Breathing Fire…

After all of my usual procrastinating, I sent off my registration form and check for BriarBash. I am excited about going, and about getting my hands on some new Boswell Pipes. And about getting my hands on some other pipe smoking bears as well.

It’s a bit of a funny scene, BriarBash is, where the sexuality is for the most part diffuse and a little hard to locate. Yet it is also unmistakably a gathering of gay men, one that seems to alternately amuse and mystify those that encounter it. I think my hunger for going has a much to do with the desire to have that “gay turf” feeling as with anything else. It’s the thing that I miss most about not being in San Francisco. There is no other place where I’ve been that gives me the feeling that I am not occupying a space at the sufferance of the heterosexual world. BriarBash gives me back a little of that. But this feeling exists for me very distinctly from a sexual feeling. Usually people seem to imagine the event as a non-stop, huffing and puffing orgy. And some times I wish it were. But the reality seems to lie closer to tender flirtation and buffet grazing with a burst of ruthless shopping frenzy when we get to the pipe store.

All of that being said – I do have a reservation for a smoking room with two double beds in it for two nights.

0 Comments +

  1. Don’t you also get that feeling you describe during Pride festivities? I know that’s one of the things I like about Pride weekend in Toronto. I can surround myself with my own kind.

  2. Yes and no -one weird thing about NYC is that you can have a HUGE celebration going on and if you’re a block and half away from it, it’s like nothing’s happening. There is nothing like the giddiness of SF Pride where even straight folk seem happy to be around queers. In NYC folks just seem oblivious.

  3. Yeah, Toronto is also different from NYC in that respect. I live a couple of blocks from the gay village, and there is NO DOUBT what is happening over there!

  4. Usually people seem to imagine the event as a non-stop, huffing and puffing orgy. And some times I wish it were.

    «Non-stop, huffing and puffing orgy»? I like the sound of that!

  5. Yes and no -one weird thing about NYC is that you can have a HUGE celebration going on and if you’re a block and half away from it, it’s like nothing’s happening. There is nothing like the giddiness of SF Pride where even straight folk seem happy to be around queers. In NYC folks just seem oblivious.

  6. There is no other place where I’ve been that gives me the feeling that I am not occupying a space at the sufferance of the heterosexual world.

    Funny – I’ve often felt that way about Brooklyn. 🙂

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