Once a legitimate blog. Now just a collection of memes 'n menz.
…or some variation thereof, on my bedroom wall all through grade school. I took to drawing my own version of the planets—no doubt as fanciful as these representations, never dreaming that during the course of my life we’d actually see each one up close via robotic probes!
…and it was [the beginning of] the worst of times.
Thanks for the memories, Laurent!
Tucson, AZ – January 1981
I was never that young.
And yet, I remember that morning as if it were yesterday.
As is my tradition every December 1st, I remember…
Kent Kelly
Ken Cohen
Steve Golden
Dennis Shelpman
Jim Hagen
Chuck Krahe
Marty Kamner
Michael Nelson
Jim Nye
Kevin Ohm
Rick King
Ron Aiazzi
Grant Neilsen
Ric Hathaway
David Koston
Kim Holstein
Russ Alvarez
Ben Walzer
Ken Borg
Harold Gates
Jim Girard
Keith Roseberry
Tom Farrel
Peter Whitman
Chuck Mayer
Richard Gulliver
Scott Woods
Bobby Farina
Brian Lea
Fred Sibinic
Steve McCollom
John Trapp
Philip Ruckdeschel
I remember there was still a definite chill in the air that March morning. I believe this was the third time Bernie and I had come to the falls, and while he had no trouble stripping down completely, I was still far too reserved to go flashing my bits to the world (even though everyone else in the canyon was buck naked).
Of course all that changed over the summer, and despite the treacherous trails to get deep into the canyon, it was worth it.
(With apologies to William Bronson)
October 17, 1989
Jack and Nick (my bosses, and co-owners of the four-person architectural firm where I had been working for the previous two and a half years) had left the office earlier that afternoon to “discuss business” at the pub a few doors down the street. I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired to do any work, and since the only other member of our little professional family, Neill, was absent for some reason, I made the executive decision to close up shop at 4:30 and head home. I had received the repaired video card from my computer in the mail that day and was anxious to get it put back in so I could enjoy the newly purchased NEC “Multisync” monitor I’d picked up at a computer show that previous weekend.
It was a typically balmy autumn afternoon in San Francisco, and I enjoyed the two block walk up 2nd Street to Market, where I went downstairs to MUNI and caught one of the K, L, or M cars outbound which would deposit me at the Van Ness Station for my four block walk home to 12th & Folsom. (Yes, I lived “right around the corner” from the SF Eagle and yet I had only ventured in a handful of times over my tenure at that location.)
After getting off at Van Ness and walking down 12th just past Mission, one of my contact lenses decided to ride up on the top of my eye. As I paused to try and dislodge it, the ground started moving. Having been on the earthquake simulator platform at the Academy of Sciences numerous times, I knew exactly what this was and struggled to keep my balance. At the same time, my contact lens slid back down and I looked across the street to see the billboard above the parking lot at the corner—one of those cantilevered things that was supported on only one end—start bounding up and down. I heard glass breaking, a few people screaming and then, as soon as everything started, it ended.
The stop lights at Howard and at Folsom were both out. When I got home, I quickly saw that power was out there as well. My housemate Frank—who had moved in with me several weeks earlier and whose constant presence (he had just lost his job) was already putting a strain on our relationship (another story for another time), seemed nonchalant about the whole thing and was busy mopping up water that had spilled out of the aquarium.
Remembering what I’d been told about things to do after an earthquake, I grabbed my pipe wrench and headed down to the basement to turn off the gas. I initially turned our’s off, but after a couple hours, with no one in the building smelling any gas, I went back downstairs and turned it back on so we could at least cook dinner.
