Balls Deep (2016–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Bears - full transcript
Bear Week is where all the heaviest, hairiest homos come to celebrate their heft.
**
[ Water splashing ]
Hi, it's Thomas.
I'm in Cape Cod in a pool
full of bears, cubs, otters,
and other hairy
homosexual wildlife.
This is Provincetown Bear Week.
**
Over the last 50 years,
American gays
have gone from a clandestine
clique of queens and butchies
to a rich mini-hewed quilt
of types and sub-types,
all of whom may now legally wed.
The burliest square of this
queer patchwork is the bears,
who meet once a year
at the uncut tip of Cape Cod.
* Dum, dum, dum, dum,
dum, dum, dum, dum *
* Do, do, do, do, do,
do do, do-do-do-do *
Provincetown's been hosting Bear
Week for the last 15 years.
Even before the bears came, this
place was a mecca for gay life,
dating back to the '20s and '30s
when artists like
Tennessee Williams would come
and mix with the sailor folk
and Portuguese fishermen.
It's a weird little pocket
of sort of fun and
open-mindedness for New England,
especially considering
the first residents here
were the Pilgrims.
It's also impressively cute,
which has always held a high
premium in the gay community.
[ Bicycle bell rings ]
MAN: So, have you guys
been poolside?
"Bear soup," as it's called.
- Is it?
- Yeah. [ Laughs ]
We met a couple bears from
Arkansas named Gary and Jay
who invited us
to a pool party today.
Oh, my God.
- I know.
THOMAS: That's what you meant
by bear soup.
Yeah.
This is bear soup.
[ Laughs ]
[ Hawaiian music plays ]
There's so much men in there.
Everyone thinks of bears
as being big, fat, overweight,
you know, beefy guys.
There are a lot of guys
that are in really good shape.
THOMAS:
I heard "muscle bear."
Is that a derogatory term, or...?
No.
That's probably more what
we identify with. Yeah.
You guys are, like,
classic strong men.
[ Laughs ]
They have all these,
you know, different names
for, you know, guys
that have no hair
but consider themselves bears.
Yeah.
Okay, furry and in shape
is an otter.
- That's an otter.
- And a cub's just a --
A cub's, like, a young, hairy guy.
Okay.
- Usually a young, hairy guy.
- Yeah.
And then you see, like,
the silver-haired...
- Polar bears.
- Yeah.
- Those are polar bears.
- Polar bears.
- Yeah.
- [ Laughs ]
Some of the Asian guys
call themselves pandas.
- Hmm.
- [ Laughs ]
THOMAS: Before they had their
own flags with the sub-types,
bears were a fringe stripe
of the gay sub-cultural rainbow.
Too hairy for
the Chelsea boy queen scene,
too hefty for the Castro clones,
bears quietly consorted
with one another
through early internet usenet
groups and mailing lists
in the back pages
of "Bear" magazine
before finally bursting
into the gay overground
with the first international
Bear Rendezvous in 1995.
Today, there are
Rendezvous-style events
like Bear Week all year long
and across the country,
and bears make up, at least
in terms of mass,
the largest distinct body
of gay men in America.
**
This is kind
of a refreshing antidote
to the usual vacation scene
where everybody's trying
to keep as much space
from each other as possible.
Here, I don't think
there's a single foot
of unbroken skin contact,
as far as I can see,
across the pool.
It's only a matter of how much
water is displacing right now.
It's probably two feet deep.
I told him he ought to watch
the Bear Boat go off.
Oh, that's a trip, yeah.
- At 7:00 A.M. tomorrow?
- Yeah.
This whole group goes and gets
on a ferry, and it's just wild.
- That's kind of terrifying.
- Oh, my God.
**
You're not getting on this boat?
I am not.
I went on this boat last year,
and it felt like
a prison sentence.
[ Laughs ]
THOMAS: While the planned
activities seemed designed
to cater to the older
bear crowd,
the younger cubs and otters
have devised their own circuit
for Bear Week.
Bye!
- Bye!
Do this!
[ Horn honks ]
There's so much man
on that boat.
Exactly.
Ready?
- Oh.
Let's go to your spot --
the fried dough spot.
Okay. Yeah, I got to go
where the party's at.
Big Dipper is a bear from
Chicago and is a rap artist.
I think Big Dipper
is not his Christian name
but in fact his hip-hop name.
Or maybe bear name.
I don't know if they have those.
Dig in there.
They're hot.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, fresh out
of the window, too.
- This looks good.
- Mm-hmm.
Classic dough.
- Yeah.
THOMAS: When did you come
into beardom?
I would say, for me,
it was, like,
when I first become aware
of my body.
Like, my body is, like,
meant to be thick.
And then not until I was 24
did I, like,
see my body elsewhere
in the world,
and I was like, "Oh, like,
people are into this."
So were you attracted to bears
before you kind of, like,
realized you were one?
I didn't quite get it.
