However, I wasn’t 100% sure that his Bears of San Francisco t-shirt meant wildlife or wild life. Got home, Googled it, and sure enough, we’re talking wild life. Castro, no less. Damn. But it’s not like I didn’t give him an opening. After all, I was buying magazines and books that spoke volumes: Lambda Book Report, The Gay and Lesbian Review, the paperback edition of Kushiel’s Avatar (has a bisexual, masochistic protagonist), Simon Blackburn’s Lust (OK, if the Kushiel book was obtuse, a book titled Lust isn’t).

I suppose, though, the bigger question is: What’s wrong with my Queerdar and why isn’t it working better? For now, I’m blaming the cold and flu medicine I’m taking.

One reason I like to run into sexual renegades whenever possible is that, as a writer, I get pretty isolated. I wish I could organize more contact and makes friends or at least enjoy a casual run-in. (“Hey, cool t-shirt. Did you go to the recent roundevous?” That would’ve been my line, had I acted on my suspicions at the bookstore.) Still, every so often I get a much needed pat on the back. The latest came when I opened up my Venus Book Club monthly brochure and saw it highlighted my contribution to Maxim Jakubowski’s Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 3 with “[a]nd in ‘On Hallowed Ground,’ a carnally charged couple tours a cemetery, giving the epitaphs on the grave stones their own naughty spin…”

Yeah, that feels good. Needed that.

I was also surprised to see that the new Master/slave anthology edited by N.T. Morley is a flip book! Yeah, it’s gimmicky but gimmick even now and then is fun. Besides, can you imagine the number of Masters who are going to read the book right side up while their kneeling submissives have to read their pages upside down? (I scanned the catalogue graphic because it shows the flipbook format; the online entry doesn’t.)

But damn! Next time I have to say something to the guy in the bookstore. Woof, at the very least!