Only in San Francisco

Disclaimer: This entry is not only not appropriate for those under 18, but is also not for the pure at heart. If you read it, you may spontaneously combust. You have been warned.

This is one of those stories that simply has to be shared. My friend, Danny, who owns the rights to this experience, has graciously given his permission for me to retell it in this forum. Thank you, Danny. --ed

So, the other day, some of my dear friends were assembled for brunch at B's house. (By "the other day," I actually mean about two weeks ago now--don't you find that you, too, come across this tendency to start an anecdote with "The other day..." even if it happened weeks or months before? Anyway, it's largely irrelevant when it happened, but you should definitely be advised that it did, in fact, happen. This is no urban legend, so don't go thinking it is.) Danny, B's boyfriend, made a scrumptious crustless quiche-type dish with eggs and bacon and ham and leeks and cheese and all kinds of yum, and B made a gorgeous salad. Also present at the brunch were Mr. and Mrs. C, Natasha, and myself. It was one of those days that lolled on for hours, and, what had started as just breakfast turned, eventually, into drinks in the afternoon, and then a drive out to the Richmond for dim sum. The brunch and the lolling day of food and conversation really isn't at all the point of this story that needs to be told. It was only the context in which we heard about Danny's horrific and surreal experience of the previous night.

Danny was still recovering when he shared with us the violation of the night before. It was in the midst of one of San Francisco's late summer heat waves, and all the windows in Danny's apartment had been wide open all night to let in what little cross breeze could enter from the adjacent alley. Danny had been sleeping peacefully all night, until he awoke at about 4:00 AM, needing to take a piss. He walked down his hallway, in the wee dawn light, and came upon an unexpected object on his path between his trash bin and bathroom. In his 4:00 AM stupor, he could not possibly make sense of what this object was. As Danny eloquently described it, he had the sensation of flipping through the files in this brain, trying desperately to register the substance of the thing which lay brazenly in his hallway, a thing which he had not placed there himself. It was a large thing, with the general proportions of a thick mailing tube with a flared end, creamy-pinkish in color, the length of it, and a darker pink at the base. The thing that kept coming to him, over and over again, was that it was a pig's foot. "Who the fuck would throw a pig's foot through my window?" his addled brain kept looping as he moved closer to the object. When the sleep and surprise wore off just enough that Danny could begin to make out more detail on the object, the foreboding sense of violation started to materialize.

He could see that the thing was made out of rubber, or plastic, and dirt-stained. It was cylindrical, with the molded rubber form of human fingers around the dark pink end of it. Yes, my friends. Danny found himself, there, in his apartment at 4:00 AM, the unwitting recipient of a dirty, used pleasure sleeve, randomly chucked through his window from the alley.

For those of you unfamiliar with the popular sex toy, the pleasure sleeve, let me refer you to the Good Vibrations site (do a search for "sleeve"). The design of the one that landed in Danny's hallway makes this incident all the more abhorrent, though I must disclaim that I have nothing whatever against anyone with a penis using a pleasure sleeve to get off. But, good GOD--lob one into the window of a perfect stranger?

Need I say, ONLY IN SAN FRANCISCO??

The question that just won't leave my mind is: which would have been worse, in actuality? A real, dead pig's foot, or a used pleasure sleeve? I can't say that I know the answer to this question, and I can't rightly say, either, that this question has ever, in the history of humankind, been posed.

Now, I very much enjoy living in San Francisco. I could be ramming my tongue into my girlfriend's mouth in the light of day, and not even the Catholic clergy here would bat an eye. I can find any item of perversion I should desire within a two block radius of my apartment. Even our mayor has drafted an open letter to the fetish community welcoming participants to the annual Folsom Street Fair.

But, is all this openness and tolerance leading us down the primrose path to hell? Will hurling disgusting, used sex toys through the windows of strangers become the next urban fad for vandals, just like tagging or throwing a pair of somebody's shoes over an electric wire? I rue the day, I really do.

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