Page 349 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 319

male prerogative which had so suddenly lost out to the bitchy rantings of
a toothy, ravenous feminism. It wasn’t masculinist separatism he wanted.
That was merely temporary antidote to separatist feminism. What he
wanted for women and men was a renaissance of humanism.
His was a call for men to function in their own way. Kick became his
supreme symbol of a man who creates himself, whose self then becomes
metaphor of communication to others to allow them to realize that as
one man can create the magnificent Entity of himself, so his example can
encourage each one to create his own self in his own way.
Bodybuilding was his main metaphor for self-creation in all its infi-
nite varieties.
Truth belied wishful thinking. Philosophy means little to men follow-
ing their dicks around. Hardballing sex leaves little time for contempla-
tion, for courting, for romance, for all the little niceties of interpersonal
relationships. The more depersonalized the sex, the less reason there was
for anyone developing himself as a person. Was it tongue-in-cheek when
Boyd MacDonald, who published the very popular underground maga-
zine Straight to Hell, wrote, “I’m not a person. I’m a piece of meat.”
The Meat Mentality pervaded Castro. Most of the men on the street
did nothing but cruise and fuck. It was understandable in the first flush
of coming out of long-repressed closets. Ryan had lived that way for his
first five or six years in the City. He had loved his life in the fast lane, but
after awhile, quantity wasn’t enough. He set out to find quality and he
found Kick. He found a joy well beyond the fun of anonymous balling.
Kick turned him around. He no longer spent all his Energy late nights
in dark baths. With Kick, he hoped to make up for lost time precisely as
he had hoped to make up for lost time after he had left Misericordia and
gone into the world. He was glad his sexual panic was ended. He wanted
to share that idea.
“What movie are we?” Ryan asked.
“The Prodigal with Lana Turner?” I said.
“No,” he said. “The main Castro movie is The Rocky Horror Picture
Show.”
“That’s you all over,” Solly said to Ryan.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because of the song,” Solly said. “It should be Ryan’s main theme.”
“What song?” Ryan asked.
“‘In just seven days,’” Solly said, “‘I’ll make you a man!’”
“I was thinking more,” Ryan said, “about Rocky’s line that fits life on
Castro. ‘Madness takes its toll.’”

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