Obviously the power didn’t come back on, so I didn’t get to enjoy my new monitor, but we had candles, and Frank had a battery-powered radio so we were at least able to stay abreast of what was happening and counted ourselves very lucky as the spotty reports of the damage starting coming in: the Bay Bridge, the Marina (we could see the smoke rising from our living room windows), and the Cypress Freeway in the east Bay. I thought back to all the times I’d driven that freeway that had pancaked…
I phoned my mom to let her know I was okay within minutes of arriving home. After I hung up with her, I phoned my dad to make sure he was okay (he was also living in San Francisco at the time). He was fine as well—a little shaken but okay. I was glad I called Mom when I did, because when I tried to call again about fifteen minutes later, I got the perpetual “All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later,” message each time I tried.
As night fell over the city, it was indeed very dark. The only lights seen on Twin Peaks was the dim flickering of thousands of candles. By 10 pm, they were mostly all extinguished and the light of the just-past-full moon was illuminating the city in an eerie glow I’d never seen before.
Neither Frank or I were overly concerned. We and the cats had plenty of food in the house and we stayed out of the refrigerator and freezer to conserve the cold until the power came back on. It was a little odd sleeping without the constant din of the traffic on Folsom or the quiet whirring of the bedroom fan, but I managed.
The next morning there was still no power. I held out hope it would be on sometime that day since Dad told me his—and in fact, much of the city’s—electricity had been restored sometime during the night. I was able to get hold of everyone from work, and they were also okay. I was told to not attempt to come downtown. Jack and Nick had returned to the office right after the rumbling stopped and discovered the office was a mess. They couldn’t get the security gate at the entrance to our suite open, but they were able to go through the entrance of the structural engineering office next door. They peeked over the partitions and saw that all the not-fastened-to-the-wall bookcases which had lined the entire south wall of our space had toppled, and while the building itself was not (yet) red-tagged, they didn’t want to risk having anyone in there; the cleanup could wait.
Frank was in a pouty mood because of the power still being out, and since I didn’t want to deal with it, I ignored my employers’ recommendations to just stay home and I headed out to explore.
Hoping to find an open restaurant to grab a bite to eat, I walked up to Market Street hoping to catch a train to the Castro. Surprisingly, the underground MUNI was running—albeit with only limited service between the Embarcadero and Van Ness stations, so riding a train to the Castro wasn’t an option. I hopped on a bus, and while not unexpected based on what Dad had told me about the rest of the city, power was on in the Castro, but every restaurant that was open was mobbed. And quite unexpectedly, there was a strong, bizarre sexual electricity in the air; it seemed like every beautiful man in the city was out cruising and looking to get laid. I finally gave up hope of getting something to eat, and left went back home, stopping to grab a sandwich at Ted’s Market on Howard Street.
By the time I arrived home Frank was gone, also out exploring.
The next day—with the power still unrestored—and myself now caught up in that weird sexual energy and horny as fuck, I went downtown looking for trouble and was surprised to discover that most of my usual haunts were open, and let me tell ya…they were hopping.
I can quite honestly say that I wasn’t frightened during the ordeal. It was more exciting than anything else. And despite the inconvenience of being without power for what turned into 36 hours, I can say it was quite a break in the day-to-day monotony of my life. Granted, it wasn’t quite as big a break as if giant UFOs had appeared over the world’s cities, but it came damn close.
Believe it or not, I once dated a porn star. Okay…a “male adult model.” He wasn’t a top-tier or well-known by any means. He didn’t do any films (that I know of), and only appeared in one issue of Advocate Men, but from the moment I first saw him on the cover of that magazine in June 1986, I knew our paths would eventually cross—even though at the time I had no idea where or when that might happen. The bio in the magazine said “Justin Banks” was a landscape architect who lived in San Francisco. I was still living in Tucson, and while the cogs were definitely in motion for my eventual relation to SF, nothing was yet firmly in place.
Of course all that changed in the blink of an eye and I found myself a resident of The City two months later…and not six weeks after that “Justin” and I passed on the street as he and some friends were leaving the Midnight Sun. Our eyes locked. I smiled. He smiled back. I stopped and glanced back over my shoulder, but he kept walking down the street with his buddies. And that was the end of it.
