Tag Archives: Featured

Featured posts show up in the featured posts sidebar.

Water Stone Outfitters’ Homo Climbtastic Convention Equipment Video

Posted on by
Reply

Maura and Craig of Water Stone Outfitters produced their very own video about Homo Climbtastic’s convention and YOUR equipment needs for sloppy wet West Virginia.  Maura introduces this year’s convention as the year of the climbing gal, so check it out, and note that she’s giving us HC members a 20% discount on helmets–you know, that thing that we insist all of you own so you don’t get your head knocked in by rocks.

Craig also takes off his pants at 4 minutes in, and as Maura notes, they’re giving prizes to the people with the best fuzzy costumes.

Get psyched for the HC convention!

Oh oh oh, and the group photo is on SUNDAY morning, July 17 2011, not Tuesday, as the video says.

Water Stone’s web site is at http://www.waterstoneoutdoors.com and their phone number is (304) 574-2425.

Craig and sock monkey

Regarding your “crag dog”

Posted on by
1

Your crag dog probably sucks.

Whenever I go climbing on the weekends, at least three times before I get to the first climb I want, I hear this “BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK” and then some random dog sniffs me and then some idiot says, “oh Twiddles!  Why are you doing that?”  Not all the dogs are named Twiddles.  But they’re all named something stupid.  “Don’t bother the nice man!  He doesn’t want to hurt you.”  This is not true. I want to shoot the dog in the face.  The most frustrating thing is that they speak to the dog in the same soothing tone they use when the dog does something they want, something they don’t want, and something irrelevant, like the dog understands English.  “Twiddles,” they say, like they were talking to their sister’s baby, “why did you pee on the carpet?  Why didn’t you lay down?  Why are you barking?  Why did you announce your candidacy for the Republican primary before doing any fund raising?”

Your dog does not understand English.  There is a reason that some owners have dogs that don’t bark at other dogs, that don’t bark at people, that lay down when told, and timely secure fund raising.

Now, a good 30% of it is that pure-breds are generally crazy, and as someone who needs to have a pure bred, you had it coming, and you probably get along better with a dog that’s as crazy as you are.  But the remaining 70%, or 100% if you have a mutt, is that, as an owner, you suck.

Here’s the great rule of dog ownership: consistently and immediately reward them for good behavior and consistently and immediately discipline them for the bad.  Is your dog doing things you don’t want it to?  Are you carrying a choke chain and a box of dog treats around?  And don’t get all whiney about the shock collar or the choking.  Both are completely usually most of the time safe.  Insert too soon David Carradine joke here.

David Carradine

Death by autoerotic asphyxiation: better than death by lung cancer, bitches!

Usually, like the awful mothers on those super-nanny shows, it’s because the owners want to be “nice” and don’t want to discipline precious Twiddles for a few weeks, but would rather have him annoy everyone, bite people, and shit in their (owner’s) bed for the next ten years until he gets heartworms and dies.  (Given their diets, I believe the children on TV also get heartworms.)  I would endure twenty crying babies before dealing with one dog barking and sniffing.  With the dog, you know that the owner’s an idiot who you then have to beware of for fear they’ll drop equipment, install aluminum permadraws, or play Maroon 5 on a boombox, all of which can cause serious physical injury under certain circumstances.  (“But the lead singer is hot” is never going to be an excuse for being a shitty musician, ever!  Ever!)

As much as I rag on them, the producer who "spotted" him probably deserves most of the blame.

You can pick up other people’s litter, ask people to turn off boomboxes, and chop routes at night, but you still get arrested for shooting dogs.  The only advantage I have in this war is that I have a glare that shouldn’t be street legal.  Just ask someone I’ve glared at.  They still haven’t gotten over it.

Women in HC

Posted on by
1
Do the Job He Left Behind WW2 poster

...drill baby drill!

In the beginning, Homo Climbtastic was 100% male–that was because the first trip was me and four other guys, including current dictators C-Pow and Chavez, tromping through the West Virginia woods.  Later, and we had perhaps the most success at our last New River Gorge convention, women turned out and turned it up.  Still, their numbers haven’t reached the volume of men present.

Where there’s more men, they bring more men friends, and the scales dip in one direction through inertia alone, so we actively recruit women in our advertising to keep the ratios from going completely out of whack.  I do this partly out of self-interest; a sausage fest sounds nice on paper, but it really just makes for a boring party, and I know my queer women friends feel similarly about clam cook-offs, so we’re in this BBQ pit together, friends.

But at the end of the day, (and this is becoming more true as the group grows larger) the inclusiveness of what we say in our advertising can’t overcome the major barrier–women in the field advertising.  The guys, since inception, have been excited to play whack-a-mole with every gay dating web site internet forum, posting press releases about the trips to bring in anybody who knows how to give a soft catch.  Sometimes I run across things posted by guys I’ve never heard of encouraging people to meet them there.

