Bear Stew #7

Bear Stew #7
Tasty Manbytes Served Steaming Hot
by Ron Suresha

Gift shopping is never a problem when you’re a bear. Our pals at animal-protection advocates Brown Bear Resources have come out with a gift so growlingly sensual, the mere sound of its name gives me major wood: Brown Bear Fudge. Knowing how much that cubs and bears and otters everywhere love to wolf down the rich dark sweet stuff, it should fly off this most excellent charitable foundation’s shelves. This delicious, insulin-inducing fudge is handmade right in the Brown Bear store by genuine shirtless Montana mount’n men. OK, so maybe I made up the mount’n men part, but you know this fudge has gotta be the real deal.

What’s SpunkDaddy’s pick of their twelve decadent and thrilling flavors? Five thick pounds of “Cheesecake peanut-butter chocolate,” please Sir. The chunkier, the better, mm-hmm. And at a mere $8.99 per pound, you can bust your gut without busting your wallet. Take it from a Brown Bear Fudge packer. Get it at http://www.brownbear.org/Giftshop/giftshop4.htm and tell ’em Bear Stew sent ya.

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Just back from another furr-bulous Summer Bear Week (SBW) in Provincetown, which was graced all week by the Most Excellent Mr Intl Grizzly 2004 Jay Duckworth from NYC MetroBears. Jay’s a magnificent bull of a bear: a real sidewalk crowder, and the kind of nice handsome guy you naturally hope will squeeze up against you on the narrow sidewalks of the gay resort at the tip of nearby Cape Cod. Jay entered as my reading of the Kink fiction anthology and the new bearsmut anthology Bear Lust got underway. Jay took the last chair in the gallery and seated latecoming cubs on his lap – there was room for four or more.

The Lit-Bear-ary event was held at the charming Art @ Home Gallery of main Ptown Bears organizer John Burrows. The gallery, a perfectly arranged Cape Cod artspace for tiles, ceramics, and framed art, is located just up the block from the famed men’s bar A-House, where your SpunkDaddy’s been hunting bears since he lived in Ptown during the tumultuous winter and spring of 1986. A nearby bear-owned B&B, Captain’s House, opened this year, in addition to a handful of existing bear-friendly guest houses, Bear’s Den, Grand View, and Watership.

At the climax of the hot and steamy SBW Fireman’s Ball uniform benefit, I flashdanced with Mr Intl Cub 2002, Steve Jensen. Upwards of 1200 ursine guys from everywhere (special woofs to Phil & Larry from San Diego!) attended the weeklong event, which doubled the amount of money previously raised for the local fire department for this event. Record numbers were also reported for the overlapping Lazy Bear Week in the rustic town of Guerneville in the Russian River area.

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If you take US Route 6 out of Ptown for about 2.5 hours, you come to Providence, Rhode Island, “the other P-City” as I call it. Providence is another bear-friendly small city where bears and leathermen are warmly welcomed into the community on all levels. We have two leather/bear bars and two bathhouses, one of which features regular “Bears at the Baths.” Providence also is the only state capital with a gay mayor, the diminutive fireplug David Cicilline, who spoke last year at a benefit during the Mr RI Bear Contest and who is himself kind of a cleanshaven musclecub (half-Jewish, half-Italian – ya know he’s gotta be hairy).

Providence is also filled with a delectable variety of ethnic American working-class guys. Sometimes there’s better eye candy at the local diner than you find on these pages (hard to believe, but true). Take Bobby and Paul, the two 40-ish owners of the “New York System” breakfast and wiener grill in my neighborhood. The first time I walked in there, I thought I’d walked into Hairy-Guy Heaven, seeing the two of them together behind the counter. Bobby’s Italian, scruffy with a trim black beard and hairy knuckles. I was just recovering from my first double-take when Bobby introduced his “partner,” Paul, a classic Irish redbear with a full beard, a gut twice as big as Bobby’s, and muscled, thick-furred forearms. Wearing matching wedding bands. So unself-conscious, so hetero-manly, so homo-innocent, so beard-ream-able. The thought of them cooking me up in a grilled c(l)ub sandwich between them fueled dozens of post-breakfast-omelette fantasies. For a while, I considered dropping a hint: “Oh, me? I’m just a friendly, furry bi guy looking for new pals in town” – but doubtlessly they knew the score. Both woofters act so damned friendly to me, it’s maddening. Early on, every time I ate there, Paul would wink at me with that melting Irish grin at least once. I had to hide my excitement watching them work the grill together under the menu! But eventually I got around to asking about their home life, and it turns out they’re each with wife and kids. Family guys, yeah, just business partners. But apparently not at all beyond having a mild flirtation with another guy. Don’t they know it’s unfair to tease the bears?

This column first appeared in American Bear magazine #63, October/November 2004.