I was attracted
to what I thought
the sort of, like, gay man was.
Oh, okay, so --
So it was like, oh,
like, big muscles
and, like, waxed chests,
and, like, chiseled
male-model features,
and I was like,
"Oh, okay."
[ Bicycle bell rings ]
And that is attractive.
It's not that it's not attractive.
Yeah.
But then I was like, "Is it
okay for me to be attracted
to a 65-year-old man
who has, like, a beer gut?"
And I was like, "Yes.
The answer is yes."
**
After our dough break, Dipper
took me on a bike-back tour
of Bear Week's
less-savory haunts.
It's a comfy ride.
[ Laughter ]
So, this, my friend, I do
believe, is the Dick Dock.
THOMAS: It looks just like
a very regular dock right now.
I think if the hour was later
and the sun was down,
you'd see a lot more dick
here at the Dick Dock.
I'm just surprised not to see
kind of like, detritus,
like, lube
or condom wrappers, or --
I would say, if we went
journeying inside,
we may encounter
some of those things.
That's lube.
- Okay.
A lot a lube.
- Yeah, but look.
You can imagine there are
all great places
to sort of hold on
or bend over...
- Yeah.
- ...and lean up against, or...
get thrown up against.
Tons of condoms.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Wow, okay.
There's your evidence, Thomas.
Yeah.
What is going on?
I'm glad we're both seeing it.
That's the kind of thing
that you catch out of the corner
of your eye. You would see it --
And start cataloging
how many times
you've taken acid in the past.
Actually, being down here
for the first time --
You know how sometimes you need
to go somewhere first
to feel comfortable?
- Right. Yeah.
Now I'm like --
Oh, I could do that.
I could come back here.
- I could do that, yeah.
Maybe I'll come get my
dick sucked tonight. Yeah.
**
THOMAS: Bear Week is more
than just fleshy,
sweat-drenched dance parties,
although there are those
in abundance every night
and pretty much every hour
of every day.
There's regular kind of vacation
stuff you can do -- bike rides,
beach trips, and shows, art
galleries featuring art by bears
for bears that otherwise involve
beardom in some way,
or just are pictures
of bears... naked.
CHARLIE: "Loved" is an
exploration of sexual identity,
and the prints show
the outward signs
of what being a bear is.
And people often ask me
about the nudity in this show.
THOMAS: Uh-huh.
Some of the bears have issues
about their weight and so forth.
So they say that they find it
kind of empowering.
And I feel that I get
a sense of the emotion
that they're going through
if they're uncomfortable
with their bodies,
or some guys are, like,
totally cool about it
and they just drop their
trousers immediately
and they stand like --
**
Beardom's obviously predicated
on a healthy acceptance
of your, you know,
given body type.
Well, I don't really conform to
the bear physical attributes --
I don't think
I'm even really an otter.
I'm not without
my personal peccadillos.
I could, you know, stand
to tighten up the tum a little.
I've got this acne
I'm really not fond of,
but there's a yoga studio here
in Provincetown
that teaches body awareness,
where they kind of,
through whatever yogic methods,
help you accept who you are.
Hi, there.
I'm Freddy.
How are you?
- Hi. Thomas.
- Thomas.
- How are you?
- This is Jay.
- Hi.
- And Paul.
- Hello, hello.
And we're gonna walk you through
a couple of things that we do
in the workshop.
We reach out and say
"Welcome, brother"...
- Okay.
- ...to the guy in front of you.
Welcome, brother.
- Welcome, brother.
- Can I have a hug?
- Yes.
Good.
Yes.
You may.
Okay.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
So we want to honor this man.
We want to honor the fact
that this is not always easy
for all men to do.
May I help remove your armor?
- Please do.
- Okay.
[ Laughs ]
Here we go.
May I appreciate your body
with my hands?
Yes.
Noting that there's
differences between us
and that everything
is beautiful,
and that every man has beauty.
Mm-hmm.
So then we'll remove
the rest of the clothing.
- May I do that for you?
- Yes.
May I have remove --
Could you remove my clothing?
Yes.
May I touch your cock
and honor it?
- Yes.
- Then I would do that.
- This is a place of power.
- Mm.
This is a place
of life-giving energy.
This isn't about having sex.
This is about honoring
each other's bodies.
It's about honoring
our masculine power.
Would you like to do that
to me, too?
Um, I think so.
[ Laughs ]
This is a source of power.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Life.
This is not just a sex organ.
It's a --
- Good.
I mean, this may be
a really stupid question,
but, like, how bad are body
images in the bear community?
I thought that was all, like,
once you're a bear --
- You'd be surprised.
- Yeah.
You know, I'm obviously
a very big bear, and I --
I struggle with my body image
every day.
I would love to be thinner.
I'm working on it.
But the point is meeting us
where we're at.
I'm in this house right now.
This is the house I live in.
I need to honor this house.
