Tom called early and suggested lunch in the Castro, and we agreed to make our way to their hotel. Probably the best position to get a cab, was to walk along the one way street, we were staying on, a block, or so. The streets are all one way, and to get a cab outside our hotel, it would mean a cab ride around the block, or walk one block ourselves. This short cut soon had all the symptoms of our first night, and the simple walk to the Eagle, which turned into a trek across town. Besides, they were on the corner of Sixth, and something, which was practically at the bottom of the one way Street, down which, we were walking. Well nearly, it just doesn’t look that far on the map, but we walked none the less. It wasn’t that far.
San Francisco is a strange place, in as mush as, the very best suburbs, can co-exist next to the very worst. So with in a block, if you’re not paying careful attention, you can find yourself, suddenly, in some pretty seedy surroundings. Tom and Tom’s Motor Inn was, basically, in the next suburb, (by Australian standards) but where our neighbours were Masey’s, their neighbours were a twenty four hour doughnut shop, with bullet proof glass and bars. I’m even sure there were car bodies in the street, well, perhaps in the motel car park. It looked like the kind of suburb, in which, the rooms would be rented by the hour, rather than the night. I noticed that Tom and Tom kept the curtains drawn, while we were there, perhaps under the advise from the proprietor.
By the time we got there, Tom and Tom had, had a disagreement, so it was just Tom de B who’d be accompanying us to the Castro. He passed it off as Tom B (Tom B now lives in Melb and writes his own blog) was pissed off that Tom de B had shown us Tom B’s dildo, when he had a reputation, to up hold, as an infamous top. So Tom de B says. Like I had asked, I'd have to add. We decided to walk straight up Sixth, and catch a tramcar up Market, to the Castro. Tom and Tom’s Motor Inn was about six blocks from Market At Mission, one block from Market street. The tram car was in sight, Mission and Sixth is the closest thing I’ve seen to a ghetto, all broken down, or dosed up, with faces in every doorway, misery the most prevalent expression.
Tom, resplendent in black framed glasses and a bleached Mohawk, caught some pan handlers attention, surprise, surprise. A panhandler is someone who begs for money on the street. (2006 - funny how in 1996 terms a panhandler was so foreign to a boy from Melbourne that I had to give an explanation of what they are) They are on every corner in San Francisco. You can’t walk anywhere with out somebody stopping you, every couple of metres, for money. It happens just every where. And don’t think the Castro is immune; where do you think all the prettiest boys beg for money? Some people even live in door ways, sleeping when it is dark, and holding their cups out when it is light, without hardly moving. The pan handler who noticed Tom was a fat, loud, thirty five year old white man, with an aggressive attitude. He made some remark about grunge bands, a misconception Tom says has happened, more than once, because of his Mohawk. Some kid blabbers on about some band called the Screaming Turnips, to which Tom returns his best "it all means nothing to me" expression, and they soon get bored and leave him alone. A tactic he decided to use on this occasion. So with a withering look, it was eyes straight a head, and onto Market street, for Tom. This guy was not to be put off easily. He managed to get a word out of Tom, and once he had heard the accent, he had a road in. He was all G’day’s and bewdy’s, after that, but still no further acknowledgement from Tom, still the main focus of his attention. Tom almost swatted him away with the back of his hand, as he fled, or perhaps that’s what I expected to happen next, and it actually never materialised. Tom’s attitude had a definite "School ma’am" quality, perhaps just a little around the edges. Tom's nose was moving like a rabbit's.
This guy was not to be ignored quietly, and was soon yelling abuse after us, as we scurried up the street.
"Just because I live in a ghetto, you don’t have to treat me like shit" and, "I’m not just a piece of shit, you know." As we turned and ran, well almost.