Thus, I am sounding the call to arms: we are getting more women involved, and we’re doing it now.  Which means you.  Assuming you either have a vagina or are making progress toward acquiring one, I, Alex Rowland, spiritual leader of Homo Climbtastic, am vesting you with diplomatic authority to post our press releases far across the internet, or, better, write or tailor your own.

Victory waits on your fingers WW2 poster

Gurl, get on OK Cupid and tell everybody to come climb with you!

You’ll have to caution them with the requirements of joining, which are posted at https://homoclimbtastic.com/join/ but that’s pretty much it.  The great thing about posting everywhere is that it gives you a reason to meet people, awesome rock climbers nearby perhaps, who you wouldn’t have met otherwise.  Direct them to join the Facebook group or to sign up for our July 14-18, 2011 convention at the New River Gorge in West Virginia.

I can assure you, we (HC men and women both) are actively working in various other ways to keep this from turning into some lame gym bunny circuit party with sports on the side and a poster that looks like it belongs under a car windshield wiper.  But the war cannot be won on leadership alone!  You have to get out there, leave shyness behind, and proclaim, “Ladies, we’re gonna crash this HC convention like no queer climbing convention has ever been crasheded before!”

Women in the war we cant win without them WW2 poster

Your gender expression is up to you, but leave working explosives behind

There are other queer athletic institutions which are almost entirely male and which have no equivalent group for women, thereby leaving women in the lurch if they want to commune with other queer people–those trains left their stations without all the cars attached.  So now’s the time to get everyone on board, and we’re all determined to make it happen.  We just need you.  Get it, girl.

JMR

Posted on by
1

Josh, a climber from my great state of Georgia, RSVP’ed as a “maybe” for HC’s July 2010 convention, and if he had been able to come, maybe you’d have met him.

Josh, in a standard southern climbing scene

The first time I met Josh, I was utterly charmed.  Most straight guys wouldn’t step anywhere near an aerial fabric, either because it looks frightening, or because it’s not the butchest activity to try for the first time (or ever) in front of others.  One time at the climbing gym, unmoved by either concern, he insisted that I show him a few moves, and he picked it up immediately.  Me and a gay friend sighed, that fuck-shit-motherfucker sigh resenting that someone so amazing doesn’t bat for our team.  Us crushing on him didn’t bother him either.  This made the resentment yet worse.  So cool!

Six months ago, he fell in Tallulah Gorge.

When someone dies, your response isn’t about the person who died, it’s about you.  Which is why when you hear about a death, the most immediate reaction is to find out exactly how it happened, and then once you find that out, you can distance yourself from it.  “I don’t do that, therefore, I am safe.”

But I don’t feel safe.  I imagine, like the rest of us players in the “extreme” sports, he participated because these activities order the emotional tumult we find inherent.  People who smile are aware more than anyone of the costs of living authentically–social rejection and the fear of not doing what everyone else is doing are a certain penalty, and so the risk of physical danger is just another bullet in the ledger.    I feel like the context of his death, expanded to the appropriate level of generality, implicates me, and us.

I feel bitter, and sad, detached, and angry, and vaguely guilty, despite being a hundred miles away.

When I was a freshman in college, the world opened up.  So much changed since then.  I learned to climb, I became an atheist, had sex, fell in love, traveled to new places, took big ice cream scoops out of my brain and replaced them with (usually) better things.  He was nineteen, about to carve his own path, but we lost him and what he would have become.

We don’t know how to talk about it, so we revert to the conversations we would have had before.  “How are you?”  “Good. How are you?” “Good.”  Everyone has bags under their eyes.

The margin of safety in our sport ebbs and flows, as it does with even the most mundane activities–not everyone rides around in a brand new Volvo with side curtain airbags.  Maybe it’s too expensive and what we have is the safest we can get, or maybe we just don’t want a goddamn ugly Volvo.  Sometimes we drift off a trad route to a runout, and decide that it’s safer to keep going rather than down-climb.  Or we see a route, weigh the risks, and climb it anyway.  This is the same choice you make when you step out of the house, have sex, cross an intersection.

Trad climbers will say (well, not if they’re honest) that they always put in more pieces, sport climbers will say they don’t climb trad, non-climbers will say they don’t climb, etc.

Even the most edge pushing trad climbers fall faster to heart disease and car crashes.  And yet climbing accidents suffer an almost religious examination, despite being indistinguishable from the pleasures of an antique car or a hamburger.

I think it risks being reductive to say that Josh died doing something he loved–I’d rather say that he died being himself.  His attitude was to be open to the world.  I’m sure this hurt him before.

It would be too easy to say you would have put in more pieces.  I’m sure there are moments in your life, whether in climbing or elsewhere, where the background thought was (or the equivalent of) “don’t fall.”  If X, then catastrophe, and the chance of X can’t be eliminated.  My brother almost died in a bike accident–I still ride my bike, and he now rides a motorcycle.