And by doing
these kind of workshops,
we can all start being
a little bit more comfortable
with where we're at,
and then we can demonstrate --
One of my big sayings
is that confidence is sexy.
There have been some guys that
have had a really hard time
getting into this,
and, like, even broken down.
A lot of times, the bear
community has been criticized
for winding up being something
to exclude people,
which is kind of the antithesis
of why it started.
And so we love doing something
where we're about
including everybody.
Welcome, brother.
Can I hug you?
Take your walk.
You walk down here, and
we touch you in the front.
- Welcome, brother.
- Welcome, brother.
So how was that for you?
Not sure.
It's a lot of touching.
[ Laughs ]
Thanks, y'all.
It didn't tickle, even.
You guys have a good touch.
A good touch.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you, guys.
THOMAS: One thing that's
a little weird about bears
that I've noticed is compared to
the other major gay sub-cultures
like leather daddies
and drag queens,
whose members, I feel like,
have a --
usually have
a pretty strong knowledge
of their group's
history background,
most of the bears I meet
couldn't tell you
the first thing about
how beardom came to be,
aside from how they got involved
in it.
Luckily, Provincetown is
the home to a number of figures
from gay history,
from John Waters,
who you should know,
to Armistead Maupin,
whose "Tales of the City" series
basically defined gay life
in America
in the '70s and '80s.
Maupin's agreed to meet us
for lunch.
- Hi.
- Hi.
- How are you doing?
- How are you? I'm Thomas.
Hi, Thomas.
Nice to meet you.
Damn it, in my day, we had to
walk 4 miles through the snow
just to get our cocks sucked.
Now they can find it on an app
and look at the dick
beforehand, and --
There was a certain thrill
to unwrapping the package
and seeing what you had
when you got home, you know?
When I was a young man
in San Francisco,
there were guys that sort of
dressed in lumberjack shirts
and were more easy-going,
friendly, masculine, laid-back,
and sometimes bigger guys,
sometimes hairier,
not necessarily.
It was a mind-set
as much as anything.
The term "bear" --
was that in common usage,
like, in San Francisco
in the '80s before --
I wrote about it in 1999
in a novel I was working on,
and it was already there, yeah.
The coffee shop in The Castro
was known as
the bear gathering place.
It's now Starbucks, of course.
Of course.
Beardom's been growing,
like, at least --
Leaps and bounds.
It's an industry now. Tons, yeah.
And the thing I love so much
about gay life in general
is that we are not
as exclusionary
as the rest of the world
in terms of what we expect
in a sexual partner.
I know many women
who don't want a man
if he's shorter than she is.
Oh, of course.
And gay men have learned to
eroticize almost everything.
THOMAS: Gay men's ability to
make any body trait a turn-on
doesn't just ensure
that everybody gets laid.
It leads to an ever-increasing
and sub-dividing web
of new sexual niches with their
own rules and markers,
even within the already pretty
niche-y world of bears.
Are you a bear?
- I would be considered a pup.
- A pup. Okay.
But like, I have a master,
like, my boyfriend, so...
- Oh, okay.
- That's what the lock means.
- I see.
- Yep.
So what's going on tonight?
So they have Furball,
and then there's also Brut.
I'm working Furball.
Could we come over
and see you change?
- Most definitely.
- Okay.
Yeah.
Just hit me up.
You guys have my cellphone,
I think, so...
**
THOMAS: Bear Week is great.
Everybody just starts drinking
at about 9:00 A.M.
jumps in the pool, and then goes
from party to party to party
until about 2:00 or 3:00
in the morning.
It's the most laissez-faire
environment, I think,
I've ever been in.
**
Hello.
How you doing?
- Hey.
- How's it going?
- What's going on?
- I like this.
Yeah, we -- [ Laughs ]
Oh, shoot.
That's new, I guess.
Ooh.
Can I try on the harness?
- Certainly.
- I've never worn one of those.
This also would signal,
because of the color,
that you are into fisting.
- Fisting, right?
Mm-hmm.
That's right.
[ Laughs ]
Are you more dominant
or more submissive?
I don't know.
Kind of in between.
- Okay.
- Do I have pick one?
You got to -- What do you feel
in the mood tonight for?
- Probably dominant.
- Dominant? All right.
THOMAS: The hanky code harkens
back to the days before AIDS,
when guys would signal
to each other
what type of sex
they were into by color --
red for fisting, pink for
dildos, yellow for piss play,
and straight on
down the rainbow.
These days, there are somehow
50-plus colors of hanky,
and you can even stamp
a cartoon pig on your color
to indicate whatever
type of kink you're into,
you like to do it "piggy style."
Is piggy another category I get,
or just like,
straight-up description?
Both.
Piggy would just be, again,
like bare-back sex,
and very, like, raw.
Very hard-core.
- Okay.
Because, again, you have, like,
the Truvada movements.
What's Truvada?
So Truvada is something
that people would take
who are negative, HIV-negative.
