REELS

This story was originally published in http://apla.org/publications/corpus/summer_2003/corpus_summer_2003.pdf

Frame #1
Once in the middle of the night, under a full moon’s watch, I took my father’s car and drove to the far end of the park. I slowly took off all my clothes and hung them on a tree. I lay down on the grass under an evergreen with low branches, waved away anyone who ventured too close, and watched the moon move across the sky. I was a horny adolescent trying to find lyricism in public sex. I grabbed for the moon and without touching myself, I came.

Frame #2
The last time I was here on top of this hill, I was a 27-year old trying not to stare too hard at the teenager nervously jogging through. I was in LA for a visit and had not returned to my haunts for several years. I was interested in checking things out. Although the terrain remained the same, the views had changed. In certain sections, like the Bird Sanctuary, where there used to be a sea of pale bodies with specks of color, brown and black boys and men had taken over. Most of them were proudly displaying their wares to each other. The road connecting the southern end of the Park (the observatory side) to the northern end (Travel Town) was closed. “Due to Fire Danger,” the signs warned. Motor vehicles were not allowed to drive up this road, making this the section of the park least frequented by families and therefore, the busiest cruising area. This road is where I watched a young man spread his legs against the back window of his car and fuck himself with a dildo. Perhaps the most telling sign of the changing times was in the litter. Mixed in with the ground cover of fallen leaves and broken branches from eucalyptus and conifers were spent condoms, their wrappers, and those tiny lube containers created by someone who saw the need and fulfilled it.

Frame #3
I hold a prism between you and these pages. I rely on memory to reconstruct these stories, but my memory is tricky and random. I can’t, for example, tell you the dates of my relationships, but I can tell you the length of time I’ve ever spent with anyone. Neither can I describe the features of men I’ve been with, but I can tell you all the names I’ve been given. And, although I can’t claim Wilt Chamberlain numbers in 23 years of having sex, I can’t count how many men I’ve been with. Most of them have been nameless. Sometimes, I didn’t even see their faces.

Frame #4
The first time cruising through, I was so scared of being seen by someone I knew that I sped from Ferndell to the Observatory, zoomed through the Hollywood sign vista, coasted down to Crystal Springs, and ended up out of breath at the Riverside Tennis Courts in a matter of minutes. The next time, I was no less afraid. Again, I quickly pedaled through, but this time surreptitiously glancing at cars parked down the entire length of the road, some with doors slightly ajar to show men jacking off or men getting sucked off. After a few weeks, I actually slowed down, and took the time to watch from the safety of the road as young men in tight corduroy Op shorts and blue Vans tennis shoes, and older men in jeans with crotches sanded to highlight substantial bulges, disappeared into a grotto of trees. Some men rushed, while others casually strolled in, all occasionally looking back. I kept returning almost every weekend, never daring to go further than a few yards from the mouth of the cave of trees, always trying to convince myself to move in just a little bit closer. On the 10th visit, I nervously followed a shirtless young man with shoulder length black hair into the bushes.

Frame #5
He pushes his sunburnt torso against mine. His lips and tongue reach out for my neck, graze there for a minute, then slowly move up to my ear. He thrusts his hard dick against my thigh; his hands roam against my back as if searching for answers to hidden meanings. He asks me how old I am and I lie, “16.” I don’t know why. He tells me he just turned 18. His lips slide back down to my neck, jump to my left nipple, and glide down to my belly button. All the while, his hands explore my backside. When he finally takes my dick in his mouth, I shoot.

Frame #6
Afterwards, he asks me, “What are you anyway? You’re too dark to be Chinese or Mexican, but your hair’s not thick so you can’t be black.”


Frame #7
Martin and I sit together on a bench overlooking the Observatory. He tells me of the first time he ever came to Griffith Park. A drunken white man had blocked his path, and without warning, threw his arms around Martin to give him a bear hug. Startled, Martin pushed him and asked what he was doing. The man then demanded that Martin turn around. Martin reached into his pants pocket, pulls out his switchblade, and aimed it at the man’s neck.
“You better take off, or I’ma cut you.”

He was my first park friend, my mentor and bodyguard, this young man with a lumbering, awkward body. We met in August of ’79, before he was to start 10th grade at Lincoln High. I was a year younger. He was running down a dirt path, freaked out by the rattlesnake he had just seen, and ran into me. I must have been knocked back six feet. He remained standing. Although he initially assumed I was a Satanas, and I assumed he was 18th Street, we had an easy truce and became fast friends. We set up times to meet at the bench, and later on, after learning how to drive, cruised together through the park and streets of LA in borrowed cars. We also started going to the bars and clubs together when I was in the 10th grade, our entree into the LA club scene facilitated by the universal ID’s, pot and cocaine. I have not seen Martin since the day after my high school graduation party. By then, he was living in Austin, TX, working construction with his uncle. He had come back to LA to celebrate with me. After he went back, our letters, postcards, and phone calls to each other slowly dwindled. Almost two years after he initially left for Texas, our communication stopped altogether. We did not have a falling out. It’s just that time and distance evaporate intimacy.

