'Bred Crumbs

10:04 PM It began with a sound as delightfully surprising as the call of a lone songbird, carried to my ears on a light summer wind:

"Oh yeah. Ohhhhh yeah. Oh yeah, bite my ass."

This exceedingly male exhortation reached me unbidden a few months ago, on a weekday as I took a lunch break from working at home. It struck at a certain point on the sidewalk outside my building, across the drive from another condo complex. It was not the first such chant I had heard at that very spot, but it was the first that included such specific directive. It was impossible to tell which window the sounds came from, just as it was hard to tell whether it was live or porn. The smooth purposefulness of the monologue suggested the latter, but the lack of cheesy music hinted at the former.

You should know that my neighborhood is a little naughtier than most in America. True, most of the residents of my building are people who are older and more settled than I -- or, as Dana defines them, "old gay men and their old gay dogs." But a short walk away is the stretch of Market Street where you'll find men sitting in storefront windows leafing through very adult magazines while waiting for their Guerneville-regulation buzzcuts, or for the leather-wrangler next door to let out the buckles on their harness. One Sunday afternoon, Robbie and I were distracted while we ate burritos at Azteca by the horizontal bobbing up and down of two bare male torsos in a window across the street. And a half-block away is a small apartment building that seems to be populated entirely by perpetually shirtless young men (along with one dog and a lifesize cutout of Britney in one window facing the street). One Saturday, these cast members of an Abercrombie & Fitch fever dream got together for a yard sale. I've never been so tempted to root through other people's discarded junk in my life, but I resisted. Probably could have picked up some unused shirts real cheap.

But the mysterious, airborne request for ass indentations a few months ago lent the proceedings a titillating new level of drama. And the past two weeks, it's taken on a whole new dimension.

Last week, I was walking along again and saw, on the top floor of the building whence emanated the fabled moaning, a man standing just inside his patio door. Completely naked. His body and tiny distant face were nice enough, maybe not quite up to cable standards, but certainly something any of us actual humans would be proud to have. Equipment? Well, I could discern it clearly, in its dormant state, from about 10 yards away. You make the call. All in all, not bad window-dressing.

Yesterday morning, as I pulled out of my garage, my eye was drawn to a window being opened in my peripheral vision. Yes, again with the naked.

Then today, I returned from a haircut, and there he was, in full unclad display in his patio door, handling it.

He was at it for a while, looking around often for any clothes-wearing mortals below. I watched until I felt too weird about it -- not because I feared he would catch me, because clearly he wanted an audience, but because I couldn't bear the thought of getting stuck chatting with any passer-by neighbor about it. "Whatcha doin'?" "Watching the naked guy stroke himself." "Yeah, well, it's a nice day for it. You take care now, I gotta go walk my gay dog."

Plus, I had to get back to work. A few minutes later, I did go back outside to, oh, let's say, "get something out of the car," and he was still at his post, steady on the rudder.

I can't honestly say I mind this very public exhibition. And I'm hardly suggesting that BMA is the only person who spends his nights working, perhaps, and spends his days entertaining himself. But I am suggesting he's one of the few who share their hobby so gleefully with the neighbors. It just seems kind of odd -- as odd as the regret I felt hours later when I realized that I could have viewed the whole show from my dining-nook window, although it would have been tastefully obscured, a la Austin Powers, by a well-placed tree branch.

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