If there is one thing to be said of climbing and the nature of the risk that makes it unique to us, I would say that it’s the cognizance of the risk.  The legal term of art is “assumption of risk.”  Climbers are, I’ve found, universally very well aware of the risks they are taking, and accepting of those risks as part of the deal.

I wish he had put in more pieces, taken a different route, gotten up thirty seconds earlier that morning, but it’s too late to ask for that now.  The most we can say at this point is that, if he’s anything like the rest of us, his sport was representative of a much larger image of living the life that he wanted.  A more risk averse person wouldn’t have embraced other people so easily or had a smile that tore through walls.  Fate’s roll of the dice confined us to enjoy Josh’s presence for a terribly brief slice of time.

I ask myself if I knew him well enough to justify feeling this shocked.  I know there are not many people who make others feel welcome in the climbing community, but he was one of them.  When people die, there are always emotions that you want to instantiate in words, but you don’t, for fear of some social rejection. It’s the same reason most people don’t smile. I feel pretty weird writing and posting this, for example. I can’t eulogize him as well as the people who were close to him.  But that boundary would have meant nothing to him–I know if I had died before him, he would have said something about me.  Maybe he was afraid, and he just overcame it on an incredibly regular basis.  I hope the memory and example of his life will at least partly replace what we lost.

A smile etches itself into memory in a world of fear.  His death has and will continue to burn for an enormous number of people.

Homo Climbtastic Dictator Abducted

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve received several emails and phone calls inquiring as to the whereabouts of HC’s most famous dictator, Alex Rowland (AKA:  Ra-Ra).  Seems the dearth of commentary on Georgia’s political turmoil hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed, and for your concern we’re all truly gratified.  Your prayers mean so much.

Rowland was abducted by a group of hillbillies (all of whom identify as dom tops) several weeks ago while climbing in the back-woods of Tennessee, though the ransom notes we’ve received (all dictated, not read, by Alex) have been very clear, no rescue requested.  We’re all hoping he’ll get his fill & comes back to civilization very soon, though personally I think the hill people have bitten off a tad more than they can chew with this one.  We here at Homo Cimbtastic headquarters (located in the world’s gayest bunker…you know, the one Lindsey Graham uses in case of emergency) are praying that Alex will wear them out eventually.  Well, either that, or Alex’s ass hair will finally start growing back in & they’ll return him out of pure need for a good wax job.

a picture left by Alex's abductors. Poor Alex. Poor, poor Alex.

So keep him in your prayers, light a candle, and hopefully we’ll be seeing more from him in the very near future.  And Alex, if you’re reading this, for Christ’s sake honey give those poor people a breather.

Member Profile: Mary Tang

Posted on by
Reply

Tang at Red Rocks

Aliases: MARAAHHHHTAAAANG!, Mirhihtang, Tang, Murr, Wu Tang Can!, Tang Tang Tang (a la Ricochet Rabbit), Tang-a-lang

Location: St. Louis

Profile: In this piece on deer overpopulation, Mary Tang captures the plight of so many HC members of being misunderstood in middle high school by authority figures who, at the time, loomed large and authoritative, but now as we can see in retrospect, are pushing their mental limits when they feed and clothe themselves in the morning.  HC, I suppose, is just the Andy Warhol studio we should have grown up in but couldn’t.

Mary and Kris

Mary Tang has those “I don’t need rest” shoulders such that she can flash a 100 foot flake all the while casually planning her next cartoon, most of which you can’t access without being her facebook friend, but here’s one about a trip to REI:

Return Everything Immediately or Rental Equipment Incorporated? You decide.

I first met Tang while in Chattanooga, where she demolished a crack at Leda I needed five takes on.  Maybe this is because I have such little experience with crack.  I mean, it’s like, what do you do back there?  Stick a finger in? Two?  I’m confused!  But Mary knows.

Odd skills: Fishing, growing cultures in a laboratory, ice hockey

Representative Icon: Cow

Carb staple: Noodles

Trip Report: The Super Secret Place

Posted on by
2

todays trip report requires a bit of discretion.  the place we went to has what the climbing community coyly refers to as “access issues,” so there is an understanding among the people who climb there that we not discuss where it is, how to get there, and so on.  because there are a lot of routes, the benefit is that you can climb there on a sunday, get on a bunch of classics, and not see a single goddamn person.  but the main benefit of no crowds is not, as you might guess, the ability to get on popular routes without waiting.  no, the real benefit is that you can climb naked. as pictured here.

Yowza.

ok, so we didnt really climb naked, and this picture was taken purely for the blog.  which may have made heterosexual cohort zach uncomfortable, although i couldn’t truthfully tell him that our trips weren’t normally like this.

Heterosexual cohort Zach. I'm not sure why we didn't have any pictures of him shirtless at the crag, but maybe Matt didn't want to give him the impression that we were perving. Which we were.

although not naked, i did in reality spend the entire day in underwear, flip flops, sunglasses, and a helmet.  the south is hot y’all!

