5A

D an can't tell if he's breathing.  It doesn't matter, ability even to ponder the question means he must be breathing.  It is a bother to open his eyes even a small bit, that must require more effort than breathing.  He can raise his eyelids slowly raise a few millimeters and then they slowly shut, vague outline of a curtained window, a dark room.  There is cool fresh air entering his nostrils without him even breathing.  Nice.  Pleasant.  Relaxing.  A nice, pleasant, relaxing room.  He could stay in this place a while, a little nice, pleasant, relaxing vacation.

Funny how breathing is barely necessary if you don't move at all.  Dark shapes float against what little light seeps around the curtain edges.  His eyes must not have completely shut.  Too much effort.  The first shape has stopped and moves aside like a guide presenting, ``Here you will note how the members of this ancient culture used deep mediation to lower their metabolic rate and survive the long, long winters.''  One of the other shapes leans over, a closeness Dan associates with familiarity.  ``Danny, it's your mom and dad.  How are you feeling?''  Dan takes a breath through his mouth and exhales, his way of saying, ``Hi mom, hi dad.''

``Can he hear me doctor?  Does he know we're here?''

``Most likely, though he needs to be kept sedated.  He had a seizure and was in a lot of pain when they brought him in.  And the CMV has destroyed most of his vision.''

I

n the earliest days of the epidemic political gays opposed a separate AIDS ward fearing it would be a quarantine area, an inhouse leper colony, maybe even with a separate elevator.  But it quickly became obvious that consolidation of resources was medically sound.  The initial AIDS ward on the 5B quickly became swamped and was moved over to the larger 5A unit where the chalkboard behind the nurses station displayed first names only for privacy.  The less severely afflicted were placed on the other fifth floor wards in rooms with the traditional hospital patients.  And had their full name displayed.

That was how one afternoon while passing a doorway a visitor heard, ``Lee, get in here and congratulate me!  I made it to the big time this trip—5A!''

The visitors lounge was called the Liz Taylor room, because the actress would show up unannounced, with no publicity, and chat with patients.  She'd donated a piano and others brought in stereos and VHS players and televisions and record collections, expensive top quality items, the best, possessions the owners no longer would need.  The room was decorated for the various holidays, Rita Rockett gave Sunday brunches and visitors and the mobile patients communed there.

Others were just bitter and became even more so in late December hearing piano and singing from the lounge, ``. . . home for Christmas . . . if only in my dreams.''

The second wave of the epidemic brought a new type of patient, the IV drug users from the Tenderloin, and their visitors had different priorities from those of the first wave.  They might look in at the patient but their interests were focused on other things.  Visitors were allowed onto the ward round the clock, 24 hour access with little oversight, hmmm, an IV drip bag of morphine connected to a comatose AIDS patient?  No problem.  Soon everything of value in the Elizabeth Taylor room had disappeared.  After that the TVs and radios and video players were all locked down with thick metal cables.

S

eizure, Dan heard the doctor say, such a pleasant sounding word.  Sei-zure.  Sea-azure, an azure sea.  To float in a nice warm blue ocean, pleasant, relaxing.  Sea-azure, a warm azure sea.  He was four years old, he wanted to play in the yard but his mother said no.  ``And you can't go outside barefoot, it's too cold and I'm not going to put your shoes on for you.''  He stood there holding his little red sneakers and glared at her, frustrated, chocking tears.  He moved to in a chair in the den and placed the little canvas shoes by his feet and looked down.  He took a laces of one in each hand, crossed them, pulled, looped, four year old Dan figured it out.  ``Alright you can go,'' she said when he returned to the kitchen to show her, ''but stay in the back yard where I can see you.''

``What son?  Say that again, I couldn't hear you.''  Leaning over the bed, her ear tilted towards his face,  ``Shoes?  You want your shoes?  Is that what you said?  You want your shoes?  You have to stay here darling, you can't leave the hospital until you're better.''

T

ess awoke frightened.  He couldn't find his glasses, he didn't know where he was and he became even more frightened once he realized.  He did not want to be alone when he died.  He didn't want to die of course but that part he had little control over, the being alone part, well, now he saw that Larry was there, Tess had just missed him.  ``It will be alright,'' Larry said, ``if I can't be here I'll have one of our friends fill in.  Promise.''

Pinky swear.

That was why there are three guys in chairs in the hallway by the room door, soda cans and white Chinese take out boxes at their feet, and two others in the room.  Someone there at all times.  Tess would not be alone.

When he had awoken in panic that first day Larry had found his glasses and said, ``Always put them on the same spot on the bedside table so you'll always know where to find them.''

Tess gazed at him, myopic eyes through the thick lenses imploring, ``Always?  You mean I'm always going to be here?''

W

arm water.  The first time Dan vacationed in Hawaii that's what he remembers the most.  The warm water.  And the cute guy he saw each afternoon lying in the sand at Queen's surf that stared at him.  On morning Dan awoke with a rash across his back and down his thighs that sent him to the ER, with no immune system you never know, there the guy was at the main desk.  ``Go in that room,'' pointing, ``remove your clothes and put this on,'' handing Dan a folded pale green gown.

The air conditioned room was chilly as he waited, barely covered by the thin fabric of the open back robe.  The guy came in and shut the door and told Dan to lay on his chest so he could examine the rash.

After the inspection the guy said, ``OK, I'll go get the doctor.''

Dan raised up, ``You're not the doctor?''

``No, I'm admissions, but I've been staring at that cute ass of yours at the beach all week and just had to know what it looked like.''

R

andy  told his lover to bring the address book and he sat up in the hospital bed as they went through the names to find those still alive that he wanted to come visit, all on the same afternoon.  Seven met in the Liz Taylor room and discussed what this request must mean before they walked the hallway together to find Randy asleep.  They debated, then Terry gently shook him awake, ``We're all here Randy.  We're all here.''

Randy pushed the button that winched him upright and looked at his friends crowded into his little world.  ``I'm so glad you came.''

Randy smiled looking to the one nearest, ``Terry,'' he said, ``remember that time we . . .''  He chuckled at a memory, smiling even more before fading.  ``I'm so glad you all are here.''

Terry took hold of his hand, ``It will be all right Randy, we're here.''

Randy shut his eyes and relaxed, still smiling.  ``Go to the light Randy,'' someone in the room said and it was echoed by others, ``Go to the light Randy, go to the light.''

