Page 176 - Some Dance to Remember

146 Jack Fritscher

get some sleep. Kick cured Ry’s insomnia by wearing him out in bed. That
I know for a fact. I get fewer anguished late-night calls.”
“Whatever works,” I said, “if it works for a while, then let’s hear it
for the boy.”
“Personally,” Solly said, “I indulge none of Ry’s impulses to make
everyone stand at moral attention forever. He’s being a bit of a bitch. What
do I care if the Castro never cleans up its act? Ryan wants to improve gay
boys. Fuck ’em. I hate gay boys. I love straight young hoods. Do I care
if my muscular, tattooed teenagers can’t discuss Kerouac? Does it matter
that they’re criminals in their hearts and that one day one of them will kill
me? I’m having a great time. I’m a contradiction in terms. I’m an artist. I’m
making a fortune making erotic art. Does it matter? Nothing matters.”
After reading the first draft of the Masculinist Manifesto, Solly, believ-
ing in nothing, said to Ryan, “Interesting. Perhaps provocative. But, no
offense, a tempest in search of a teapot. What does it mean? What is the
agonizing worth? Nothing is worth anything. You think things mean
something. Nothing means anything. What is, means nothing. What is,
is. Plain. Pure. Simple. You question things. Once a priest always a priest.
But I warn you. Do not ask for whom the nothing nothings. You’ll be
disappointed. It nothings for no one. Not even you. You keep printing this
stuff, you better leave town.”
“I think I hate you,” Ryan said to his best friend. “I think I really
hate you.”

15

Late one night, at the corner of 10th and Harrison, South of Market,
near the Ambush bar, Ryan watched a man in full leather spray paint the
whitewall of the abandoned Falstaff brewery with the slogan QUEERS
AGAINST GAYS. Ryan clapped his hands in joy. He was right. It was
true. Something new was quietly afoot South of Market. The Manifesto
had started as a put-on, a send-up, a satire, but a weird irony, quiet and
populist, was slowly turning it true in the streets and the bars and the
baths.
Men were reading it, laughing at it and its slam-dunking of gay poli-
tics. A reviewer in A Different Drum magazine wrote:
Ryan O’Hara’s Masculinist Manifesto is a quirky twist of
insult, humor, and a grain of truth. One begins reading it not
believing in masculinism; one finishes it, if not believing, at least
not disbelieving that some truth relevant to us as men runs as

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