If you saw how far up that second bolt was, you'd have top roped that shit too

given that i cant publicly disclose even what state it’s in, me and laurie decided to refer to this climbing area in the open as as The Super Secret Place.

Laurie, on the other hand, Just Says No to top roping. And says yes to sexy back.

even among the regulars, people dont know the name or the grade of 3/4 of the routes there. fortunately, we had the most recent revision of the bootleg topo for the area, which you too can obtain if you’re willing to forgo your sexual orientation for a few hours.  (Editor: Does it really take that long to fuck (redacted)?  Me:  Yes!  You only wish you could have.  And you can’t print that name here.)  suffice it to say, the dixie dyno’mos will stop at nothing to get a bootleg topo.  but dont ask us for it, because we think that’s a right of passage everyone should experience.  certainly better than whatever was involved in joining your fraternity, if only because we have the dignity to skip the cracker and admit that the paddling was enjoyable.

The downside of the area is the occasionally spartan bolting (better than no bolting) which demands creative stick clipping and sideways mammer-jammering.  So half the time we climbed anything we were tied into another rope and swinging around to clip the next route over.  Still, despite the heat, and the spiders, and the mammer jammering, the route quality is stellar and the grades challenging.  The latter probably explains why someone abandoned this pair of (Redacted) brand climbing shoes at the base.

Looking for a good home

Matt said, “Maybe you shouldn’t badmouth (Redacted) in case they decide to sponsor us?”

“If that happens, I’ll just delete all the references to (Redacted), and help them come up with a new ad campaign.  I can see it now.  (Redacted): Better than Montrails!”

“Maybe if they give us free shoes they’ll just spray paint their logo over a pair of good shoes like they did with (Redacted Redacted).”

Check out those guns

On the way home, we passed a sign next to a gas station that said “boiled peanuts”.

“STOP THE FUCKING CAR.”

The boiled peanuts sign was underneath a sign that said AMERICAN OWNED.

Thumbs up for the bottom sign, not the top one

The “American Owned” signage made me and Matt feel a little uncomfortable, because it’s the equivalent of “NOT FOREIGNER OWNED.”   In any event, one would assume that if you’re going to take particular pride in your American-ness, you would take particular pride in the pièce de résistance of southern cuisine, boiled peanuts.

NOT TRUE.  Those peanuts were hardly boiled, and if I was driving, I would have turned that car right around and chucked that styrofoam cup hard enough to blot out at least the second half of “American”.

Also, I demand to know what the hell the female equivalent of “Extenze” they were selling is supposed to do.

The male "extenze" makes your penis longer, so we can only presume that the female "extenze" makes your... uhhh... this seems like a discussion more appropriate for the comments section

with the trip just about over, i thought about my goal that morning, which was basically to find a place with bolts with no more than two hours of thorny bushwhacking, and to waypoint the shit out of everything on my GPS.  after we left, i was sad i didn’t have more time to get on harder routes, so it was kind of funny that we debated going to sandrock instead the morning of.  so, moral of that story, if your group is five or less, grab that motherfucking machete and move toward the abyss.

No, darling, you don’t miss him…you miss the near-death sexperiences.

Posted on by
Reply

OK so you’ve dated a climber, and, after having some herbal tea and talking with your therapist, you’ve decided that relationship just wasn’t for you.  Because you’re just better than that.  You’re worth more than that.  You deserve someone whose idea of a vacation involves room service and maybe a massage, not some self-centered narcissist with a death wish whose idea of “time off” is going to (insert river name here) gorge and climbing 13 hours a day.  Stand up for yourself!  Be the person you need to be, heal from this experience and move on, wiser and more capable of dealing with adversity in your relationships!  Now if only you could achieve an orgasm with your new love interest, that accountant you met at a trade show in Orlando…

What the fuck ever, this ain’t Cosmo and I’m not giving out any more GODDAMNED dating advice.  But Rowland was telling me about this article he read in some fucking book or what the cock ever.  Evidently, people who experience extreme stress (ie:  20 foot fucking lead falls) have an unexpected side-effects.  Like being really really really horny.  And guess what?  When you’re dating your climbing partner, you have those near-death experiences with one-another.  So it may be that you wind up having the best sex of your fucking life while dating another climber.

I need to add here that we’re NOT talking about clucking…Homo Climbtatsic does not endorse this type of lewd behavior.  That’s not to say we think there shouldn’t be MORE of it, we just don’t want to be responsible when it all goes horribly wrong for you.  Besides, we’ve all received fellatio while being lowered off a climb, and it’s totally fucking over-rated.  If, however, you’re making a video, we’ll totally watch that shit.

