Sex Still Spoken Here Part 7

I talked to my two best friends for strategy and dressed with care-as hot as I could but with a serious conservative edge befitting an accused-black suede Yves St. Laurent heels, marquisette pin, black jacket, short red dress to show off my legs. Spraying on a discreet amount of "Paris," I tried to summon up a smile in the mirror. With long dark hair and green eyes, I still looked too serious and idealistic, for a stripper. Clearly reflected in the gla.s.s was an ex-schoolteacher with an addiction to the outrageous. Unmistakably, I was a woman who was old enough to know she was deeply in love.

I felt a sea of mixed emotions. Being away from the place for awhile had given me a clearer perspective. Now I knew that walking into the O'Farrell was like crossing a border into a princ.i.p.ality as foreign as Shangri- La, with its own unique customs, and a constantly changing party-line point of view that necessitated denial. Jim and Art Mitch.e.l.l were kings there, and games were played for power. Women were encouraged to prove how hot and uninhibited they were, while the men measured their s.e.xuality by their number of conquests. Once I stepped back through those doors, I had to deal with life on their terms, no matt how fanciful, harsh, or strange it might seem. Once I was within Mitch.e.l.l territory, I'd be living on X-rated time.

I was going back. There was no question about it. I drove shivering with fear, keeping a sudden sense of nausea in check. Dealing with a pair of countercultural entrepreneurs bent on a p.o.r.nographic crusade wasn't easy. Would I get to tell my side of what led to the argument? I wondered. What would they do to try to make me crawl? Everyone had to do some penance to come back to the O'Farrell-it's a ritual, and part of the game. Thinking, they're not going to break me, and thinking, what more could happen, what do I have to lose? And thinking, I haven't been this broke in the last five years, I pushed open a mirrored gla.s.s door and felt the slightest chill.

Inside the plush lobby, past the box office and the king-size fish tanks, was the staircase to the executive offices of Mitch.e.l.l Brothers. Moving past the photo of a sleek Marilyn Chambers used to promote Behind the Green Door, I ventured in on the thick green carpet of the inner sanctum. Vince, tall with wavy brown hair, sat behind the roll- top desk from which he cleverly administered the entire operation. He was Machiavellian, yet at times benevolent; feared, yet cultivated by the dancers; implicitly loyal to the brothers and adept at defending them. "Simone, you came at a good time," Vince greeted me. "They're in there." "Simone, it's good to see you," said Dan O'Neill, notorious since the 60s as an underground cartoonist, and longtime O'Farrell groupie. A disreputable hat, irreverent overgrown mustache, and long hair heightened his whimsical expression. Just beyond him was Rocky, Art and Jim's bearded cousin, a tough-looking quiet good old boy, who worked there as a janitor.

Three dancers in lacy lingerie, rhinestones and heels, perched on the edge of the pool table. The pretty California girl-next-door types, whose clean-cut image and s.e.xy magnetism have been so essential to the success of all Mitch.e.l.l Brothers' productions.

Jim Mitch.e.l.l was just inside the door. They were having a drunken spaghetti feed and had already half-eaten a dried-up, out-of-season game bird they shot early that morning, to destroy the evidence. A faint odor of marijuana hung in the air.

"Simone, you're back," Jim turned toward me, steel-eyed. Ralph Lauren casual, he was bald with a trim mustache, slightly overweight but powerful, a man who clearly savored the accouterments of success, and his position of authority. Half-drunk at the moment, Jim was seductively forceful in his touch. Referring to my argument with Missy, Jim stated, "In these cat fights the rule of thumb is, both kitties have to go because it disrupts things for the other kitties. It doesn't matt who started it." Jim sounded typically sarcastic, but was relishing the King Solomon aspects of his role that day, having been able to banish, being able to pardon, "But you have friends in high places. And since Christianity, we believe in giving a guy a second chance, so we'd like to have you back. Art, Simone's here."

"Party Artie," devastating, bearded and slender, walked over with the a.s.sured style of an outlaw, and gave me a kiss. It's polite. I didn't want it polite-I wanted it pa.s.sionate. Art kept love intense and compelling, he was a flawless player in control of an ever-changing, unfolding game. A game I had to win. I followed him longingly with my eyes down to the other end of the pool table. Art stretched out on the floor like an animal, on top of one of those padded cloths used to cover packing crates.