Frame #8
I grew up in Silverlake, first in an apartment on Hyperion Avenue south of Sunset, then in a house on Benton Way, north of Sunset. Across from our apartment lived two gay men whose blinds always seemed to be open. Next to them lived a young married couple with their newborn son. The husband used to sit in front of the TV after dinner, most times in nothing but his wifebeater and underwear. Sometimes, as he lounged on the recliner, one of his hands would play absently with the wiry hairs on his belly, while his other hand would slip in between the waistband of his shorts to cup, fondle, or make adjustments in his crotch. I spent countless hours in my room with the lights off, lying on my bed with a blanket wrapped around me (in case one of my brothers or sister walked in). I would watch both of these apartments and masturbate to glimpses of furry crotches, and if I was lucky, fully nude men lounging.

Frame #9
I don’t think my dick was ever soft between Junior High and High School. I attended King Jr. High, which stood between Frog Pond, a bathhouse, and the Silver Dollar Saloon. Outside the gates of the school, I once found a stack of gay porn hidden behind a bush. Every night for several weeks afterwards, I would return to look for more. Though I never found any more, these early evening treks turned into an exploration of my neighborhood. Occasionally, I hid in shrubs or trees outside someone’s house, and would simply watch as the inhabitant(s) lived through their routines.

I created a mental map of where the gay men lived, and where the single, straight men lived (alone or in packs). I also took notice of the young men who lived with just their mothers. I’m not really sure why. Perhaps, as a momma’s boy myself, I identified with them, these tough-acting adolescents whose hearts reached out only to, and whose hearts could only be reached by, their mothers. They made my own heart ache.

Frame #10
At 14, I lost my virginity to someone old enough to be my father in the backyard of The Frog Pond. I had just finished a 3-mile run and was walking to cool down. He approached, greeted me, then said, “Do you want to get sucked?” I think I mumbled my reply. Inside the gate, he knelt in front of me and took my penis in his mouth. I had dreamt about this moment, fantasized about it (although the man/boy in my fantasies was never older than 18). And though I was familiar with the pleasures ofjacking off, I did not expect this feeling of rawness, the feeling that all of my nerve endings had somehow become concentrated on my dick head. The nerves were radiating across my stomach, around the top of my head, to the tips of my digits. As I shot my load into his throat, my breath seemed to get stuck in my own throat, and for a few seconds, I forgot how to breathe. I ultimately leaned against the fence, barely able to move, while the man stroked my legs and buried his nose between my balls, inhaling and exhaling deeply. After a few minutes, I thanked him, pulled up my shorts, and ran home feeling guilty and dirty, high and liberated at the same time.

Frame #11
Up the street from King, the Vista Theater showed double billings of the latest gay porn movies with intriguing titles like, One Thousand and One Inches and Packed Jockstraps. Martin made friends with one of the cashiers, who would sneak us in once in a while. We’d sit at opposite ends of the theatre, to jack off or get sucked off by men. Today, when I watch porn, with their virtually didactic position on condom sex and strict adherence to shaved bodies, I wonder whatever happened to the hairy, one-named porn stars of the 70’s – those men who made movies before bodily fluids became anathema.

Frame #12
Yes, I was barebacking before the term was even coined. (Although barebacking might not be the proper term, since in the age of AIDS, it is seen by some as an immoral act, to others an act of resistance and expression of freedom, and still to others a mere lapse of judgment. But one can also argue that buttfucking is also burdened by these notions. The obvious difference is that barebacking is framed in industrial society’s ironic love of experiencing “the natural.”) The transition from skin-to-skin sex to sex with latex was quite momentous. As gay boys and men with the “sexual revolution” still fresh in our minds, we had to re-conceptualize the condom, from a prophylactic/contraceptive (obviously used by straight people) to a necessary lifesaver. Before 1982, condoms were not even largely marketed as effective protection against STD’s. Additionally for me and for a lot of young people, the difficulty was in my/our embarrassment at having to buying condoms and negotiating condom use with partners.

Frame #13
At the corner of Santa Monica and Sunset, just up the street from where the original A Different Light bookstore would open, men lined up after the bars closed, while cars circled the block. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and sneaking out of the house to walk to Sunset. In the beginning, I was too shy and had taken to heart the childhood warning about getting into a stranger’s car.