Randy opened his eyes wide and sat up when he understood what they were doing.  Everyone was now in a circle around him and seemed to be performing some ritual, ``Go to the light.''

``Hey!  I'm not dying just now!  Is that what you thought?''  He shook his head, ``I just wanted all of you together so I could tell you how much your friendships have meant over these years, how much I've loved all of you, how much fun it has been just knowing each of you.''

Randy shook his head again as he lay back, ``I may have AIDS but you're not getting rid of me that easily.''

D

an floated back from his Hawaii vacation to hear his mother, ``He's smiling doctor, he must know we're here.''

``It's difficult to say, most of his eyesight is gone and he's not responding to the pentamidine so there's really no way to tell what he's aware of.''

``You mean there's nothing more you can do?''

``I don't want to get your hopes up, some people do recover briefly, but he only weighs about eighty pounds and he'll never walk again or see again and the pain will probably just keep increasing.''

She looked at gaunt form, barely recognizable as a human, lying there in a nest of tubes: breathing tubes and feeding tubes and infusion tubes, and she tried to match what she was seeing with the lifetime of images of her son.  ``There's really nothing more you can do?'' she asked.

Dan tried to laugh when he heard the word ``stopcock,'' the infantile snicker in high school science lab, as the doctor, before leaving them alone there, explained its function, how it regulates flow.  ``You turn the valve to here and he will be out of pain for a while, you turn it to here,'' he paused, ``and he will be out of pain forever.''

F

ranz checked in at the nurses station when he came on for the evening shift and then made first rounds, the floor quiet, a hospital settling in for a hopefully uneventful night.  That's how most of them go, quietly, uneventfully, a graceful transition from one world to another.  Forms to fill, discharge papers, but rarely urgency or crisis.  The ordinary sameness of one day routinely following the next, this methodical efficiency of the epidemic.  Sometimes a patient might rally and appear in the dark hall pulling his drip bag pole, moving towards the light, ready to go home.  And sometimes Franz will come on to see a nurse stand to face the chalkboard, reach to smear out a name and write in a new one.

The flat green chalkboard every schoolkid spent years staring at, first names and room numbers over the palimpsest smudges of previous patients, dead or recovered enough to go home to die.  AIDS roulette, pick a number, the house always wins.

It's the Filipino nurses that get him, you volunteer to be here, they could be on any other ward, house staff is never forced to work 5A.  Franz knows these patients, these women don't.  They sit quietly conversing in Tagalog, above them the endless supply of names San Francisco provides, first names only just like the chalkboards you used to see on entering the baths.

The wheel never stops, barely past childhood, these innocents rushed to the circus that was San Francisco before , the glorious midway, all in fun, place your bets folks.  ``We were too young for this,'' Franz wants to scream down into the empty hallway.  The house always wins.

He turns the corner to see a lanky blond woman midway facing the wall with her head bowed.  He's seen her up here before.  Gert had stopped by to visit a friend and while looking in the rooms found that she knew two other people on the ward.  Now she's gently banging her head against the concrete in a slow methodical rhythm.

As Franz passes behind her holding the clipboard with this night's list of names he mutters, ``Feels good doesn't it.''

___________________________________________________________

workshop

T ypical June day  for the Pride Parade, luminous fog overhead, jacket weather chill, basic summer in San Francisco.  On Market Street the parade continued but she wanted to beat the crowd to the underground so was cutting across wide Civic Center plaza when she saw it.  At the far end of the enormous open space surrounded by granite buildings a smudge of color leaked over the City Hall facade.  Hung from the outdoor balcony was quilt and there was David, her David.

Cindy hadn't heard anything more from these people after that first meeting.  She stared above the tall doorways where large cloth squares billowed and flattened with the gusts.  Eight panels in each square—so this is how they would do it.

Someone told her they'd seen Roger at a booth back across the plaza and she headed there.  A wood frame braced panels mounted behind a table.  The guy she'd sat next to at the meeting, Jack, was standing there staring as well.  ``Sure we remember you two,'' the person at the table probably thinking they were a couple.  ``We just signed a lease on a storefront on Market Street so have a place to sew to get ready for the march in Washington.  Stop by, we can use all the help we can get.''  Handing a flier headed with a phrase she'd never seen, ``The Names Project.''

By Pride day in 1987 the epidemic was a permanent fixture, the playful insouciant  joie de vivre  that was everywhere a decade before was gone, as irretrievable as the people whose names now hung from the balcony.  You were aware of it not just in the twenty or more obituaries, small headshots of young men in prime of life, that ran each week in the BAR  or in the framed photos of faces displayed in shop windows on Castro Street, employees everyone had known, or in the increasing number of memorials but in every little aspect of daily life.  You were surrounded by the epidemic.

It was there in snippets of casual conversation you might overhear, ``He moved back home, someplace like Indiana.''  Or ``I should have known something was wrong, if there was a choice he always bought the cheapest; this time he didn't bother.'' Or simply, ``He was diagnosed.''

It was there in the exchange of friends upon running into one another,  ``Tom, love your new look, you've trimmed down, lost weight, that shirt looks fabulous  on you.''  Tom all but shouting, ``I Have Not Lost Any Weight!''

It was there on the sidewalk as you move aside for the scrawny guy coming towards you, baggy wrinkled clothes, matted hair, who halts as head turns and deep-set eyes lock in a long stare that follows as you pass.  You hear a weak rasp that almost sounds like your name.  A few more steps before you stop, Larry ?  That can't be Larry—I just saw him a few weeks ago.  That's when you realize the guy must still be behind you gawking.  By the time you turn he has continued down the sidewalk leaning a bit unsteadily on a cane.

The Castro Street Doubletake.

She had a day off the following Wednesday, standing there in front of this booth where Roger was displayed she and the guy Jack made a date to check out this new place on Market Street.

I

n 1979 a contingent representing San Francisco charted Amtrak to carry them to that year's March on Washington that commemorated the tenth anniversary of Stonewall.  A piano was installed in the bar car and essentially they planned to take the San Francisco party through the hinterlands, singing and drinking as America slid by outside the windows.  The train had barely crossed out of Nevada into Utah before they completely ran out of booze.  Fully stocked at departure and now nothing, not a drop.  Then true divine intervention, in Ogden a fundamentalist lay on the tracks to block their passage.

