I Left My Schmuck in San Francisco

Sometimes it's hard for a girl to know what to wear. Or how much to wear. Whether it's dressing to stay out of trouble in Salah ud-Din . . .

. . . or to get into it in San Francisco . . .

. . . there can be so many choices to make. Spangles . . . or tassels? Choker . . . or necklace? Fan . . . or lorgnette? And which earrings? Clothing is a luxury for much of the world, worrying about which clothing even more of a luxury.

Except in San Francisco, where horns are locked, swords are drawn, cudgels taken up (all pointy, metaphorical things, of course) in defense of what not to wear. The supreme luxury, in questions sartorial, is that delicate frisson, the pique of feeling put upon when a paternalistic city, like a distant father, dictates that if you're going to go about nude (which is in accordance with municipal law) then you must seat yourself on a towel "or other material" when using public seating. Well really, dear.

A San Francisco city supervisor with the infinitely freighted name of Scott Wiener has proposed a city ordinance forbidding nudity in restaurants and "requir[ing] unclad people to put a towel or other material down before sitting bare-bottomed on benches or other public seats." The response was immediate. The San Francisco Bay Guardian printed a helpful recyclable tear-out in a recent issue to enable easy compliance with the proposed Wiener ordinance (or, "Wiener's proposed ordinance," if you prefer).

San Francisco being a hotbed of militant older men, other responses were more predictable. In the storied Castro District, a smallish crowd of naked protestors shoaled up like a pod of sunburned walruses in a damp autumn fog last Saturday to protest the ordinance, which most considered unnecessary since most already complied with the spirit of the law. The "Nude-In," as one might expect, did not draw the flower of the masculine populace (or would the opposite of "distaff" be "mastiff"? Someone please look it up and let me know.) And for my money, walking around naked in a September fog in San Francisco seems more like a hard-nippled, clasped-arms way of making a point (see photo) than "celebrating the freedom of the body" or whatever similar rationale floated in that rarified, post-D.H. Lawrence coastal air.

One lady who brought some out-of-town visitors for this Only-in-San-Francisco Moment asked the question on everyone's lips, “Where are the supermodel types? We want to know why it’s always the people who should not be naked who get naked.” (Not even to mention what chilly air will do for your shwanz.)

 

"If we're all wearing shoulder bags, does that count as naked?"

I've never actually spent much time in the "City By the Bay," but I'm told that this sort of thing is pretty serious business there. The aristocracy of that city take a pretty hard "Don't Tread On Me" stance when it comes to what they will or won't do - whether in personal fashion, political leanings, religious convictions, window treatments - which I understand all come to pretty much the same thing on the West Coast.

". . . and that goes for my Dorothy Draper chintz valances."

The case could be made that they have a point. It takes only a nominal prudence and foresight to carry something to sit on when in public, considering that it's a good deal simpler to remove, say, a wad of someone else's chewing gum from a towel than it is to ask even the dearest of friends their assistance in divesting your mechanically inaccessible parts of the same.

But the lady asked an important question. Why is it that the only people one ever hears about going stark naked are men in whom all the gristle is gone, men who should probably be wearing something . . .  

I actually have a theory about that. I think it's guys about my age who grew up in those crazy Eisenhower Years. 

"Wanna get naked, kid?"

UPDATE: TROUBLE IN PARADISE   

from The Guardian, November 20, 2012

Nudists vow to defy anti-nudity law in San Francisco

San Francisco nudists said on Monday they would continue to walk the streets naked regardless of a proposed law that would order them to cover up.

City authorities are meeting on Tuesday to decide on a new anti-nudity law that is being supported by residents and business owners in the city’s Castro district.

Nudists (in bathrobes)

The law would make it an offence for anyone over the age of five to “expose his or her genitals, perineum or anal region on any public street, sidewalk, street median, parklet or plaza”.

Lloyd Fishbach, left, who was standing naked at the corner of Castro and Market, said it should be his choice to dress as he wants, where he wants.

“There is always someone who is not going to like what you are doing,” he said. “I live in the Castro and I’ve been doing this since first grade. This is just a bunch of uptight Americans. But I’ll still keep doing it and if I see the cops coming I will run and hide.”