Think about it…have you ever cleaned a trad route & gotten to that totally run-out crux section right at the very end of the pitch only to realize that the piece you’re about to clean is actually an old chicken nugget with a sling wrapped around it?  Have you ever taken a 20 foot whipper only to realize that the gate on your fucking quick-draw at your last bolt…yes, the one you just fell on…blew, and you only survived because the rope happened not to fall out of the biner?  These experiences lead to some pretty serious emotions, and probably some serious arousal later in the day…if not immediately afterward.  Jon told me that, while he did not feel arousal immediately following his (now homo-world-famous) whipper, it was “no fun” having a near-death experience without having someone to take it out on.

Though you can see only terror in his eyes, Jon's probably insanely horny in this pic.

So, sugar, listen to me:  You do not miss that ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend climber.  In fact, breaking up with that person was probably the best thing you’ve ever done.  You do, however, miss the post-near-death-experience sex.  I recommend autoerotic asphyxiation if you’re not ready for another relationship, or, if you’re emotionally available enough, try to find someone who’s willing to experiment, maybe a little role-play with a loaded gun.  It’ll be safer, and odds are good you’ll wind up with someone who’s a little more sane than your garden variety climber.

Supertopo Trip Report, NRG 2010, Part 3

Posted on by
2

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Mike shows off his ape index on Fuel Injector, Kaymoor, 5.13

So Bubba City proved, again, the two rules of large group management, both of which I was previously determined to break.  No more!

Rule #1: Large-ish groups hate even moderately strenuous hikes.  Even when composed of people who, alone, will run uphill five miles in the snow.

Rule #2: Everyone is determined to stay together.

Kate on Tobacco Road (12a)

My plan was for people to break up and do their own thing on the last day.  By now, I figured, people would have picked out a crag and some people they wanted to hang with (romance!), and would resent a summer camp style schedule of the day’s events with too big of a crowd to mack on anybody.  Not so!  People wanted to move as a group and they wanted someone six feet tall with a beard and a huge stick clip to take them.  So after Bubba City turned out to be wet and everyone was all pissed off about trudging to and from the car through sludge and brambles, there was clamoring about what to do next.  We ended up, yet again, at Summersville Lake, I guess because everyone knew where it was and that it would be dry.  In the New, most of your decisions are based on what will or will not be dry.  And sometimes you go to the Meadow or to Bubba or wherever thinking you’ll avoid the crowds, and sometimes you do, but sometimes you get fucked, and so Summersville was packed.

Mike on the ledge of B/C, the Coliseum, 5.13b/c. Those are straight porn magazines on the left. On our next trip, we plan to add a copy of Unzipped to the B/C library. Don't throw it away or we'll cut you.

I discovered when we parked ourselves by the best arete route in the whole wide world, Under the Milky Way, that I had lost my Swiss army knife, which was very upsetting, because it was a gift from when I lived in Switzerland and it has my name engraved on it.  Which means that whoever found it and did not return it to me is a big mega douche.

Anyway so I had to borrow Connor’s knife to open my can of tuna.  I learned how to open a can with a knife from Dean, Chavez’ friend.  Dean is totally straight and totally twenty years older than me and he totally gives me a boner every time I see him.  I think the next time a guy older than me on the internet gets pissy because I blow him off, I’m going to forward them a picture of Dean, and say, “if you were once in the military and raced motorcycles and had a face like this, I’d fuck you too.”  Despite being totally hetero, I think Dean will help me get laid regardless, because he took awesome photos of me at the Red (and of Mike when he was at Kaymoor), and gave me the ever wonderful moment of vanity of being in a five star photo on rc.com with a comment that says “SUPER SICK!” and being the protagonist in a flame war between sport and trad climbers.  I’m tempted to comment on there that I’m gay and single.  Gay and single y’all!  (Can someone with an rc.com account post that in there? Please?)

Rio smoking on Tobacco Road, 12a

(Other Dean photography highlights: Dictator Chavez sending a wet Bubba City trad climb, and Dictator Rio literally smoking on Tobacco Road.)

Gay and single y'all!

We ended up at Orange Oswald again, doing endurance climbs. I asked Ann how she was getting home, and she said with me, which was fine, cause I had one seat open. But then I asked Leo, and he said with me, and then I asked Jasper, and he said with Leo, and I asked Mike, and he said with Jasper, and then I was like, “hold the fuck up, I don’t drive a clown car,” and “you motherfuckers better find someone else to ride with.” I had idle fantasies of having a drunken bisexual three-g with Ann and Leo so I was like, what the hell, they can share the seat in the back, they might as well get to know each other now, right? So it was us and Mike and Connor, and I put on a headlamp and did a little after-dark climbing at Orange Oswald.

Ken, on the trail to Summersville.

