candles

W
ednesday evening before Thanksgiving Cindy came up out of the Muni station at Castro and Market to catch the bus home from work and found the plaza full of young men milling about.  Small groups huddled together trying to light candles that protruded through the bottom of paper cups and random people held small whiteboard signs on sticks as if it was a political rally.  She asked what was going on and was told this was the annual candlelight march for Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk who had been slain on this date in 1978.  Seven years ago.

''And the signs?''  The number of AIDS deaths in San Francisco, a disease that was all but unknown when everyone in America sat down three turkey dinners before, had passed one thousand and people here had written the name of someone they knew who had died.  Most of the dead had lived within a few blocks of this intersection and tonight those people would be carried in the march to the Civic Center.  Cindy got a blank board and put Roger's name on it and then wandered around in the light mist with her sign at a casual right shoulder arms.

She'd met Roger a bit over two years before when an old friend excitedly introduced her to his new lover.  Early thirties, tall, trim, big grin, dark hair and moustache, David could not believe how fortunate he was, or, as he confided to Cindy when Roger went to the kitchen, that anything bad could come of Roger having just been diagnosed with this gay disease everyone seemed to be talking about.

"I mean, just look at him!" David exclaimed.

Cindy froze, this slow dread filling her as she stared at the friend sitting there so happy.  David made light of too many things, once joked with a gleeful reminisce that the gay VD clinic was the best pickup joint in town because whoever you met there wouldn't have gonorrhea that night at least.  Sure Roger looked fine but nobody knew, that was the scariest part, absolutely no one knew anything.  Except that young gay men were dying in very strange ways.  There was the feeling that day-to-day reality was slowly dissolving, taking the quality of a dark and claustrophobic dream.  A party was winding down, the record player is skipping and most guests have coupled up and departed while your trapped in the almost deserted room with someone very, very creepy.

A young man had just walked out of the room and AIDS had moved into her life.

A few months later, in August, 1983, David told Cindy how Roger had gone to Washington, DC with the San Francisco contingent to lobby Congress for funding.  Roger was chosen to be one of the three that testified before a House Government Operations subcommittee about the disease.  Three young men in suits and ties stood with their right hand raised, solemnly swore, and then sat.  Each told his story in turn and answered questions from the officials.  They still had faith in the American system they'd all grown up under.

David's biggest thrill, ``Roger got his name in the paper!''

Cindy found the newspaper article and read the quote from Roger: ``I came here today in the hope that my epitaph would not read that I died of red tape.''

Two months later Roger helped organize an AIDS vigil in the Castro where the names of people in the Bay Area known to have died of the disease were read.  The small crowd gathered there heard one-hundred and eighteen names that Saturday night.  Across town in the bathhouses people were burning the safe sex posters and pamphlets given out by the Health Department, ranting about the self-loathing and latent internalized homophobia of those gays pushing for closure of these establishments.  They had not moved all this way to be confronted with the same middle-class morality they came here to escape.

The following year, as Roger's health deteriorated and the frequency of his medical appointments increased Cindy began helping care for him.  In just a few months he dropped twenty pounds, one of the first to engage in what would become a San Francisco tradition for gay men: punching another notch to tighten the belt. 

T

he cab honked and she ran down the stairs from the second floor apartment and told the driver they'd be right out.  She left the rear passenger side door open and went back in building.  Roger was at the top of the stairs with a cane. ``Go on back,'' he called down, ``I don't need any help.''  She waited by the cab and then went to the door and looked up.  Roger was only halfway down the staircase.  ``I'm fine!  Just need a little time.''

When his turn was called at General she walked him to the exam room and then returned to the waiting area.  A little old lady in a chair along a facing wall smiled at her and asked, ``Is that your husband?'' and continued, not waiting for confirmation, ``You've got to start feeding him better young lady.  He's awfully skinny.''

Roger signed a waiver allowing his colonoscopy to be videotaped.  Sarcoma lesions on the interior colon wall might be worthy of a journal article and the information may be of help to surgeons who would be seeing things like this in the future.  Roger eventually became weary of the whole routine, the hope and optimism he'd had a year before had essentially evaporated.  Cindy was next to him on the hospital bed as support to sit up so the doctor could examine him.  He did a quick scan of Roger's mouth with a little flashlight and casually mentioned, ``Got a bit of KS in there.''  She was watching this from an angle, ``Those don't look like lesions, they look like holes.''

