One night I was walking around in the Castro, too early to be officially cruising Collingwood Park, which started usually when the bars closed at 2am, but nonetheless deeply ingrained in that mode due mostly to a really good batch of meth in town. It was called ether-based sparkle and the stuff really had legs, meaning the high lasted a long time, but the extra added bonus was, on top of being real dick dope (figure it out), was this stuff had a very euphoric quality to it, like a side-order of upbeat unfettered joyousness added to the whole unstoppable amphetamine grind. You could cruise Collingwood whistling a happy tune with a big sparkling smile, or find a trick, fuck their brains out all night, make them French toast in bed, get dressed and tear out the door at 6am for dancing at the End Up.
Motivation was easy to find, as was adventure, as was the best, most magical dumpster full of treasures, as were others out there riding that same happy, horny wavelength. You could spot them from several blocks away, glowing with an aura of energy or walking with a spring in their step and eventually looking in their eyes, inviting and wide enough to fall into a conversation, ready to spill forward effortlessly and with animated wit.
Apparently this ether-based sparkle was very costly or smelly to manufacture, so it would only come around on occasion, then after a certain dealer was found bludgeoned to death and rolled up in a carpet, we never saw it again. Rumors flew around that he had 10 pounds of it stashed in some storage unit at the time of his demise, another speed freak urban legend, probably. On another downside, after being up for a weekend on it, everyone seemed to lose their voice. I’d walk up to my friends on a Sunday night at Club Uranus after a weekend up on the stuff, and say, “I’m a little hoarse,” and slap my foot to the dance floor twice like one of those horses that can answer simple math equations by tapping the answer with its hoof. We’d laugh, a few of us with a telltale rasp or miming that they’d lost their voice, too. It was a price to pay for a really good time.
If you couldn’t talk, you could at least still dance, and I did, dancing the heel right off of my boot one night to the slamming industrial and unpredictable tunes of DJs Lewis Walden and Michael Blue. They provided the renegade soundtrack, alternative attitude, and essentially a familial structure for freaks and young people forging their own identity and mythology and creative forces to a nightclub scene in the shadow of the devastating loss of an entire generation of gays to their fore from AIDS. Their music gave this city’s club scene an edge right when the nightlife was literally dying in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. They saved this city, and their music was playing in my head, maybe “Scarecrow” by Ministry or Front 242 or Nitzer Eb or “Human Fly” by the Cramps, as I strolled the Castro in full reptilian mode, looking for sexual adventure too early on that one night.
Sexual adventure came in the form of a cute Italian boy named Matt who drove up in a large old model American car. He had those wide eyes that said we shared a friend in common, which made us instantly familiar, like we actually knew each other but we didn’t. I got in the car without a single worry, not even glancing to see if the inside door handle was removed. I was more focused on the fact that Matt was clad entirely in leather, chaps, cod-piece and vest with a smooth and perfect muscularly ripped stomach and chest. He seemed much younger than most men I usually saw sporting full leather, but he filled the uniform well and I was excited. We began driving towards my home South of Market, and he explained to me that he got all dressed up tonight because he was in the mood for leather sex. I asked what the difference between sex and leather sex was, suspecting that I wasn’t what he was after since I wasn’t dressed like an extra from the movie Cruising or the Eagle’s Sunday beer bust. “Am I the wrong guy for you tonight?”
“Not at all,” he said excitedly and sincerely, “I’ll teach you all about it!”
“I’ve never shyed away from lessons, and I’m a very good student,” I said.
Then Matt started asking me if I knew this person and that person, as one does when they are getting to know you, and he asked me if I knew this particularly notorious guy, a familiar low-life always being shady and telling lies and stealing things and selling bad dope, that sort of thing. I said I knew him, and he said, “Then maybe you can help me figure something out. Earlier tonight I saw him and I got this strange feeling that he was trying to lure me into a trap, like kidnap me or something. Am I possibly just being paranoid? It was a weird situation and I just kind of felt danger and bolted.” He explained more of the details to me, and I told him that maybe he was a bit wound up on drugs at that moment, which does happen to all of us from time to time, because the guy in question was really annoying and petty, but not that ambitious or tough to pull of something like imprisonment or abduction. He was too busy stealing from friends and working any dealers he could for product. Anything else was way out of his league, so it must have been Matt was tripping on the paranoiac tip. “You gotta keep that in check, Matt, or should I say Sir?” We laughed and I sensed he fully understood. We got to my place, which was a flat directly above a bar called My Place, and went in for a good long lesson.
We explored the concept of leather sex thoroughly, even trading roles and uniforms in that perfect accelerated and charged amphetamine fervor that does happen from time to time where you are both inspired to exhaust every known sexual activity possible between two people, no act too difficult, every option approached with zeal, every mountain climbed. We were having such a good time we decided to share the magic and invite another person to join us.
We were trying to decide who we knew that would be game for such an impromptu romp at a moment’s notice in the wee hours. I immediately thought of Pride, because, after all, he took me on my last sordid adventure, and I thought he might like Matt. We put in a call and he was soon there and wanted to get high before we started going again. For this, I knew he would need a syringe or rig.
He asked me, “Do you have a wig for me?” because that’s what we called them, rigs were “wigs,” the needle exchange was the “wig exchange.” I promptly went to ask my roommate for one. While I was out of the room, Matt asked, “What do you need a wig for?” to which Pride coyly and simply responded, “I always have to wear a wig every time I do a hit.” I returned with the apparatus and saw that Matt was dressing hurriedly. I asked him where he was going, and he told me he had to feed the parking meter and would be right back.
This sounded logical to me; he’d been there a long time. Pride said, “He’s not coming back. ” I looked at him incredulously and said, “Yes he is,” fully believing it. He never returned, and he left a fancy cock ring behind, too! I was really bummed that he left, grilling Pride about it. “What did you do or say to him while I was out of the room? Did you act all nelly or something, you evil bitch!” He stuck to his story. We couldn’t figure it out, then a few hours later another friend called us and said that Matt had fled our place and come to his saying he had narrowly escaped being killed by some queen who was gonna put on a wig and kill him, Mafia hit man style. That friend tried to calm the confused guy down, but he was inconsolable and apparently was sent back home to Mom and Dad in New Jersey in a matter of 48 hours. That poor, poor delusional leather instructor. He taught me a lot.