We only had three headlamps between the five of us, so we had to walk close together on the hike out. I had one of the best parts of the trip, standing on that one part of the trail where you’re on the edge of the water in view of the bridge, but at night, which I hadn’t seen before. It occurred to me that no commercially available camera could capture this without blurring the ripples, and that was why I felt it important to stop and look at it.  Marching back through the mud in the halo of a spotlight, nobody was speaking, concentrating on the ground, and I was happy, because this is the sine qua non of a good climbing trip–I didn’t have to ask if anybody was uncomfortable with staying past dark.  Alis doesn’t have to ask Odin, Noah, or Myau if they’re afraid to hack up a bunch of monsters in some cave somewhere, she just fuckin goes and does it.  (Funny story: after my oldest brother woke up from a two week coma, the first thing he asked for was the released-in-his-absence PHANTASY STAR III.  On my most recent visit to the emergency room, the most disturbing event was the realization that hospital TV’s no longer have A/V hookups.  What the fuck do children recovering from comas do now?  Watch HGN?)

So anyfuck, it’s like 10:30pm when we get to the car and I’m pretty sure there ain’t shit open in Fayetteville so we headed to Summersville and Summersville, West Virginia, HAS AN APPLEBEES OPEN UNTIL 1 AM.  And they have TWO DOLLAR COCKTAILS UNTIL CLOSE.  She carded Leo but not me, although I suppose that’s expected, since people stopped carding me at 18.

Leo and Alex, who apparently looks forty

I wish I could say it was the cocktails, but I’m pretty sure Mike and Leo would have ended up arm wrestling even if they were sober.  Maybe they were sober.  Anyway they were arm wrestling at Applebees, and the waitress came over with my drink.  It had on the rim a pineapple slice, cherry, AND a strawberry.

“This looks beautiful!” I said.

“It normally comes with a pineapple,” she said, “but the strawberry and the cherry are my special touch!”

I could hear Chris in my head: “And by [redacted], I mean you can do anything!”

On her recommendation, I had my first Applebees meal which was not horrendously awful, but I forgot both the name of the meal and the drink, so I’m kind of fucked if I ever get screwed again into going to Applebees.  I don’t know why, but my carpools are inevitably full of people who are willing, no, excited about pulling into an Applebees.  I can skip showering for days, wear sneakers with holes, clothes from Goodwill, and eat peanut butter and jellies for weeks, but my upper class upbringing is inevitably betrayed by the reaction I have to being told we’re eating at Applebees.  People probably figure I just paid for the law degree with scholarships, until,  “Me?  At an Applebees?  Do you know who I am?”  That and the car.

(Editor: Miss Ann Raber notes that the drink was the “Baltimore Zoo.”) (Me: How does she remember these things? It was very delicious. Almost as much alcohol as you get out of one of those little vodka filled chocolates.)

We drove back toward Fayetteville.

The next morning, we ate at the Cathedral for breakfast, and I had the Dobson, like always.

Later, we were driving back home through north Georgia when I saw a sign that said “Boiled Peanuts” and so I was like “STOP THE FUCKING CAR” cause I love boiled peanuts.

No boiled peanuts!

But sadly, they were closed.  Connor still got out of the car to take a photo of the place, I guess because being in the south and seeing a wood shack with a tin roof and a rocking chair and a gigantic American flag and a wooden duck with a blue ribbon around its neck and woven baskets and produce on sale is like being in France and seeing a dude wearing a beret holding a baguette and a paintbrush and a cup of coffee doing a mime routine to Depeche Mode.

The next day, dad drove me and Mike and Connor to the MARTA station so that Mike and Connor could get back to the airport.  I gave them hugs at the turnstiles and returned to the car.

“Fuck, I’m depressed.”  I was no longer in West Virginia, Mike and Connor were heading to California, Chris was back in Honkyville, and I was scheduled to take the bar exam in a week.  The preceding week was no less of a reality than the next week’s reality, so it would be inaccurate to say that I was now returning to reality.  But I was returning to something.  Something significantly less fun.  And it wasn’t the obligation of work either–I brought my bar review materials to the New, to the Alabama canyons, my income tax books to the Red.  And I wasn’t leaving friends, I have friends at home. And there’s climbing in Georgia. So what was out there?  A state of mind?  A temporary suspension of Positioning Myself For The Next Thing?

A week and a half later, my father got a thank you note from Connor.  “He doesn’t know I’m sending him a bill for $150 a night,” Dad said.

Part of Connor’s letter said that “it was refreshing to see a father so comfortable with his son’s sexuality.”

Dad said, “I should write back to him, and say, ‘I appreciated your letter, but I didn’t understand the part about Alex’s sexuality. Is there something I should know?’  …You know, to fuck with him.”

“It could be seen in poor taste.”

“Ok, I won’t do it.”  But I kind of think he will do it, the next time he’s drunk Facebooking.  So I’m warning Connor now.

Dean. I'm not sure he would have allowed Tim to take this photo if he knew what I was going to do with it later.

Later, at Red Lobster, I asked Dad about emancipation in the sixties.  What was it like to have “Whites only” signs?  Did he even know what gay was?

