Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

out there in the middle of nowhere. I haven’t felt that way since…Wounded Knee, maybe.”
    I smirked as benignly as possible.
    “I’m ancient, aren’t I?”
    “Pretty much,” I said.
    “Next thing you know I’ll be wearing Sansabelt slacks.” He wrinkled his brow in thought for a moment. “Do old farts even wear those anymore?”
    “I think they wear jeans,” I said.
    “I think they do, too.”
    We exchanged rueful looks, sharing our pain. We’ve done this for almost thirty years now, since the day we met, in fact, in the courtyard at Anna Madrigal’s apartment house on Russian Hill. We were both in swim trunks at the time, both bronzing our bodies for a night at the bars, though the bars were as different as the objects of our lust. We were just a couple of guys talking about guy things, cheerfully enslaved to our dicks yet secretly, deeply, romantic. And those ever-warring instincts drew us ever closer.
    Like me, Brian is at least twenty (or so) pounds heavier these days, but that architectural cleft in his chin is just as fetching as it ever was, especially under a sandpaper beard, though the sand is now white as Daytona Beach. It’s been ages since I’ve felt anything like lust for Brian—that would be way too incestuous—but Benjamin, my beloved, finds him eminently fuckable. And Brian loves knowing that.
    I walked to the window and looked out at the latest shipment of fruit trees. “I need something tall for a courtyard on Townsend. That lemon tree is pretty, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah,” Brian deadpanned, “and the lemon flower is sweet.”
    “ But, ” I said, playing along in a dry professorial tone, “I’ve always found that the actual fruit of the poor lemon is…very nearly… impossible to eat.”
    “I couldn’t agree with you more.”
    We laughed with idiotic abandon, terribly amused by ourselves, until a voice in the doorway told us we were no longer alone. “You guys are way weird.”
    It was Shawna, Brian’s daughter—an assault of dark-red lipstick beneath crow-black bangs and Harlequin glasses—addressing us tartly with hand on hip. She had stopped by to bring her father a brown-bag lunch from Cowgirl Creamery at the Ferry Building. “If this is early Alzheimer’s or something, I need a little warning.”
    Brian laughed. “We were riffing on a song.”
    Shawna made the openmouthed “Huh?” expression that’s so popular with the young people today.
    “You know,” I said, and began to sing for her: “‘Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet…’”
    Brian joined in, giving it a saucy Caribbean beat: “‘…but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible—’”
    “All right…fine,” said Shawna. “I’ll take your word for it.”
    I turned to Brian, slack-jawed. “She’s never heard of it.”
    “God,” he said, “I’m a fucking Neanderthal.”
    “It’s from Peter, Paul, and Mary,” I told Shawna. “Tell your father you’ve heard of them before he self-immolates.”
    “Oh…well, I have,” she said.
    “Thank God,” I said.
    “Those old guys on PBS, right? With the fat blond chick?”
    Brian groaned.
    “Oh, you poor, poor Boomers,” said Shawna, rolling her eyes. “Life is always so hard for you.”
    “I’m not a Boomer,” I said. “I was born well into the fifties. And Brian’s too old to be one.”
    “Bite me,” said Brian.
    “Listen, guys,” said Shawna. “I’d love to stick around and get truly pathetic with you, but I’ve gotta get back to work.”
    Brian faced off his daughter like a soulful spaniel. “Dare I ask?”
    “It’s the same thing, Dad—the Lusty Lady—I’ve only been there two days.”
    “Oh, yeah.” Brian remained lackluster. “Seemed like more somehow.”
    I laughed, ushering her out of the room. “C’mon. I’ll walk you to the car.”
    “Ah,” said Brian. “Now you’re gonna talk about me.”

    We did talk about him. Or, more accurately, his discomfort over his daughter’s budding literary career. Shawna, who’s twenty-two and a Stanford graduate, writes a widely read blog called “Grrrl on the Loose” in which she chronicles her escapades in the pansexual wonderland of San Francisco. She’d just signed on for a week of work at the Lusty Lady, a peep show in North Beach that recently became the nation’s first worker-owned strip club. This is journalism for Shawna—a big thrill, sure, but mostly fodder for her site. She has no inhibitions about sex. She’s breezy and