"Help yourself ..." Jim suggested. "Have some spaghetti."

Vince came in. "Yeah, you can have some of that," he snickered, pointing to a paper plate of parsley.

O'Neill helped me to a serving of this horrible white spaghetti, red sauce with bird gizzard cooked into it, which I felt I had to taste as some kind of sacramental gesture. The girls were looking through the new Playboy and pointed out a small photo. "Oh, there's Missy. Miss Congeniality." Missy-the kitty who had me fired.

The office looked the same-it was dominated by the pool table, fishing relics, mementos, and a poker table reminiscent of Art and Jim's Depression-era, Okie gambler father, J.R. Mitch.e.l.l, who schooled them well in living outside the law.

Art got up off the floor, came over to me, and said, "I want some of that p.u.s.s.y," in his rich Oklahoma drawl, lawless, always melted me completely. I put my plate down and followed him down the hall, into a scene from one of his movies.

He closed the door softly, then pulled me onto his lap, and I told him, "I really missed you."

"No," Art said, as I looked into his sultry indecent brown eyes, "you mean you love me."

He pulled my red dress up and slipped into me, while pressing his head to my breast, "Keep your mouth shut and I'll f.u.c.k you in secret," he said. Fat chance. "Be the slave to love that you are, Simone," he said, stealing a line from the dreamlike Bryan Ferry hit song.

"I still love you, Art," I said as he was coming. "I'll always love you." "Is whoever's f.u.c.king you f.u.c.king you right?" he asked.

"I'm not seeing anybody," I hugged him. Art said, "Enjoy your spaghetti."

I went right out to the manager, Vince, who asked, "What happened?"

"I think I can come back," I replied.

Vince told me to call Monday and O'Neill kept offering me his chair. But I didn't want to sit down, I wanted to leave. Vince said, "By the way, did you ever see Hunter's note?" Hanging down over the window were six sheets of yellow lined paper all taped together, penned in a large defiant scrawl by Hunter Thompson. I tried to lean over Vince to read it.

The first part deplored the evils of the business and then over and over he was asking whatever happened to his friend Simone, the spirit of the O'Farrell, the most creative girl act, what evil b.a.s.t.a.r.d was responsible for this hatchet job on his good friend Simone. All this really heartwarming stuff.

Vince said, "You know, there're probably five or six versions of that story, one of them's over there, I'm saving that for the archives."

"I never told anyone my story," I said. "But I don't care, if I can come back."

And as I turned and walked away I heard O'Neill say softly, "And now we have a gorilla."

"If I hadn't learned to write about s.e.x, and particularly to write about my own s.e.xual desires, I don't think I would have survived. I think the guilt, the terror I grew up with was so extraordinarily powerful that if I had not written my way out of it, I'd be dead ... And I think it's vital [to write about], aside from whether it ever becomes good fiction, particularly for women with transgressive s.e.xuality ... [or] people who in any way feel their s.e.xuality cannot be expressed. Writing can be a way to find a way to be real and sane in the world, even if it feels a little crazy while you're doing it. If we are to answer that call, we have to be able to feel every part of our lives."

- Dorothy Allison seeley quest Bio seeley quest was born in 1976, won a first poetry award in 1989, has lived in California and the East Bay since 1998, and performed around the Bay Area since 2001. Sie has featured at the International Queerness and Disability Conference, National Queer Arts Festival, SF Anarchist Cafe, SF s.e.x Worker Film and Arts Festival, and more, as well as on tour to Vancouver, Toronto, and numerous other US cities and colleges. More of hir work's at sinsinvalid.org.

