By Juliette Tang
One thing I never thought I’d see in my life: an 85-year-old man in an orange paisley pashmina and a red beret screaming “Gum my cock” in front of a crowd of reverent observers. But on Wednesday night at Army of Lovers, held at the Center for Sex and Culture (1519 Mission St) in conjunction with this week’s Sex Workers Fest, that was exactly what I saw. Unfortunately, I don’t have a transcription of the full text, but trust that it included highly homoerotic descriptions of a bathroom orgy at the Embarcadero, a heavy bondage S&M scene between a sex master and his sex slave, and the aforementioned cock-gumming scene between the author and a toothless young man in suede pants.
George Birishma at Army of Lovers
George Birishma, 1955. Yowza!
Hearing octogenarian playwright George Birishma read from his 1977 novel, S&M Gym, was well worth suffering through some of the night’s other performances. Army of Lovers, a two-night spectacle featuring art, video, and performance by men who have worked in the sex industry, opened on Wednesday with performances by Birishma and 9 other former (and some current) sex workers that touched on themes of sexuality, eroticism, isolation, fear, community, and home. Curated by Kirk Read, a former sex worker and current writer, both Wednesday and Thursday showings were completely sold out.