The doctor brought the flashlight back up.  ``You're right, those are holes.''  Some fungus had found a nice warm, moist place grow without an immune system to disturb it and was feeding on the roof of Roger's palate.

Around this time Roger decided he'd had enough, he was tired of being poked and prodded, he just wanted to be in his home.

T

he gray mist muted the colors of the shop lights along Castro Street.  At some point, as if an hourglass had reversed, people began slowly flowing away down Market, the candlelights separating and stretching into a ragged wavering line.  Others would fall in behind, each seemed to know his place.  Later, in the darkness at the Civic Center, after the speeches and impromptu memorials and the sobs from grown men they would put the placards with the names in a patchwork up on the wall of the Federal Building.

Just before Cindy was swept into the stream one more young man came over and looked at the name she carried.  Things had changed so much in just two years.  ``I was in the group with Roger in Washington in 1983,'' he said, ``All the rest are dead.  I didn't think anybody remembered us.''

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mala leche

For a decade or more there was a KFC at the corner of Valencia St. and Hill St. near 22nd.  Within a few months of its opening a hand-lettered sign on white butcher paper went up on the window announcing that rice and refried beans had been added as menu options along side the corn, mashed potatoes and cole slaw.  Valencia Street was still part of the Mission then and during the day you would see people that lived and worked in the neighborhood and in the night hear some great Latin jazz at the intimate club Bajones next door to the KFC.

Through the 1980s Valencia Street had a number of women's establishments, the Artemis Cafe at 23rd, Old Wives' Tales bookstore, Amelia's bar near 17th but so dispersed along the six block strip that the area did not have the cohesive feel as a lesbian district that the Castro had for gay men.  One by one these places closed as the gals moved south across Army St. to Cortland Avenue on Bernal hill.

The last night of Amelia's in November, 1991 there was a line of women down the block, saying things like, ``How can you close, this is such an important part of our community?''  To which the answer was, ``We were open every night of the week, where were you?''  Rikki Streicher remodeled the space into the Elbo Room with the prescience to target a mixed clientele.

That block was dominated by the shuttered Pepsi bottling plant across the street.  Surrounded by a chain link fence at night it gave the stretch a dark, forlorn look, a place to pass through quickly.  The gang members probably thought the Elbo Room was a gay bar when they sent the initiate in to verify that he had the guts to be one of them.  The guy slid through the door into the crowd, walked to the rear and then returned, picking up speed as he neared the front and he savagely pumped a knife into the back of the person who sat nearest the exit.  That person should have died instantly but his girlfriend had her hand inside his jacket caressing the base of his neck.  The blade went through her hand before entering him and that distance kept the tip from puncturing his heart.  At the ER the doctors said he'd probably heal completely while she'd never have use of her hand again.

The area perked up when the Mission Police Station moved to that lot and soon valet parking was available at a restaurant down the block, so that some locals ranted, ``Valet parking on Valencia Street—it's time to leave!''  The Kentucky Fried Chicken began getting complaints about the odor, about drug dealers hanging out in the parking lot and eventually was picketed by a vegetarian group protesting the torture of chickens.

Someone told a story of how in the early 1970s they'd sat across the aisle from Colonel Sanders on a plane flight.  He was their travelling ambassador, the little eccentric in white suit, white hair, white goatee, string tie and he never once broke character, he was The Kentucky Colonel.  His southern drawl was so infectious you almost wanted to join in, ``Why K'unnell Suh, Ah Do Dee'clare.''  He was able to deflect any question or topic change that might evince an opinion but they tried, they asked, ``Colonel, what do you think of these hippies?''  He looked over at them across that short space with his impish smile, ``Dey eats chicken don't dey?''

When the KFC finally closed the owners put a small sign by the doorway thanking their customers for the support all those years and wishing them well in their futures.  The owners didn't have to put that sign, it was just a little courtesy from people who had interacted with those in the neighborhood.