``The Lord works in mysterious ways,'' was yelled as they piled out running to the grocery across the tracks, guys in leather chaps raced guys with mascara smeared eyes, feather boas elbowed ahead of lumberjacks, all with a single destination: the liquor aisle.

``Thank you Baby Jesus!''

Clark was one of the first in line, honey blond curls nestling on his shoulders, rainbow tie-dye tee, a quart of vodka in each hand and he heard the woman in front of him say to the cashier, ``MayBelle, you should have seen what just got off of that train out there!''

Maybelle paused her ring to lean over, ``Don't look now but they're all  in line right behind you.''

These were the Baby Boomers, children of people who had lived through the Depression and then the War and wanted little more than an uneventful life, a peaceful Leave It To Beaver existence.  Job, house, family, the little black and white images on the set that dominated the living room was all the excitement the parents needed.  Stability, if June said, after vacuuming the already spotless rug in her heels and pearls, ``Ward, I'm worried about the Beaver,'' you knew it wasn't going to be anything like, ``How so, dear?'' laying down his paper to look up.

``He's been trying on my lipstick and jewelry.''

``It's just a phase honey, went through it myself, he'll outgrow it.''

These Boomers didn't outgrow it, their war, the one that tore America apart, Vietnam, had finally ended, and they were in the extended liberated celebration.  Growing up with only three TV network stations almost all of them had the exact same experience most nights no matter where in the country they lived.  Most could remember when color came into the living room and all could remember where they were when they heard Kennedy had been shot.

C

indy met Jack at a bar down the street and after a drink they walked to 2362 Market.  They stood in the glass doorway and peered into the empty room, a wide area with a floating staircase at the far end leading up to a mezzanine level.  The space had been an apartment furnishings store, a business that couldn't compete now with so many Everything Must Go sidewalk sales.  The walls and carpet were gray (the color taupe if you were gay), track lights crossed the ceiling and the mezzanine ran around the left side above them.  ``Well, what do you think?'' Jack said.  ``Sure seems big,'' she answered.

In the weeks that followed, as word got out and panels began coming in for the display in Washington the room filled, with sewing machines, with piles of cloth, with volunteers working at almost all hours.  People just showed up, John Anthony appeared one afternoon, he'd left his home at the River forever with no place to stay, nothing but his plaid shirt, construction boots and jeans, waving about twenty Post-Its, ``Anybody want to help me make panels?  These are names of all my friends, they're all dead.''

He wasn't the only one.  Outside this room the epidemic had circled and settled, a harsh gray world, four or five young men died each day, the realization that everyone was infected and had next to no hope.  Inside there was laughter (``We who are about to die. . .''), color, enthusiasm; where death was so present here was life, for how ever little of it they had left.  Just to be able to do something, anything, in the face of this enormity was enough.  For many who would sew there this place would be their last real home, it became a warroom, here they were mounting a campaign and this place was the Alamo.

___________________________________________________________

first meeting

E ARLY EVENING IN MAY, so pleasant one could almost forget how chilly summer would soon be, so quiet one would almost forget how vibrant these streets once were.  Two young men walked down 18th on their way to the Women's Building.  Approaching Moby Dick's one realized, ``We got time for a drink.''

A friend sat at the nearly empty bar and they went over.  ``We're getting a group together to make a quilt to memorialize AIDS victims,'' partially unfolding a cloth bundle he carried and holding it out, ``Why don't you come with us?''

``A what?''

``Each one of these will depict someone who's died, then we'll sew them all together into a quilt.''  A pause, ``And take it to Washington, D.C. this October.''

How do you explain something that had never been done before?

The guy looked at the cloth and then back to his drink and shook his head, ``Well good luck, hope you're not wasting your time.''

A 

flyer had caught Cindy's eye as she waited for the bus over the hill after work, the chill of winter still in the air.  There are flyers on poles all around the Castro Muni station, why did she pause to read this one?  It announced a meeting to make a memorial for the people who had died of AIDS, cloth quilt panels with the name and some details of the person's life, each to be three feet by six feet.  The flier gave a date six weeks away, a time, a place–the Women's Building on 18th.  She mouthed the words to herself, memorizing them.

She borrowed a sewing machine, set it up in the living room of her apartment and began.  By May she had two of these cloth panels finished, one for Roger, his name in large pink and black angular funhouse letters and another for a coworker with whom she'd watch morning reruns of the ``I Love Lucy'' show, sitting together on his bed on their days off giggling and bouncing.  As she hunched over the machine she would smile, something she'd almost forgotten how to do, hearing an exasperated Desi exclaim, ``Lu-ooo-cy!''  The panel showed the show's opening logo, a large heart with the ``I Love'' in cursive letters but Lucy  replaced by David.

As the May meeting date approached she began to worry about things, how maybe hundreds of people would bring panels and they would all be fabulous (this was, after all, the Castro) and how hers might just get lost in the mix.  She wrote her name and address on both so that after they were taken to DC she might be able to get them back, they had become Roger and David for her.

T

he Women's Building began life as one of those ``sound body, sound mind'' exercise clubs, this one built by the local German community after the 1906 earthquake; at four stories it was taller and bulkier than other buildings on the street and seemed to dominate its block.  In 1935 the Sons and Daughters of Norway purchased the building, renamed it Dovre Hall and converted the gymnasium into an auditorium.

There had been a substantial number of Scandanavians living in Eureka Valley and even with the gay gentrification of the 1970s one could still run across that only in San Francisco catholic school mix of a half Mexican, half Norwegian who grew up there.  Or still be entertained by an eighty year old Norwegian play accordian on a weekday afternoon at the du Nord downstairs from the Swedish American Hall a few blocks away.

A women's group bought the building in 1978 and gave it the current name but allowed a small bar with a separate entrance to remain at one corner.  The Dovre Club was run by an Irishman so that most people thought the word Dovre had something to do with the Emerald Isle unaware that it was a mountain range in Norway.

The bar became hangout both for the remnants of the Mission Irish and for a new group that sought the asylum of the city's sanctuary policy.  Over the doorway a sign, ``Let's drink to the final defeat of the British army in Northern Ireland.''  Money donated at the bar would find its way across the Atlantic to the IRA.  After the 1983 Maze Prison break four of the inmates made their way to the Bay Area and late in the evening you might hear about some of how, Pogues on the jukebox, MacGowan's Jameson and cigarette rasp the perfect background to the story of how three guys drove from Frisco to Mexico to smuggle one of those escapees into the US.