Oh. Yep.
So that prevents you,
for the most part,
from catching HIV,
or contracting it. Oh.
So that's why you're having
this emergence of piggy-ness.
I see. Okay.
'Cause you have that very
raw, aggressive mentality
that's from the 1970s that you
kind of saw subside in the '80s
with the AIDS.
- Right, okay.
I mean, it just kind of
flatlined in the '90s,
and then you see this,
again, rise.
Do you take it, or no?
No, I do not take it.
- Oh, okay.
- So.
Yes, I'm HIV-positive,
but undetectable.
So...
I take my Complera.
- Oh.
- So --
I can't believe
I just said that on camera.
It used to be a big thing
for me,
but I remember when I was
diagnosed, I mean --
[ Exhales sharply ]
- That must have been --
Probably the most --
not probably --
the most intense experience
I've ever had.
But it's not --
It's not the death sentence
it was July 4, 1982.
- Right. Right.
- So...
I chug my little wine.
Yeah, yeah.
[ Both laugh ]
* Put the money down my pants,
down my pants, down my pants *
* Put the money down my pants,
down my pants, down my pants *
* Put the money down my pants,
down my pants, down my pants *
* Put the money down my pants,
down my pants, down my pants *
THOMAS:
Dancing with bears is intense.
It's, like, most clubs when
everybody has their shirts off
are kind of like a sea of flesh,
but that's a solid
just ocean of skin
just rubbing up against you.
I'm probably covered
with the sweat
of at least 10 different men.
And the smells alternate
from, like, the stronger,
most-potent poppers
you could ever buy
combined with just,
like, the stankest,
most unclean locker room
of all time.
It's just this full-body
sensory overload.
It must be what it's like
to just be absorbed
into God's belly.
Like, the undistilled essence
of maleness.
Solid men.
You know, for a sub-culture
that kind of prides itself
on relaxation
and being very laid-back,
bears do plan a lot of shit
for their week.
Tonight, after all the daytime
stuff, there are no less
than, like, eight parties here,
like this cabaret act
called "Showgirls,"
which is some sort of
bear drag amateur revue,
I think our rapping pal,
Big Dipper,
might be participating in.
**
What's up, P-town?
[ Cheering ]
Oh, hi.
My name is Big Dipper.
I'm gonna rap a little bit
about dick
and a little bit
about ass-fucking.
* Big belly, thick thighs,
I'm a fat homo *
* See me swishing my hips,
I'm a fag homo *
* Craving dick when I'm lit,
I'm-a grab a homo *
* Don't spit cum, spit bars,
I'm a rap homo *
* Sex in the city,
I've got sex with no titties *
* My life is just like Glee,
I'm singing show tune diddies *
* I'm like grrr, woof,
fuck yea *
* I'm a bear, big, thick body
all covered in hair *
[ Cheering ]
Here are the four cunt-testants.
[ Laughter ]
Only applaud
for who you want to win.
Let's get it up for Big Dipper.
[ Cheering ]
- Dude.
- Hey.
- Good work. You knew it.
- Thank you.
Yeah, I'm glad you got
to see the show.
It seems like it was a fix.
What are you gonna do
with the $500?
Um... I don't know,
pay my phone bill, maybe?
Bye!
Thank you!
The night's already
three or four hours in,
but I think it's just starting.
[ Bicycle bell rings ]
I feel like a freshman
at the ultimate
high-school party right now.
I hope people like me.
**
* We came back in time
* We came back in time
* We came back in time, yeah
* We came back in time
Yes.
So if you do shout,
it'll tell you how many bears
you can send it to.
THOMAS: How many bears can
you send it to right now?
1,530.
- [ Laughs ]
- Five-mile radius.
Within a five-mile radius,
there's 1,500 -- Yes.
Not just 1,500 bears,
but 1,500 bears specifically
on Growlr right now.
**
I guess I'm gonna down
to Dick Dock
and see if any
of the fish are biting.
[ Men panting ]
That was extremely jarring.
There was pretty much every
manner of sexual congress
I could think of on display
under that dock.
3-ways to like, 12-ways
to group sucks to circle jerks,
and just -- the air smelled
of ass and cum.
And a little bit of lube.
It was very intense.
Well, if the Dick Dock
taught me anything,
aside from a number
of new sexual positions
I hadn't thought of, is that
I'm definitely straight,
which is a shame because
in terms of lifestyles,
bears can't be beat.
I mean, this is one of the most
luxurious vacations
I've ever had.
They're living at the apogee
of human pleasure.
It's almost like they're artists
of personal enjoyment.
And it's a sustainable
lifestyle.
As you get older,
you get more desirable
and get more attention.
You can just keep on doing it
until you die.
I almost kind of wonder where
gay culture evolves from here --
if it leads into the mainstream
or if there's something
even better in the works.
I do know that gays lead the way
all the time,
so if there is something better
than bears,
they'll be the ones who have it.
