no sex The Orgone Accumulator : Part One

September 10, 2019

The Prologue is found here: The Orgone Accumulator : Prologue

The Orgone Accumulator: Part One

He finished his three articles about Portland Waterfront Pride and sent them to the news-site editor per e-mail. Brad Taurus. He smiled. If your name is John Smith, and your occupation is freelance journalist and writer, you have to use some eye-catching alias to stick out in the crowd, even if it sounds silly. He scratched his hipster beard, took a sip of green tea, and clicked on one of the files that contained one of the chapters-to-be of his new book about the history of gay subcultures.

Stud of Dakota ... One of the models of Robert Mapplethorpe's artistic black-and-white photographs back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The guy had been huge and muscular long before working-out became fashionable. At a time, when other men allowed their hair to grow long like Peter Berlin did, Stud of Dakota went from a rockabilly hairstyle to a crewcut, like he had predicted the approaching fashion-changes of the 1980s. Stud was surrounded by urban legend: Had he lived among the San Francisco leather scene before it became publicly visible? Was he devoted to kinks too extreme to describe in words? Was his disappearance from the public eye in the mid-1980s caused by AIDS? No-one knew. The New York art scene was probably where to sneak around, if you wanted answers.

Mr. Smith booked himself an airline ticket. His guilt-stricken conscience told him, that his travels would be bad to the environment, but the thought of a coast-to-coast railway journey caused him to shudder. He compensated his carbo-dioxide emissions with a click, and prepared to pack his bag.

* * *

It was days later. He had presumed, that he would enjoy New York, but he was wrong. The streets were sticky of some unknown dirt, the air smelled funny, the cabdrivers were impolite, and there were beggars or psychos in the streets.

"Brad! Darling! So this is how you look in real life! I've wondered who the mysterious Mr. Taurus behind all those articles is. No-one told me, that you are a bear-cub."

The Queen was overwhelming. The art dealer known as The Queen was in his eighties, and remembered the Stonewall riots and days long before these. His suit was luxurious, he wore androgynous wristbands, and his arms gestured in a manner reminding of someone's aunt, in a way that didn't feel natural, but seemed like a skilfully rehearsed act aimed at provoking bystanders, which it probably did. The comment surprised John, and it felt like it dissolved and evaporated all the polite stuff he had planned to say. Startled, he answered:

"I'm not a cub, and 'Brad Taurus' is a pseudonym."

"You don't say?", The Queen answered waspishly. "I would have guessed, that your inventive and creative parents came up with the name before your birth. You can never be too careful when you select your parents. My parents had the grace to bestow unto me independent means, and they tended to pretend not to understand, that the vagina business was way outside my comfort zone, just as the upper classes of their generation used to do."

The elderly man's eyes glittered of mischief, and he gave the impression of being considerably younger, despite his silver hair.

"Anyhow. Come in, come in, and let me give you something to drink. Something bubbly perhaps?"

A few minutes later, John was sitting in a chair constructed to look artistic, but it wasn't particularly comfortable. In his hand, he was holding a flute of champagne.

"So what brings you to the doorstep of my humble abode? Chin chin!", The Queen asked and toasted.

"I mentioned my book about history ..."

"Indeed you did, darling. Did I tell you, that those puppy eyes of your's suit you very well?"

"One of the chapters will mention, how some gay men in the past behaved effeminate, in order to mock the prejudice of straight society ..."

"Oh, honey! I have no idea what you are talking about!", The Queen shrieked in falsetto, but his eyes glittered of intense irony.

"However, I ask for your advice about a different matter, since you are knowledgeable about the arts scene in the 1970s ..."

The lustre in The Queen's eyes changed from flippant to businesslike. Even his gestures became more restrained, less studied. His body language went from a stereotype to a real person.

"One of Mapplethorpe's models, the alias 'Stud of Dakota', disappeared in the 80s, and I don't even know his real name."

The Queen let out a low whistling sound.

"Those young boys were in an entirely different league than I or my late husband were. Beside being younger than me -- he must have been born some time in the 1940s, I guess -- Stud and his handsome friends hang out with an entirely different circle than mine: Nice to watch at a distance, but only watch, no touching! It doesn't probably come as much of a surprise, that most of my friends belong to old families with old money, but one of the benefits of moving in artistic circles is, that you encounter men from many ways of life, including some gorgeous working-class and lower middle-class men. I encountered them a few times when Mapplethorpe arranged something, but I don't know much about them -- neither Stud nor his friends."

John's facial expression must have revealed the wave of disappointment, which began to well up inside him, because The Queen continued:

"But have no fear. I have a fairly good idea which ones to ask. You'll have to ask the older patrons at The Eagle NYC."

"The Eagle?"

"A leather bar. Not my personal cup of tea, as you might guess, but the oldies over there would possibly know something. You wouldn't be able to enter dressed like that ..."

The Queen evaluated John's hipsterish attire with critical eyes.

"... but if you wear well-polished boots to those jeans, the men at the entrance could possibly sell you some suitable gear to wear at the bar. Better ask them first. It's not my type of place."

* * *

The story continues in The Orgone Accumulator : Part Two

Edited September 16, 2019 by Hialmar
added link, spelling, language