Or so I thought.
The following February a friend and I were at a toy store in Corta Madera called The Imaginarium, where we spotted “Justin” working behind the counter. So much for being a landscape architect…
His eyes lit up when he saw me and immeidately came over. He definitely remembered our two-ships-passing moment, telling me that after he’d dropped his friends at their car that night he came back to try and find me, but I’d already disappeared into the night. He introduced himself with his real name (Michael Rose) and gave me his phone number. “Call me.”
The rest is now ancient history, but we ended up dating for a few months. And all I can say about that is Michael taught me a valuable life lesson: NEVER date porn stars—excuse me, “male adult models”—not even the B-Listers.
…are the people who threw themselves out of open, broken windows rather than be burned or crushed by the building falling around them.
It seemed we were one people for weeks and months following the attack. Now we can’t even unite in the simplest of ways to prevent our fellow citizens from perishing.
Like many gay men of a certain age, I have my own salacious stories of the clandestine (and not-so-clandestine) venues that catered to this sort of activity in the 80s and 90s—albeit in San Francisco, not New York.
I can hear you now, “Do tell!”
• The Shaklee Building, 2nd Floor
• 255 Bush, 2nd Floor
• The Russ Building, 11th Floor
• Rincon Center, 1st Floor
• The Sir Francis Drake, Mezzanine (the only place I ever almost got busted)
• The Hyatt Regency, 2nd Floor…and of course, pretty much every public restroom on the shop level of the Embarcadero Center, of which the Hyatt was a part.
But like one of the contributors in the video above pointed out, after 9/11 all these buildings slammed shut to casual comings-and-goings. (Or should I say, comings-and-cummings.)
Some day I may go into greater detail regarding my adventures—and misadventures—my own Tales of the City as they were, but I’m in no hurry, as much as I’m sure you’d all like to read them. I don’t want to shock my husband after all these years. I mean, he knows I was a slut when I was younger; I’m just not sure I want him to know how much of a slut I was…
We all knew this kid in grade school, a borderline (if not outright) homophobic bully who was going to grow up oozing testosterone while simultaneously terrifying and exciting our pre-pubescent bodies in ways we didn’t quite understand at the time. My own tormenter—let’s call him Squire—while never getting physical with me, loved hurling “faggot” in my direction whenever we were out of earshot of any adults. This went on for years, and while it tapered off when we got to High School, it never ended completely. Thankfully by this time our paths seldom crossed, with him pursuing sports and me avoiding them.
And—of course—we all know what became of most of these school bullies, don’t we?
Yup.
I ran into my own go-cart racing, faggot-spewing hellion in one of my favorite gay clubs about three years after we graduated high school.
He was there by himself, and looking quite studly in the jeans-and-generously-unbuttoned-flannel-shirt uniform of the day. In fact, he initially caught my eye for that very reason—until, of course, I realized who it was. We locked eyes, he got up from the bar stool he’d been sitting on, and in a flash was gone. I never saw him there again. I was quietly chuckling the rest of the evening, while thinking, “That explains so much!”
Despite the fact we dated for months and knew each other for years afterward. I do not have a single photo of Philip, and can only vaguely picture him now.
We met the night of the gay pride parade in 1988.
That evening, after grabbing dinner with friends, I decided it was time I venture into some of the Castro bars and see what sort of trouble I could get into. My first—and as it turned out, my only stop for the evening—was The Detour. It was a dark, hole-in-the-wall place with chain link fences, throbbing dance music, half naked bartenders, and that night was full of some very good looking menz…
It was there I met Philip. As I recall, he came up to me. He was quite drunk, but I was still flattered that such a good-looking man (inebriated or not) took an interest in me. We talked for a bit, and agreed to meet at his apartment after I’d run back home and let my houseguests who were ostensibly in town for the parade know I’d probably be out for the remainder of the night.
