Big Lessons

If anyone ever reads this I have to say this. I wrote down the first some paragraphs, but after I paid more attention but I still can't figure out which visit back I went and saw him during, Maybe 82 when a wedding happened? Maybe. Shit, I am getting brain issues as I age and keep smoking weed by the ton.I have, for the sake of the forsaken, in the full interest of those who read and know to never never ever take no left turn unstoned, all that...I think I have it straightened out
that is all.
               

     

                             One of my friends, in 1972 in the early winter I believe, told us all he was gay. 

       He pushed it at everyone, challenged us with it, and got the unenlightened ignorant male teenager response, fear, ridicule, and, finally ostracism. We were all 14 to 18 years old. We were supposed to be open and love smashed according to the music and the times, but racism, misogyny, hard drugs, and lots and lots of fear and alcohol is what I was living in instead, but I was trying ....bleat bleat...

..

                Soon, he was gone, moved to a place where he could live in peace.

In 83??? I went back for a wedding, I had to go to it, best man, hoo boy,,,,big honor for a real partner so I did it, respectfully, I did it, they were in love and that was that. I went into town to see Pete. No one liked him any more, nobody I talked to, anyway

I went back there because the High School I graduated from was having its 10th reunion, I was still hopeful I could find a good guy to work the weed thing with. At the event,  I bumped into Pete's brother and gave him my number in case Pete wanted to call...he did but it took sixteen years

.

 He came out to The Bay Area called me up and came up to visit us in Petaluma. 

It was great to see him, even if he had calmed down. I had been worried about him, had been for years, I never heard from him.

AIDS has killed friends of mine, I will stop right there about that, I can't handle it.

He had the first snorkel coat I ever saw.

                                           He was/is intelligent too, sometimes we could talk about heavy shit and make sense of it.

He had to go to a special Catholic school which must have been joyful as hell for him. I had to go to a special school when I was a kid and I hated it too, so we had that and drugs in common, plus we both love the blues.

                     I was surprised, I remember, that I really didn't care about his sexuality.

I had a box full of blotter acid once and some of it got a little wet so I figured it wasn't very good anymore and I gave him two hits and he went to school behind them, well, it wasn't weakened by the rain but he managed to handle it.Us hard heads gotta stick together, no matter what I figure, so my esteem for him blossomed.

I knew it really bothered others in our set, all of us dedicated dopers and drinkers to some extent that pushed outside of the social norm, even the law., some thinking was done on occasion I do remember, but not in public.

I could tell, I actually realized that anyone but mine and my girl's sexuality was not important and

it didn't have anything to do with me. That was how I actually felt, no one gay had ever done anything at all to me, I had no badness to actually hang on them for whatever they did in private or wherever, it wasn't for me to really even consider somehow, no judgment I guess, I mean, look, I shot dope so what was I gonna say?

So, that slid in and joined up with my already instilled knowledge that where one came from or looked like was immaterial even irrelevant to friendship and interest.

I had found that everyone deserved respect until they proved they didn't

...moving back to The City...

I was worried about the numbers in SF, I knew of the large gay rights movement there so... was I in danger of being jumped or turned out,... drugged up and forced into whatever it was they were into forcing around back then, I didn't know what all that could be, but If I thought about it I could worry myself still, by giant slave-taking gay rape-o killers?? AIDS wasn't there, here, yet.

I was not sure. 

At all.

 I learned a couple of things.

 First, I was still really dumb.

I had a notion for a while that I was doing someone a favor by not being judgemental, so I was still an idiot.

I learned just how UTTERLYdisqualified I was for consideration of a possible love interest from a gay man.

An incredibly simple major understanding of one thing was that I don't feel that way about men. 

I am not interesting to gay men for dating or having sex with them because I am not a gay man.

OK, and then...

Not one gay man hit on me in the years I lived there. 

Never.

Do you know why?

 I am not gay.

