ROYAL RESIDENCE 11
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THE ROYAL RESIDENCE
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This is episode eleven. In our travels about the neigh, Mr Cheez
and I have stuck to the part of Market Street and environs from
Third/Kearny to Fifth/Powell. Lately we've taken two safaris
into the scuz from Fifth/Powell to Seventh/Leavenworth. Directly
north of where we have been exploring lately is the world-famous
Tenderloin. We've been amused by the bustle and the hustlers of
Market Street and made uneasy by the pimp wannabes and hard-ass
women of Mission Street. We think most of the working girls in
this town are independent and this is making hard times for the
wannabe pimp crowd.
Mission Street is named for the Franciscan mission, San Francisco
de Asis, from which it extended in the 1800s to the eastern
waterfront. The block of "Mish" from Fifth to Seventh and beyond
are better thought of as commemorating the rescue missions. I
saw some woman who looked tough enough to have a cast iron cunt.
With the looks of the men present, she would need it to survive a
date. This is the district of town where every other square of
uneven, cracked sidewalk has a permanent barf stain. We saw
cigarette butts no wino would pick up.
On the way to these tough blocks we've seen cheap clothing place
after cheap clothing place. There are not less than three
bluejean palaces, almost side-by-side. Cheap suit stores abound.
Pimpy grey leather is out this year. Now we have topsider
imposters with frilly layered patterned leather and gold rings --
just what the pimp on your block needs to go stylin'. You can
get a nice Satanic outfit of black with a blood-red shirt
complete with useless "gold" rings sewn into the pleated front.
Be sure to wear the shirt collar out to maximize the beet farmer
panache and to keep your greasy neck from staining the rayon.
Most of the second-run theatres on Market Street have caved in,
literally, or have become hoochie shows. Ah, yes, the Market
Street Cinema, "Where Your Feet Stick to the Floor or Your Money
Back!" The girls at the sleazy show down the street from the
Royal Residence have threatened to strike. It seems they don't
get enough time off to go to the Mission District women's shops
to pick out new brassieres and boas. This one is within sight of
the luxury hotel which caters to Japanese tourists. The place
knows where its teriyaki is sauced; the signs are in Japanese.
We found a shopworn drug store where we can get copies made for a
nickle without uptown attitude from some tie-wearing minimum-wage
snotty thrall. They also have a contract post office. How nice.
All these stores, no matter what their specialty, have at least
twelve square feet of floor and shelf space dedicated to San
Francisco Junk. You can buy all sorts of hideous and useless
souvenirs. If you want hideous, useful souvenirs, you have to go
to Woolworth's on the other side of the Fifth Street "divide".
We have to do the other side of Market soon. There is Maxferd's
to explore. Maxferd's is the traditional pawn shop for the
Pacific Heights crowd when they need some quick cash. Did you
climb a little too fast this month and can't pay your city club
bill? Why, hock the extra sterling gravy boat til you can clip
some more coupons off your Pacific Gas & Electric bonds. We
believe we are going to encounter not _a_, but _the_ Mickey Dee's
of Death.
Mr Cheez wanted to go back to FAO Schwartz for more model cars.
He got two very nice fire trucks for a tenspot each. But it was
Heavy Breeder Day in there. These people will not move out of
the gimp ramp, they park their progeny all over the place in the
way, and they stare at us like we don't belong there. You'd
think this was a fucking toy store or something. The doorman was
back, stiffly saluting everybody going in and out. He pivots and
scrapes something like an out-of-adjustment robot. Could be the
pants of his toy soldier outfit give him a magic wedgie. Or
maybe he's had too much animal tranq. Mr Cheez says he is just
another queen who gets to wear make-up at work.
I now specialize on the street pulling up behind any skinny,
reasonably smooth male legs I see. I do my tardive dyskinesia
thing of licking my moustache and moaning. The object of the
letching may turn about and let us assess his package. Baggy
short pants are best for letching buns. Sometimes the baggy
pants let us see as much moon melon as the nylon boxer shorts of
hot, sweaty Mexican fighters on the sports channel.