Safely on the tram stop, in the middle of the road, we let our guard down, and waited for a trolley car. Perhaps we looked like poofters, I used to think that was a power only poofters had. And Tom’s white Mohawk probably didn’t help. Buses use the trolley car stops also and when not blocked by public service vehicles, cars are free to use them as well. So you can have trains, buses and cars passing you on both sides, and it can be a hectic little island, buffeted from all angles. As a tram stopped, and a bus pulled in behind it, passengers struggle to get by, when Mark was shoved hard, which I thought was an accident, until the bus pulled away and saliva rocketed towards us, followed by the scream "Die all faggots." After which, we concluded the shove was anything but accidental. Two assaults in nearly as many minutes, what kind of city is this, I thought, as I began to feel, decidedly, uneasy.
I think we ate in the equivalent of “The Spaghetti Tree” for lunch. The food in America is definitely not one of its best points. It is very bland and nothing really tastes all that fresh, succulent, or tender, or young, or at all. It is very ordinary. If you can eat it and enjoy it, you are well a head, believe me.
After lunch Tom, Mark and I wandered up the hill to Anton's flat, (2006 - Anton was the black boy I was having the holiday affair with. Cute. Athletic. Really nice. So sweet. I should have stayed in contact with him. Why didn't I? The foolishness of youth.) where we consumed some more of the dope we obtained the night before. It was a lovely afternoon, with the daylight shinning in through Anton's big bay window. We chatted lazily, and I found my comfortable spot, in Anton's black swivel chair, with Anton. I could turn slowly, in a one hundred and eighty-degree motion, letting my foot slip across the wooden floors as my head rested on Anton's chest. That slow circular motion can be so relaxing, like the lapping of the water on a boat, or the gentle rock of a train in motion. It was a place to be lazy, and we were.
Anton was handsome.
As day turned into evening, we decided to go to a bar for a drink. We decided on “The Detour“, as none of us had been yet, and we should taste the fruit of all the bars, when in a new city. It was a short walk, so in the fashion that Anton transverses San Francisco, we set off. Through the back streets, across Haight Street, through the park where the under ground railway returned above ground, our station, if we were coming from our hotel to Anton's place. We walked along a beautiful tree lined street, the address I would chose, if I lived in San Francisco; Noe Street, San Francisco. It reminded me of Victoria Avenue, in Melbourne, where the politicians live, but the architecture wasn’t right. It reminded me of Paddington, around the Number 96 building, all tree lined with terrace houses. The house’s were big, and grand, although I’m willing to admit that the beautiful trees, the branches of which met tip to tip in the middle of the street to form an arch, helped make the houses look bigger and grander than those in other parts of the city. As we walked along, I could picture myself living in this street and living a gay, San Franciscans life. Of course, such day dreams are of a transitory nature, such a house would only have me in it briefly, as I stopped over on my way to some where else, or on my way home, to Melbourne.
The Detour is a cramped bar with industrial style décor, divided up with metal bars and wooden, box type, benches creating sections. It is basically a shop front, long and narrow with a bar at one end, over which is placed its famous sign. It’s a bar, and busy the day we visited, where you stand around and drink, watch the Pool competition, or get involved in small talk, as the never ending pushing, of somebody passing by, bumps and jostles you. The famous sign is a narrow strip of, red, neon lights, about a meter long. Looking directly at it, it appears as a long red line, but as soon as you divert you eyes, from the corner of your eye it shoots out horizontally to spell Detour. As soon as you look directly at it again, it is back to a straight line. It is only in your peripheral vision that it spells Detour. Many an hour can be whittled away, in between small talk, playing eye games with the sign. But eventually it was just another gay bar, in which we were standing, with no room to move and no where to dance. So our interest waned, and we got restless for another space.
Mark walked out the door, in front of me, but returned to collect me, a ruse I suspected to hurry me along. We left Tom and Anton at the bar, in the throb of the music and the cloud of smoke. Tom was biding his time, before he went to another club, “The hole in the wall bar,“ his favourite in San Francisco. Once on the foot path, I realised I was wrong about being hurried up by Mark, as there, sitting on the street, directly in front of the door, was a pristine Volvo P1800S, looking gorgeous with polished, grey paint work, red leather interior, and mirror finish chrome, with Mark pointing at it, waiting to see my reaction.
