Conga!

This has been my commute soundtrack for the past couple days. And like it always does, it took me back some 36 years.

Picture this: Tucson Arizona, 1986…

I was young, dumb, and full of…optimism…in a time of great upheaval.

Bernie—my partner of the previous two years—and I had split up. I'd just moved out of an apartment we'd been sharing with a friend, and into my own place.

A year earlier, Bernie and I had flown to San Francisco for a weekend. He had miles that needed to be used, but at the time we were on a shoestring budget and couldn't afford for me to accompany him. When my friend Kekku heard this she said, "But you must see San Francisco!" and promptly wrote me a check.

We came back from The City infected. (No, not with that; with the city itself.) San Francisco had charmed us, seduced us, and planted the seeds of our eventual relocation. Suddenly Tucson had become black and white, while SF remained glorious technicolor.

At the time I was working as a senior architectural draftsman at the firm of Kim Acorn Associates for a little over a year. My partners in crime there were another Mark, Jerry, and most fascinating of the bunch, Kate.

I lusted after Mark in the worst way. I imagined all manner of depraved (although looking back, not having lived in San Francisco yet, my definition of depravity was entirely too vanilla) things I could do to/with him. But sadly, he was straight, married, and unobtainable.

Kate—whom I sadly have no photos of—and I had each other clocked the moment I first walked into that workroom. She reminded me way too much of Large Marge from PeeWee's Big Adventure. She smoked. She walked with a swagger. She drove a truck. For chrissake, she wore more flannel than I did.

She had a keen interest in astronomy, and owned a beautiful telescope that she would take out into the dark desert nights—and also carried a gun "for protection" during those forays into the wilderness. ("Javalina, y'know…") She loved the same music I did and I helped her buy her first hi-fi stereo system.

Her grandmother had been a Sioux medicine woman and had taught her "the ways." Our shared interest in all things otherworldly (both physical and otherwise)—not to mention our mutual overpowering dislike of several members of the firm we worked at—immediately bonded us.

I believe if I could've used today's parlance back then, I would've called her my work wife…

It was at this time I bought my first portable CD player. Imagine! Portable! It was ridiculously expensive, bought on credit, and went pretty much everywhere with me. One of the first CDs I remember buying was Primitive Love. It became a big part of the soundtrack of my life that summer.

Though Bernie and I had separated by that point, our plans to move to San Francisco together remained in place. It was an amicable parting, so there was no reason to change them; to this day we remain good friends.

Things were slowing down at work. Kate and I both noticed that the amount of clients coming into the office was drastically declining. Since he knew of my eventual plans to relocate to SF, coupled with the downturn in business, it came as no surprise when I was called into my boss's office around the first of July and was told that along with Kate and two other employees, they were letting me go. I remember starting to giggle and the guy looked at me and said, "That's the strangest reaction I've ever gotten to telling someone they're being laid off." I shrugged my shoulders and replied, "The Universe is telling me to go to San Francisco now."

And so I did. It took a couple weeks to make arrangements, but I left Bernie to house sit for the month or so I anticipated it would take me to find work, and loaded up my car and headed northwest. Our mutual friend Lee was already in SF; he'd accompanied us on a visit to The City the previous December and came back as smitten as we'd been. I'd be crashing with him at the home of a couple of his friends. It would be an adventure!

And quite an adventure it was. Another story for another time. "The City will chew you up and spit you out!" But suffice to say that nearly our whole gang had become San Francisco residents by October of that year.

I saw Kate briefly when I flew back to Tucson for Christmas. She had been having trouble finding work and wasn't in the best head space. In January or February I got a strange phone call from her. She was in good spirits; decidedly better than she had been in when I saw her. She told me that she (in her own words, just to make it clear) had made a breakthrough; she "had decided she was a man trapped in a woman's body" and was ready to do something about it. She had adopted the name Hawk, and asked if I knew of any place in San Francisco that could help her physically transition. After regaining my composure (where had this come from?) I told her I didn't, but I knew enough even back then that before she went under the knife she'd have to go through months—if not years—of counseling, hormone therapy, and actually living the life of a man, and told her so.  Perhaps she could check with the Gay Students Organization at the University of Arizona? She said she would, and that was the last I heard from her. Subsequent attempts at reaching my work wife were unsuccessful. Her phone had been disconnected and mail went unanswered.

Every time I play Primitive Love think of Kate/Hawk and wonder if they had been successful in finding the inner peace and happiness they were seeking.