He had taken the commercial Aeroflot Moscow flight that refuels in Shannon on its way to Havana.  From Cuba into Mexico and Tijuana where the three picked him up.  Just another trio Americans with hang-overs coming back from a weekend of frolic South of the Border, Riley could best hide his Paddy accent so he drove them through the customs toll booth.

The guard holds Riley's fake license and uses one of the old tricks, ``Oh, you're from San Francisco,'' he says real affable like he knows the City well, a faraway look as if fond memories are returning.  ``Where'd you go to high school?''

Riley has a sudden panic, in the UK tube stations the Wanted posters with the face of the guy they have under a blanket in the trunk read: ``IRA Terrorist.''  Looking up through the car window, hot wind on his shoulder, the guard's face now with an intent stare, no more smile, Riley remembers the locals back at the Dovre, standing at the bar, how they'd bitch, brag about school days at,  ``S.I.'' he says quickly, ``Went to S.I.,  Saint Ignatius.''

The guard returns the card and waves them on.

T

he night of the meeting she took the two panels and hung them side-by-side on the wood fence in front of her apartment building so that a friend could make a photograph.  She wasn't certain she'd ever see them again.  This was the first time any sections of what would become the Quilt were ever displayed together.

After being photographed she took them back into her apartment, paused to look at each one more time and then carefully folded the two panels.

The auditorium in the Women's building seemed so large when she entered with her package, imagine what it would take to fill up a space like this.  A folding table was mid-room where two men sat facing the long wall.  The first to arrive had placed themselves along the wall directly across from the table, as others came in they had sat next to the previous person so that the line stretched away from table in one direction only.  The eight young guys seated along the wall when she got there turned to stare at the lanky blond, sheepish, still in her workday makeup.  She sat at the folding chair at the end and after a bit it became apparent no one else was coming.

The two at the table displayed the cloth panel they had brought and one told of their hope to have hundreds of these produced and stitched together for the gay rights March on Washington come October.  The silent prayer was that if the rest of the country could see the enormity of what was obvious every day in the Castro it might ignite a groundswell demand for the government to mobilize its resources.  Six years into the epidemic and all they'd produced was AZT.  And a lot of obituaries.

Then they asked if anyone had brought a panel.  After no one answered Cindy replied and went over to the table.  She held Roger open and told how he had already been in DC, in 1983, testifying in front of Congress about the disease.  Then she showed them David, explaining the Lucy part and humming a snippit of the theme song.  She and another coworker had visited David in his hospital room the week before Halloween, pulling clusters of orange and black helium balloons they tied to the bedrails.  The ward was quiet, essentially deserted even though this highest of gay holidays approached.  David lay in the bed smiling at the thoughtfulness and thanked them but added, ``Did you need to bring the black?''

They talked about work, catching him up on the gossip, trying to make him feel a part of the world outside, telling how some woman had stood across the counter and just talked, ``You know the type, she wasn't going to buy anything but just wouldn't shut up, she must of talked to me for half an hour.''

David had propped himself up now and his face got a far-away look as he listened.  When she finished he said, so quietly they almost didn't hear, ``I wish someone would talk to me for half an hour.''

Before the meeting adjourned a clipboard was passed down the row and everyone wrote their name and address for further contact, hers went on last, just below a guy named Jack who had been sitting last until she arrived.  When she got home the apartment seemed more empty than usual, the sewing machine had little use now and would need to be returned, the living room floor needed to be cleaned of the squiggles of thread, end pieces of cloth and scattered shirt pins.  But tomorrow.

F

ull night now as the two men walked back to the Castro, the darkness greater than just an absence of light, the quiet was murmurs from the thousands who had crowded here just five years before.  They stopped in Moby Dick's again, the friend was still at the bar and he swiveled on the barstool, ``So how'd your sewing bee go?''

``Nice crowd, maybe a dozen or so.  It wasn't a sewing bee, it was an organizational meeting to make a memorial quilt for AIDS victims.''

``So how did your little quilting bee organizational meeting go?  Did anybody bring sections for it?''

``Two.  Some strange blond woman brought two quilt panels.''

``A woman brought quilt?''   The guy on the barstool chuckled before turning back to his drink, ``A woman—now you guys are really going to have to do this thing.''

___________________________________________________________

jack day one

J
ack got his first view of San Francisco where I-80 finally ceased its westward thrust to curve south past Berkeley.  Four days earlier he had given his mother a goodbye hug on the porch of the Craftsman bungalow where he grew up, walked the strip of concrete that divided the front lawn early on an already muggy August morning and drove away from Kokomo on a dim promise from Wade, almost a rumor too unbelievable to be true.  A bit after 2 p.m. his Oldsmobile and the U-Haul that had trailed it those four days curved west one final time to merge with the freeway arteries that led onto the Bay Bridge and into the City.

In the distance before him across the quicksilver shimmer of the bay the image of a tight cluster of office buildings backed by low hills rose into a bright haze.  The connection took no leap of imagination, exactly like the movie, up ahead was Oz.  Jack paid at the toll booth, slid his foot from brake to gas pedal and as the car moved onto the bridge proper he became a cliché, yet another new arrival.

From the bridge he merely had to follow the directions given over the phone and he would arrive at his new home.  ``It's on 16th just across Market from the main block of Castro Street,''  Wade's voice coming thin and tinny out of the Bakelite receiver, ``Jack, you'll be amazed.''  Then Wade laughed, ``And get a haircut, the sixties are over, it's a new decade out here.''

The apartment key was under the mat, a welcome note was propped on the entry hall table, ``I get off work a bit after six, wait and we'll get a drink to celebrate your arrival.''  Jack couldn't wait, couldn't bother unloading, he had to get out into it, had to see what Wade meant by ``you'll be amazed.''

The wide traffic lanes of Market Street were a last boundary in his journey.  The light became green, the stream of cars parted and Jack crossed the intersection.  As he stepped onto the far curb a group of pigeons hesitated, shuffled and then flared into the air a few feet to settle back to the sidewalk under the plate glass windows of the Twin Peaks bar.  Inside old guys sat sideways on the barstools to stare out.  Shit they must all be at least forty, thought Jack, old queens.  A bit further and Jack became aware that all around him now were young men, smiling and gawking at one another, young and vibrant, reminded of his first Indiana State Fair, the excitement from disorientation at trying to take in too much too quickly.  Without the smell of sawdust, damp straw and cow manure.  All these guys out and this just a random weekday afternoon—doesn't anyone in San Francisco have to work?