We just wanted fresh air, and a change of scenery, and we wandered out to the street. We found ourselves wandering down Castro, cuddling and wandering to no where in particular. Mark had wanted to try out the doughnut shops, so we soon found ourselves sitting in a tacky, nineties style, twenty four hour doughnut shop, eating sugar coat creations, washing them down with bad, brewed, coffee, from Styrofoam cups. Linoleum on the floor, laminate on the tables, and harsh neon lights, turning every thing cold. A steady stream of people wandered in, looking quite vacant at the display case, waiting for the solitary shop assistant, with a sense of the last stop before who knows where. We sat and watched the world go by, for a while.
Soon we’d had enough of the doughnut shop, and its vagrants of the night, people who look as though they have endless amounts of time on their hands, but no where to go. We decided it was time to mingle with gay boys again.
Tom had been raving about “The whole in the wall” bar and had indicated he may end up there, so off we headed. Back to the South of Market area, a brightly lit bar overflowing with people, a little oasis in an otherwise quiet street. The traffic still thundered along the road, but none of the other buildings were showing any signs of life. Going inside “The hole in the wall” bar was like entering another dimension.
The whole place seemed dirty, run down, and busy, with an air of uncertainty and menacing, and it all seemed to function as if seen through the haze of an acid trip. Faces came into focus suddenly, and then were gone. People were ugly, with strange features, unkempt with dirty ratty hair and beards like bird’s nests, with animated mouths and strange pale gums, and lips. It was like a scene out of “Mad Max” crossed with a biker’s convention, threatening me with each gaze that came to rest on me. As we moved toward the back of the bar, it was like disappearing down a sewer, inhabited by more menacing creations of the urban jungle. We didn’t stay long, and though it wasn’t big, it was a whole other acid trip to get back to the front door. We extricated ourselves, straight into the grips of yet another panhandler, in waiting outside.
Standing before us was an emaciated, short, man in a beret, who proceeded to talk the moment my gaze met his. His cheeks were sunken in, and his tomb stone teeth seemed to be trying to part company with his gums, every second one of which seemed to be missing. A large, brown, jacket covered a thin body, the bottom half of which was clad in black leggings, and sandals. His skin looked healthy enough, but around the corners of his mouth there seemed to be a white substance, not unlike the consistency of glue, wood glue, which frothed and bubbled, as he talked. During his rapid speech he spat saliva and the white substance, with each syllable, directly at me. He held my attention completely, with his monologue about homelessness and Aids infection, which he got through a long, and complicated, ordeal full of betrayal from loved ones, violence, and even the government, I think. The jettisoned wreckage of society stood before me, and giddy for a moment, I found myself, caught in his web of failure and despair. The unfriendly world seemed to eddy around me, as a piece of refuse, snatching at life, grab at my heels. I can’t begin to tell you how I felt with this apparition before me, surprise, revolution, immense sorrow at the worlds failure, and a sense of hopelessness for him, and for me to make any difference, all at once. And my head spun a little more. I was in the middle of a retreat to safety, from the volts of hell, stopped by the thing we all dread becoming. I was in a different space, another place, for a split second, before Mark's voice, pulled me away.
As I took, what seemed like two giant steps, to the corner, about twenty metres away, to a cab waiting, with open doors, another drug fuddled beggar tried to stop me, but I was ricocheting from something much, much worse, and not even a glance did she get. The door closed, and if I didn’t command the taxi driver to “Just drive,” I certainly wanted to.
The drive around south of market was along wide roads, which crossed each other in a grid pattern. As this was the area we were drawn to the most, it was fortunate that I liked the taxi ride home. No matter what we had encountered whilst out, the taxi ride home relaxed me. There was some thing cool, and relaxing, skimming through the night, along those wide streets, of a cosmopolitan city, in the limousine sized (but not necessarily appointed) American Taxi’s. The deserted landscape, all lit by street lighting, purposefully urban, straight lines and square buildings, down each cross road, as far as the eye could see. Dick Tracey could have been working south of Market it was his style. And our street, where our hotel was located, up the hill from the leather district, looked more like a deserted department store district, in comparison.
