Exotic Magazine: Loaded for Bear

Autumn has brought a refreshing change to Portland. Not only has the foliage become more colorful, but so has my sexuality. I am now in touch with a deeper, sweatier part of myself. My soul now fondles the giant hairy package of The Great Bear Spirit.

As one of the two Lifetime Members of the Northwest Friends of Lesbians Social Club (see "Dyke Like Me!", Exotic July 2002), my buddy Dave and I hailed the changing season with a change of our own. In other words, we had a change of our own to hail the changing season. One thing that has weathered the seasons is our unwavering desire to do kind things for people. We care so much, it hurts. We care way, way too much. We care so much, we want to blow our fucking heads off. In our past "Live Actions," we have opened our musky, tattooed, pheromone-slathered arms to the most unfortunate of society's undesirables. Namely, fags.

But sadly, the noble seeds we've sown have only reaped a Harvest of Grief. This was the case during our recent First Annual Teach a Dyke to Read Festival. It all started just as we planned--cupcakes and home movies. But the night marched steadfastly into an open yawning pit of Tragedy and Other Bad Shit.

You know, it's a funny thing--upon first inspection, your average bulldyke might seem tame and somewhat respectable. But get a little liquor in her...or say something that pisses her off...or make a loud noise that unexpectedly startles her...and she transforms into a bloodthirsty she-goat bent upon your humiliation and destruction.

Using sock puppets, Young Dave was trying to show the dykes how to act like ladies. He included songs 'n' everything as part of his presentation. It seemed that the sock puppets had a bewildering effect upon the lesbians. Dumbfounded by a talking sock, one carpet-muncher tried to touch it. Dave recoiled in fear, drawing his hand back in an instinctually maternal gesturetoward the imperiled sock puppet.

It was then that the lesbian attacked.

I ran out of the hall without a scratch. But Poor Young Dave wasn't so lucky.

Dave's lacerations, puncture wounds, bone fractures, and head trauma will one day heal, but the emotional scars will linger like the smell of ass in a public restroom.

We tried to "understand" and to "get over it," but we were a mess. After being mauled by those fat, ungrateful, slobbering, biscuit-munching dykes, we even considered throwing in the

towel and abandoning the Northwest Friends
of Lesbians.

We really needed help.

Young Dave checked into AA meetings.

I checked into the Male Survivors of Sex Abuse, where they're teaching me to"embrace my scars."

After a bushel of ups 'n' downs, and a whole bale o' hay's worth of tears, Dave and I--the core committee of Northwest Friends of Lesbians--are back and stronger than ever. Our desire to help others and to heal the community have reached a fever pitch. We just can't fucking wait to foment sex-positive social change.

But if the lesbians don't want us...then who?

Obviously, the lesbians don't deserve good friends like Dave and I. In fact, they deserve to be rounded into small slaughterhouses where they are chained to walls, fed lentil soup, and beaten routinely, or something cool like that.

If not the flabby legions of cabbage-stinking, carpet-munching sows...then WHO do we help?

The solution came to Dave and I one morning while we were downloading pornography. Without much direction in our lives, Dave and I purchase, view, and utilize a LOT of pornography.

We really like that fag porn best of all. We like to watch it while pulling "boner checks" on each other. We never fag off or anything like that, if that's what you were thinking.

We stumbled upon a Gay Bears website. Fat, bearded cocksuckers unashamedly displaying their Tater-Tot-sized wing-a-ding-dings, bending over and spreading open their pasty pimply milky buttcheeks to reveal assholes that appear to have been plowed by oil drills. Lumberjackish gluttons carpeted by greasy hair.

Alas--Dave and I had found our cause. We would be the Willamette Valley Protectors of the Bears. These fat hairy homos could count on us if the shit ever went down!

While sitting on the toilet reading Exotic, several striking similarities between bears and lesbians occurred to me:

* They both enjoy the comfort and durability of flannel.

* They both proudly display their well-groomed facial hair.

* They both have their own bars with jukeboxes featuring dance music catering to their specific lifestyles.

Everyone who's normal and not some kind of sick queer has a healthy, well-reasoned, murderous hatred for bears, lesbians, and all Sodomites. If they be mocked and ridiculed, my only wish is that it be more often. In fact, I encourage and WILL

LEAD the parade into their private "Bear Dens" and "Dyke Huts," and in the good-natured spirit of the Beer Hall Putsch, I will march them all to camps where Dave and I will serve as their Reeducation Tutors, forcing them to watch naked fag wrestling videotapes for days and possibly months until they suffer an ultimate mental breakdown and act like Proper Normal Heterosexual Men and Women of This Great Nation of Ours.