He paused in the pleasant gloom under the theater marque to read the Now Playing poster, his own image, stringy hair, baggy pants, reflected pale over the frozen embrace, Audrey gazed up at Gary Cooper.  Odor of buttered popcorn, a siren pull he had to resist, there was too much out here to see, he had to continue on.  Humming ``It Was Fascination I Know. . .'' as he moved away from Love In the Afternoon.  Wade had been right, Jack needed a haircut, not even half a block and already he could tell there was a prevailing style, short cropped hair, moustaches, tight faded jeans, trim and healthy.  Making him feel even more obvious, out of place, more aware of his current status: new in town sailor?

Up ahead at the street corner he could see Hibernia Bank, remnant of the Irish influx, now Hibernia Beach, a row of shirtless guys preening against the granite wall, getting some sun while showing off.  Every shop window he passed was a carefully decorated enticement, even the hardware store.  At 18th St. he stopped, which direction?  A deep steady bass sounded from his left like the approach of a parade.  He turned that direction and stood outside a doorway covered by two heavy black leather curtains.  Seemed a little early for a drink but it was three hours later back home, so . . . OK, a drink.  The bass throb increased as two guys came out through the curtains, laughing, looking at Jack one said, ``Step right on in, always room for one more,'' as he held back the curtain.

Inside blaring disco pounded as he squinted while his eyes adjusted to the darkness.  Human forms coalesced, slowly he could see that the long narrow barroom was jammed with bodies, they looked like the same young men he'd just seen on the street.  Every barstool was occupied and people stood two and three deep behind.  Those attempting to talk over the music were tilted towards one another, mouth close to ear.

Two guys who faced the door with their backs against the bar moved aside enough for Jack to squeeze in.  When the bartender finally noticed, Jack stretched across the bartop and shouted, ``Gin-tonic.''  He watched the drink being mixed: ice, gin, more gin, and finally a little a splash of tonic.  Jack pushed some bills across and shouted that he'd just moved here, confiding, ``This is my very first drink in San Francisco.''

The bartender shut off the stereo, faces turning his direction as the amplified music faded away.  ``This is on me,'' he said to Jack placing the drink and then he announced to the room, pointing, ``Another New One Here!''  And to Jack, ``Where you from?'' then loudly again to the crowd just before turning the music back up, ``Representing the Great State of Indiana.''

Someone was patting Jack on the back as he reached for his glass and before he got one sip it seemed that people were trying to elevate him as if to show him off.  The music was blaring again, he was being grabbed under his shoulders and then from behind his knees and suddenly he became airborn, spun in a whirlwind of hands, tilted on his back into a cushion of raised arms.  The noise level alone seemed enough to bouy him aloft as he began to be passed feet first in celebration down the length of the bar.

Bewildered, hovering above these strangers, this was not the kind of attention he sought, then he relaxed and flowed with it.  Everyone was laughing, arms rose automatically in an undulating wave to support him as he body surfed this curl of hands.  He saw himself full in the mirror as he was borne floating amidst cigarette smoke and odors of cologne.

Around midbar the uplifted hands began tugging at his clothing, people giggling at his helplessness, he felt a shirttail slide out, a shoe went, a button popped.  Fingers groped his flesh as he slid past, someone was tugging at his belt buckle, Wait a minute here!  When the last hands let Jack down on a concrete floor in the rear of the barroom in a garish red, yellow and violet glow from pinball machines he was laughing giddily and completely naked.

What the hell was this place he'd come to?

San Francisco, 1977

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wash that man

D
an parked his car in the lot where the road ended near the top of Mount Tam to meet a rocky trail that circled to the peak.  This is what Jerry wanted, the kind of thing some New Age tourist would want done, but Dan had promised.  He looked towards the summit and saw a red tail hawk float in a lazy circle against the blue as he hiked up into a dusty odor of wild fennel in the Indian summer heat.  Two people on their way down nodded pleasantly when he stood aside for them to pass.  As he made the top a breeze came up and Dan saw that he was alone, perfect.  He undid the band at the back of his neck and bent slightly to let the wind shake his pony tail loose and protect his neck from the sun.  Jerry had hated that long hair, ``The Summer of Love was twenty years ago, get over it.''

A 360 degree view, off to the west a haze that would be the Pacific ocean, to the north the country ran clear up to the redwoods, south was the City and east was the Central Valley and all the rest of America.  Dan stood there and gauged the wind as he pulled a plastic bag carried in a brown paper one and held it above his head and away, trying to think of something to say that might add meaning to the act, to make it something more than mere littering.

``So long Jerry,'' as he shook the contents into the air.  Gray ash dropped and sifted and rose to stream away in a rapidly disappearing cloud.

I

n retrospect the China trip was a mistake, it had the opposite effect from that of bringing them closer.  The long flights, stuck, squirming in their seats, the time changes, the round the clock companion became an ordeal as emotionally exhausting as the evening a year before when Jerry told Dan he was positive and had to tell him why.  They sat up all night talking, just talking; they had been so careful for so long.  Or at least one of them had.

Dan could remember their first night together.  They met at the River, Dan should have realized at check-in when he glanced across the lobby through the sliding glass to the pool deck where burly men with trimmed beards wearing Speedos and construction boots stood around holding drinks, hairy bellies protruding from unbuttoned leather vests, that he might want to spend the next two days at some other resort.  A Bear weekend, having to listen to their nauseating word plays in a Folsom Street bar was bad enough but you could easily leave a bar;  here Dan would be stuck.

He overheard ``Looks like someone could use a hug,'' before he was able to order a drink, caught the snide observation from men down the bar that ``There are other animals in this zoo,'' and nearly gagged when one grizzled guy growled, ``Come to pappa,'' because Dan mentally inserted the word 'bear' into each sentence.

If he had a gun Dan thought gazing around, he'd make himself a bearskin rug.

Jerry was not the kind Dan ever would've imagined he'd become involved with, but for a weekend fling sure why not.  Fate put them next to one another out by the pool, Jerry making catty remarks about everyone that passed by,  ``Jeeze, does that queen really believe anyone would believe she's a top?''  Introductions were unnecessary.