Frame #14
Some truths are embedded within prisms, within layers. Within.

Frame #15
An internet search of all public sex venues in LA, excluding colleges, gyms, clubs, bookstores, street cruising, rest areas, stand-alone public bathrooms, hotels, office buildings, malls, libraries, and sports arenas (in short, bush sex), reveals nearly 100 places. Back when I was coming up, I knew of 5 parks. Two were in West Hollywood - this was before incorporation, when no one lived in West Hollywood, but in “Beverly Hills adjacent.” Two were in Hollywood. Of course, there was Griffith Park, immortalized in countless publications and oral histories, and mythologized in public lore. Here is where I learned, practiced, and perfected what a friend calls my “spidey sense” - an unerring ability to sniff out public sex arenas.

I found out about Griffith Park sex by accident. In the summer of 1979, I attended a cello clinic at Immaculate Heart College. During a break, my friend Alejandra and I took a walk to Ferndell. She noticed him first - the man openly staring at my ass. This was also the moment when I realized that my ass had magic powers (as Cisco, my second boyfriend would later say, my ass could turn a bottom boy into a top).
Two years earlier, I had come out to myself and to some of my friends. 1977 was not a particularly easy time for me. I was adjusting to life in the United States, while at the same time dealing with my awakening (homo)sexuality. True to my bookworm reputation, I read all the books relating to homosexuality at the Cahuenga branch library, including 1960’s psychological treatises on “aberrant” sexual behaviors. John Rechy’s memoir(s)/novels, from City of Night to Rushes, also figured prominently in my early inquiries. What really kept me going back to the library, at least until I finally started having sex was the Sunshine Press literature, which published interviews with prominent gay authors and anthologies including Orgasms of Light, a collection of poetry, short fiction and graphics. All of these books (even the psychology texts) taught me all I needed to know about man-to-man sex, and also informed my love of research and literature.

I returned to the park by myself the following weekend.

Frame #16
Los Angeles sings to me. I hear cacophonous symphonies in the way freeways divide neighborhoods. I am enraptured by palm trees fighting their way up to the sky; to chaparral brambling down hillsides. The city, a dry riverbed of concrete and struggling vegetation, courses through me. It’s an arid shield against hopelessness; a beacon for a realized future. I revel in this new energy that has come to define the city - the tongues and hues that bring back that biblical tower, with no god to damn us. Los Angeles grabs me by the waist, by the throat, spins me around, while I dance to its versatile rhythms. I dip the fog, which isn’t quite fog that covers the basin and dampens the energy of the solar-powered people. I move to the beat of high-rises and Skid Row. But most of all, I two-step to the pulse of the earth that grows daily beneath me. I feel its measured up-thrust, the gentle, almost imperceptible movement, like a new blade of grass pushing its way through fertile soil. These mountains girding the vast expanse will one day be the tallest in the world, and snow falling on the Andes, blizzards blanketing Everest, will feel like tropical rain in comparison to the tempest. But sometimes, Los Angeles swallows me and I wallow in the depth of tears the city sheds for countless unrealized dreams. No, not of becoming A Somebody, but dreams that come with the promise of the name.

Frame #17
I haven’t met many angels. One though, came into my life, with broken wings, lustrous black hair that framed his face, and flawless brown skin. He said he was Cuban, born in Florida, and raised in Guam. (I have always been, and will continue to be attracted to island men - I feel a connection in our land knowledge of the finite and water wisdom of endless possibilities.) With a father in the military, his family moved often. With a younger brother who never left him alone, he spent most times outside the house. We met by the tree decorated with used Christmas tree air fresheners, and talked to each other beyond the too-quick groping that resulted in a too-quick climax. We saw each other in and out of the park for the next year, and managed to slow down enough to become comfortable with each other’s island brands, until his family once again had to move. Every week for six months thereafter, I received a hand-made postcard. I still have them, these angels with clipped wings clutching stomachs as if in pain, or falling from cliffs. Then one day, the postcards stopped coming and poems I sent were returned unopened. I stopped frequenting the parks soon after. There were too many reminders of his presence - the olive branch by the reservoir was still halfway broken, our blue contribution still hung on the Christmas tree, and the skunk odor, which had become aphrodisiac, lingered. According to Martin, I had broken the prime directive to, “Never fall in love with trade.” He had just finished reading City of Night and (mis)quoted incessantly from it. But why not? In my 16-year old mind, that was one of the reasons to go to bars and parks, to look for someone to fall for; a man who could be attentive and strong, creative and intelligent, sexy, worldly and easily delighted by simplicity.

I like to imagine that he’s marooned somewhere on some island, unable to make contact. In my mind, I see him still as a young man, unchanged by the passing of time. His name still fits, still feels right curled…