On The Town

Got a lot done yesterday afternoon! (Picture this: me leathered up, ready for a night on the town, cleaning out the refrigerator, gathering up the trash for burning, changing my father's bed and doing his laundry...).

When all that was out of the way, I headed out. I got into Philadelphia around 5:45, just as I. Goldberg's was closing their doors. (I seem to be fated never to get there before then. A stop at my brother's in Doylestown wrecked the possibility of that happening in this instance.)

In the rain, Philadelphia struck me as being even more dreary, dour, and vaguely dangerous than usual. But I hit Kiehl's to stock up on products, then headed to Millenium for a latte, and then to More Than Just Ice Cream for dinner. As I was finishing up dinner, I was joined by the Baron von Philadelphia. We talked for a bit and then the Baron offered to show me his garden.

If'n you get to Philadelphia, stop by the corner of Broad and South Streets. There, you'll find a bit of green in that big bad city. Half of the formerly garbage strewn vacant lot is communal, and the other half is given over to individual plots. The Baron is the proud tender of one of these plots. All of his plantings seem to be doing beautifully. His basil and peppermint made for a nice way to refresh my palate.

And the Baron has allowed his life to be transformed by gardening. Plants have a life that is strangely independent of ours, but at the same time, tied to us. If we don't give them care, they wither. Or not. They will thrive or perish and it's beyond our control. And a garden is a living thing, never done. It's about the process, not the end result. And there is never not something to do. When the Baron finds himself getting trapped inside his head, he heads to his garden.

Sweet.

Together, the Baron and I headed to my car so I could drop off my bag before heading to the Bike Stop. As we rode up in the elevator in the parking garage, I heard something metalic fall to the floor. Huh. A coin? I looked around. There was the post from my piercing.

Egad! I wasn't about to try and jam it back in there and then. And besides, the ball that secures one end was gone gone gone.

This means that today, I have to find a local piercing parlor and have them reinsert it. I am way too much of a wuss to do that myself. I get off on the site of blood, except when it's my own. Tarnation.

But I took it in stride, walked over to the Bike Stop, said goodnight to the Baron and headed in.

Bad news.

The Bike Stop no longer has a dresscode on Saturday nights. So, there was like, madras. It was bad. And the manager that I know was keeping busy putting a stop on any inappropriate sexual activity.

*sigh*

This kind of got me to thinking. Over the course of the past couple of months, I've darkened the doors of the Eagle NYC, the Loading Dock in SF, and now the Bike Stop. And it's (shockingly) the same story at all of them. Not much in the way of sexual energy. A mixed crowd. Leatherbars make me think of Plato's theory of Ideals. Plato believed that we know what a chair is because in the realm of the ideals, there is the perfect chair, and the chairs we see all approximate the ideal, displaying a kind of 'chair-ness.' My philosophy prof in college acknowledged that this was pretty far out, but then demostrated this by asking us to consider the hamburger. We all have in our heads an idea of the perfect hamburger: big, juicy, full of flavor, charred on the outside, red on the inside, ketchup, mustard, pickles. And every time we have a hamburger, we compare it to this ideal hamburger in our heads. And usually find the actual hamburger wanting in some respects. But the thing is, none of us has probably ever had a hamburger exactly like the hamburger in our heads.

Get it? Isn't that cool? Where did that ideal hamburger come from? How did it get in our heads? And why is it that with some superficial differences (say, you don't like pickles), all of our hamburgers pretty much resemble one another.

Anyway, so too with leatherbars. We all of us have this ideal leatherbar in our heads, and yet although we might have come close, we've never been there.

Maybe it was an off night, but the Bike Stop was pretty far off the mark.

I did run into Lthrpup28, an AOL correspondent and frequent Singletails reader. So, 'pup became the first reader to get a look at my new tattoo.

There was a guy last night who definitely piqued my attention. This big bearded guy, leathered up, and around his neck was a length of chain secured with a padlock.

Huh.

Huh!

How 'bout that?

So, not only am I now a boy, with a Sir, but I've also become a brother, entering a special fraternity. A fraternity of men in the fullness of their manhood. Strong and capable men. Men with lifetimes of laughter and tears, joy and sorrow under their belts.

And men who have gotten down on their knees--knees that might crack at this point like mine do, knees that have bent in toil, and possibly in prayer, and that now bend to accept the collar of another man. It's different when a man decides to become a boy. A man who knows himself and what he's capable of, and who decides that his place is at his Sir's boots.

Sweet.

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