Ugly images

Make a list of ugly images.

• A messy-bearded religious man with warts on his face, eating pork and beans, getting it all in his scraggly gray-brown beard.
• The seven-day old underwear of a homeless man who's been urinating in it for the week.
• Wealthy Americans who believe their taxes are too low at the same time they contemplate buying huge mansions, expensive automobiles, extensive plastic surgery, and exotic vacations, giving no more than a few pennies toward charitable causes.
• Over-confident straight men who leave their wives when they turn 50 and take up with pretty 20-something girls with big tits and small minds.
• A drugged-out HIV-positive gay man with tattoos all over his body, an artificially-inflated penis, and a black rubber cock ring who lurks in the showers of San Francisco's gym waiting for young boys half his age, following them into the steam room and staring at them.

Now pick one of these ugly images and make it beautiful.


No one knew yesterday'd been Bruce's 60th birthday. None of the staff at Gold's, none of the bartenders at the 440, not even Mildred with the curly bangs at Harvey's. They should've known, he spat out the thought. He'd been patronizing their establishments more than twenty years. He'd been their bread and butter since Ronald Reagan had been in the White House. Since before HIV, hell, he'd been negative back then. But then he'd met Sergio Casanova, enough, on the name alone, to fall in love and give him anything he wanted, though the unprotected sex he'd wanted had nearly ended him.

It hadn't, however. He'd survived, he'd made it. No understanding how, but he'd survived. He'd survived, made it these past fifteen years with few hiccoughs, few serious illnesses, only veiny legs, a pot-bellied stomach, hunched shoulders, a flat ass, and shrunken testicles. All of this but a small price to pay for life. Life. He knew how the right-wing Christians felt about life, its precious beauty. He'd become an HIV-positive, anti-abortion gay man who lived in the Castro. He'd never vote Republican, though, because you have to draw the line somewhere.

Sure, he'd found ways to counteract the tangible effects of the drugs. Testosterone pills made his veins pop out, his 60-year old frame muscular, wiry, and strident. He'd gotten a dick pump to inflate his cock, because testosterone shrinkage made it difficult for him to find dates or keep them after they'd agreed to sleep with him. How he missed physical intimacy, the warmth of a fellow human being! How he longed for the touch of a man, a return to the time before he'd met Sergio Casanova when he could spend a romantic night with any attractive 30-year old he wanted. How he longed for the days ...

Occasionally, he'd grasp at fleeting intimacies, those he'd find at the gym after he'd pumped up his muscles and gotten a natural high from the excitement of working out, of feeling healthy and happy. There'd be the relaxing feeling after these workouts of standing in a shower, finding his natural self without clothing. All he wanted, on this, his 60th birthday, was to share that with someone, someone who might remind him of what it had been like, before he'd ever met Sergio Casanova.