Bear Run

My First Bear Run

I attended by first bear run this past Easter weekend. Now some people may ask, what is a bear-run? I'm still not exactly sure, even though I've just been to one.

A "bear" in the gay community is typically an overweight gay man with a lot of body hair. However, it is also an attitude of sorts, a way presenting oneself. In the post immediately below, I've included an article by Andrew Sullivan, a man who wears many labels himself (he's a neo-conservative, gay, Catholic, English, political pundit, gay activist who self-identifies as a bear) and who describes the cultural phenomenon better than I ever could.

The event I attended was sponsored by the Dallas Bears and was called the Texas Bear-Roundup. This year's theme was Cirque des Ours (Circus of Bears in French). My first indication that I was in for an unusual weekend was when I arrived at the hotel. After checking in, my friend and I proceeded to the elevators where we saw the sign posted above. The hotel had been the host for the event for the past several years and knew what a large group of large men could do to an elevator.

We arrived on a Thursday with plans to stay till Sunday. As the evening wore on, more and more bears started to arrive at the hotel. These were large, friendly men, who were quick to say hello and shake your hand and introduce themselves. Some were fat, some were stocky, quite a view were big and muscular in a football playing way, and some, not as many, were of average build or even small. These were the "chasers". A chaser is a man of average or small build who is attracted to large, even obese men. Nearly everyone had facial hair of some kind, and it occurred to me as I watched the crowd gather in the lobby to begin the registration process that to a stranger we would look, at least at first glance at least, like a a gang of extremely laid-back bikers, or a convention of high school football coaches. The entire hotel was booked by bears that weekend as were the two hotels immediately adjacent to the Crowne Plaza. Eventually, the crowd of registrants would grow to nearly 850 men (and about six women).

My friend was an old hand at these gatherings and immediately began to recognize people he knew from previous runs. There are runs all across the country of various sizes, and he had been to several. I used to tease him about them by saying, "What do ya'll do at a run anyways? Fight for equal rights for the hairy?"

However, as the weekend wore on I began to see the appeal of the event. They had shuttles running every thrity minutes or so between the hotel and the gay area of Dallas, and every evening they had a party at the hotel with free beer. ( I almost typed bear. The event does that to you-anytime someone can work the word bear into something, they do.)

There were vendors selling T-Shirts, and kilts, and jewlry and porn. there was a candlemaker whose candels were made from "woofwax". "Woof" or "woofy" means sexy, and if someone "woofs" at you its like they said, "Hey good looking, what's happening?"

People at a bear run are very casual about personal space. People who have just met reach out and stroke one another's bears or pat each other on the stomach. It takes a little while to get used to, but after awhile you get used to hugging everyone you meet. It can also lead to some funny situations like when I was standing outside the hotel smoking. A man, probaby in his early forties, came up to me and said:

"I need a fuzzy bear."

"Excuse me?" I replied.

He repeated, "I need a fuzzy bear."

I thought, "Awe, how cute, I'll give him a hug."

So when I reached over to hug him, he pushed me back firmly and said,

"I need bus fare!"

Obviously, I had misheard him.

I think many people who have heard of a bear-run thin it is one big hairy orgy. And I think for some people it can be. However, as I watched people talk and mingle, it occurred to me that this was a place for a group of people who are twice-over outsiders. They are gay, but they are not like the gays you see on television, those men who look like they belong on a daytime soap opera. Most of them would probably be ignored at any gay disco in the country, and they don't conform to the gym bunny aesthetic many gay men strive towards. They were more like the neighbor you might borrow tools from, or the little league coach for you son's T-ball team. They were a group of people who had decided to make a place for themselves, even if it was just for one weekend. I noticed that an inordinate number of the men I met worked in software development or I.T. support, and I think it is no coincidence that the rise of the bear movement has coincided with the rise of the Internet. There were people at this run from Brazil, England, and Australia. I don't think this would have been possible without an easy, cheap, and fast way to communicate.

I really enjoyed the weekend, even though finding love turned out to not be in the cards. I wasn't really looking for it, and even though the condensation on the bear bottles at the hotel parties was probably 50% testosterone, I was content to watch the crowd and talk with my friends.

Once

I've complained recently about the lack of magic and excitement I used to feel when I watched movies. Fortunately, I had a very pleasant experience with a little movie I watched last Saturday on pay-per-view. It's a small movie, very low-budget, and it is also unusually short, only 85 minutes. It is called Once, and it stars Glen Hansard and Martina Irglova. Hansard is a member of the rock group The Frames, and is apparently pretty well-known in Ireland. Irglova is from Czechoslovakia and met Hansard while he was on tour, and became one of his collaborators on an album called The Swell Season. The movie was originally to star Cillian Murphy, but Murphy decided he couldn't sing the songs, and the movie was shot in seventeen days with Hansard and Irglova playing the leads. The cool thing about the movie is you get to watch to great musicians create and perform music together and fall in love while they do it. The movie doesn't go where you expect it to go, and the performances are so fresh and natural they make you think you're watching a documentary. Hansard has eye's that seem to be perpetually widened in surprise and Irglova, wile nearly half Hansards age, has old eyes that have seen a great deal. As, you love watch the movie, you love both these people, and you really care about what happens to them. The ending is sweet, unexpected, and just right. This is a refreshing, spring breeze of a movie.