DILDO BOB

No, this is not another episode of "this writer's strange obsession with unprintable subject matter". It is not about dildoes. If you came here for that, I am sorry to disappoint you.

This is about bars in San Francisco.


The year after the prohibition against smoking in bars went into effect, the three elderly owners of my favourite watering hole sold the place to a couple whose vitriolic domestic disputes in the bar nearly qualified the place as a cabaret - live shows, quotable lines, and over-the-top stream of consciousness poetry. I held out longer than many patrons, but I eventually found somewhere else to have the occasional drink.


I went to the karaoke bar around another corner. The gay couple that ran that place was more likeable than the two people who ran The White Swallow, and their quarrels were far less public. Many of the loyalists of The White Swallow eventually also started roosting there.
Those two gay men no longer own the place (two other gay men own it now), and while it is still a karaoke bar, the clientele has changed somewhat. One of the loyalists who has stayed, and who enjoys the presence of the younger, hipper, more tattooed crowd that drinks there now, is the person named in the title of this post - a gay man in his seventies with a handlebar moustache, a raspy voice, and a farting dog (which is not allowed in the bar anymore).

Dildo Bob drinks Manhattans, sings off key and out of tune, has an overactive imagination, and is conversationally both a disaster and a toxic-waste dump (he's called 'Dildo Bob' because listening to him, speaking or singing, is a pain in the sphincter). But he's an all-right kind of chap, and once you know him you will recognize this.


GET NAKED

Dildo Bob has a number of lines he yells as encouragement to the singers. One of which is "get naked". When he yells it at young men (that is, anyone under seventy years of age), it also expresses his hope, nay, his desperation, that he might see some fine masculine gootch tonight.
But he yells it at women much more often - he's a gentleman, and believes that the fairer sex need all the encouragement they can get.
It's very sweet of him to do so.


Not everybody appreciates the sheer positivity of his approach. A few weeks ago he yelled it at a woman who sang pretty darn bad. She looked pained, then sang even worse, and when she finished the song she came over to inform him that she did not like what he had yelled. It hurt. It objectified her. It was totally inappropriate!
All of us nearby were smiling like maniacs at this point - it's fun seeing Dildo Bob discomfited. And further: Yelling 'get naked' was sexist, typically male, and deliberately insulting, she felt he was undressing her with his eyes, and using "gender-based judgementalism"...... Bob was starting to look very uncomfortable by now (he probably had no clue what "gender-based judgementalism" could possibly be), and she went on to explain that she had had a mastectomy........


The first person among the listeners to recover from a sudden coughing fit (yes, all of us are smokers) put her hand gently on the woman's shoulder, and explained "hon, Bob's an old queen. He wouldn'ta known about the missin' titty even if you had come up and pressed your chest in his face. He simply wants you to be happy."


So that's basically it. Dildo Bob's advice to you is 'get naked, be happy'.


Promise me you'll at least think about it.



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