From Vernacular to Official—and the Spaces in Between

The shuffle function of my digital music library crafts an amusingly random soundtrack for casual household chores. As I swipe a dusty bookshelf, John Milton Hendricks’s voice pulls me into alert attention. On this track, which occurs on a four-year-old mix CD of the sort that sustains our long-term friendship, John narrates his walk to the Powerhouse to investigate a Mister Indulgence otter contest/fundraiser at this esteemed leather-and-more bar, possibly the first otter contest in the history of San Francisco. With a librarian’s training, an archivist’s instincts, and a dweller’s attention to thick description and detail, John shares the excitement of encountering the flier for the event, his characteristically brisk walking pace laboring his narration. A series of brusque edits shifts us from the street into the scene of the event and takes us across its entire span to the announcement of winner. Our intrepid reporter, himself an author of a chapter on the otter identity and its relation to the figure of the bear,¹ probes with the important question of which came first—a celebration of the otter, or a fundraiser for the Marine Mammal Center? The two organizers and hosts of the event, Sister Anni Coque l’Doo (say it out loud, it goes without saying) and Sister Constance Craving (both members of the decades-old activist group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence), get pulled into the proceedings. Imagining them bedecked in the frocks, habits, and garish face make-up characteristic of their order, I hear the Sisters describe one of their colleagues’ ongoing work with the marine mammal center and the easy decision to subsequently organize a fundraiser that would feature shirtless men on stage.

As a result of John’s investigative labor, we have vernacular archival material that permits us, in the hallowed pages of this journal’s experiment in GLBTQ worldmaking, to add to the historical record: The very first otter contest in San Francisco (“not that I’m aware of, but that doesn’t mean one does not exist already in the Leather Community” one Sister demurs, hand seemingly placed gravely on some unholy bible) took place at the Powerhouse on March 21, 2009.

There’s something queer about the manner of John’s investigation—the casual relationship to sobriety, the incorporation of random bar patrons and genderqueer activists as expert witnesses, the mutual raising of shirts for affectionate scrutiny of each other’s otterly qualities, and the passionately partisan investment in the outcome. To the latter point, as each contestant is featured on stage, John carefully assesses his virtues, perking up especially for the third contestant: “This guy’s an otter. He’s got a total beard. He’s got a [pad]lock around his chest. He’s got two tattoos. … He’s lean, but he has a lot of hair. This is [a] true otter.” The next several contestants don’t fare so well: One is “just a porn model. It’s a big waste of time, even though his chest hair is nice and. …” Another: “This is like a wolf or. … Sure, he’s got a beard …, but there’s nothing otter-ish going on.” The last: “Okay. Umm, clean-cut. Definitely sexy. … He’s very—too—cute. … And it’s like he just grew a beard.”

Invested in the integrity of a distinct definition of otters and keen to the prevailing direction of the voting audience’s erotic winds, John voices growing concern over a potential travesty—the most normatively sexy contestant, though sexy clearly not an otter, winning. What tragic prescience. Let the historical record also show: The first ever (maybe …) otter contest in San Francisco committed a travesty of otter justice (… based on certain avidly partisan criteria). Loudly, boozily protesting the results, John returns to the chill of the South of Market streets, spaces of rejuvenating potentiality for queer justice.

If it matters how we construct meanings about otters and bears (and wolves, etc.), if it matters that this was the first otter contest in San Francisco, if it matters...