Dan couldn't tell exactly when he began warming to the guy but the next afternoon sitting in the sun again they ordered drinks, ``My treat,'' Jerry grinned as he looked over to wink, ``Honey.''

The obviously new waiter, swamped, visibly flustered, took forever to bring the two drinks and, after asking for three dollars and seeing the twenty Jerry held out, apologized, ``I'll have to go back inside to get your change.''  Jerry raised his head from the deck chair to peer up at the kid.  ``Keep it,'' he said as he rolled away, ``Maybe you'll be a little quicker next time.''

Reclined there on the wet concrete surrounded by sounds of splashing and carousing Dan saw the cub behind that gruff burly exterior.

So a weekend turned into weeks and then it made no sense to keep two apartments, Jerry enjoying the redecorating (``A place to hibernate, you know.'') and Dan plotting trips for him and the homebody.

But in time the playful curmudgeonly quips that had once made Jerry seem so personable and quick witted, that made you forgive him even when he overstepped bounds, became caustic and crude; eventually Dan moved out.  ``I'll make you regret this!'' Jerry snarled.  So when Dan got the phone call that Jerry was in 5A at SF General he joked to friends, ``I didn't realize the lengths Jerry would go through to make those words true.''

After that first crisis Dan stayed at Jerry's overnight, listening to him come awake from some terror; Jerry was so afraid to be alone, some tough guy.  But as the trips to General became more common, the priest coming in the room, the last rites, holy water and solemn incantations, maligna discordia, then Jerry pulling out of it and being released.  Dan would try to go back to his own place, ``Jerry the doctors said you're stabilized, they can't do anything more for you, I want to go home and get a good night's sleep for work.''

He'd take personal leave during the day to drive Jerry to the various appointments, the aerosal pentamidine, exams, counseling, the waiting rooms, he'd clean the fridge, toss out the foil containers, their white cardboard tops penciled with the contents, unopened, uneaten, delivered each day by Open Hand.

Dan remembered that last night with Jerry, once again last rites, the priest gone, after they discharged him, after they'd gotten back from the hospital.  Dan helped Jerry get into bed and then went to the doorway and turned.  ``I'm going home, I've got to work tomorrow, the doctors said you're OK.''

Jerry was adamant about Dan staying, begging, ``I'll do anything, just stay here with me this one night.''

``Do anything?  Anything, Jerry?''  Dan was overwhelmed by what he felt, exhausted mentally, physically, how many years now had they both been part of this?  ``Anything?  You're never going to get better.  If you'll do anything for me then you'll just die.''  Jerry's face contorted into a fierce scowl and then he realized how Dan meant those words.  Dan watched as the glaring face softened, as Jerry let go of his fear and lay back relaxed, at peace.  Jerry smiled at Dan as he closed his eyes and settled in for a long winter's nap.

A

s Dan watched the remains spread off into the blue above Mt. Tamalpias it seemed like Jerry got back at him one last time.  The wind shifted, whipped around to reverse its flow as the ash suddenly buoyed with spirit.  Dan screamed ``You fucking asshole!'' into the enormous sky overhead as a hard grit blew across his face and eyes, scattered into his hair and covered his clothing.  He drove back across the bridge working his mouth to clear the dry gravel irritant.  When he got home Dan stood in the shower looking down at his bare feet on the enamel of the tub, the water flowing sleek over the back of his neck and splatter to a swirl of shampoo suds pooling into the drain.  ``Right out'a my hair,'' he sang, ``Gonna wash that man right . . . right . . . right.''

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Dan was left to clean Jerry's apartment, toss out the last dinner boxes in the fridge, pack up personal mementos to send to his mother; he kept all the amber bottles of pills because you never know.  On the floor of a closet shoved to the back he found a box of porn videos, most showing a blond surfer type on the cover and thought, ``Thank god I dyed my hair before going to the River that weekend.''

You hold the yard sale, watch the posessions go to strangers because friends don't want to take advantage, what doesn't sell goes to Community Thrift, then you carefully pull the door on the empty room.  That's it, that's a life, end of story.  Next to nothing to show that this one person had ever existed on the planet.

Dan kept the apartment key for few months more, he just liked the feel of it in his pocket.  He made a quilt panel using a borrowed sewing machine and when he previewed the three foot by six foot blanket of cloth spread out on the living room floor Dan felt something was missing.  He got a pair of scissors, reached behind his head and cut off the pony tail that Jerry always hated.  Then he pulled a corner of the cloth back up to the machine, folded an edge over that length of hair and sewed it into the lining.

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tourist town

C

alifornia as a destination began to insert itself in the minds of the post-WWII baby boomers with the weekly Disneyland/ Walt Disney Presents  television program which first aired in October, 1954.  The theme song, ``When You Wish Upon a Star'' and the programming mix of fantasy, adventure, the American frontier and the American future made it seem that Tomorrowland was just around the corner.  Besides displaying Donald Duck and Davy Crockett, other Disney episodes imprinted the young brains with ``Man in Space'' and ``Our Friend, the Atom,'' shows indicated the future was in Anaheim, California.  this hourlong weekly ad for the Magic Kingdom caused untold numbers of families piled into automobiles and hit Route 66 as choruses of ``When are we going to get there? When are we gonna get there?'' chimed from the wide back seats.

This vocal anxiety was entirely understandable, their destination was the Happiest Place on Earth.

This West Coast tourist industry made possible by the automobile and enhanced by cross country air travel did not go unnoticed in San Francisco.  The shipping based economy had been in decline with loss of stevedore and longshoreman jobs to the container freight-handling capabilities of the Port of Oakland across the bay.  Because of the mild weather San Francisco had a year-round tourist season to provide permanent jobs unlike say a Cape Cod summer or Key West winter.

The City began advertising this ``come anytime'' aspect in East Coast papers, something that went like, ``In February when it's a bitter snowy 23 degrees in New York City, it's 68 in San Francisco.  And in August when it's a sweltering 97 degrees in New York, it's 68 in San Francisco.''  To which some wag added, ``And when there are one thousand intelligent conversations in New York, there are 68 in San Francisco.''

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A
large tour bus crawls down Castro Street past the movie theater marque.  Eerie silhouettes in the obsidian windows seem to glower down toward the sidewalk crowded with a bustle of young men.  This swing through the Castro has only recently been added to the route and soon will be banned as gays gain political clout in 1975:  We're not a zoo display!