The houseguests were not there. This was a decade before the first cell phones, so there was no way of tracking them down. I left a note, grabbed my trick bag (contact lens case, solution, toothbrush and toothpaste) and drove up to Philip’s apartment.
He lived on Van Ness, probably somewhere near Clay Street. (I have long sense thrown out address books from that period and a quick Google Streets perusal didn’t come up with anything definite.) What I remember most about his place at the time was the elevator was old. It didn’t even have a door in the cab, just an open metal accordion gate. Philip had a large studio apartment that was done to the nines. I learned soon after that he was an interior designer—and it was evident. Unfortunately our tastes were very different. That alone should have been a red flag.
I stayed the night. We dated for a few months thereafter until one evening we were scheduled to get together and we had a blowup over my refusal to come pick him up to drive him back to my place, where we had planned the 1988 equivalent of “Netflix and Chill.” (I was in the middle of putting a desk together and he had indicated earlier in the day he would take a bus down.)
After that, we didn’t speak for months. We reconnected by accident later that winter and got together occasionally for some recreational activities when the need arose. It was nothing serious, as we both realized that we were fundamentally different in so many ways. Philip also drank a lot. Eventually this became a problem in the bedroom and things just—pardon the expression—petered out. We remained friends, however, until his death in 1992.
The reason I bring all this up is that he popped up in a dream the other night. Well, not him specifically, but rather that I’d found a photo of him—and being a dream, it was not just a simple photo. It was like a little video on a credit card. It was damaged, and while he was doing something extremely campy as I remember, it still warmed my heart to see him again.
…while my mom, sister and I were visiting her parents in Massachusetts, my mom decided it was time we learned how to swim. (I was comfortable in and around water, but I didn’t know how to swim, which was apparently not good enough for any of the adult parties involved in this decision.)
The dashing gentlemen standing between us was Chad, our instructor.
There is a reason I’m covering my crotch with my hands. I wanted Chad in the worst way, even if at that point in my life I didn’t know how. I can’t tell you the number many times I’d come home from one of our lessons to shower off the remnants of Laurel Lake adhering to my skin, soap up and shoot a huge load down the drain after thinking about the guy.
(“Oh gurl…those socks with that shirt? Were you high?”)
It’s amazing the things you find packed away when you’re forced to move and someone else boxes everything up.
This was published in October 1987. I never realized how many of these items were long gone from Jack’s menu until I saw this. I miss the Monterey and Mushroom burgers; also the Taco Salad and the Supreme Nachos.
The first thing to go is the memory. Or the knees. Sometimes both at once.
In my case, it’s definitely memory. While some aspects of life in my 20s stand out very clearly, others are more…muddled. And what I’m increasingly discovering is that things I swore happened one way—or in such a such a month—actually did not, as backed up by photographic proof.
And while it could be that those photographs are nothing more than a glitch in the Matrix, I find it far easier to believe that I just got it wrong and it’s a glitch in my matrix.
I don’t exactly remember how I got there or what I was searching for, but last week I found myself knee-deep in the online archives of Arizona State University; more specifically, their collection of Arizona gay rags from the 70s onward.
The collection is far from complete, but reading the smattering of articles and opinion pieces pointed out exactly how far we’ve come as a community and our standing in society at large in the last 50 years.
It was also a wonderful trip down memory lane.
(Click either to embiggen.)
Seeing the ads and logos from all these long-gone establishments especially brought me back.
And then there was the card shop on 7th whose name I was searching for a few weeks ago…
…where I bought this treasure in 1983:
Done by a probably local artist, “C. Ruth”, it thought it was adorable. I loved the colors, I loved the subject matter, and while my partner at the time, Dennis, didn’t have a beard, he was a ginger…
Frankly, I’m amazed that it’s survived the 24 moves it’s gone through since then.
But I digress.
Lastly, who could forget this information-packed reference? Kids wonder how we met up before the internet? This is how.
(I never bought one. Six dollars was a lot of money back for me in 1979; it was an hour’s work!)
