San Francisco 1978

San Francisco is alive, though something is amiss that I can not quite put my finger on. 

My roommates, Briggs, JC, and I found a great place to live on Clay Street halfway up Nob Hill, a few blocks from both Chinatown and Polk Gulch. My Irish Setter, Meaggan, is getting used to the city, though for cultural reasons that I cannot figure out, we can clear an entire block of Chinatown if walking with the red dog unleashed - even at my side, down that way. We are renting the first floor flat in an old Victorian between Hyde and Larkin. 

I am learning the city block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.  Aside from school, there are parts of this life that feel dreamlike. On Saturdays we walk over to an outdoor basketball court on Russian Hill and challenge the locals in some 3 on 3 hoops. From the court you have an expansive view across the Bay and Angel Island north to Marin. The cable cars clang by every few minutes, sail boats and wind surfers scoot across the bay, and when the fingers of fog reach under the Golden Gate, it is almost impossible to focus on anything but the sheer beauty of it all. 

One of the biggest attitude adjustments I’ve needed to make has to do with San Francisco’s gay population. I must admit, to this point in my life no one I knew was an “out” homosexual. As I think back on it, I am certain (based on sheer math) that I must have known gay people, but in both Jersey and Georgia they remained closeted. I know I grew up in locker rooms with the usual gay slurs, but truthfully, until moving here, I never gave it much thought. San Francisco is the gay mecca. Guys are out holding hands and kissing in public. The most active social group at law school is LIL - Lesbians in Law. Turns out 2 of the guys in my study group are gay. Truth be told, Steven, an ex-UC Santa Barbara drama professor is one of my favorite people in my class. The other gay guy is a douche bag. Lesson to be learned: gay people are like everyone else, I like some and dislike others. Duuuhh. 

But it does take some getting used to. Steven lives in Ashbury Heights. On a study break walking through Buena Vista Park you could not go 20 feet without running into gay couples on the benches snogging or in the bushes fellating each other. No exaggeration here. Last month, waiting for the Metrobus on California Street to take me home, I was propositioned by a hard hat! Good looking guy. If I were gay, I might even have been interested. And then last weekend, I think I finally came to grips with this new reality. A friend from Atlanta visited. He was a north Georgia mountain boy, very arty, very funny. We had worked together in a restaurant as well as being friends at University. Michael was a little effeminate, but during the time I knew him he was dating one of the more beautiful women in our group, so truly never gave any thought to some of the “odd” characters who would approach him at the bar. After a day of wine tasting in Napa with JC and Briggs we were back at the flat. My roommates had drifted off to their rooms, when Mike got up and slid the door to the hallway closed, and pulled a chair up on the opposite side of the fireplace where I was dreamily staring into the flickering blue gas flame.

“I have something important to talk to you about,” he almost whispered. 

“I’m gay.” 

At first I wasn’t quite comprehending. All I could think to say was, “So you wanna sleep with me?’ 

He feigned horror. “God no. First, you are the most disgustingly hetero of all my friends, and second, and do not be offended, you are neither particularly attractive nor my type!” he said smiling at me. 

All I could think to say after that was, “so, can we still be friends?  Because unless you are going to try to kiss me with that grungy ass beard you have been unsuccessfully working on for 3 years, I truly do not see an issue here.” And that was it. 

However, I must admit, the blow jobs in Buena Vista, the rumored glory holes at gay bars, and Polk Gulch were just a little beyond my liberal views on the world. While the area around Castro street was gay Harlem, and was not all that different from other city neighborhoods, once you got used to the public displays of affection, Polk, 3 blocks from our digs, took a little getting used to. This neighborhood was sprinkled with gay leather bars. You were as likely to see a guy in a leather speedo with cowboy boots and nipple rings as a butch mom bare chested pushing a baby tram. My personal favorite, and Meaggan’s as well, was the guy in the shorty priest’s hassock, cut to the waist, with red leather assless chaps for bottoms. Every time Meaggan sees him, she breaks away to stick her cold wet nose where the sun don’t shine - and I am pretty sure he gets off on it.  

Haight Ashbury, or “The District,” as the locals call it is seedy where it has not gentrified. The real hippies are gone, in their place are lots of lost kids and hard drugs. While Recycled Records on Haight remains a mecca for music lovers, the posters harking back to the glory days of The Dead, Airplane, and Joplin, and head shops hang on selling kitschy 60s paraphernalia with mass produced Summer of Love silk screens, the streets around the panhandle have been taken over by the homeless and drug addled.