Member of the Opposition: San Francisco's Circumcision Ban

The male member is a highly comic figure, even (especially) when not the subject of graphic portraiture. It has always had its mockers and detractors, always gone about with a bit of raffish tarnish, always been the chap who draws the easy laugh, the cheap snigger and the staged trip-up. It begs disadvantageous analogy with the smaller rodents and fungi, its character always in question - too often in the way, or simply not there when needed.

Now the City of San Francisco has done its worst by the wee lad (I really wanted to write "wurst" there but I am not going to add puns to the manifold tribulations of Le Petit Prince).  A proposal to ban the circumcision of children will be on the November ballot in San Francisco - the nation's first public vote on whether to dismantle or not to dismantle. This sort of public attention does not contribute anything to the gravitas of the minor citizen in question, nor to the body civil (if that's the right word here) that would even bring it up for a vote. ("Put it to a vote" might be a happier phrase, but let it pass - as I said, a highly comic figure.)

"Yo, careful!"

Supporters of the ban say male circumcision is a form of genital mutilation - akin to the illegal mutilation of females - unnecessary, extremely painful, possibly dangerous; and that parents should not be able to force the decision on a child.  

"Parents are really guardians, and guardians have to do what's in the best interest of the child. It's his body, it's his choice," said San Francisco resident hand-wringer Lloyd Schofield, the measure's lead proponent.  Cutting away the foreskin, he insists, is a more invasive medical procedure than many new parents or childless people realize.

"Couldn't we make it less . . . wrinkly?"

In a 1999 article in The Humanist, the authors argue that circumcision violates both the Fourteenth Amendment and international law, specifically the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Be that as it may, circumcision seems to be the default procedure on little boys born in the U.S. The worldwide average, according to a Huffington Post article, is 30 percent, though the U.S. average is close to 80 percent. Proponents of circumcision generally cite its hygienic advantages - a suitably coiffed pecker is presumably less likely to catch in ski lifts, Tommy-lifts, elevator doors, car doors, trouser mangles, tailgates, zippers, CD players, malfunctioning prostheses and so on.

For my part (if you'll permit that expression), I had no say in the matter, nor do I remember the procedure as being either traumatic, degrading or particularly uncomfortable. I do have childhood memories of the doctor who performed it - "Dunn Me Wrong" Dunn, who made reparations for his violation of my human rights by handing me a little corked vial of sugar "pills" every time he examined me in his office, with the earnest injunction to take them regularly until they were gone. It never occured to me that I had been "docked," in common with the sorts of dogs - Dobermans, Great Danes, schnauzers, boxers - that regularly had their ears and tails ideally reconfigured for the Westminster Trials.

Would you do it to your dog? 

The national Jewish and Muslim communities are promising legal remedy should the measure pass a vote, as such a proscription violates immemorially old religious practices. In that respect, it seems as though the San Francisco City Council is a) trivializing its legislative mandate, and b) engaging in the sort of moral fascism that would also conceivably criminalize, as a violation of their rights and inherent dignity, the sale and transport of goldfish in plastic bags.

Goldfish in Gitmo

As is so often the case in instances of preposterous legislation, there is a fundamental deficiency in any leavening sense of history. The schmekel has been the object of rabbinical jurisdiction for milennia, instructions for its proper care and feeding institutionalized in sacred writings from ancient days. It brings peace and makes war . . . 

Rape of the Sabine Women (Jacopo Ligozzi) 

Its names are legion. It is a literary character, a biblical character, a figure of myth and legend. The Greeks and Romans deified it as Priapos, a rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, crops and male genitalia.The classical Mediterranean countryside was awash in goat-legged satyrs on the lookout for the easy tumble (the goat's horns were the symbol of the cuckolded husband).

"Beat it, kid."

The Hindustani countryside is littered with lingams, the stumpy, becomingly modest stone monuments to Shiva's procreative travels, invariably watched over by a canopy of five cobras (which might plausibly represent the San Francisco municipal overlords).

  "Is he 'Big Boy,' is he 'Little Boy'?" 

The final irony is that San Francisco of all places, a city known for a broader than usual tolerance of "lifestyle choices," should unaccountably choose to put its collective hand in the civic pants to the extent of removing the question from the realm of personal choice. Whether to go smooth or wrinkled into the world should not be left to the same people who set the zoning regulations. 

As I said, a highly comic figure. Quod erat demonstrandum.