Summer Sigil

SUMMER SIGIL

 

when I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride till I get to the bottom and I see you again...

The night before the Summer Solstice. The early evening fog is trailing down over Potrero Hill. Not the delicate summer mist moving on cat haunches that I'd read about in grade school haikus. This is an amorous, gauzy hand whose fingers worm their way into the streets with alarming speed. Like a hand, or a spider. Like the ones in the squat I'm staying in, kingdom of the spiders. The other punk kids ignore them, but the first day I moved in I killed dozens of them. I drowned an angry mother still spinning her globule of brood, in the sink where I was washing my face. Summer's little horrors. The cold Pacific wind comes in on the heels of the mist. Straight off the coast, driving the temperature down, the coolness wakes me up and draws me out. I head to Market Street to see a punk show. The streets in the Mission are unusually quiet. Just murky yellow ponds of light with occasional television flickers beyond. I start walking north and cut through a highschool parking lot. As I'm doing this I catch sight of an apartment window where a kid my age is lifting weights. The room is painted ice blue, and it stands out against the sandy ochre of the street lamps. It's like looking into a salt water tank, impossible cool blueness, his body doing it's oceanic repetitions. Without thinking, I stop and stare, standing there in the middle of the parking lot. Suddenly he puts his weights down and stares back at me. Caught, my heart starts to kick at my ribs. The kid slides his shirt off over his head, the sound of my own blood rushes in my ears - I wasn't expecting this. Nor was I expecting him to slowly make his way to the window. He stretches his hands up to the top of the pane, smiling, inviting me. So, this is San Francisco. I get freaked out. I'm not used to this kind of thing, so I slip out of the streetlights and into the darkness between. I head for Market Street, glancing back every now and then to see him pivoting himself, opening the window, looking for me. But I'm all in black and I've vanished.

do you don't you want me to love you I'm coming down fast but I'm miles above you. tell me tell me come on tell me the answer you may be a lover but you ain't no dancer.

The warehouse is filled with homopunk kids. I feel at home. The cover is next to nothing, there's free food and no attitude. Most of the scene is straight-edged so no one is drunk or stoned. There's an unwritten code of respect and concern for one another. Some of the punks have formed a pit and start thrashing around, whipped into a frenzy by the black punk drag queen on stage. She's speaking in tongues like a mad woman, screaming, "I smell the semen of the Lord!" I do, too: the air is almost palpable, thick with the comforting, earthy sweat of the great and glorious unwashed. Unbaptised. Unsalvageable. Unbelievably sexy. Two guys with foot-high mohawks suck face each other in front of the speakers. A cute dyke with bright pink dreads zips past me on a skateboard. Following the blur of her leads my eye to a man standing at the back of the room, tapping his foot, but not dancing. European features, long dark hair spilling down over his shoulders, all beads and hemp clothes, looking like a Digger's ghost. He sees me, too, grins. My fear was undone earlier by the boy in the blue watery room, so I just walk up to him. He smiles, big toothy Dionysian smile, he introduces himself with a Belgian accent as Francis. Asks me if I want to go to a Solstice Ritual tomorrow night. "You look like you'd fit in," he says, tapping the beads and bones I wear strung around my neck. Before I leave the show, he tells me that it's an all-queer, pagan gathering. There will be a few hundred people. Clothing is not allowed. Without fully getting what he's saying, I'm nodding and grinning back, and only thinking about him and me. I leave him my number and head back to squat. I think of him briefly, falling asleep so easily in the cold night air.

Helter Skelter Helter Skelter Helter Skelter.

Waking up with the covers sweat-stuck to me, my eyes stinging from the heat. In the harsh Californian dawn it hits me what I'd said 'yes' to last night. Weird middle-of-the-road moral values I thought were long gone ambush, terrorize and then half-throttle me. Panic rises with the temperature. The intense squalor of the squat upsets me immediately, everything seems filthy to me, I leave without showering and without food while everyone else is still asleep...save the dog, Cork, who always follows me around the house because I am the only one who pays attention to him. Sitting on a sofa in the back of a cafe, my head reels and I'm making up a list of all the terrible things that could happen to me tonight: Don't get killed. Don't drink anything you haven't poured yourself. Don't make eye contact with people. Don't bring your passport. What if someone steals your clothes? It'll be cold and your dick will look small. No one will look at a skinny little rat-boy like you. I consider calling Nayland, ask him and Phillip if I can crash there tonight, that way someone will be expecting me, just in case...and it goes on and on. I stop short of "what if I get aids?" because I have no intention of having sex with anyone. I’ve creeped myself out of it. Not even with the longhaired guy from the punk show. Francis. Saint Franciso...maybe I’ve met the patron spirit of the city? The more I think of sex, the more I think of it's sister. I remember reading about Pan and how, bored of fucking fauns and wanking, he would delight in whipping the shepherds into terrorized frenzies. I spend the rest of the morning in Mission second hand clothing stores, To make myself feel better I start slowly ditching my black wardrobe because it reminds me of death. Creep uphill to the Castro and look down over an azure skied city, it's villas stacked on top of each other in terra cotta Lego, brik-a-brak ways. I cower in a bookstore for a while, wondering when the gnawing dread of tonight will go away, but it just builds. I'm reminding myself that I came here for queerpunk shows not a bacchanalia. I'm just about to decide to stay home tonight when some red head guy behind the counter, with a goatee and wild green eyes, recognizes me from my zine. He intervenes, and we talk for a bit. He asks me if I'm going to go to another gig tonight. I say no. He smiles, big Priapic smile now, says "me neither." For the rest of the day, the longest day of the year in fact, I let thoughts of him and the longhaired boy soothe my mind. When night finally falls I head back to the squat to a phone message from Francis. He'll meet me at the Gathering. I cower in my room watching a red sun curdle the sky.

