and after the pride is gone--then what?

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yes, in this post, i'm waxing sentimental about a tube o' lube--and not even a very good-looking tube o' lube at that. i mean, look at it--"pride" lubricant?! and even if you can get past the lame-ass branding, it's scuffed and scarred and its once-vibrant pink-on-black is but a sad, faded shadow of its former self.

but regardless of all that, there's a reason this little tube o' lube is special: it's because, outta the hundreds of tubes just like it that have sustained me over the years through good times and bad, this is my very last one.

is there a story here? well, of course there is--where the fuck you think you are, anyway?

picture it: west hollywood, summer 1992 (or 1991, whatever--i have no doubt i'll be corrected). i'm newly out, a late bloomer, making up for lost time and sharing a house on crescent heights boulevard (the infamous "841," as it would come to be known) with paul and royce, who are showing me the ropes. through a series of machinations i won't bother going into here, we acquire a temporary fourth roommate: fresh from berkeley, the young, tender ex-boyfriend of the first guy i ever slept with--let's call him (for lack of a better name) noblesavage--is gonna enjoy the hospitality of our couch for the summer.

but you gotta understand--unlike the grim, teutonic taskmaster that is the noblesavage you see in my comments today (especially that last post), back in the day he was a hot, juicy little number--definitely the new boy in town that summer, and the house was just a little bit jealous of all the attention he stirred up (unlike the other two roomies, however, noblesavage and i took the trouble to look past the surface of what we saw in each other that summer, and developed a friendship that endures to this day).

anyway, even though we were both pretty new, noblesavage and i took really divergent paths in exploring our emergent sexuality: he was much more interested the communal aspects of the gay experience--you know, the music, the crowds, the dancing--all that stuff i had no use for, wrapped up as i then was in my lonely, single-minded pursuit of every 22-year-old piece of ass i could get my hands on.

and he quickly found his home that summer--a club called probe over on highland. legendary in its day, it featured the experience he was looking for: best dj's, best music, hottest boys in town writhing shirtless and sweaty on the dance floor as one, and all of it all night long until way past dawn.

[and just as quickly, he found his hook--and it was pure marketing genius. a repressed catholic boy, noblesavage showed up in town that summer with a box full of dozens of cheap, glow-in-the-dark rosaries he'd gotten from some religious mail-order catalog company--we're talking plastic beads and a crucifix heat-formed onto a circle of string--tackiest goddam things you've ever seen.

and before he'd set out for probe on any given night, he'd hang a couple dozen of 'em around his neck. while they looked dull and cheap in the light of day, they glowed as brilliantly as the most precious jewels under the black lights of the club--between the luminosity of the rosaries and his chicken-prettiness, he was damn well bound to stand out, and he did.

but then--and this is the genius part--as the night wore on, he'd walk up to guys who were either really hot and/or danced really well, remove one of the rosaries from around his neck and place it around theirs. and since he was really hot and/or danced really well, they'd generally accept it as the badge of honor it seemed to be, until, by the end of the night, he'd branded all the hot boys in the place with his own little ring of fire. and from what i understand, by the end of the summer, boys'd kill to get one of those glowing rosaries hung around their necks--it meant they were hot, right?]

but back to the story--one bright, sunny sunday morning towards the end of that summer, noblesavage came in the front door of 841, strode into my bedroom, tossed this huge box at the foot of my bed and said, "here--for you."

and i remember looking at him quizzically, kneeling down and ripping the box open, gaping at the contents--hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of of little sample tubes of lube--and then up at him with my mouth open.

and he said, offhandedly, "pride lubricant was doing a promotion at probe last night--they were tossing these things out at the crowd. i managed to snag a box for you--i figure if anybody could put 'em to good use, it would be you."

ok, for those of you who don't understand the overwhelming sense of gratitude that overtook me at that moment, lemme put it this way: lube is expensive, and giving a slutty faggot an endless supply of the stuff is pretty much the equivalent of giving a long-haul trucker an endless supply of diesel--it's that major.

and a seemingly endless supply it was--after awhile, the tubes o' lube went from the box to this big gym-bag that i kept next to my bed for years afterwards. and of course a big handful o' tubes went into the glove compartment of my car--and a handful went into the left pocket of my jeans whenever i left the house for even a walk to the mailbox (this being west hollywood and all)--and, naturally, as a lovely parting gift, a handful o' tubes would often go into the pocket of whatever trick du jour i was shoving out the door.

what the hell did i care? i had all the lube in the world--and if you haven't experienced that lovely feeling for yourself, i can't even begin to describe it to you.

and this happy state of affairs continued for years and years afterwards--until, sometime in the late '90s, something weird started to happen: with time and age, the the little tubes o' lube started to thicken and coalesce--i mean, yeah, you could spit on it and loosen it up, but it wasn't the same, and the boys started to complain.

so, reluctantly, i did the unthinkable and started buying retail. but i always knew i had a fallback--if i ran out (and i often did), sure as the sun would come up tomorrow, the tubes o' lube were always there, waiting to rescue me--and they were always better than nothing.

until a couple weeks ago, when i reached into the duffle, and came up with...this last, lonely, forlorn, beat-up little tube (and yeah, it's taken me that long to compose myself sufficiently to write this post, and sort out all the associated memories).

what the hell--end of one more era.