Oh, well.
Maybe I can learn.
[ Water splashing ]
Hi, it's Thomas.
I'm in Cape Cod in a pool
full of bears, cubs, otters,
and other hairy
homosexual wildlife.
This is Provincetown Bear Week.
**
Over the last 50 years,
American gays
have gone from a clandestine
clique of queens and butchies
to a rich mini-hewed quilt
of types and sub-types,
all of whom may now legally wed.
The burliest square of this
queer patchwork is the bears,
who meet once a year
at the uncut tip of Cape Cod.
* Dum, dum, dum, dum,
dum, dum, dum, dum *
* Do, do, do, do, do,
do do, do-do-do-do *
Provincetown's been hosting Bear
Week for the last 15 years.
Even before the bears came, this
place was a mecca for gay life,
dating back to the '20s and '30s
when artists like
Tennessee Williams would come
and mix with the sailor folk
and Portuguese fishermen.
It's a weird little pocket
of sort of fun and
open-mindedness for New England,
especially considering
the first residents here
were the Pilgrims.
It's also impressively cute,
which has always held a high
premium in the gay community.
[ Bicycle bell rings ]
MAN: So, have you guys
been poolside?
"Bear soup," as it's called.
- Is it?
- Yeah. [ Laughs ]
We met a couple bears from
Arkansas named Gary and Jay
who invited us
to a pool party today.
Oh, my God.
- I know.
THOMAS: That's what you meant
by bear soup.
Yeah.
This is bear soup.
[ Laughs ]
[ Hawaiian music plays ]
There's so much men in there.
Everyone thinks of bears
as being big, fat, overweight,
you know, beefy guys.
There are a lot of guys
that are in really good shape.
THOMAS:
I heard "muscle bear."
Is that a derogatory term, or...?
No.
That's probably more what
we identify with. Yeah.
You guys are, like,
classic strong men.
[ Laughs ]
They have all these,
you know, different names
for, you know, guys
that have no hair
but consider themselves bears.
Yeah.
Okay, furry and in shape
is an otter.
- That's an otter.
- And a cub's just a --
A cub's, like, a young, hairy guy.
Okay.
- Usually a young, hairy guy.
- Yeah.
And then you see, like,
the silver-haired...
- Polar bears.
- Yeah.
- Those are polar bears.
- Polar bears.
- Yeah.
- [ Laughs ]
Some of the Asian guys
call themselves pandas.
- Hmm.
- [ Laughs ]
THOMAS: Before they had their
own flags with the sub-types,
bears were a fringe stripe
of the gay sub-cultural rainbow.
Too hairy for
the Chelsea boy queen scene,
too hefty for the Castro clones,
bears quietly consorted
with one another
through early internet usenet
groups and mailing lists
in the back pages
of "Bear" magazine
before finally bursting
into the gay overground
with the first international
Bear Rendezvous in 1995.
Today, there are
Rendezvous-style events
like Bear Week all year long
and across the country,
and bears make up, at least
in terms of mass,
the largest distinct body
of gay men in America.
**
This is kind
of a refreshing antidote
to the usual vacation scene
where everybody's trying
to keep as much space
from each other as possible.
Here, I don't think
there's a single foot
of unbroken skin contact,
as far as I can see,
across the pool.
It's only a matter of how much
water is displacing right now.
It's probably two feet deep.
I told him he ought to watch
the Bear Boat go off.
Oh, that's a trip, yeah.
- At 7:00 A.M. tomorrow?
- Yeah.
This whole group goes and gets
on a ferry, and it's just wild.
- That's kind of terrifying.
- Oh, my God.
**
You're not getting on this boat?
I am not.
I went on this boat last year,
and it felt like
a prison sentence.
[ Laughs ]
THOMAS: While the planned
activities seemed designed
to cater to the older
bear crowd,
the younger cubs and otters
have devised their own circuit
for Bear Week.
Bye!
- Bye!
Do this!
[ Horn honks ]
There's so much man
on that boat.
Exactly.
Ready?
- Oh.
Let's go to your spot --
the fried dough spot.
Okay. Yeah, I got to go
where the party's at.
Big Dipper is a bear from
Chicago and is a rap artist.
I think Big Dipper
is not his Christian name
but in fact his hip-hop name.
Or maybe bear name.
I don't know if they have those.
Dig in there.
They're hot.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, fresh out
of the window, too.
- This looks good.
- Mm-hmm.
Classic dough.
- Yeah.
THOMAS: When did you come
into beardom?
I would say, for me,
it was, like,
when I first become aware
of my body.
Like, my body is, like,
meant to be thick.
And then not until I was 24
did I, like,
see my body elsewhere
in the world,
and I was like, "Oh, like,
people are into this."
So were you attracted to bears
before you kind of, like,
realized you were one?
I didn't quite get it.
I was attracted
to what I thought
the sort of, like, gay man was.
