Bear Pride 2005: The Highs and Lows

[muckefuck]

I figure I'd better get this started before (a) it's totally stale and (b) I begin to forget details. I may be adding to it for a while yet.

LOWEST POINT: No contest: My one regret for the whole weekend is bailing on a friend in need. Sure, I hadn't communicated with him in years, but we hadn't forgotten each other and he'd been nothing but kind to me when he still lived in Chicago. It's not too often that you see someone getting dumped in front of you--by phone, no less! (Chickenshit bastard!) Sure, the timing was awkward--he was waiting for the restroom, monshu was waiting for me outside--but that doesn't mean I couldn't have offered my phone number. I didn't have plans for that evening or most of the next day; it would have cost me little to at least make the offer to hand-hold if that's what he needed. Of course, I didn't see him again for the rest of the weekend. Damn.

Dishonourable mentions:

• Worrying for about a day that bookbear was avoiding me due to an acrimonious parting on LiveJournal, only to have him say something ("Were you the guy who was filming in New Orleans?") that caused me to realise he had no idea who I was. I suppose I should be relieved or amused, but I'd like to think that I've left some sort of impression on the people I've known off and on for nearly a decade, even if it is a negative one.
• Getting into a spat with monshu on Friday night over something as trivial as dinner. It's inevitable: We had one of our biggest fallings-out (and reconciliations!) ever over Bear Pride weekend, which we commemorate every year with some sort of irritating misunderstanding that leaves us not speaking for a bit. Actually, it was kind of a relief getting it out of the way up front this year.
• Listening politely to an irate attendee who I know from way back about how he was never coming back as I could see out of the corner of my eye that a very shy bombshell was trying to get me to chat him up. Minor inconvenience, really; I made a new opportunity later than evening.

HIGHEST POINT I know it's cliché, but I can't name just one. There was no single thing that "made" Bear Pride for me this year, rather an accumulation of petty delights, such as:

1. Being picked up and swung around by bleepkeeper on more than one occasion--including, Xanadu-style, outside the Metro in the wee hours of Monday morning. What a perfect ending to that evening!
2. Finding out that not only did one of my favourite couples from my early years with the bears move back into town, but that each member individually sought me out to renew our acquaintanceship. I am remembered after all!
3. Seeing a large, muscled, black man stretch out on the floor of a party and raise his pelvis over his head, legs fully extended. And then remain sprawled out in order to look up the boxers of men walking past.
4. Literally running into aadroma, nytemarewulf, and jpcub right at the moment when I was wondering what the hell to do with myself for the rest of the evening. And just hanging out with them in general and watching them work their seductive wiles on gangs of admirers.
5. Talking cpratt and danlmarmot into coming up to my neighbourhood for tamarind duck, Southeast Asian shabu shabu, and spicy squid at the local Laotian joint and getting them to talk about their adventures abroad on a night when they might just as soon wanted to order room service and crash.
6. Finding out just today that the gorgeous Southerner who I thought was only expressing his natural kind and outgoing nature by chatting me up every time I ran into him would have let me do him "all weekend long".
7. Chatting with my artist friend Stan about his blossoming career while trying to not to make contact with an INSANELY HOT radiator.

And, really, just meeting and talking to a lot of very sweet, interesting, affectionate, intelligent guys that I see only once a year, if that.

Comments

[gopower.livejournal.com]

What constitutes "Xanadu-style"? Especially if no roller skates were involved.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

1. "Xanadu" was playing in the background. (That's kind of how we knew it was time to leave the party.)
2. I had my arms above my head, elbows bent, and my knees bent above the level of his waist.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm envious! I'd love to be picked up and swung around by bleepkeeper! He's a cutie ^o^

I was really glad to hang around with you, Da. You're so much damned fun, especially when we get all linguistic ^o^ And you're, like, the coolest dance partner ^o^

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

See, you get swung around all the time. For you. it'd be just a different dreamy guy doing it. It's a rather more novel experience for me. I kept worrying (unnecessarily, of course) that it would end in tears, with a thrown-out back and me sprawled on the pavement.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

It's astounding that anyone could forget you.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You'd think, wouldn't you? Yet it's happened several times already. I shudder to think what might happen if cut the hair and nails.

On the other hand, I still can't get over the weirdness of having not only a guy I met twice remember me, but his lover who I never met--in fact, who I didn't even know existed, much less was there both times--as well.