Inside the bus, in a pleasant gloom insulated from the sun glare and chill wind out on the street, tour guide George stands just behind driver Al's partition holding a microphone as he describes sights the bus cruises past.  SF history for the out of town folk, this blue hair crowd, each face turned to a window.  If it's a couple the man will sit on the aisle and usually try to appear disinterested.

The routine is a glib easy banter between George the pudgy loveable teddy bear, all enthusiasm and big smile, and Al the driver, the grounded, no nonsense curmudgeon, greying hair pulled into a tight pony tail.  Today already they've been across the Golden Gate Bridge, to the top of Twin Peaks, a stop at the Cliff House, everybody out, smell that salt air, George asking as they park, ``Al, I bet you'd like to have a drink at the bar in there.''

``I sure would George, but can't while I'm driving.''

``Well I guess I'll just have to have one extra for you.''

Pickup was Union Square and they swung through Chinatown, then approaching Columbus and Broadway George points out City Lights bookstore, explains,  ``The beatnik era in San Francisco was a mad gay party;  the women were mad because the men were gay.''

Waiting at the light across from the Condor Al keeps hands on wheel,eyes straight ahead as he leans to the mike, ``George, I got a question for you.  The northern part of the City is at least a mile from here over by Aquatic Park, right.''

``Yes Al, that's right.''

``And do you see any beach around here?''

George stoops down and peers out, ``No Al I don't, what's your point?''

``Then why is it called North Beach?''

At the Condor under the three story vertical sign of topless Carol Doda, red light bulb nipples, George bends sideways to gaze up at this monument to silicone.  ``The corner where topless was born.  One night after barhopping Al went topless along Broadway and earned the distinction of being the only person ever arrested in San Francisco for indecent exposure.''

And passing Fisherman's Wharf on the way to the Bridge,  ``Al claims they saw an actual fisherman here in 1971.''

After the Cliff House they cruise through the Park and down Haight Street.  As they cross Ashbury,  ``Al spent all his time hanging out here while his parents thought they were paying for him to be in college, you can probably understand why he's driving a bus now.''

Still on Haight Street Al leans over to his mike, ``George, how many hippies does it take to screw in a light bulb?''

``I don't know Al, how many hippies does it take to screw in a light bulb?''

``Hippies don't screw in light bulbs George, hippies screw in dirty sleeping bags.''

Always a silence as the old gals try to decipher the punch line, eventually there's a a groan or a nervous cackle and some uneasy laughter, this is what they came to Frisco for, a little bit of the naughty, we're not in Kansas.  OK, now we get it as one leans to whisper to the other:  Hippies screw in dirty sleeping bags.

A few blocks later they are moving slowly along Castro viewing storefronts from lintel height, the parade of young men.  Al leans over to his mike while eyes stay on the road, ``George, do you know anybody that's gay?''

George gives it a second as he watches the faces turn from the windows, then he does a little sashay in the aisle with wrist flip to answer, ``Well, Al, you know I'm gay! ''

Never fails to crack them up.

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I

n summer 1964 a woman dancing on a piano topless, a Republican convention and a Life  magazine spread that showed brooding Brando/James Dean gay men all collided for a perfect media storm to make San Francisco seem the risqué spot to be in America, a Disneyland with bars, something for absolutely everyone; the burgeoning tourist industry could not have wanted for better publicity (``You looking for something?'' the guy said to Jack, ``Well I have it.'')  Every newspaper in the world had mention of the Barbary Coast.  Marshall McLuhan, served lunch by a young woman with bare breasts at a table full of journalists observed, ``They're wearing us.''  The discothéques  of North Beach seemed so sauve, so Continental, you could almost hear someone at the bar say, as that E-minor guitar chord is strummed, ``Name is Bond, . . . James Bond.''

San Francisco in 1964, shaken not stirred.

An influx of new arrivals (the first wave of Baby Boomers had just finished high school), checking out the scene, picking up those easy service industry jobs.  At the end of one summer the owners of a restaurant in Sausalito held a TGTG party for the staff, Thank Goodness They're Gone, now just us locals, us true residents, we can relax and enjoy this wonderland that is California.  A week after that two-thirds of them were layed off because now that Those Tourists Were Gone most of the staff was unnecessary.

A young man in Hong Kong announced to his family that he was moving to San Francisco to seek his fortune.  The father gave a blessing of sorts, he said, ``Son, if you can't make it in a tourist town you won't be able to make it anywhere.''

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more different stuff

A

fter he had called in sick to work Ralph sat on the couch and flipped through the TV Guide.  Let's see, Good Morning America.  Seemed about right as a start to this day: Good Morning, America—how's everybody doing this fine day?  Later he'd have to make decisions, which channel.  His finger slid down the grid underneath the twelve noon slot:  Days of Our Lives, sounds OK.  Guiding Light, exactly what I need.  General Hospital, seen that a bit too much.  One Life to Live.  Felt as if his own life had merged with these daytime soaps.

What to watch this fine morning—decisions, decisions.

Earlier while getting ready for work he had passed by the open doorway to Bobby's room and paused.  Bobby usually kept the door closed because of his horrid grating cough.  Today the door stood open.  Ralph heard a slow cadenced counting, ``eleven, . . . twelve, . . . thirteen.''  Looking in, window shades were up, morning light filled the room.  Bobby was sitting with back against the headboard, a water glass in one hand and a bright yellow capsule in the other.  He was methodically swallowing pills from a pile scattered on the nightstand, a little pot of gold at the end of his rainbow.  He'd pick up pill, place in mouth, sip of water, tilt head, swallow, pick up pill, mouth, sip, swallow and repeat.  Announcing each one with a number, drama queen to the end.

``Today's the day?'' Ralph asked.

Bobby raised a finger, Wait just a second, took a sip, swallowed and looked over smiling, ``Fourteen—didn't want to lose count.''  Then, ``Right, today is the day.''

As Bobby picked up another Nembutal Ralph asked, ``Anything I should do?  Guess you won't be wanting any coffee.''

``Peace and quiet.  You go on to work.  Just another day, OK.''

That's when Ralph called in sick, he didn't know why, he just figured he should stick around.  He went into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee then went back to the living room and sat down in front of the TV and picked up the Guide to plan out his own day.