A bit later other signs began being plastered on the plate glass of the empty store front, mostly election posters but also one large graphic of some hens flocked together and the words "Mala Leche" underneath.  Implication being that the person who did it was a hip, politically savvy Mission District artist who speaks for everyone: We don't want you here, Colonel.

Apparently the meaning of ``Mala Leche'' was lost on those the artist wanted most to impress (it translates literally to "bad milk" or "soured milk" and colloquially to "tough shit") because the sign was soon replaced by a similar graphic but now with the words "Bad Chicken" in English underneath.  Across the street a restaurant had opened that serves "white folks" Mexican food, a bit overpriced, not quite authentic—tofu enchiladas, things like that.  On weekends there is always a gaggle of young people waiting outside and they could be the people outside a restaurant in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn or 6th St in Austin or around Astor Place near NYU, that generic post-campus suburban look.

At the KFC, the now gone Mission District KFC, because its customers used a different criteria for how their food dollar was spent, the only people you ever saw eating there were blacks and Hispanics.

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media training

Before they went on tour in Spring of 1988 they were given a brief media training session to see how each looked if interviewed by TV news.  In turn each sat before a camera under the glare of the key light and responded to hypothetical questions about their purpose.  Scott and Joey came across fine, casual and natural, Gert was told to defer to one of the others because if she didn't like the question or the person questioning her condescension came across like a hatchet; she wasn't going to play puppydog for the camera.  Jack became flustered and then flamboyant in explanation, his arms waving around as if capturing imaginary moths.  He was told to sit on his hands if interviewed: Jack, just sit on those hands.

In the San Francisco they would be leaving for the four month tour AIDS was a constant, a daily given that affected their every action but the rest of America was a huge unknown.  They had no idea how they would be met as they went from city to city taking a message about a communicable incurable disease.  Thus there was no identification on the box sides of Stella, the truck that carried the Quilt, no large graphic announcement, only a little brass plaque on the front: ``Friends of Dorothy.''  They remembered the country as it was in the 1960s, the thought that they might be singled out to speak on a newscast seemed totally foreign.  It was their action, the tour and what they displaying out in the open in front of the whole world, that would do their talking.

T

he September 2004 issue of the women's fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar  ran a story on the mayor of San Francisco with photo of him and his wife in elegant recline across an oriental rug in a Beacon Hill-style mansion.  In the background an enormous open window framed a marble balustrade and blue water bay outside as they were dubbed "The New Kennedys," implying the Camelot of the 1960s was in their future.  The story included the price of the clothes they were wearing and a quote from his hairdresser.

The young mayor seemed to have taken the article as prophetic (women's fashion magazines usually are) and began preparing himself for the larger political arena.  The power of television had been well known since the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon debates and Newsom embarked on a training regime that included in his own YouTube channel.  What were once photo-ops became city-funded practice sessions, not just the press conferences and State of the City reports but almost any little ribbon cut would find him facing a camera with a team of handlers and no need of a live audience.

The YouTube video touting the wonders of his Pavement To Parks program and Guerrero Park doesn't mention that the program was abandoned almost immediately afterwards, leaving the space he stood in during that filming an unused eyesore benefiting no one.  A few blocks north and a few blocks east were two legacy city parks falling apart for lack of maintenance but you don't get YouTube videos for maintenance.  San Francisco in the 21st Century: Rise of the Creepy Class—a different kind of people, these kind would never have made the Quilt.

T

he twenty-city tour they embarked on in 1988 took them south from San Francisco for displays in LA and San Diego then through the southwest to Atlanta and up to Boston where they turned back west.  In every city gay groups welcomed them like royalty, held dinners for them, showed them the best of their city.  In someplace like Detroit the group had been dined and entertained in yet another fabulously decorated home and they now sat on the sofa in the living room and heard yet again about how wonderful it must be to live in San Francisco, how their hosts visited there and loved it, how there was just no other place in the world like San Francisco.  The same things they always heard.  Jack was on drink three by now and unusually quiet, he should have been animated and loud with those hands of his flutterng toward the chandelier.  Gert leaned over and asked if anything was wrong, this was not like him.