“Well, your great uncle was pretty open about it, as you know.”  My great uncle, aside from being a super genius getting attention in Virginia for using bootleg AT&T equipment to build his own working car-phone in the 1960’s, had a mansion with enough opium and heterosexuality-optional group sex to make Andy Warhol wince.  “The last time I saw him alive, (he died in his forties from heart problems), he was walking through the hospital with one of those rolling IV’s, with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.”

What was racism like in the south?  “Well in a way, it was better there.  When I moved to New Jersey, I thought, oh, this is the north, it’ll be a lot better, but instead it was worse.  Also all the people there thought that since I was a southerner, they could talk to me openly, because of course I hated those blankety blanks.  Most of the black people I knew who moved up north moved back to the south.”

Southern belle Laurie (l), Kris

Even with plenty of friends from rural Georgia with thick southern accents who are hardcore queer rights activists, I still can’t shake that impression that the south is behind on the gay train.  Which is why Connor’s note surprised me, even though I knew it shouldn’t have.  When I turned on the TV as a kid and they (CNN, based in Atlanta) showed the gay pride parades, it was always a parade in New York or San Francisco.  Growing up, I thought up north, and out west, and in Europe, these were the places in the world where the gays roamed free.  The reality was, I discovered, very different.  RuPaul is from Atlanta. Atlanta’s ratio of Pride attendees to city population is about the same as San Francisco, and many times larger than New York (note crowd counts are notoriously rough).  The gay bars in Dallas have the mega-club real estate of East Berlin.  But prejudices are hard to shake, and my stereotype is that because the people out west are so ahead of the gay curve, of course they’ll be cool with their kids being gay, and of course, this isn’t really true at all.

Christy and Kris. Another of Tim's photos.

So if the dirty-dirty’s penchant for faggotry, lesbianism, and trannydom still surprises me, despite having so many things deflating my own prejudices, the Homo Climbtastic convention must be a real mind-fuck for its non-southern participants, some of whom have never been to the south before.   When an old pick-up truck with men in camo hats rolled slowly around the hostel corner one morning, more people probably expected a fag drag than the fucking hot guy leaning out to say, “hey boys.”  Of course, true to type, maybe part of the reason we’re all so friendly down here is because we’re all packing heat.  No seriously.  All of the southern carpools had guns.  Welcome to the south y’all!

Meli. Looks like she's either pumped or praying for death's sweet release. They are kinda the same.

Homo Climbtastic held the largest queer climbing convention in the world, but it would be overly reductive to describe its significance in this way.  This year’s convention again spawned new local climbing clubs.  It proved that the south, that queer people, that queer climbers, that you, can all be whatever the fuck you want.  It was an ephemeral suspension of the mindless drive to worry about the next thing.  It was a reclamation of athletics, a poster for a people shoehorned into a limited sphere of acceptable sports and performance.  It was an expression of humor’s centrality to meaning.  It was a portal to Outland.  If you weren’t there, I promise, you want to be present for the next one. It’ll be bigger anyway.

Alex Rowland

Supertopo Trip Report, NRG 2010, Part 2

Posted on by
2

The group at Roger's Rocky Top Retreat

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

The next morning, we all swung by Roger’s Rocky Top Retreat, so that we could get a group photo with Fayetteville institution Roger.  I still don’t know Roger’s last name, although I keep meaning to ask him.  Roger was kind enough to put up one of our posters, which made me feel even more guilty about the fact that we were camping at Chestnut Creek (I lost that fight to people who require level tent space).  I suspect next year the appeal of forgoing quiet hours will swing the vote toward Roger’s.

We took over the entirety of Butcher’s Branch, and at the base of Flight of the Gumbie, Matt revealed that he had brought his dresses and wigs.  So there was really no choice but for us to do a drag climb.  I was going to climb lead, but the only open climb nearby was slab, and I prefer injuries I can explain.  These were five of my favorite photos.  I’m the blond.

…….I nearly sent the damn thing on TR, but between the last clip and the anchors my heels slipped off on the smears and I had to stop to slide them back on.

Kate from New York led some God-awful sandbagged 12b that raped me on top-rope, even out of drag.  John fell while clipping on Flight of the Gumbie and after a thirty foot fall and a not quite soft enough catch, rammed his ankle with enough force to go all blue and purple–which scored him the “best lead fall” win in the anti-comp and a free pair of Chacos.

John (l), Taylor

That night, the dictators picked up a to-go meal and discussed dictator things on the lawn, so I didn’t get to see what all the convention attendees got up to.

Saturday, I joined a group of 14 HC’ers to go rafting with the Rivermen.  The head guide was kind of a douche, and totally not rolling with our faggotry, but the two guides who were actually steering the HC boats were fantastic and all about being stowaways on our queer train.  One of them, Shea, steered her boat over to my boat, guided by Abbi.  “Hey,” she said, “what do gay horses eat?”