Oh, okay, so --
So it was like, oh,
like, big muscles
and, like, waxed chests,
and, like, chiseled
male-model features,
and I was like,
"Oh, okay."
[ Bicycle bell rings ]
And that is attractive.
It's not that it's not attractive.
Yeah.
But then I was like, "Is it
okay for me to be attracted
to a 65-year-old man
who has, like, a beer gut?"
And I was like, "Yes.
The answer is yes."
**
After our dough break, Dipper
took me on a bike-back tour
of Bear Week's
less-savory haunts.
It's a comfy ride.
[ Laughter ]
So, this, my friend, I do
believe, is the Dick Dock.
THOMAS: It looks just like
a very regular dock right now.
I think if the hour was later
and the sun was down,
you'd see a lot more dick
here at the Dick Dock.
I'm just surprised not to see
kind of like, detritus,
like, lube
or condom wrappers, or --
I would say, if we went
journeying inside,
we may encounter
some of those things.
That's lube.
- Okay.
A lot a lube.
- Yeah, but look.
You can imagine there are
all great places
to sort of hold on
or bend over...
- Yeah.
- ...and lean up against, or...
get thrown up against.
Tons of condoms.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Wow, okay.
There's your evidence, Thomas.
Yeah.
What is going on?
I'm glad we're both seeing it.
That's the kind of thing
that you catch out of the corner
of your eye. You would see it --
And start cataloging
how many times
you've taken acid in the past.
Actually, being down here
for the first time --
You know how sometimes you need
to go somewhere first
to feel comfortable?
- Right. Yeah.
Now I'm like --
Oh, I could do that.
I could come back here.
- I could do that, yeah.
Maybe I'll come get my
dick sucked tonight. Yeah.
**
THOMAS: Bear Week is more
than just fleshy,
sweat-drenched dance parties,
although there are those
in abundance every night
and pretty much every hour
of every day.
There's regular kind of vacation
stuff you can do -- bike rides,
beach trips, and shows, art
galleries featuring art by bears
for bears that otherwise involve
beardom in some way,
or just are pictures
of bears... naked.
CHARLIE: "Loved" is an
exploration of sexual identity,
and the prints show
the outward signs
of what being a bear is.
And people often ask me
about the nudity in this show.
THOMAS: Uh-huh.
Some of the bears have issues
about their weight and so forth.
So they say that they find it
kind of empowering.
And I feel that I get
a sense of the emotion
that they're going through
if they're uncomfortable
with their bodies,
or some guys are, like,
totally cool about it
and they just drop their
trousers immediately
and they stand like --
**
Beardom's obviously predicated
on a healthy acceptance
of your, you know,
given body type.
Well, I don't really conform to
the bear physical attributes --
I don't think
I'm even really an otter.
I'm not without
my personal peccadillos.
I could, you know, stand
to tighten up the tum a little.
I've got this acne
I'm really not fond of,
but there's a yoga studio here
in Provincetown
that teaches body awareness,
where they kind of,
through whatever yogic methods,
help you accept who you are.
Hi, there.
I'm Freddy.
How are you?
- Hi. Thomas.
- Thomas.
- How are you?
- This is Jay.
- Hi.
- And Paul.
- Hello, hello.
And we're gonna walk you through
a couple of things that we do
in the workshop.
We reach out and say
"Welcome, brother"...
- Okay.
- ...to the guy in front of you.
Welcome, brother.
- Welcome, brother.
- Can I have a hug?
- Yes.
Good.
Yes.
You may.
Okay.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
So we want to honor this man.
We want to honor the fact
that this is not always easy
for all men to do.
May I help remove your armor?
- Please do.
- Okay.
[ Laughs ]
Here we go.
May I appreciate your body
with my hands?
Yes.
Noting that there's
differences between us
and that everything
is beautiful,
and that every man has beauty.
Mm-hmm.
So then we'll remove
the rest of the clothing.
- May I do that for you?
- Yes.
May I have remove --
Could you remove my clothing?
Yes.
May I touch your cock
and honor it?
- Yes.
- Then I would do that.
- This is a place of power.
- Mm.
This is a place
of life-giving energy.
This isn't about having sex.
This is about honoring
each other's bodies.
It's about honoring
our masculine power.
Would you like to do that
to me, too?
Um, I think so.
[ Laughs ]
This is a source of power.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Life.
This is not just a sex organ.
It's a --
- Good.
I mean, this may be
a really stupid question,
but, like, how bad are body
images in the bear community?
I thought that was all, like,
once you're a bear --
- You'd be surprised.
- Yeah.
You know, I'm obviously
a very big bear, and I --
I struggle with my body image
every day.
I would love to be thinner.
I'm working on it.
But the point is meeting us
where we're at.
I'm in this house right now.
This is the house I live in.
I need to honor this house.
And by doing
these kind of workshops,
we can all start being
a little bit more comfortable
with where we're at,
and then we can demonstrate --
One of my big sayings
is that confidence is sexy.