Around noon Ralph checked in on Bobby and found him sleeping quietly, completely at peace, his breathing smooth and untroubled with none of the spasmodic cough and violent eruptions of the past months.  This was not right, the pills should have done their work by now.  Ralph dialed the number for Emergency Services at SF General and explained, ``My roommate has AIDS and took a bunch of barbiturates to kill himself but he hasn't died—he's not going to become a vegetable or anything?''  Ralph knew he probably wasn't making a whole lot of sense but when the person got excited, almost yelling, Give us your address, we'll get an ambulance over immediately!,  he hung up.

At five that afternoon, after the soap operas ended, as the evening commute home had begun, Ralph checked again.  He stood in the doorway and scanned the silent room, everything clean and in order in the fading light, that's Bobby, the empty bedside table, the water glass, hesitant to enter, wondering if he should feel something more than he does: drained.  The body lay motionless under the sheet, the distant voices of a television commercial now more present and alive than his roommate.  From a birth 32 years ago to this room wrapped up neatly.  Bobby had been successful in his last endeavor, maybe Ralph should feel proud.

One life to live.

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O

n Thursday, July 1, 1993 about 3 p.m., pudgy, moustache sporting Gian Luigi Ferri, age 55, wheeled a sample case strapped to a dolly into an elevator of the 101 California Street building in downtown San Francisco and rode to the 34th floor.  He appeared to be just another salesman making his last call of the workday.  He pressed the red Emergency button to hold the elevator, stepped into the empty hallway and located the door to the conference room of the Pettit & Martin law offices.  He paused outside the door to insert ear protectors and then he pushed it open.

Before settling down to business that afternoon the people in the room would have talked of their plans for the long weekend, kids, barbeques, fireworks displays.  Not one would have known Gian Luidi Ferri as he entered, the only dealings the firm ever had with him had taken place over ten years before.  Somehow Ferri got the demented idea that all his current problems had begun compounding from that single encounter.

The case he towed contained hundreds of rounds of ammunition for the two Intratec DC9 semi-automatic assault pistols with Hell-Fire trigger systems and the .45 caliber Colt holstered under his suitcoat.  He sprayed the room with one of the TEC-9s and then moved to two lower floors firing at anyone he saw on each.  Eight of the 14 random people he shot that afternoon died.  He then used the .45 on himself when trapped in the raw concrete stairwell as over one hundred SFPD stormed the highrise.  Ferri had been in the 101 California building about 15 minutes total.

After police verified the building was secure (a time consuming procedure during which people bled to death that otherwise could have been saved) paramedics moved most of the victims to the place best suited to handle emergencies, San Francisco General Hospital.  The ER there has had a lot of experience with gunshot wounds.

A nurse on duty the afternoon of the 101 California shootings related how the next day a team of trauma counselors went through that building to assist those who worked there and later came over to the hospital to provide the same service to those on the floor that day.

The nurse remembered another afternoon when things were slow and she and a coworker were able to take a break to eat the sandwiches they'd brought for lunch.  They sat across from the glass doors of the entrance ramp at the rear of the building in a pleasant, warm area lulled by the sleepy drone of routine hospital sounds.  They watched as a large Lincoln with dark windows swerved into the parking lot and slammed to a halt near the delivery area.  A black kid jumped out of the car, grabbed a gurney from beside the doorway and pushed it to the sedan where two other young blacks hauled a body onto the palette.  All three then wheeled the gurney up the incline to the doorway, rammed the doors open and gave the gurney a hard shove inside as they turned and raced back to the car.

The gurney rolled across the floor and hit the wall next to where the two nurses sat eating.  The body of a black kid rolled off and landed in an awkward crumple at their feet, wide eyes gazed at nothing.  He'd been shot in the head and much of what had been inside was now oozing out from the blood caked hair and misshapened skull as they stared down holding their sandwiches.

The nurses didn't get to finish their lunch and later no one came to give them any trauma counseling either.

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S

weat crawled from his forehead and funneled into his eyes where he tried to blink away the sting.  Tommie was standing guard duty in the heat 50 yards beyond the edge of the tarmac.  He could see the dark treeline shimmer across a wide stretch of dried vegetation and he felt about as useless as a scarecrow in December.  His C.O. had ordered him out here, out where no one ever stood guard, exposed to any VC sniper, listening to the dull whine of insects that sought the moisture on his face.  From the airbase far to his back Tommie first heard and then felt the thump of the rotors and watched a Cobra swing around the perimeter and turn in his direction to settle into a lazy hover and slowly advance, scattering a circle of dust and grit that speckled his face.  He squeezed his eyes shut and when he could open them he saw the grin of the forward copilot/gunner as the turret minigun swept back and forth across his position.

Tommie had joined the Marines at age seventeen at the height of the Vietnam war, his parents gave consent and all concerned were glad for him to be out of the house.  He had been in-country nine months when he was caught having sex with a sailor.  The Company Commander was livid, ``Son, if it was up to me we'd put you in front of a firing squad, toss the body into a paddie and be done with it.''

Standing at attention in front of the desk Tommie watched the man in starched fatigues barely able to control his rage, ''But the Marine Corps doesn't see it my way, the Colonel just wants to give you a bad conduct discharge and get you out of here soon as possible so us soldiers can get on with this war.''

At first confined to quarters, then billeted alone and separate in a tent with no sandbags and now given this special guard duty, to stand all day alone, almost off-base while two Marines in an attack helicopter hover and glare at him.  The expedited discharge came through and when the C.O. realized it meant Tommie was going home he tried to rescind the orders, wanted to keep Tommie there a little longer, send the little queer home in a body bag.

But he was unsuccessful and on Tommie's last day with the outfit he stood again in front of the desk with two MPs waiting outside the door.  Even now the C.O. was trying, on the phone, ``Yes Colonel I'm aware of that but the situation here has changed and we'd like to keep him a bit longer.''  A silence as he listens and then, before hanging up, a dejected, ``Yes sir.''

The man signs along the bottom of the sheet of paper on his desk, pushes it in Tommie's direction and finally looks up, ``Get out!  Get out of my sight!''

Tommie made it back to the world and at some point moved to San Francisco with the great influx of the late 1970s.  There, a bit over a decade later, what the VC and the NVA and the USMC had been unable to do HIV accomplished.

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