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Friday, November 1, 2024

Honcho (November 1989), Part One

In 1981, Dianne Feinstein, the mayor of San Francisco, established Fleet Week to celebrate the Unites States’ Navy. Since then, the event, always held in October, has become a week-long festivity where visitors can watch airshows conducted by Navy pilots, attend clubs along North Beach spouting nautical themes, and stroll the shops of vendors and eateries around Pier 39. While the event has always been a major tourist destination, with over 50,000 people attending in 1988, it has also been a place for gay men to rendezvous with sailors as, on average, over 5,000 of them visit the city for the celebration. In this November 1989 issue of Honcho (which has been broken into three parts), Willam Cozad’s short story “Sailor’s Discharge” showcases the eroticism of Fleet Week as the narrator hooks up with a sailor from the USS Fox. Also included in this first third is the short story “Mack Stud” (where the narrator recalls his experience with a laborer on his uncle’s farm when he was nineteen) and a photospread titled “International Male.”