woody’s. I might be there next week. Anyway, so I’m in the middle of the floor minding my own business, when Old Pa walks up beside me drinking his beer, rubbing his belly, scratching his nuts, I don’t know, I wasn’t paying any attention. Until that is, the ever so slight brush of his hand against mine. Was that an accident? Something not worth mentioning because we are all brothers heading on a similar journey and the damn place was crowded anyway. No, because then came the ever so slight nudge against the elbow.

“Goddamn,” I thought. Can I get a little respect around here? Can he least try to say something to me before he tries to get some for the night. Not that he had a chance in Hades. I think I would have to have a stroke and be completely incapable of defending myself before someone looking like him would ever be able to get close.

Its not that I have anything against people who look like him, but this is a leather bar. Isn’t this the place where you are supposed to find your fantasy, because leather is nothing but a fantasy, a fantasy of control or lack of? It’s true I wasn’t in leather garb that night, but still. I was looking for something like this.

But instead, he looked more like this. Like 99% of the rest of the crowd there. I don’t like to think that I am body bigoted, or so immature and shallow that I will lose out on that one opportunity that will turn my life around. But a brother can dream can’t he?

So I played my master stroke. I gave him the ever so slight turn of the head in the opposite direction.

Such brilliance! Such grandeur and aplomb! I should patent that shit. An action as smooth as a baby’s backside should be given all the recognition it deserves. And I was doing just that until I felt the tap on the left cheek. Oh, I had to go.

Mandingo Fantasy

The other night I was talking over a pizza with Curtis, a friend of mine and fellow blogger and we were talking about why so many white men like to have black men for lovers or just sexual encounters. I don’t think of myself as a racist but I’ve never been with a white man or at least admitted to it, but I said that that many white people were looking for that Mandingo fantasy.

Now I wasn’t talking about Mandingo, the name of the movie that I saw in the eighties or the book that it was based on. I was talking about Mandingo, the big dick African warrior of urban myth that would come and take you, manhandle you, rape you but leave you smiling and begging for more. Well maybe I am talking about the book and movie, where Ken Norton, a big black buck came in and took care of business for his white mistress. She wanted the Mandingo fantasy where she was ravaged by the black man but still be in control and still safe.

I say this is a fantasy, because most black men, although blessed physically, rarely come up to the standards that their white counterparts are looking for. Very few us will have that ten to twelve inches of man meat that they want. In fact the only person that I have ever come across with that kind of measurement is Mitch.

Mitch stands about six feet three or four and has a face that is almost punishingly ugly. From what I understand, his family no longer talks to him. I’m not sure if it’s because he is gay or because they are frightened of his looks. But he has an ass of two firm round orbs that stick out like a park bench, so solid that you could bounce a quarter off it. And his dick is a thing of beauty. It is so long and thick with veins popping in all the right places and a head that reminds you of a small Portobello mushroom that you would need to shave off all the hair from your ass so you could fit the whole thing in. To see him move when he is naked is to melt into your own dreams, slide into your own fantasies.

He is always surrounded by white men. Men he has been with and men that he will probably be with. These are people who even though know they will never measure up to his measurements in height or dick length think they will always be in control and they and will never be hurt by him. But I think as in most relationships they are hurt, because eventually they realize he is more that just a fantasy. He is a real person.

White men will always long for Mitch or men like Mitch. In fact black men will want him too. The Mandingo fantasy isn’t just confined to the white community. As gay men we all long for someone who will take us into a different world. As humans we all look for that partner that will affirm what we think of ourselves or cover what we least like about ourselves.

As for me, I think I will just rent Mandingo the movie again and leave real life and real fantasies for others to deal with.