Jack was from the midwest, Indiana, his mother still lived there and they were close.  ``These guys,'' he said quietly, nodding towards the room. ``They're obviously gay, they're not hiding anything, yet they're living here, near their families, near where they grew up.  It was easy to be gay in San Francisco, it didn't take any courage at all.''  He looked around at their hosts, seated or up quickly, let-me-get-that-for-you, ''These guys,'' he said, ''they're the one's with guts.''

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glory days

The Miracle Mile of Folsom Street was anchored on the west at 12th St. by Hamburger Mary's and extended east to around 5th St. and included the parallel streets and alleys in the South of Market.  In the 1970s the area was mostly dark empty industrial warehouses no longer necessary after container shipping moved the industry over to Oakland and made the dockworkers, the stevedores and longshoreman no longer necessary.  The shot-and-a-beer bars that seemed to be at every street corner no longer had customers.  Bars that could be bought cheaply with no neighborhood residents around to complain about anything.  Anything at all.  At night the little pink neon FeBe's sign above its doorway at the corner of 11th shined dimly, a last outpost before the pitch black expanse of a wide, desolate Folsom Street that stretched down the decreasing number streets toward the bay.

Hamburger Mary's was on the corner of 12th and the Stud was mid-block on the other side of the street.  On any given night an eclectic and inebriated mix of tall drag queens wobbling in heels, swarthy men in metal-spiked leathers, disco divas waving boas and moustached Castro clones would pass each other crossing Folsom between the two establishments.  Mary's initially had a disco, Cissy's, in the larger space adjacent to the restaurant area but the food became so popular that disco died and was replaced with tables.  Dancing moved exclusively across to the Stud, a mutually beneficial separation.  One night there a dancer leaped up under the uv light, twirled in the air and when he came down went completely through the rotting floorboards into the basement.  Folsom St. in the '70's, no rules.

There was a short burly guy who drank at Mary's during the daytime that stood out even there because he always wore the same custom leather outfit: chaps, vest, jacket, fingerless gloves and little cap.  The hides had been bleached and then dyed a pale yellow which gave the look that a banana popsicle was squating on a barstool.  He was president of the Golden Showers Association, the kind who keeps buying a guy beers and tells the guy not to go the the bathroom because he wants to get him home with a full bladder.

The bar at Mary's was in the second back room and as it was a hassle to get to the bathrooms in the adjacent section on busy nights the bartenders would stand just inside of a curtained supply area at the end of the bar and surreptitiously pee into an empty gallon wine jug.  Whenever the jug filled the guy in the yellow leather outfit would take it for whatever they did at golden shower meetings.

The further east down Folsom that one ventured the more black leather and macho posturing became de rigueur.  Names of the bars and sex clubs evinced a musky ethos of maculinity: Boot Camp, Barracks, Ramrod, Brig, Caldron, Catacombs.  A place could have a clawfoot bathtub in the middle of a room, plywood partitions with mouth-sized holes cut out at waist-level, rooms with slings and padded tables, men in uniform, men in jeans shirtless, men in nothing.  A thick metal collar around the neck of a bartender attached to a heavy chrome chain tethered him to the back wall.  A bartender is taking random swigs from a mayonnaise jar by the register during his shift and when asked replies that it's his lover's urine, keeps him hydrated in this stuffy, airless room.

And the bathhouses.  Some people stopped in for a little warmup sex before going out to cruise for the night, other people stopped in for the whole weekend, breezing by home on Friday to pick up clean clothes for work Monday, checking in at the baths and spending the next three nights there, ordering food delivered, pizza, Chinese, maybe a towel as modest attire.

There was a green chalkboard next to the main desk where people could write a name and room number on entering plus some additional information, physical attributes, etc., e.g. Doug, twelve inches, or blond surfer, or a Cowboy Butt, sometimes the always popular ``have drugs,'' but more often ``request drugs.''  Passing the chalkboard on their way in Joey and friends would reach up, change a 'u' to an 'e' and add a 'y' so that everyone entering after them would see that in such-and-such room they'd find ``Cowboy Betty.''