Mini-Interview How did you start writing about s.e.x? i had written a few shorter love poems in the late '90's which had hints of suggestive phrases, as i became interested in playing a bit with readers around what i was evoking. An affair in '98 with my second lover helped increase comfort with my s.e.xuality at that time, which had been quite repressed while growing up, and pretty unsatisfied until my 20's. In '99 i also began reading the East Bay Express, where Carol Queen then published a s.e.x advice column weekly (far better than Dan Savage's or anyone else's i've seen), and in '00 i met her going to an educational workshop at Good Vibrations she was teaching ... ... this was part of my first exposure to actually s.e.x-positive public communication, and a local culture of discourse valuing directly engaging with s.e.xuality. i went back to school in 2000 to finish a BA in Performance Studies and Gender Studies, and wrote my first erotically- invested vignette in late 2000,which was about power play, shaving someone's face. That fall i was in a cla.s.s for Gender Studies at New College of California taught by Judy Grahn called "Literature of the s.e.xual Underground," and texts i recall included some of her writing, and also Robert Gluck's. His book Margery Kempe narrated merging his experience with a female saint's, and he and Judy explicitly describe and reflect on their s.e.xualities. The opportunity to talk with both of them about their writing approaches-as well as see performance art then such as at 848 Divisadero, Keith Hennessy improvising p.i.s.sing while dancing-influenced my own experimenting and interest to write material specifically invoking erotic energy.

he has short arms seeley quest you know, the kind you get if your parent was exposed to certain drugs or other factors that mutate development.

He has short arms, but regularly wields his razor to keep a close shave, because it seems easier to introduce himself with a European kiss on the cheek than handshake.

I can tell he likes his jawline to stay as kempt and smooth as possible, 'cause he's got a lot of people to meet and kiss and charm.

He's also game to charm by feeding people chocolate, being fed chocolate, and by licking chocolate off of others, too.

He shares this after a girl says I just fed her from my piece of chocolate torte.

He adds yes, he wants some also, and then I get his mouth deliberately closed around my two fingers to caress the bite from them with his tongue, an approach I hardly get every day.

He thanks me and moves off in the crowd, while I marvel at how supple his lips feel.

He has short arms, and perhaps his legs wouldn't seem so long otherwise, but with his height and peculiar grace there's a beautiful long movement as he suddenly steps down next to me upon returning and saying yes, he'd like more but thinks he needs to be kneeling for it.

I can tell he's not all about chiseled bravado when this time he lets me play with him at my pace, lets me fingers brush against the surprising softness of the skin around the lower edges of his face, asking, "how badly do you want it?"

before fingers pushing the smear past his teeth.

He worships the texture of my fingertips as much as the torte, savors sucking them even more thoroughly now, and after he rises and disappears again, I wonder if he likes his fingers licked as much as I do; are his upper appendages sensitive different from his lower ones?

They are placed perfectly to stroke his own chest or another's; he barely has to stretch one arm to mouth his fingertip wet and then circle that pleasure upon his nipple.

Economy of size yields economy of movementI like the languidness of his hands reaching above his shoulders, and returning to tickle at rib level, where they belong.

He has short arms, which fingers just right, when I imagine him folding at the waist and knees to place his head at my legs' juncture.

I can tell how sweetly his hands frame his face, how suited they are to press apart thighs, how neither of us would be distracted by an excess of gangly limbs from the focus of his elbows angled precisely in to pull hidden skin taut for discovery.

He has short arms, so he's trained his full lips to do some things in their stead, like grasp the cap of a thing that needs a s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g motion to open it up; he need apply no wrist when he can just circle it with his mouth's hold until it comes completely undone.

He is also accomplished with his feet; he uses one to wash his a.s.s.

Upon learning this, first I think, "What else can he do with his feet??"

Next I think, "What else does he do with his a.s.s??"

I think of when he fingers knelt to me, how I said, "You know I'm also a pro-dom,"

and how instead of, "Why am I not surprised," what if he said, "You think I'm surprised?" And then I could've shown restraint by simply saying, "Cheeky,"

while lightly scratching my nails across the side of his face before letting him suck them inside.

I can tell if I managed to draw him off from the crowd to dally somewhere less public, when he leaned by a wall I could pin his arms at the shoulders to hold him there; though he quite outsizes me what if he accepted it, my pressing in to have my way where I want?

He has short arms, which remind me of my one high schoolmate with not much dangling for his, the one who was my English teacher's son and therefore felt off but who was beautiful and the most streamlined runner on the track team, someone I saw cutting through air for hours.

