It was August 1994. The previous two years had taken an emotional toll on me, first with Rory, then with Ron, and it seemed The City had lost much of the magic that had enchanted me upon my arrival nearly ten years earlier. I ached for a change and after returning from a trip to Tucson earlier that summer I started wondering if moving back to Arizona might be what the doctor ordered to cure this ongoing malaise.
After I returned from Tucson and the summer drew on, my dissatisfaction with The City increased. It seemed every aspect of daily life—from the panhandlers to the urine-soaked doorways to the daily commute from hell to the cost of everything—had become an annoyance, so it was a relatively easy decision to cast it all aside and return to the desert southwest.
Once I decided on that course of action, I gave a month's notice at work and on my apartment with every intention of moving back to Arizona the second week of September, but ultimately it was not to be. At least not this time.
I've often said that The City is a very jealous mistress, and my attempts to leave during the next eight years only confirmed it. She does not easily let go of her lovers. And deep down, despite everything, I truly loved The City.
The Playground
The Saturday before I was scheduled to move, I needed a break from packing, so that evening I decided to head out one last time and get into trouble. Young, hung, and full of cum…or something like that. (Well, two outta three ain't bad, right?)
I learned about The Playground from my friend Rick (or Miss K.C. Dare as he went by when on stage). With the demise of the 1808 Club a few years previous and not being one who cared for the tubs, I'd been missing the kind of wanton abandon a good old fashioned sex club provided. From Rick's description, The Playground sounded perfect.
It was. There was something primal about the place, something that was very much liked to our deepest (and yes, I suppose darkest) sexual fantasies. I knew from the moment I stepped into the place that the owners had a gold mine on their hands if the only knew how to keep the ambience alive.
It was a converted warehouse, located on the north side of 17th Street between Folsom and Harrison. The building itself was at the far end of a large parking lot, all grey corrugated metal with yellow painted trim. At night there were two rotating yellow beacons located at the entrance, which was also a loading dock.
When you first entered, to the right was the admission area. When you passed through that, you first entered the television and refreshment area. There were several sofas clustered about a lone TV. If continue toward the back and slightly to the left, the next area you encountered was the gloryhole space. It was a series of black painted cubicles surrounding a raised platform. Naturally, there were more than an ample number of holes drilled between the cubicles and the platform.
Immediately to the right of that area is what I referred to as "the Drive-In." There was an English taxi of unknown vintage parked there that faced a large projection television that showed the same porn videos that were playing in the television area. Continuing back toward the rear of the building, you entered another area separated by separate separate cubicles. These cubicles had small holes drilled at eye level and surrounded another, smaller room, allowing you to look in and see what's going on.
Continuing on toward the back of the building, you passed the dungeon on the left that contained a sling and other accountrements. On your right were the restrooms (and yes, they were used for play as well as for their intended function). Continuing down a set of stairs, there were three more spaces: the jail (four cells complete with bunks and stainless steel toilets), the "infirmary", and a small room with a bed and a single lone light bulb. I remembered there was something very eerie and uncomfortable bout being in those two rear rooms, even if you were totally alone. I never lingered there.
And the soundtrack to this debauchery? It was The Pet Shop Boys' recently released Relentless half of Very/Relentless.
And as far as what exactly happened that night, let's just say I came home a very satisfied man.
Melancholy Sets In
During what was ostensibly my last week in San Francisco, I took Wednesday off and ran errands that morning, noticing the fog spilling over Twin Peaks as I drove down Dolores Street. As I got out onto the 280 Freeway (I was heading to Target to get a cooler in which to transport my tropical fish), I realized that this was probably going to be the last time I was on that highway.
A certain melancholy descended upon me as my continued my errands, picking up items I knew I wouldn't be able to find once I left Oz. By the time I returned home, I was severely depressed. I was just about ready to call it all quits and bail out of the move, but I realized I couldn't. It was too late. I had to go through with it.
The next night I hooked up with an especially handsome man whom I'd met the prior Sunday while I was out washing my car in front of my building as one is wont to do in San Francisco. He was walking down the sidewalk. We locked eyes, and to my utter surprise he'd paused and started up a conversation. We had dinner and ended up in my bed. What was I doing? I was leaving the fucking city in less than a week, and here I was going on a date with an impossibly good looking man who seemed quite enchanted with me and expressed great disappointment that this was only going to be a one-night thing.
After he left, coupled with the doubts that reared themselves the day before, I found myself wondering why the hell I was leaving San Francisco. Was it really too late? During the weeks that led up to all of this, my friend Stan was fond of telling me it was never too late to change my mind. I wondered if he might be right.
I sat down to write in my journal later that evening, but didn't get more than a paragraph completed. I'd started writing about everything that had happened that week: the unabashed lure of The Playground, meeting Peter, the realization that I really did have friends there who didn't want me to leave, the magic that continued to come into my life in various forms—and I wrote, "I can't leave!" I broke down and cried.
And then, at a little past midnight, I made a decision. I wasn't going anywhere. No matter what it cost, I was not going to say goodbye to my beloved San Francisco. The only problem was I was caught in a financial Catch-22. I had to leave my job in order to remain in San Francisco. I needed the severance money they were giving me in order to pay the two months rent I needed to stay in my apartment. I didn't relish the idea of leaving the firm that had become my family over the previous eight years, but I also knew from my conversation with my boss a week earlier that staying on was probably not an option. No matter. It would force me to find a position doing more computer and less (hopefully much less) architecture.
What I wasn't prepared for when I told him of my decision the next day was the fact that he wanted to keep me on—and would be willing to loan me the money to pay my rent so I could stay. Now that is something you just don't find in today's workplace.
I accepted.
Friday afternoon we closed the office early and I came home and started putting my apartment back together. IT was no easy talk, although the unpacking did go much more quickly than the packing had. By that evening the living room had pretty much been returned to normal. By dinner time on Saturday, the rest of the place was put away. Instead of driving down I-5 heading toward Los Angeles, I was busy putting my track lights (it was the 90s, after all) back up and reinstalling all the flat switches and electrical outlets I'd swapped out only days earlier.
Of course, it seemed like the moment I got resettled, all that magic disappeared like the fog burning off each morning.
Peter—who seemed at first so disappointed that I was leaving San Francisco—became cagey. After telling him I'd decided to stay, I tried several times to set up a second date but his excuse was always "too busy at the moment" to get together. I finally wrote him off. If there was one thing I learned through that whole transformative process of leaving and then at the last minute stepping back from the brink is that I no longer had time to waste with bullshit like that.
And the magic that was The Playground? It too dried up, although not as quickly. While I had one more magical night at the venue, it seemed with each subsequent visit, the quality of the clientele and the encounters themselves dropped precipitously until I reached the point where it was more satisfying to simply stay home and jerk off by myself.
And that is why I say San Francisco is a jealous mistress…