The baths were a regular routine for Alex, many weekends he never saw the outdoors, and in late 1982, when gay cancer had become GRID and when five people he knew of had died Alex went to see a doctor.  He was healthy but felt like something was stalking him, no 32-year old should know that many people who had died in that short of a time.  Not in America in a peacetime.  After checking him over the doctor said there was no sign of KS and said that there was not a lot known and said maybe he could get Alex into a study at UCSF.  The main epidemiologic correlation at that time seemed to be number of sexual partners and the doctor asked Alex about that, how many he thought he'd had.  Alex was sitting in his underwear on the paper strip that covered the exam table in the little room staring down at his sock feet.  He raised his head and moved his eyes toward the ceiling as one does when counting.  After a bit he looked at the doctor and answered, ``You mean today?''

D

uring Sunday brunch lull at Hamburger Mary's the bartender went out back by the dumpster to take a couple puffs off a joint with some of the kitchen crew and when he returned a waiter came up with a glass of white wine and set it on the bar.

"Customer says this tastes funny."

Bartender looks at the glass, "Where'd you get this? . . . I didn't serve this to you."

"You weren't here so I went behind the bar and poured it from that jug by the curtain back there."

___________________________________________________________

the mission

Rock Against Reagan, Dolores Park, October, 1983

As  he crossed the 16th Street BART Plaza one mid-afternoon a couple glided past him from behind, both a bit pudgy, pasty, with unkempt hair, the guy in faded coveralls, the girl in sweatshirt and jeans.  So nondescript that if Joey hadn't overheard a snippet of their conversation they would have registered about as much as the shadow of a small cloud passing high overhead.  Two people that were purposely invisible, that did not want to draw attention to themselves.

The guy asked, ``So how long were you in for?''

``Three months.''

His voice took on a snide edge, ``Guess you cleaned up, huh?''

``Man,'' she said, ``King Kong didn't hit that hard.''

The BART plaza: people selling drugs, people buying drugs, people selling sex for the money to buy drugs, always at the periphary of your vision, you just had to not look to see it.  In the early evening Oakland hookers would be coming up out of the BART terminal to join the locals on Capp St. where all night long cars would circle the five or six blocks of The Track, most of the trade being done out of the vehicles.

When smokable free base cocaine began vying with heroin for the drug dollar in the 1980s the dealers at the Valencia Gardens projects at 15th stenciled ``Buy Crack Here'' in large letters on the concrete sides of the buildings so you would know.  Frisco Choppers was across the street, ``In the Ghetto,'' as the logo on their T-shirts said.  And ``Thank You for Pot Smoking'' as the sign over their cash register said. 

In the late 70s/early 80s some punk venues sprouted around Valencia, a West Coast mirror of the Bowery/East Village in NYC: the Deaf Club, the Tool & Die, Target Video; in 1980 a synthesizer band The Units even put out a song, ``The Mission Is Bitchin.''  The swell that had begun with hippies moving into the Haight more than a decade before and then carried into the Castro as gays arrived was now flowing into this western edge of the Mission District.  That wave receded when the scythe of the epidemic came down (imagine being able to see over a dozen 'For Rent' signs in windows during a casual 30 minute stroll around the intersection of Castro and 18th) and it was almost twenty years, as Y2K approached, before the tide rolled back.

J

oey lived behind 4 Wheel Brake at 17th and Mission in this era and one sun filled afternoon when passing Clarion he had idly stared a bit too long at four guys huddled a ways into the alley.  One of the four moved away from the group and stopped in a doorway to stare down at a little packet he'd obviously just purchased.  A guy saw Joey watching, turned fully to face him and advanced, ``You looking for something man?''  It took Joey a second to realize the guy wasn't challenging him, the guy was sincere, that if there was anything Joey wanted this guy was going to do his best to provide it.

Some years later, in August, 1990 a 29-year old Irish SFSU student, Paul O'Meara, had his cab pull over to the Wells ATM at the northwest edge of the 16th St. BART plaza to get cash.  It was just dusk, about 9 p.m. and four men loitering there put him in a chock hold with a baseball bat and pulled him around the corner and beat him to death.  At least six people witnessed this.