I decided to enlist Google Maps to see what now stood on these once-hallowed locations.
To say it was a sobering experience would be an understatement. While I knew instinctively that the bars came and went even back then, it was still disheartening to see that so many were now just vacant lots, or had been torn down to make way for new strip malls and condo/apartment complexes.
Interestingly, the one bar that still remains in business and at its original location is the Nu-Towne Saloon; the one bar I have never visited. Back in the day it was “way out east” and basically surrounded by little more than open desert. Now it’s surrounded by development and doesn’t seem nearly so far east as it once did.
There will never be another quite like her. And unless we get rid of the Republican cancer infesting our government, WE. ARE. FUCKED.
A typical morning commute for me, October, 2000:
Who dis? New phone…
We made our usual Sunday run to Target today. We’ve been getting four dinners a week from HelloFresh, but let’s face it, we still need lunch and incidentals.
The store was abysmal, although not as picked over as it seemed a week ago. Still no paper products, but that was expected. We’re still in good shape as far as toilet paper is concerned, and I was able to order paper towels off Amazon (even if they’re not arriving until week after next) so there’s that. We were able to get everything else on the list.
The one thing that stood out, however, was the fact that no one (except Ben and I) seemed to be observing the six-foot rule. Idiots, the lot of ’em.
We did some purging around the house yesterday, making a run to our meager storage unit in the process. I wanted to find the bungee cords I knew were in a box as well as retrieve a tub of my dad’s architectural drafting paraphernalia that my sister had given me shortly after his passing. It had been my intent all these years to select a few of the pieces and make a shadow box to honor his legacy.
It took seven years, but after several hours’ work today, that intent finally became reality.
On another front, I finally got the door locks on Rabbit to automatically lock when driving away. This was a standard setting on Anderson, and I noticed it wasn’t happening with Rabbit, so I had to dig into the Owner’s Manual to find out where that setting was hiding. I also discovered this morning that our local FM NPR station (KJZZ) also transmits on two separate channels in HD. One’s for news only, and one’s for all-day jazz, and I can easily switch between the two. This makes me happy since there is a dearth of decent radio in Phoenix.
Not exactly forgotten, as I do still have the original prints, but my recent scans from the negatives do look immeasurably better.
…went to the tubs because I wasn’t that kind of boy in my 20s. Drop to my knees at the gloryhole at the Univeristy of Arizona Main library yes, but go to a bathhouse? Never!
Until we moved to San Francisco and I discovered the 1808 Club.
The 1808 wasn’t a bathhouse per se. The 1808 was among the first of many “sex clubs” that rose up in the City following the closure of all traditional bathhouses in the mid 80s. It differed from a bathhouse in that there were no private rooms and the only acceptable (and yes, it was monitored) interaction between patrons was jacking off, but it was still insanely hot. Lots of very hot men more than willing to lend a well-lubed hand when needed.
From an entry in my August 1991 Journal:
It’s been an interesting evening. I went to the 1808 Club. I hadn’t been there in over four years, and it was like becoming reacquainted with an old friend. Some things had changed, but for the most part it’s still the same as it was. There wasn’t anyone there I especially wanted to set up house with, but there were a few hunks running around; none of whom wanted anything to do with me. But that’s fine. It’s one of those places where you can still stare at ’em and whack off anyway; like live porn.
I don’t know especially why I went…I just had a need to get naked with a bunch of naked men. Probably some sort of unconscious male-bonding thing. Yeah, right. I wasn’t especially horny, but the thought of spending another Saturday night at home didn’t appeal to me, and neither did going to the Night Gallery.* I sure as hell didn’t want to deal with attitude and smoke in some Castro bar. Sure, there was attitude at the 1808, but at least you got to look at all the wonderful glistening naked bodies and throbbing cocks! It was kinda magical and the music was excellent.
*a.k.a. Mike’s Night Gallery, another story for another time…