Sunday we went to the Berkeley Community Theatre which is really
the golly-gee high school auditorium. It has pretty good
appointments though. There are two 35mm professional projectors
and a 5000-pipe Wurlitzer organ. We went there for the season's
last recital on the Wurly. I don't think Mr Cheez had ever been
to a live popular organ recital. He was a happy boy, madly
applauding and politely verbally ejaculating. The place looks
like a wedding cake from outside. The interior has a distinctly
30s feel because the plans were finished just before WW II. Only
the steel structure was put up before Pearl Harbor. The building
sat there being referred to as the Bird Cage until its completion
in the 50s.
The BCT is not of itself tasteless, but the half-hearted
compromise made to gimperie is. This place was built before they
discovered you could have lockable double doors without a
latchpost in the center of the doorway. I thought my skill at
creeping between the door and the middle post without creaming
anything might have gotten a polite round. All I got for being
there was a lot of force field from the old ladies. Boy, do they
hate gimps. Maybe I remind them of their imminent decline and
crumbling.
Strangely, the old men were usually polite unless they were
idiots altogether. I am frequently apprehensive of being taken
for a maimed veteran. My loss of leg was a disease process and
not a sacrifice. I do not ever want to be taken for a hero of
any sort. I'm too much a fraidy cat queen for that. At
intermission we both had to pee something awful. We discovered
the powder rooms are in the basement. Then a building attendant
told us the handicapped john was way around the perimeter of the
hall near stage left. We didn't argue. I fairly shot between
latchpost and frame of three doors and opened it up full in a
race with Mr Cheez to get to the pissoir. Boy, does this chariot
go when it has a full charge. Just call me Big Mama Unser in the
Quarter-Mile Potty Run.
Mr Cheez went down front to get a picture of the organist at the
console. Cheezy froze in his tracks, thunderstruck upon
beholding a near-by pubescent corpulent geekyboy lecturing
somebody all about the inner workings of the organ in his soprano
voice, flailing his wrists about in his excitement. Mr Cheez
imagined that I was of this appearance and enthusiasm at that
age. He dubbed the boy, Big Mama in Training.
After the music was done, we went over to downtown Berkeley's
Shattuck Avenue to Mel's Diner, a reproduction of the spirit if
not the architecture of the original made famous in American
Graffiti. This is not a place for dieters. They have the
hamburgers and shakes, of course, and they have the comfort
food -- meat loaf, pastrami on rye, chili, mountains of fries,
and hot fudge sundaes. We got to sit at a small table next to a
Berkeley big-titted lesbian gimp in a Quickie P200. The party at
the big booth across from us was annexed to the Berkeley
Mediterranean Contingent led by Magdalena Puccinelli who never
shut her hole once in the whole time we were there -- any of them
-- holes, that is.
We used the East Bay Tardvan Service to get to the auditorium,
but the program went on so long we missed the scheduled ride
back. We did see the beach head Taco Hell on University Avenue.
It looks so fuuny, tiny and old. While we rode, Mr Cheez told
the black driver to turn onto Grove Street. The driver remarked
that this street was named Martin Luther King Jr Way. I thought
Mr Cheez might say he didn't particularly give a rat's ass, turn
onto Grove Street, there, boy! Knowing how politically-correct
most Berkeley people are in one way or another, he likes to twist
the nose on their personal agenda.
The thing I liked the most about rolling around in Berzerekely is
the smell. There is usually a mix of eucalyptus, damp leaves,
and moss essence that makes the place smell as old as the English
bishop the place was named for. The next best thing is the
quality of curb cuts in the streets. Berkeley is the Stonewall
of Gimpiness. This is the town where the greater provisions of
the ADA were first wholesaled. Unfortunately there are a few
booboos such as the street-to-foyer train station elevator. Four
feet in front of the door there is a decorative brick wall. The
frame of the elevator doors has been banged by tard chariots so
many times it looks like a used car. There are many drool stains
on the brick pavement.
Nearby Constitution Square has had all its decorative, bench-
supporting walls removed. The benches and the space under them
had for years been a shelter and salon for bums. It was an
exercise of will to come out of the candy shoppe with a package,
step from the adjacent book store, or buy a pork bun from the
cart at the train station entrance without being screamed at by
ne'er-do-wells. This is all nice and neat now, unlike the
station interior which is grim with brake pad soot. The light
fixtures are so filthy not even half the brilliance can get
through. But everybody in Berkeley has their nose in a book
anyway. They hardly notice these things.