Queer lovers of mine with straight spines have said they love my back's asymmetry, its sinuous twisting, and I can tell he knows how it feels to be a freak in one's bones, the way others don't.

So little is off-limits now; I hardly want to wash my fingers that held his chocolate, knowing that later I'll roam more of my body with them.

I can tell he knows it, too, as upon parting for the night, hugging me close with short arms, his last murmured words are, "When you get off think of me."

serpent stirred seeley quest You brought the snarl out of me, beyond the curling lip and teeth wanting to snap, beyond the growl rumbling from my throat echoing the ones you left in my ear.

You brought out my hungriness for as much as you could give incisors clasping upon collarbone, smacked, grabbed, held in place, made to toss this way and that, gang-bangedyou awoke how insatiable I could be.

Even to share meals and feeling the pleasure of feeding you, then to find on my finger the spoor your body made laterto touch what entered and exited and stain myself with your smell lingering after I washedit fueled me, the earthiness of you.

This mouth opened as I pedaled on adrenaline across town; I sang big with yipee-yiy-yo-cai-yays, wanted to shriek and groan so much when with you that it ripped my voice to shredsI was inspired to let myself bellow in my most shameless beastliness; just wanted to hear you get on your pillow or bike and bellow, too.

'Cause I saw we're those kinds of cancers, guarded if need be but ready to give up some amazing goods once that surface's penetrated. I have that kind of moon in scorpio, all about s.e.x and death and delving into such states of extremity, learning from life at the edge. You know what they say about cancers, how we're just scorpios with housecoats on, just a little more into domestic discipline. And you knew I was born in the year of the dragon, able to go all subterranean and deep and dark, then sky-high style, and back again.

These arms burned, still I rode, these haunches held over to grind into you burned, still I rode, days later it made accomplishing much anything agonizingly slow, still I rode; that desire, to write while at work and call you to read while you were working, too, and to steal off with toys to f.u.c.k myself until I could take a break from that wave of pure l.u.s.t and eat and give in to my fatigue that sneaking to jack off I almost never do, that dreaming your bowie against my body I'd never done before; I rode into and through more burn and still didn't know when my craving would abate.

Scorpion paused, flexed along its segments down to its tail, feeling the stinger staying in balance no matt what shifted while covering the ground, ready to strike if sufficiently aroused. Crab sidled up to another crab, admired its strong sh.e.l.l, kept pincers prepared to defend kin's delicious soft parts from attack danced on agile legs.

Kundalini serpent stirred from where it had lain in dormant waiting, and started to rise up this crooked spine.

After you left, something at my groin gave way; my age or my sounds and furies or how I keep pushing through finally fissured tissue in a new way that needed correcting, and before I knew what was happening, I couldn't call you from the hospital.

Then it was day after day in bed, recalling my desire against the washing machine, on the kitchen counter, in bathrooms residential or public.

Week after week of wondering when I'll be able to take the new scar at the bottom of my belly being pressed, when where you once bit so sensationally at the top of my thigh won't be numb.

After you left, a day came that pulled me to find what I could take, what I could off with all the ache and endurance in me.

f t f t, I found the power of holding myself in place, teasing myself up, while holding stillness and openness, not tensing my gut or clenching as if for your c.o.c.k keeping from bucking as I came made me yell louder: feeling inside rushing up, bigger and bigger, and I rode it without getting burned at all.

After you left, I got my own knifeI don't need to imagine yours anymore; this serpent knows what dreams are for deferring and when the time's come to rise and ride.

"we made love. How pedestrian the words look-trite, worn, practically featureless with use-but how can one better describe that which happens when it happens? that creation? that magic blending? I might say we became figures in a mesmerized dance before the rocking talisman of the moon, starting slow, so slow ... a pair of feathers drifting through clear liquid substance of sky ... gradually accelerating, faster and faster and finally into photon existence of pure light ... as my whole straining body burst like fluid electricity into hers."

- Ken Kesey (from Sometimes a Great Notion) Elizabeth Rae Bio Elizabeth Rae is a professional vixen. She just lost a five year game of Battleship that she was playing through the mail. It is her greatest defeat to date.