So, in the kinda communistic spirit of my much-loved lesbian costumes for the Great Dyke March of 2002, I scratched my chin for a moment and then decided to adopt Gay Bear Fashion sensibilities.

Dave was in rehab...again...so I was forced to wander into Bear Country alone.

I didn't want them to think I was some kind of sissy-bitch limpwristed purple-
people-eatin' Nancy Boy from Fagtown...rather, I sought to project the image of a rugged, cocksure, woman-hating Homo Fireman who KNOWS the evils of women,
especially when they're on their "monthly time." I wanted to portray myself as a REAL man, rather than what I suspect and fear I am.

I imagined the wild lifestyle of this Burly Gay Elite: monster-truck rallies, tall cans of Australian beer, Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs blasting in the background, and everybody sucking cock as if those cocks were guns that would go off the second they stopped being sucked. The Bear Lifestyle is ideal...and, I daresay, appealing to me. It's oddly warm and welcoming, like a Cinnamon Pop Tart you threw in the microwave for fifteen seconds...I'm talking about a hot, sweet, sticky feeling...the aromas of pickles and feces entice me further into the Bear's Den...so put on your leather jacket, my fat, furry friend, and let's wander into Bear Country!

When it comes to Bear Bars, look no further than the mighty Eagle (1300 W. Burnside), a meaty barbecue pit of raw male sensuality that recalls the taste sensation of Hot Mongolian Chili Oil.

When I walk in, the first thing I notice--besides the faggots--is a menacing, ominous,
sorta-socialistic stuffed eagle hovering behind the bar, looking straight at me like it wanted
to suck my cock or something.

There were round tables everywhere, just brimming with queers. Every kinda queer you could imagine...leather fags, drag queens, gay ice-cream salesmen, professional arm wrestlers, pillow-biters, bondage fags, bony old fags, and skinny young cocksuckers.
A complete and total Hungarian goulash of Fag-a-Trons.

But of course...the bears loomed larger than the other species of queers. Bigger. Hairier. Smellier. Scarier. Get me out of here. They're going to rape me. Please get me out of here. They're definitely going to rape me.

Curious to what the bears are "all about," I almost thought about talking to them. That's what kind of dedicated journalist and dogged reporter I am. Unfortunately, as I was dressed rather bearish myself, I decided not to directly approach the bears, fearing they might corner me and do something dastardly.

I shuddered with the blank, cold realization that the Eagle's notorious, legendary, really-like-talked-about-a-lot "upstairs" section...where there is no lighting...no safety...no boundaries...no grease...loomed over my frightened scalp. Dare I ascend the stairs? Or would they somehow know that I was a Poseur Bear? Would they cradle me in their mighty arms and hoist me upstairs? Would they undress me with the lights on, offering candid comments during each stage of my disrobing? Would they entice me with the fleshy, hairy megatonnage of the entire bear clan? Would I feel the mass of bearflesh rubbing on my Joyous Bits and the occasional painful jab of their reddened, swollen bear cocks? Beard to beard...belly to belly...hands exploring and discovering...man touching man with firm-yet-adequately-moisturized hands...man touching man as only man can touch man...simple men simply enjoying the simplicity of manhood's enjoyment...playfully rubbing the eager-to-please head of ME, their newfound baby cub...all of us laying around post-orgasm, enjoying one another's simple, pungent warmth. Would they accept me? Would they call me the next morning? Would they hold me in their strong arms like weak women could never hold me?

I asked myself these questions...and forty-seven other questions which I won't recount here...as I watched television and realized I'd become enchanted with the Gay Bear lifestyle. I at times find it hard to choose between what we all know is right and good...and what I know would feel so right and would feel so fucking good.

I left the Eagle without having spoken to any Bears...without having attempted to go upstairs and witness possible Bear Sex in action...but still expecting Exotic to pay me the full amount for this supposedly investigative article.

I sure wish Dave had been there to shirk some of the journalistic responsibility with me, too.

There's a little bear in us all.

Not that I want a little bear in me.

Or that I wouldn't mind it.

Or not that I wouldn't mind not doing it.

Or it's not like it isn't that I wouldn't enjoy some huge bear raiding my ass like it was a picnic basket.

I think you know what I mean.