Because of the high crime rate around Mission/16th and because of the number of customer robberies at that ATM the bank had months before begun inactivating the machine each evening at 8 p.m.  Thus Paul O'Meara had next to no money on him when he was killed.

Area merchants had long clamored for a greater police presence so the SFPD set up a kiosk in the plaza apparently meant to frighten off criminals.  It sat there for many months about the same size and about as imposing as a State Fair corndog stand, it never seemed to be staffed and eventually it became grimy and collected wind blown trash around its base and at some point the police kiosk disappeared.  Six witnesses, no one was ever arrested or charged with the crime.  An Irish bar in Noe Valley had a benefit one Saturday afternoon to collect money so that Paul's body could be returned to his family in the Old Sod.

I

n the early 1990s bodies of Capp St. hookers began showing up in vacant lots by the water in China Basin.  Not unsurprisingly this spread a pall over the street workers but hey, a gal's gotta earn a living.  The increased police presence after those murders moved a sizable portion of the business to the other side of South Van Ness Avenue.  Eventually they arrested a guy already out on bail for sexual assault of Capp St. hookers because a 19-year old girl Jack Bokin thought was dead when he dumped her in the Bay had survived and identified him.

Lisa worked at the Rite Spot on Folsom when this all was going on and she was walking there in the dying light of early evening.  She was outfitted in the short skirt and combat boots style girls wore at that time which seemed to emphasize her cherubic cuteness, her big smile.  A friend happened to drive by and he honked and pulled over, bending to reach across the front seat and roll down the window.  Lisa went to the passenger side and leaned in and they chatted a bit but she had to get to work so said bye, her friend drove off and she continued walking.  Before she got to Folsom this black gal popped out of a doorway, tight pants, spike heels, very red lips and said, ``You was right not to go with him!  I been round here a long time and they's plenty of weirdos—I can spot 'em!  That there guy was sure one!  You done the right thing not to go with him.''

Then the black woman stepped back a bit to bat her false eyelashes and assess Lisa, ``You new here, I ain't seen ya' before.''  After she looked Lisa up and down the woman smiled and gave her approval of the street: ``You gonna do O.K.''

D

uring daylight hours hookers made the stretch of 17th around Thrift Town into their little cloister.  They would stand on one of the street corners between Capp and Hoff and announce themselves by making a flamboyant show of lighting a cigarette, taking a drag and then swinging their arm in an extravagant arch while exhaling a long smoke stream up into the air.  A censer to ward away the evil spirits: ``No officer I'm just here waiting for my boyfriend, ain't no crime in that is there?''  These were the ones that needed money early, dayshift here was end of the line, the decrepit seeking the desperate no matter which way you looked at it.

Joey was on his way home one afternoon and notices this young girl walking ahead of him stop on the sidewalk and hunch over briefly to light up.  She didn't have that girl next door look, not for the girls in this neighborhood, she looked like some nerdy innocent kid maybe come over to check out the bargains at Thrift Town.  Joey considered saying something, a little word to the wise, if one of the gruff Mexicans propositioned her she'd probably collapse in fright, but what was he going to say?  As he passed by she looked over at him and smiled as if she could sense his concern.  The innocent looking nerdy girl said, ``Hi, . . .  want a date?''

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great wall

Jerry phoned Dan at work when he got the results of his blood work, ``Good news, T-cells are still up, don't have to start AZT.''  So that evening Dan brought a gift home: ``We're going to China,'' waving a glossy color brochure.  Even knowing that Jerry was your basic homebody Dan had placed the deposit to join a group tour, it was early 1989 and mainland China had only recently begun allowing Americans into the country.  This was an opportunity he felt they should not miss.  Left unsaid was, ``While you can still travel.''

``Can't we just go to Grant Street for an afternoon?  Take a ride on the 30 Stockton?  We'd be home in time for dinner.''

``Jerry, I can't believe you're this parochial, you know how many people would love to make a trip like this?''

Jerry did not know how many people would love a trip like this but he knew of one who would not.  He also knew when he was trapped.  Finally he grumbles ``Alright, but I'm taking a fork.''