Mini-Interview How did you start writing about s.e.x? I have always been a writer. Writing about s.e.x just seemed the next logical step. The biggest challenge for me is finding a different voice that sounds genuine. In non-erotic writing, I draw less on personal experience and am able to vary voices more frequently.

How is the Erotic Reading Circle part of your writing process? It is helpful to know what parts of your story are actually erotic. You may be focused on one act, or even one word as the turning point to your piece. But when you expose it to the Erotic Reading Circle, you find that there is something very different that others found to be the hottest part of your story. Knowing where your other strengths lie enable you to turn a story a very different way.

Do you write under your own name? Why or why not? Do you have any concerns about publishing erotic work? I do not write under my own name. My "real" job is in a professional world where it might not harm my career, but it certainly wouldn't advance my career to have it known I write erotica. It isn't a secret to my friends, and I would love to be more open about it in my professional arena, but at the moment, it isn't advisable.

What's the inside scoop on your story? What inspired it? Any caveats or unusual tidbits you'd like to share with your readers? The story is true. Except that I never got the treadmill up to 7. And the focus of the story? We're still good friends ...

Stock Check Elizabeth Rae She just needed to sweat. It had been a week since the flirtation had started and she was wound tighter than a spring. Her skin felt too tight and too hot. Sometimes she would roll down the windows in her car, turn up Stevie Nicks singing "Edge of Seventeen," and drive across the bridge, belting at the top of her lungs. The sting of the cold bay air would hit her constantly warm skin and her body would sing. She could imagine it was him touching her. The kiss of the wind was his lips on her neck, on her face, in her hair.

She just needed to sweat. Yoga pants, men's t-shirt, iPod. She turned the treadmill to 4. Searching for something loud and fast with good ba.s.s, she scrolled through her playlists, feeling her shoes. .h.i.t the rubber with a comforting thud. She settled on Ke$ha and turned the volume up. Jogging felt free. She knew she was in deep l.u.s.t and he was eating it up. When she would look at him with that hunger, he just smiled, knowing exactly what he was doing to her.

It didn't help that the flirtation was at work. A constant professional, she reveled in finding excuses to run to the bas.e.m.e.nt for various items. She had become an expert at restocking the floor. She had also developed perfect timing for her double entendres as she walked past him to retrieve an item.

Today had gone as it usually did. 4:30. There were only two more hours at work and her feet knew it. No matter the number of Dr. Scholl's inserts she tried or Dansko arch support shoes, at 4:30 her feet needed a rest. In the cutthroat word of upscale, commission retail, one tried to take as few breaks as possible so that when Danielle Steele or Leon Panetta came in, you were the one to snag them. But even as she saw a woman walk in with a fur jacket and a rock the size of Montana on her finger, she pressed the down b.u.t.ton on the elevator. No sale was worth putting her feet through another minute.

As the lift arrived, she stepped in and pressed "B." What had she seen that needed filling? Usually she would go for something in fragrance. Even if it didn't need filled in, she could put it in backstock, making it the perfect cover. Fragrance also took her all the way across the stock room, in case he wasn't at the desk where he typically stood. Fortunately, she didn't have to look this time. The doors opened and she saw his blonde hair over the shelves. He was wearing her favorite shirt, too; grey, just tight enough to show off the muscles in his arms, with the word "l.u.s.t" written in an engraver's font on his chest.

She had started dressing for him in the mornings. On days she knew he was going to be there, she made sure she had a little more cleavage, a little shorter skirt, brighter red lipstick, a touch more perfume. It was only recently that he had started to reciprocate her flirtations, which made her more focused on letting him know that she wanted him. His head turned towards her slightly as she walked across the room. He smiled and went back to his task. He knew she did this on purpose and she suspected that he was flattered. Sometimes he would ignore her just to increase the tension for her next trip down. She grabbed a lemon verbena candle and as she turned to go back to the elevator he walked past her and brushed her hand with his. She felt a jolt rush through her and stumbled back to the lift.

Work made it more dangerous. Work made the tension more delicious, and made even the most mundane comment a terribly important conversation. Work made this touch third base.

As she rode the elevator back to the first floor, she felt herself blushing and tried to control herself. The last thing she needed was the rumor mill starting up about her personal life.