There have been some guys that
have had a really hard time
getting into this,
and, like, even broken down.
A lot of times, the bear
community has been criticized
for winding up being something
to exclude people,
which is kind of the antithesis
of why it started.
And so we love doing something
where we're about
including everybody.
Welcome, brother.
Can I hug you?
Take your walk.
You walk down here, and
we touch you in the front.
- Welcome, brother.
- Welcome, brother.
So how was that for you?
Not sure.
It's a lot of touching.
[ Laughs ]
Thanks, y'all.
It didn't tickle, even.
You guys have a good touch.
A good touch.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you, guys.
THOMAS: One thing that's
a little weird about bears
that I've noticed is compared to
the other major gay sub-cultures
like leather daddies
and drag queens,
whose members, I feel like,
have a --
usually have
a pretty strong knowledge
of their group's
history background,
most of the bears I meet
couldn't tell you
the first thing about
how beardom came to be,
aside from how they got involved
in it.
Luckily, Provincetown is
the home to a number of figures
from gay history,
from John Waters,
who you should know,
to Armistead Maupin,
whose "Tales of the City" series
basically defined gay life
in America
in the '70s and '80s.
Maupin's agreed to meet us
for lunch.
- Hi.
- Hi.
- How are you doing?
- How are you? I'm Thomas.
Hi, Thomas.
Nice to meet you.
Damn it, in my day, we had to
walk 4 miles through the snow
just to get our cocks sucked.
Now they can find it on an app
and look at the dick
beforehand, and --
There was a certain thrill
to unwrapping the package
and seeing what you had
when you got home, you know?
When I was a young man
in San Francisco,
there were guys that sort of
dressed in lumberjack shirts
and were more easy-going,
friendly, masculine, laid-back,
and sometimes bigger guys,
sometimes hairier,
not necessarily.
It was a mind-set
as much as anything.
The term "bear" --
was that in common usage,
like, in San Francisco
in the '80s before --
I wrote about it in 1999
in a novel I was working on,
and it was already there, yeah.
The coffee shop in The Castro
was known as
the bear gathering place.
It's now Starbucks, of course.
Of course.
Beardom's been growing,
like, at least --
Leaps and bounds.
It's an industry now. Tons, yeah.
And the thing I love so much
about gay life in general
is that we are not
as exclusionary
as the rest of the world
in terms of what we expect
in a sexual partner.
I know many women
who don't want a man
if he's shorter than she is.
Oh, of course.
And gay men have learned to
eroticize almost everything.
THOMAS: Gay men's ability to
make any body trait a turn-on
doesn't just ensure
that everybody gets laid.
It leads to an ever-increasing
and sub-dividing web
of new sexual niches with their
own rules and markers,
even within the already pretty
niche-y world of bears.
Are you a bear?
- I would be considered a pup.
- A pup. Okay.
But like, I have a master,
like, my boyfriend, so...
- Oh, okay.
- That's what the lock means.
- I see.
- Yep.
So what's going on tonight?
So they have Furball,
and then there's also Brut.
I'm working Furball.
Could we come over
and see you change?
- Most definitely.
- Okay.
Yeah.
Just hit me up.
You guys have my cellphone,
I think, so...
**
THOMAS: Bear Week is great.
Everybody just starts drinking
at about 9:00 A.M.
jumps in the pool, and then goes
from party to party to party
until about 2:00 or 3:00
in the morning.
It's the most laissez-faire
environment, I think,
I've ever been in.
**
Hello.
How you doing?
- Hey.
- How's it going?
- What's going on?
- I like this.
Yeah, we -- [ Laughs ]
Oh, shoot.
That's new, I guess.
Ooh.
Can I try on the harness?
- Certainly.
- I've never worn one of those.
This also would signal,
because of the color,
that you are into fisting.
- Fisting, right?
Mm-hmm.
That's right.
[ Laughs ]
Are you more dominant
or more submissive?
I don't know.
Kind of in between.
- Okay.
- Do I have pick one?
You got to -- What do you feel
in the mood tonight for?
- Probably dominant.
- Dominant? All right.
THOMAS: The hanky code harkens
back to the days before AIDS,
when guys would signal
to each other
what type of sex
they were into by color --
red for fisting, pink for
dildos, yellow for piss play,
and straight on
down the rainbow.
These days, there are somehow
50-plus colors of hanky,
and you can even stamp
a cartoon pig on your color
to indicate whatever
type of kink you're into,
you like to do it "piggy style."
Is piggy another category I get,
or just like,
straight-up description?
Both.
Piggy would just be, again,
like bare-back sex,
and very, like, raw.
Very hard-core.
- Okay.
Because, again, you have, like,
the Truvada movements.
What's Truvada?
So Truvada is something
that people would take
who are negative, HIV-negative.
Oh. Yep.