The current lack of winos in this part of the US's most famous
college protest town reminds me of the apochryphal midwest police
department who scooped up all the riffraff and transported them
in boxcars to the middle of an adjoining grassland state where
they were pushed out to fend for themselves far, far from
pedestrians to hustle. Can you not see the besotted winebibber
awakening from his delirium to stare into the eyes of a Holstein
and call her Darling? Moo.
Saturday Doreen called to invite me to dinner. Miss Ralph was
coming to town and they were going to resume dancing their asses
off at the SoMa clubs. Poor Doreen took every stitch of clothing
in the house down to the laundry room and set the machines to
whirling his stained panties. When it was time to dry his drag,
some cunt had taken up all the driers. When Doreen came back to
see if the driers were free, the cunt's clothes were still there
and were having a second dry. Ergo, Doreen has a house full of
wet threads and nothing to wear. Doreen doesn't show up at five.
I cannot leave because I have asked Miss Kooky to come by ASAP to
help me grin.
Grinning is what I do when lying on top of Hat, the bedpan Doreen
presented me as a housewarming gift how many weeks ago. [ Still
no potty chair. ] I have never asked Doreen to come by to
supervise its use. I don't think he's hardy enough to take it
even though he wants ever so much to fuck boys in the ass (as
opposed to being submissive himself -- at least not without a lot
of posturing and gaming). A great auld auntie once told me a
browning queen who is put off by shit is going to have a
vocational crisis. Miss Kooky is wonderfully considerate and not
grossed out playing Florence Nightingale Mendoza, Nurse's Aide.
By the time I was finished grinning, Doreen and Miss Ralph were
knocking my door down. Doreen simply _must_ get over to
Headllines ("Retail Entertainment") and buy some threads to wear
tonight because all he has dry is what he has on and he is not
showered and dainty. It is lost on me why anyone wishes to be
tidy when going to a dance club where the temperature will be 90
defrees F from the body heat and everybody will be sweating all
over everybody else. I mean, why bother?
Doreen fell in like with the clerk at the clothing counter. They
cruised each other severely with the cute clerk taking Doreen's
wallet's cherry for three pricey shirts and two pairs of pants in
trendy colors. (Chocolate brown Levis are in this year.) (So
are zippered jacket-shirts -- so 50s retro.) Doreen was taking
so long I sat inside the glassed entrace to Headlines and stared
back at the sidewalk crowd. I wiggled my tongue and licked my
moustache in that inimitable tard fashion I am perhaps getting
too good at, and wiggled around in the chair excitedly. The
rubes would stare and point. The queen at the front counter was
in on my ruse and was cracking up.
When we finally adjourned to Virgin Megastore's cafe, I was
primed for quiche and cherry tomatoes dipped in raspberry
vinaigrette. I ended up buying my own coffee and a piece of
cranberry granola cake. Miss Ralph has something equally as
light. We were trying to assuage our ravenous hunger while we
waited for Doreen to get his ass out of the video section and
come to dinner -- it was his invitation, if you remember.
Doreen finally showed with a plate, sat there and pigged on
quiche and salad while we drummed our empty fingers on the table
and stared at the tail lights on Fourth Street. I am now primed
to be sooooo evil... Stand by. I hope Miss Ralph took a good
bite out of Doreen's biceps he's so proud of. Doreen fucked
around so long Miss Kooky had to go off to work without dinner
because there was no time left to get anything.
I want to get reflecting plates for the sides of my chair. I am
afraid some Turban TYransit Co taxi is going to mash me,
crosswalk or not, after dark. They are stone fools who do not
give anyone a break. Just for them I want a slow vehicle
triangle sign for the back like they make the Amish put on their
surreys. Mine will be a bit different, however; it will have the
silhouette of a rigid digit in the center. Now where can I get
that air horn...
I gave Mr Cheez a brown leather case in which to keep his 2-1/2+
diopter reading glasses. He doesn't have it any more. I am
going to get him a San Francisco Junk model put together with
gold plastic cord, in purple, emblazoned with the crimson Golden
Gate Bridge and the words "San Francisco" picked out in tiny
rhinestones -- a thoroughly revolting piece of personal property.
I'll bet you dimes to Fisherman's Wharf tokens he doesn't lose
this one. I'll bet he couldn't shake it loose if he had to. It
will be the eyeglass case from Hell. BBBBBWAHAHAHAHAHA!
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