The music pumped in her ears as she thought back to that touch. She pushed 5 on the treadmill and started to run. She just needed to sweat. She wanted it to be with him. Rolling around in bed, heavy breathing, fast movements, exhaustion, shower.

He had cornered her in the towel aisle yesterday under the guise of helping her find what she needed. As she bent over to get a turtle- embroidered towel from the bottom shelf, he stood behind her. There was never anything outright filthy said. She felt his eyes on her a.s.s in her black pencil skirt, which she had bought with him in mind, and lingered for a moment after she found what she needed. He hadn't moved when she turned around. He just stood there staring at her. She smiled as she felt her eyes darkening with a hungry look.

He backed away from her, letting her take her towel and leave. It had been like this for a week! She pushed 7 on the treadmill and felt her heart race. Sweat started to pool at the base of her neck and the small of her back. Her hair clung to her face around her temples.

He would text her for hours in the evening, keying her up all over again. She found sleep impossible. She had tried masturbating but found that even though she got off, it wasn't satisfying. At least not satisfying enough to turn her brain off and get to sleep. She had even resorted to calling her phone f.u.c.k buddy who managed to give her one night of repose. But it wasn't what she wanted.

Exhausted, she turned the treadmill off. She was drenched, but she felt amazing. Expending even the tiniest bit of this energy he was pumping into her settled her. She walked to the bathroom and turned the shower to its hottest setting. She peeled off her workout garb, tossing it to the floor, and stepped into the steam. For a moment she simply stood in the hot water. Her skin turned pink and she exhaled slowly.

It hadn't been enough. She put her face in the shower's stream and her mind drifted to his hands. She saw them pulling aside the shower curtain and stepping in behind her. She felt the heat of his body coming close to hers. She felt the weight of his hands on her shoulders, rubbing down her chest and settling on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She felt his lips kiss the sweat off her neck. She felt his stiff c.o.c.k pressing into her a.s.s and her nipples perked. She put her hands in front of her on the shower wall, bracing herself as she bent over slightly; she wanted him inside her. Finally beyond the walls of work, he took charge and pulled her hips back onto him hard. His c.o.c.k popped inside her, a sudden rush of relief and heat washing over her. Finally. She started to move back and forth on him, the water rushing between them on every thrust. She bent over further, aiming his c.o.c.k at her g-spot and pushing back against him hard. He gripped her hips, moving faster against her, the sound of wet skin slapping in the air. Water ran in her eyes, her mouth, her ears. She felt her c.u.n.t tighten around him, the o.r.g.a.s.ms coming in waves. His hands dug into her flesh, pulling her back harder each time. A moan escaped her lips as she shook with another rush of blood to her extremities. She felt him c.u.m inside her, holding her tight to him. They breathed in unison, both trying to catch their breath.

As she turned the shower off and pulled the curtain back, she knew she would be able to sleep tonight. She wrapped a towel around herself, and collapsed into bed, alone. She had just needed to sweat.

"Write the story that you were always afraid to tell. I swear to you that there is magic in it, and if you show yourself naked for me, I'll be naked for you. It will be our covenant."

- Dorothy Allison Jack Fritscher Bio Dr. Jack Fritscher, founding San Francisco editor- in-chief of Drummer and pioneer SOMA leather historian, has auth.o.r.ed 100s of stories and 20 books: Leather Blues (1969); Lammy Finalist, Some Dance to Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco 1970-1982; his memoir of his lover, Mapplethorpe: a.s.sault with a Deadly Camera; and his Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer, The s.e.x, Art, and Salon of Drummer Magazine, winner "Best Book," National Leather a.s.sociation (2008). He has received two "Lifetime Achievement" Awards from the Erotic Authors a.s.soc. (2007) and Pantheon of Leather (2014). JackFritscher.com Mini-Interview How did you start writing about s.e.x? In 1953, when I was 14, I began writing about locker room and gladiator "stuff" that turned me on and made me hard while I was writing it. I wrote to the same literary standards I was learning for penning my non-erotic fiction and features in high school. Erotica differs in that one of its physical purposes as art is to make the reader c.u.m. When I was editor of Drummer, I accepted and rejected writers on that masturbatory basis, and the subscribers called out for more. Erotica is CPR for non-erotic writing. Erotica is as essential to the heart of GLBT culture as Rap is to the soul of Black culture.