               Why would anyone gay waste their energy and time hitting on straight guys when a  huge population of like-minded and feeling people was everywhere?

Another thing that was apparent to me was, just like I was doing- a lot of gay people were coming to SF to get away from everywhere else.

Around when I got there, the gay population was still growing and dealing with oppression by the SFPD. Plus, there had been incidents of gay bashing, and the citizens wouldn't take it. They fought back. 

                   When the cops hit a gay bar, well, they hit back. SFPD was chagrined I say, chagrined. They were being ass kicked by the fairies, in the End-Up on a regular basis, it was fucking wonderful, the Chronicle covered it well, Herb Caen liked it as well so everyone else did too. He was always right.  Between the bridges and halfway down the Peninsula, always.

       Big-time macho cops were really uninterested in getting their asses beat by people they considered weak little pansies. The raids stopped.

Attempted muggings continued. Escorts were arranged, from the neighborhood.

Surprise Surprise. Some of those people knew and know how to get down if necessary and YOU had to make it happen to yourself, go ahead and start some shit..

                                

When that fuck killed Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone, the City made a huge move up, no more gay 

 bashing here, motherfuckers, White Night settled some of that shit with the SFPD, and people patrol for people in the Castro now, just like the avenues.

...shit changed and it changed quick, power had been found and it wouldn't easily be let go of again, like just now when they recalled Chesa Boudin. I got plenty to say about that scene but not until I cool off a little more about it.

Now, gay cops patrol the Castro along with other reasonable people

What I was able to see was a people getting, being liberated, freed from the bullshit that used to come with and often still does come with not fitting into a "social norm", with belonging to a statistically smaller population united for justice and getting it.. 

The City opened her arms to them as she always has for the free people of Earth.

                         I  remember the sneaky snickers behind the backs

the bullying, the torture, that even suspected gay people were put through in the outlying areas of Boston as I made my way through that place...which I still love most of my memories of, anyhow, enhanced by past digressions from normal life as most know or want it and I was loaded the whole time, no shit, always...so, what do you want from me on that?

I talked some shit, too. My teen years were fraught with teen angst, I went through that,  I didn't like the cool dudes, I ducked them, I wanted to be cooler than them, just to show them I didn't give a fuck, and then, sin of the century...I like punk rock. I really like punk rock. This was unpopular with the Led Zeppelin/Aerosmith crew I hung with.

 I fit with the other ones that don't and didn't. That's me, right there,even now, today I am still unimpressed by clothes or cars that I fit in, I ain't "one."

I was misinformed about, warned about, told about, and made sure I understood about people, foreign to me by people just like me and every bit as ignorant as myself.

I never pounded anyone for being who they were, I would rather stick up for them, they had enough of shit they didn't deserve

                                                I knew guys who had done that, beat up gay guys for being gay.

I know for a fact they thought gay guys were all kinds of bad, DANGEROUS TO KIDS AND THE WEAK, WHO COULD BE EASILY ATTACKED AND....please...give us all a break, please please please, just leave people alone, goddammit

         So, I never really knew what was what until my mind unlocked another good file buried in there, looked a little deeper at it, and thought about it, the friendship between my old pal and me

Our friendship had had a huge hidden dimension, hidden to me anyway, a gulf full of fear.

He had been afraid of me, us, his friends. His sexuality, His family. His school.

                                          All your life, imagine this, all your life, you hide from yourself and everyone how you really feel, do shit to prove you are not what you are, not who you are, an act for the world and a veil over the mirror, soon it all seems fake, nothing you do is satisfying, fear of yourself invades and then if you just cannot get used to the closet dwelling you can get off of now, but not so easy then, it took real guts to do what Pete did. it proves the humanity in him, his life changed radically when he got real, so has mine when it happened to me, he was way ahead of us, necessity is the mother of me and Pete's un -miserization in this crazy fucking place.. 

San Francisco is relief, the Castro was and is, a feature of America we never want to lose and in fact, the more we expand it the closer to the stars we will be.