Their group meets with a tour liaison at the Air China terminal of SFO International, they were easily the youngest members and the only male couple.  Jerry leans to Dan, ``Don't look over just yet but two old dykes are staring this way, I think they're gonna want us to be tour buddies.''

``You always think people are staring at you,'' Dan mutters as he bends to fumble with a carry on so he can scan the women.  Jerry continues, ``And  they're wearing Birkenstocks!  I simply refuse to be associated with anyone that wears Birkenstocks.''

On the flight Dan flips through the brochures once again, hoping to pique some interest, reading out loud, ``Tien An Men Square, Peking Duck, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the Great Wall—come on, you're going to love it, look,'' shoving the brochure over, pointing to the picture: ``Guilin, we're stopping there, we'll see this, look!''

A large part of their stay was in Beijing  (Jerry: ``When do we get to see Peking?'') and they noticed some peculiarities beyond the total mindwarp just of the mass of human beings.  If they stood on a street corner for more than a few minutes people began congregating around them, men in black pajamas that would stand in some proximity and just stare, to these people fair skin, blond hair was the spectacle.  (Jerry: ``If I flap my arms do you think they'd scatter like pigeons?'')

More than a few times as they visited various ancient and oriental sights (or as described by Jerry, ``Yet another place older than Jesus.'') a native Chinese would approach them and begin asking a sequence of questions in English that would tend towards the awkwardly personal.  The pattern was something like this,  Are you from America?  What city are you from?  What do you do for a living?  How much money do you make?  Are you married?  How many children do you have?  With a pause between each question.

Others in their tour group had similar experiences and eventually their guide said that these Chinese were practicing their English, these were standard question and answer routines used in a language class (Jerry: ``I wonder what they ask the lesbians— 'Can't you afford better shoes?' '').  At any point they only needed to say to the Chinese person, ``You speak English very well,'' and that person would thank them and leave happy.

The day they visited the Great Wall and were standing with other tour groups in a curved open stretch near a rampart Jerry nudged Dan and nodded towards two young, elegantly dressed Japanese males that were crossing from one parapet to the other.  ``You think they're gay?'' and on noting that the two Japanese had looked over at them while talking to one another he added, ``Wouldn't it be funny if they were asking the same thing about us right now?''

About then a Chinese man intruded, standing in front of them with a big grin and he started the routine, ``Are you from America?  (pause)  What city are you from?''

The two young Japanese males had moved close enough to overhear the interchange and when Dan answered, ``San Francisco,'' he saw them look at one another knowingly and smile.

___________________________________________________________

snoopy

Cindy is hurrying down the sidewalk from the Savoy Tivoli on upper Grant where she's had a quick drink before opening the box office.  As she waits to cross Broadway under the tall sign of Carol Doda Topless she hears the barker on front of Big Al's next door giving his spiel to people passing by, couples that giggle, young sailors over from Alameda, rocking a bit with his jive, ``See it right in here folks, Topless, Bottomless, LIVE! NAKED! SEX! On Our Stage, we got it all."  A pause as he glances over at her, ``Hey Cindy, how's it going?" then he continues, ``That's Right Folks,  Completely LIVE,  Completely NAKED, Completely SEX we got it right here on our stage.''

She's heading down to the Little Fox Theater on Pacific to prep the box office for the 8 o'clock show,  ``legitimate'' theater, different from the ``live naked'' theater Cindy just passed. The marquee over the entranceway informs that  ``Snoopy, the Musical'' is now playing.

She unlocks the main doors and then the door to the ticket area, her little kingdom.  A thick glass window with a low opening faces the street, a large calendar hung on the wall with scribbles in almost every numbered boxed, a wood rack slotted for each performance holding the tickets sold for that night, three-ring binders holding the accounting tallies for past nights, and shoved in the corner a small refrigerator.  She sat on the stool and unwraps the salami and cheese from the Molinari's.

Stage hands and cast drifted in, most stopping to say hi and inquire about any phone messages, fan letters (dream on), job offers.  Cindy had eaten about a third of her sandwich when the house phone rings, it the producer in the main office upstairs and he asks her to run down the block and get his suit from the dry cleaners.