Classes have ended and I am in the midst of studying for finals, though it has been hard the last few weeks. First, the mass suicide at The People’s Temple in Guyana has many San Francisco connections. Jim Jones, the cult like leader that took the mostly poor and black congregants to the South American jungle, only to slaughter them all with cyanide-laced grape flavored Kool Aid, after the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan and 3 others on an airstrip at Port Kaituma, had been supported by Governor Brown, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Mayor Moscone, and numerous local political leaders from the Democratic establishment, including First Lady Roselyn Carter. 

The city was still in shock when less than 2 weeks later, we were struck with a second tragedy.  I am sure you have read about the murders of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the city’s first gay supervisor and most prominent gay leader by another Supervisor, Dan White, who had resigned several days before. White, a VietNam vet and former police officer, saw himself as the Board’s defender of the home, the family, and religious life against homosexuals and hippies who he believed were destroying his beloved city.  He sneaked in a basement window at city hall and murdered both men at their desks. The city’s gay community is going back and forth between shock and outrage. 

I did get in some time on my first political campaign, working the phones out of election headquarters on 1st street for Governor Brown’s reelection. Truly a brilliant but very strange man, the boy Governor. He will wander in after a hard day campaigning, plop himself in a chair and then entertain a discourse with the staff until late in the evening on subjects wide and varied. He is as likely to quote St Thomas Aquinas as the Whole Earth Catalog and on election eve provided us all with copies of Ernest Callenbach’s, “Ecotopia,” a futuristic novel taking place in a revolutionary California after it has fought a war of liberation against…...the United States and created an environmentally based society. 

One more story to relate before signing off. The day of my last finals, Briggs and JC took me down to the Buena Vista for a cold December afternoon involving far too many rounds of their legendary Irish coffee. We arrived at noon, seated ourselves at one of the large round family style oak tables along the window facing Bay Street across from Fisherman’s Wharf, and over the course of the next 6 hours enjoyed the company of many tourists from places far flung as well as the occasional local off from work. Briggs especially hit it off with a tall lithesome blonde from Berlin, getting increasingly intimate as the afternoon light dwindled. JC and I left them there, huddled closely at the Buena Vista bar and made our way over to Hyde Street, deciding to hoof it up Russian Hill rather than wait for the Cable Car, seemingly stalled at the turnaround. If we were sober I am not sure we would have attempted the climb, but we were way too drunk and happy to figure this out rationally. About the time we crossed Union, JC decided that he would wet himself if he did not bleed his peter immediately. So he unzipped next to a bush and I quickly followed. And, while we were hanging it all out there in the middle of Russian Hill smiling stupidly, enjoying the damp ocean air, the cable car came rattling up right next to us, tourists hanging off the hand straps, cheering, hooting, and clapping as they slowly made their way up the hill. Bowing, too drunk to be embarrassed, we waved back, zipped ourselves up and continued on home, first stopping at Henry Africa’s on Van Ness for a nightcap.

When we finally made our way home, Briggs was in the front room with Inge, his new German friend, sliding doors firmly locked.. JC and I gathered up the dog and headed for the back bedrooms, slipped Greetings from Asbury Park on the still functioning Dual turntable and prepared to listen to some tunes and smoke a little weed. About halfway through Mary Queen of Arkansas, as an aside, the worst song Bruce Springsteen EVER recorded, we suddenly heard a crash in the front room and Briggs screaming.

Before JC and I could even get to the bedroom door, Meaggan had pawed it open and gone sprinting down the long narrow hallway towards the living room at the front of the flat. She was striking the bottom of the sliding door attempting to get in, but the doors were latched from the inside and all we could do was peek through the leaded glass. What we witnessed was not something that I likely will ever forget. Briggs was standing over a disheveled Elsa who remained sprawled on the couch trying desperately to rearrange both the blonde wig that was now twisted comically to the side and her skirt pulled up above her waist. We could hear Briggs through the door, half sputtering, half screaming at her to get out! We backed away just in time as she hurried to the double doors, flung them back and nearly ran from the apartment. 

Meaggan was sniffing around when we stuck our heads in to witness Briggs, nearly white, standing in the center of the room, a look of complete bewilderment on his face. It seems that the evening was progressing just swimmingly. Briggs and Inge were chatting, snogging on the couch, all go, when Inge took Briggs hand and placed it under her skirt. And much to Briggs eternal everlastin surprise, when he reached a little higher he encountered evidence that Inge, was not actually Inge, but more likely Helmut or Fritz. It seems that 9 months on the left coast had still not yet taught Briggs that a large adam's apple and deep voice, while they could be quite sexy, might require a little investigation, because to quote Ray Davies, “i’m not dumb but i can’t understand why she walked like a woman but talked like a man.” LOLA, L O L A LOLA!