I went to visit him in town, Boston,whenI was in town for a wedding, 1983??? I think so, anyways Cambridge, where he was living, on Mt.  Auburn Street, has always had that pull on me, I fought cops off in Harvard Square, met my first real honest-to-god hippie street dealer,{called Mighty Mouse on the Common, at the gate, he sold great dope, all kinds of it, and he showed me some shit, let me not tell you.,} but for me and Pete, that was to be the last time we heard of or seen each other for ten years, maybe more. When I went to see him in Cambridge at that time, I faced suspicion when I returned to where I was staying with other old friends of ours and this is what I got....

"You crashed at Peter's place?" "He's a fag, right? What about that, man?"

Even Dave doesn't understand and if anyone should, he should. Listen to me and my shoulds, I am shoulding all over the place...

 

and then

Suddenly,he calls me and pops up in Petaluma, just in time to meet our newborn son, Patrick. Pete's partner hung out with Jess and Patrick and Pete and I went for a drive out to the coast. I brought some  weed with me but...Pete is a responsible guy now, he did not wish to get "all fucked up" so we didn't.

I ain't seen or heard hide nor hair of him since, but I don't hear much from the folks back there anymore.

Why Not??? I been gone a long time, I may go back and see my family back there but I don't know, I sure ain't hitchhiking to New York anymore,

                                                                 Here's Harvey

  

I fucking love San Francisco, where everyone that wants to be "out" can be, or not, it is up to you, but Harvey said to tell your mother. 

.

 

Wait a minute here, now check this out, I was volunteering backstage at a Family Dog Tribal Stomp at the Greek in Berkeley, Ginsberg and Peter Orlovski were there too, I had ingested a nice little piece of paper the "producer" gave me, and then I was delivering the buckets of beer and wine to the bands downstairs waiting to go on, Canned Heat gave me another little gift and I am not really sure but I believe I was floating around and Peter Orlovski grabbed me and french kissed me for some unknown reason, and I went home after dropping another 250 mikes to clear my head. I have kissed men hello or goodbye, out of love and respect. Us hippies do that out of love and respect for the end of the shitty norms, I kissed men, dogs, cats, women, a hamster once, bottles of booze, and bags full of money and drugs, so what's the big deal? I like french kissing girls enough to want to do it a lot more, but only them and even out of all them, it's only me and my wife, I ain't no perv.....no cheating.....

There's no mouth on money, technically, the fun there is not in the kissing of the shit, it is just having enough of it to feel kissed...

Well, shit...

The raccoons are here, I got a herd of criminal ones eating over at my house with their moms most every night. The teenager ones are fucking wild. When I try to sneak up on them, they run off a little then stand up and chitter at me while their moms saunter around, pissed off because the cat food is unreachable while I am on the porch. Sometimes they throw dirt at me

A guy said they will never leave now but they never have anyway. I live next door to the woods,  everything is wandering around out here at night, the deer come down and eat my apples in the fall, I feed five Annas Hummingbirds all winter, I did last winter anyways, we will see here this year soon,.                                                 JD raccoons leave at the end of their adolescence. out of mom's territory, but up to twelve female mother raccoons can cover territory like this here one, and they do not leave, so they are my neighbors, they were here long before me, I like them and I want them to feel safe around here. I checked out a guy on youtube called the raccoon whisperer, he has a hundred of them eating out of his hand, hot dogs mostly, they are polite, they take turns, they don't bite or scratch him, they eat and split.

The guy behind us raises hairy dogs, big ones, they live in cages in his backyard, safely and comfortably. The raccoons torture them. They walk on the fence, I seen one stop and preen for five fucking minutes while the hounds frenzied up, I was laughing and feeling bad for the dogs, but not really. I think they were having fun, too.

What a life I got going here, not fucking bad. I am a lucky man. My wife will tell you if you don't believe me just how lucky I got.

It's going alright.