``Sure, no problem.  Maybe you need your car waxed too? I got plenty of free time,'' muttering ``Asshole" as she hangs up.

To make sure her sandwich would still be there when she returned she covered it with a paper napkin on which she'd scribbled, ``Don't eat this, I spit on it.''

She returns from the errand, hangs the plastic shrouded suit behind the door, pulls her stool back to the ticket window and reaches to the sandwich.  Under her words on the napkin someone had added, ``So did I.'' 

Bit later she sees Tim down the street coming in to work, his gangly saunter, hands and feet too large, waiting for the rest of his body to grow into them.  Just a big puppy, no wonder he was cast as Snoopy.  He exaggerates the movements for her as he bounces up to the customer window, leans into round metal voice slot and whines:  ``Is this show any good?  I don't want to spend my money if it's one of those shows that's full of really crappy acting.''

``Well, most of the acting is great, but there's this one, the guy that plays Snoopy, who's a real drip.  We think he must be having an affair with one of the producers.''

``Not what I hear! I hear he's just dreamy!  And did you know that today is his birthday?  The young thing is currently accepting gifts---cashmere, cash, drugs, any and all of the above.''

Cindy grins at Tim across the glass partition, ``If Miss Birthday Thing is one year closer to being the old queen everyone says she is, she sure shouldn't be announcing that fact.''

Tim heads backstage as she punches the house phone, "He just got here but he'll be in the dressing room for an hour. We'll need the gift at least twenty minutes before curtain.''

Over the next hour people come to the window to pick up their tickets before going off, out to make an evening of North Beach, drinks, dinner and a show, maybe more drinks.  She didn't notice when the streetlights came on,  only vaguely aware it had become evening.  Somewhere up above there must be stars, the easy peace at day's end, but down here her workday was just beginning.

``Excuse me,'' a voice interrrupts.  She looks up at a handsome tanned face and a confident grin on the other side of the glass, heavy starch blue button down shirt,  a groomed successful look, preppie, maybe young stockbroker.

``Hi, I'm Carl, here for the birthday. I'm not late am I?''

It came out automatic, the oldest line in the book, ``I don't know, what time were you planning on getting here?''

She phones upstairs, ``Your gift is here.''  Dana comes down, smiles approvingly as she and Carl are introduced and as the two move into the lobby Dana looks back flashes a little thumbs up.  Cindy shakes her head watching the young man and mutters, ``Why is it that all the good looking ones—it's just not fair.''

The typical rush just before curtain, a line of eight or ten, people starting to get anxious, but no mistakes, no missing reservations. Tonight the evening report would have to wait, she wrapped the cash and charge receipts and put them in the safe uncounted then locked up the little room to join the others on the back row of the theater.  It was, after all, Tim's birthday.

[Act One]:

The curtain opens to an enormous doghouse stage center, chin high to the cast emphasizing that they are children and the audience is viewing a cartoon panel.  There's Snoopy reclining across the top.  Members of the Peanuts gang drift in and perform song routines that Cindy usually hears as background music each night while she finishes her report.  At some point Snoopy clambers down and crawls inside his house while the others continue the cartoon bickering and the singing.

[Act Two]:

The cast performs a few more rollicking numbers that lead to Snoopy's next cue, something like ``Oh no! It's the Red Baron!''  A pause while the onstage group looks to the doghouse. The pause extends and the Peanuts gang turns towards one another quizzically.  So again, louder, ``The Red Baron!''

From her last row seat Cindy could see audience heads leaning to one another as it became obvious something was amiss.  Once more, ``It's the Red Baron!''

Snoopy finally snakes from the doghouse, with a distant grin and a gaze to the back row where he knows his gang will be sitting.  The cast onstage keeps from making eye contact so that there won't be a communal break down into convulsive laughter.

Cindy slips out, back to the box office to finish her report.  At intermission Carl the birthday gift pokes his head in the door on his way out,  ``I thought I'd had weird requests before, bondage, dungeons, Nazi uniforms, Cub Scout uniforms, licking boots, but after this they'll all seem pretty lame."

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