Matt started to yell, “haaaaay,” but then Shea interrupted, “HORSECOCK!” and HC’s next official inside joke was born.  For the remainder of the day, all we could yell at each other was “horsecock!”

Abbi's holding the red bag.

We had lunch at the Secret Sandwich Society, and I got the Ulysses, which was really good, and so were the chips, although the mac and cheese tasted kind of funny.

That night at the campground, Connor expressed to me that maybe I should play bad cop a bit more with the quiet hours, because “we are,” he said, “whether we like it or not, representing all gay people.”

“I think it’s a bit late for that,” I said.

Dad called me on the phone to talk about mom, whereupon I learned that it had only taken a few hours for photos of me in a dress to show up on Facebook.

“I saw your pictures on Facebook,” he said.

“Did I look good?”

“Maybe you should have shaved.”

Late Saturday night ended with smores, and therefore, a chubby bunny battle.  Laurie egged me on to go up against the other dictator named Alex, Alex Chavez, and so we were stuffing marshmallows into our mouths one by one and saying “chubby bunny.”  I got up to about 7, with marshmallows oozing out of my mouth, when I saw a good opportunity to forcefully make out with Alex and hump him on the ground, as pictured here.

We ran into campground owner Brian in the bathroom when we went to wash the marshmallow off.  “We had a chubby bunny competition get violent.”

The next morning was a group breakfast at the Vandalian.  The food was amazing, as usual, and we had the anti-comp award presentation.  We gave away the goods from Chaco, Prana, Black Diamond, Friction, Beta Clothing, Aveda, Waterstone Outfitters, and drag superstar Pandora Boxx.  Tim, who took most of the photos in this report, got a prize for being our favorite ‘mo photographer.

Tim. Yeah, I would have, but Jon got to him first

I got a prize too, but I forgot what the category was, if there was one.  On our last trip to the Red, we debated out loud what would happen if porn star Levi Poulter showed up, and we decided that if he did, someone would have to get a pair of kneepads as a prize.  So Kelly obtained a pair of kneepads and Bedazzled (TM) them, and that was my prize, although Levi never showed up.

Kelly (l), awarding me (r) Bedazzled (TM) kneepads.

We got worried later, after the anti-comp ceremony, that maybe we were too crude for the Vandalian, so I texted Porter to be all like, “I hope we weren’t too crude,” and he wrote back, “no, it was xxxpected,” and so all was well.

Homo Climbtastic at the Vandalian

Just as we stepped outside, Deadpoint Magazine arrived for an interview, so I stood on the street corner within the auspice of a tape recorder. He asked, “Why did you start the club?”

Usually, when confronted with this question, I respond, “I started this club to find tops, remedying social iniquities was just collateral damage.”  But I was concerned that DPM’s readership wouldn’t know what tops were (straight male climbing mag readers are usually bottoms) and so I hedged and said something like, “to have fun” or whatever’s quoted in the article.  The tape recorder didn’t pick up me leaning over and miming a blowjob.

DPM, I’m pretty sure, was more interested in the social justice-y aspect of HC, which dances in tandem with our tendency to act ridiculous.  I usually have trouble speaking seriously of social justice and the challenges stemming from discrimination faced by the queer community, e.g. the 800% suicide rate, which DPM brought up.  I let the others talk about discrimination present and past. For me, HC was/is about creating a new world, rather than working on an old one. Like Opus’s departure for Outland, I figured everyone I liked would eventually follow me in.  The most I would do for the old world would be to Bedazzle (TM) the portal so it would at least be easy to find.

Standing there on the streetcorner, I realized I had come a long way.  When I was in my teens, I think I felt ashamed of the crude gays in the dresses and the hotpants, because if only all the gay people would just act like straight people, talking normally, buying life insurance policies and houses and getting married, being responsible, and fitting in with gender expectations, and not being crude, THEN the straight people would accept us.  Two martial arts and many pool table hustles later, I finally realized that straight people didn’t worry about what other straight people were doing or whether they were properly representing other straight people, and if they weren’t taking collective responsibility for 2 girls 1 cup, I didn’t see why I had to prove shit.  All I really wanted was for people to be free to do what they wanted.  Up to and including climbing 5.10 in a dress. (Next year’s goal: send Apollo Reed in drag.)

Nikon sells a filter that's capable of removing the unicorn rainbow in front of Waterstone, but we didn't have it

We posed in front of Waterstone for a group photo, yelled “horsecock” in lieu of “cheese,” and then everybody went to Bubba City, which turned out to be a little bit of a disaster.

On to Part 3.

A correction: Well, a pseudo-correction, as I left something open to misinterpretation; Connor’s comment was only in regard to quiet hours, he wasn’t suggesting that we tone down our swishyness, just that we not be assholes by keeping the campground awake all night, whether by drag show or by alligator wrestling.  (Although that does give me a new idea for next time…)