So that prevents you,
for the most part,
from catching HIV,
or contracting it. Oh.
So that's why you're having
this emergence of piggy-ness.
I see. Okay.
'Cause you have that very
raw, aggressive mentality
that's from the 1970s that you
kind of saw subside in the '80s
with the AIDS.
- Right, okay.
I mean, it just kind of
flatlined in the '90s,
and then you see this,
again, rise.
Do you take it, or no?
No, I do not take it.
- Oh, okay.
- So.
Yes, I'm HIV-positive,
but undetectable.
So...
I take my Complera.
- Oh.
- So --
I can't believe
I just said that on camera.
It used to be a big thing
for me,
but I remember when I was
diagnosed, I mean --
[ Exhales sharply ]
- That must have been --
Probably the most --
not probably --
the most intense experience
I've ever had.
But it's not --
It's not the death sentence
it was July 4, 1982.
- Right. Right.
- So...
I chug my little wine.
Yeah, yeah.
[ Both laugh ]
* Put the money down my pants,
down my pants, down my pants *
* Put the money down my pants,
down my pants, down my pants *
* Put the money down my pants,
down my pants, down my pants *
* Put the money down my pants,
down my pants, down my pants *
THOMAS:
Dancing with bears is intense.
It's, like, most clubs when
everybody has their shirts off
are kind of like a sea of flesh,
but that's a solid
just ocean of skin
just rubbing up against you.
I'm probably covered
with the sweat
of at least 10 different men.
And the smells alternate
from, like, the stronger,
most-potent poppers
you could ever buy
combined with just,
like, the stankest,
most unclean locker room
of all time.
It's just this full-body
sensory overload.
It must be what it's like
to just be absorbed
into God's belly.
Like, the undistilled essence
of maleness.
Solid men.
You know, for a sub-culture
that kind of prides itself
on relaxation
and being very laid-back,
bears do plan a lot of shit
for their week.
Tonight, after all the daytime
stuff, there are no less
than, like, eight parties here,
like this cabaret act
called "Showgirls,"
which is some sort of
bear drag amateur revue,
I think our rapping pal,
Big Dipper,
might be participating in.
**
What's up, P-town?
[ Cheering ]
Oh, hi.
My name is Big Dipper.
I'm gonna rap a little bit
about dick
and a little bit
about ass-fucking.
* Big belly, thick thighs,
I'm a fat homo *
* See me swishing my hips,
I'm a fag homo *
* Craving dick when I'm lit,
I'm-a grab a homo *
* Don't spit cum, spit bars,
I'm a rap homo *
* Sex in the city,
I've got sex with no titties *
* My life is just like Glee,
I'm singing show tune diddies *
* I'm like grrr, woof,
fuck yea *
* I'm a bear, big, thick body
all covered in hair *
[ Cheering ]
Here are the four cunt-testants.
[ Laughter ]
Only applaud
for who you want to win.
Let's get it up for Big Dipper.
[ Cheering ]
- Dude.
- Hey.
- Good work. You knew it.
- Thank you.
Yeah, I'm glad you got
to see the show.
It seems like it was a fix.
What are you gonna do
with the $500?
Um... I don't know,
pay my phone bill, maybe?
Bye!
Thank you!
The night's already
three or four hours in,
but I think it's just starting.
[ Bicycle bell rings ]
I feel like a freshman
at the ultimate
high-school party right now.
I hope people like me.
**
* We came back in time
* We came back in time
* We came back in time, yeah
* We came back in time
Yes.
So if you do shout,
it'll tell you how many bears
you can send it to.
THOMAS: How many bears can
you send it to right now?
1,530.
- [ Laughs ]
- Five-mile radius.
Within a five-mile radius,
there's 1,500 -- Yes.
Not just 1,500 bears,
but 1,500 bears specifically
on Growlr right now.
**
I guess I'm gonna down
to Dick Dock
and see if any
of the fish are biting.
[ Men panting ]
That was extremely jarring.
There was pretty much every
manner of sexual congress
I could think of on display
under that dock.
3-ways to like, 12-ways
to group sucks to circle jerks,
and just -- the air smelled
of ass and cum.
And a little bit of lube.
It was very intense.
Well, if the Dick Dock
taught me anything,
aside from a number
of new sexual positions
I hadn't thought of, is that
I'm definitely straight,
which is a shame because
in terms of lifestyles,
bears can't be beat.
I mean, this is one of the most
luxurious vacations
I've ever had.
They're living at the apogee
of human pleasure.
It's almost like they're artists
of personal enjoyment.
And it's a sustainable
lifestyle.
As you get older,
you get more desirable
and get more attention.
You can just keep on doing it
until you die.
I almost kind of wonder where
gay culture evolves from here --
if it leads into the mainstream
or if there's something
even better in the works.
I do know that gays lead the way
all the time,
so if there is something better
than bears,
they'll be the ones who have it.
Oh, well.
Maybe I can learn.