Will you won't you want me to make you I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you Tell me tell me tell me the answer You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer. Look out here it comes.

Eleven o'clock at night. Laying by the window, the first cold chill air comes over me and dances like electricity across my face. A rank, salt ocean smell arrives on it, it makes me unexpectedly hungry and horny at the same time. Alright, I think: I will allow my fear to step aside for my instinct…and it does. It steps aside, unbars the door and throws it open. I'm flush with purpose now. I am on my way to Guerrero Street when I meet the red headed guy from the bookstore again. We talk for a bit, then all of a sudden Rick strokes his goatee and says, "I'll see you later," and pulls a vanishing trick. The Summer Solstice is being celebrated in a huge Victorian style mansion. No point in lingering outside, Francis' phone message said he didn't know when he would arrive, so he might already be in there. I move on automatic, everything I do is deliberate but dreamlike. I wait in line at the clothes check. The last drops of trepidation come off with my clothing and go into a numbered bin. They write the number on my palm so I won't forget. I walk into the foyer and instantly everything comes alive. Upstairs people are drumming Afro-Celtic rhythms that permeate every inch of the house, unrelenting and jubilant. I catch glimpses of men wearing elaborate headdresses of rams' horns and antlers. A tattooed juggler descends the staircase, without missing a step. His taught arm keeps three pomegranates in mid-air, and brushes against me intentionally as he passes by. It's then that I realize that I'm not really aware of my nakedness. It is the height of Summer; clothing for some reason seems unthinkable here. There are huge tables overflowing with food and drinks, littered with fresh cut flowers and burning candles. Everyone is languid, stretched out on pillows. Everyone is wired, dancing lasciviously, and tripping out on mushroom tea. All the while the drums align every gesture with the same intent. The same Law as in the punk show applies here, Love Each Other. It is Rome before the fall, it’s Valhalla, Elysium, Sumerland, and men of every conceivable form and face roam through it all as if it this were their natural state. I peak into a tiny room - there is a hole in the floor and fireman's pole descending into its murkiness. Perhaps the Belgian boy is down there.

when I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride till I get to the bottom and I see you again.

Leisurely picking my way amongst the revelers and lovers, I eventually end up outside in an enormous back garden. The Pacific air is held at bay by a row of outdoor heaters and two hot tubs. Some boy has braved the coolness of the night, and fallen asleep in the crook of a peach tree. Circuitously I find my way down to a door that leads to the basement. The door is wide open, and once my foot goes across the threshold I'm hit with an unimaginable scent. The air is damped with it, pungent, musky and earthy. Stealthily it goes straight to my head and puts out restraint and reason, then sinks heavily like a mercury drop into my cock. The basement is a maze of hanging patterned muslin sheets. Stoned on pheromones I drift through dozens of men entangled in one another. It looks just like I hoped Bliss would. I have never imagined, in all of my Goth fantasies, in all my pagan mythologies, in all my twenty-three mid-Summer queerboy sweats, anything comparable to this. Here I am and I feel no trepidation at all. No fear in the nakedness, panic is gone finding its way back into satyriasis. Gog-eyed, I wander further, until someone catches my arm. I turn and expect to see Francis there, but it's the red head, Rick, grinning at me. For no reason other than it's Summer I just kiss him and kiss him. He gives me a message, tells me my friend will be late, and everything is just allowed to flourish into growls of approval. I bury my face in him, he smells like the earth, looks like a wild-eyed Pan and we're laughing out loud the whole time. With a dozen new hands upon me, a mid-Summer night comes crashing down around us. Nothing and no one is left standing. Nothing can every be the same. He pulls his vanishing trick again, and this time for good. I tacitly agree to carry this long hot Summer going forever.

Look out Helter Skelter Helter Skelter Helter Skelter Look out Helter Skelter Helter Skelter Coming down fast Yes it is Yes it is.

Scott Treleaven, 2000

(revised version, 2004)

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All Imagery and writings © 2004 Scott Treleaven