Do you write under your own name? When I sold my first poems, stories, and articles to magazines in 1957, I used a pen name because I was a Beatnik and thought it was cool and didn't realize the implications. By 1965, I wised up and exited "out" of that "scribbler's closet." Why credit an imaginary person for my writing?

What's the inside scoop on your story? When I first arrived South of Market in 1961, I rented a room at the Bay Bridge Motel which still stands across the street from the old Ambush bar. As an eyewitness writer during all the years of my 1001 nights in SOMA, I fell in love with the masculine soul of the neighborhood, and its roots in all the gay men from the Gold Rush onwards through World War II who lived in the SRO cheap hotels where so many died in the urban disaster of the 1906 Earthquake. One of those SOMA pioneers spoke to me. I channeled his voice directly from the past in my epistolary story, "Love Among the Ruins."

San Francisco Earthquake 1906: Love Among the Ruins Jack Fritscher San Francisco, April 25, 1906 Dear Benny, It's yer old (ha ha) pal Jimmy writin you from General Delivery in Frisco where you might of heard back in Saint Louie we had a little earthquake on my birthday Wednesday last, April 18. What a way to turn 19 (ha ha). No cake for me like two years ago at our fine spree at the Saint Louie World's Fair before I lit out for Frisco on the train from Union Station. I ain't forgot that cake or the icin on it. How we had our cake & ate it too. Sorry I ain't writ you much but I bin thinkin about you, &, pal o mine, I wish you were here, but I'm glad you ain't been through what I been through. What I seen in the last seven days could break a man's heart. This whole city it ain't gone, but sorely wounded. Ma Sloat's boardin house where I live is all charcoal ashes down South of the Slot, along with all the South of Market buildins around it. So forget that address.

It were all us workin men livin in cheap rooms down there, & pore families, cuz nice San Franciscans never cross South of the Slot in Market Street. Remember I toll you last letter how the iron cable-car slot worked, runnin down the center of Market Street, pullin the streetcars from the Ferry Buildin west toward Twin Peaks like a hummin metal line fencin off us & the rich folk we work for. It were terrible after the shakin woke us all up at 5:12 in the A. M., yellin in our longjohns, steppin out as I did from my third-floor window that crumpled down like a house of cards to the curb, crushin fellas livin under me, all us who could dashin out into the cold streets, everyone screamin. The Chronicle says 60,000 us souls live down South of Market, & we was all runnin for it, tryin to get away from the fire that started in a Chinese laundry near Ma Sloat's at Third & Brannan. It just spread & spread through all the broken wood & gas mains shootin flames into the air. At 8:14 A. M. come another quake rollin through, knockin more buildins down like tinder, & puttin folks chokin on all the smoke in a worse panic.

I don't want to make you sick, dear Benny, but there was women and children, whole families killed, and lots of men, more than you can guess. Lots of fellas, some of em I knew, trapped in the collapse of all the bachelor workmen's boardin houses. They saw the path of the fire and they was beggin, shoutin, you could hear, in all kinds of languages, at first for somebody to pull em out, till those that didn't have guns to kill themselves, becuz they was about to be burned to death, was beggin somebody, anybody to shoot em, & they was shot. Some of em as a mercy was shot by each other, you could see em, some dyin naked as they was born, & even if you turned away, you could hear the shots that stopped the shouts. I didn't need the priest from Saint Pat's, which toppled down, kneelin in the holy bricks prayin in the middle of Mission Street, to tell me it was a vision of h.e.l.l, & I was glad he got up like a man & started pullin trapped souls out from the rubble. Nothin none of us could do to keep somethin like 3000 souls alive in our disaster. Somethin like 500 looters, & still countin, was shot on site includin 2 fellas I knew who was just tryin to get their trousers & shoes & pocket watches & tintypes out of the wreckage. Gunfire & flames & smoke & explosions & the ground quiverin every few minutes like the earth was a bag of gravel. I left Ma Sloat's hightailin it with nothin.