When The Candy Was Free

You know what I hate? People who hardly know each other jumping into bed together. I’m not against it for religious reasons. In fact, I’m not even sure what family values are — but I think they have something to do with the Care Bears. No, it’s because of my best friend John T.

Back in the late Seventies, John and I were “writer-producer-directors” for a big public relations firm in San Francisco. And over time we grew to be tight friends. We shared a lot of interests. He was a wonderful photographer and a classically trained pianist. He was gentle and funny and he had a warm heart. Truth is, over the years we worked together I came to love him like a brother.

John and his boy friend Todd were regular dinner guests at our big old house on Seventeenth Avenue and the evening always ended around the piano howling out Beatles songs or Cole Porter ballads or Christmas carols if the season was right. I won’t forget the time Patrushka attempted Creme Brulee for dessert, but the melted sugar topping got way too sticky and glued John’s mouth shut. The table fell apart from laughter.

John was a pal, and pals are hard to some by and I still miss him. Love is forever.

All because John couldn’t pass up a good orgy. He used to regale me with his sexual exploits. I learned a lot about the San Francisco gay community and its bathhouse, gloryhole culture. He once said living in San Francisco was like being a kid in a candy store and all the candy was free.

We used to go on the road together and I was amazed at his ability to spot and meet and pick up a gay cashier or waiter at the hotel – all with a look, a glance. He told me once he had been driving down Highway 101 up in the country somewhere and he had sex with a guy who passed him on the highway. They just exchanged looks and that’s all it took. They both pulled over and jumped out and got it on in the field and then jumped back in their little sports cars and off they went. Yahoo! Life in the free candy store.

He laughed about it and I laughed too. I guess I could have gotten all moralistic with him but I never thought of it, and it probably wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. That was the way it was in the gay world in San Francisco. Nobody had ever heard of AIDS.

Actually, the word was starting to get around. I remember one bluesky Saturday morning in 1982. We took the kids over to John and Todd’s Potrero Hill flat and jumped into their hot tub in the backyard. We had a great time as usual, but underneath I worried. Could AIDS get passed on through water in a hot tub? Should the girls be in here? Looking back, I’m glad I ignored the thought. Those guys weren’t long for this world and I’m glad for every moment we had together.

So, the next year I took a job on the east coast and, after that, I only saw John and Todd when I flew back to the City on business. I’d always drop by their flat to see what was up, and John wasn’t looking so good. He never would cop to having HIV, but I saw him preparing little vitamin protein supplements to spread on his cracker. We never really got down to what mattered – we’d just talk about business and trade east coast vs west coast work stories and talk about if the multi-image slide show business would survive.

John and Todd usually stayed with us when they were on the east coast and we managed to stay in touch, but less and less. Then one evening Todd called to tell us John was dead. He caught pneumonia and died quite quickly.

The fuck.

John’s parents came out from Pittsburgh. I guess the flat was in John’s name because they sold it and evicted Todd. They blamed Todd for everything. After a few months, he left the City. There was someone in Long Beach who said he’d take care of him.

God bless those guys. They’re both dead now because John couldn’t keep it zipped. Why couldn’t he just stay home with Todd? Was it really that hard to do? Excuse me, gentle reader. But do you see why I have a personal dislike of promiscuity?

Instead of a dear friend I get to see whenever I go to San Francisco, I just get another stupid fucking grave to put flowers on. I’ll just have to miss his sweet smile and gentle ways till I get to heaven. I wouldn’t want to go to any heaven that didn’t include John T.

So while we’re changing the world around here today could we please eliminate AIDS too?

Sally Go Round The Roses or At The Langley Porter Neurasthenic Day School, 1964.

“The roses they won’t hurt you…the roses they won’t hurt you.”

What were The Jaynettes singing about anyway? It was the hottest song on our scene up at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Day Care Center for Mind-Blown Freaks, Hysterical Teenagers and Proto-Hippies, and that included me, Peter B. and Loretta W. We’d play that weird kids song, Sally Go Round The Roses, over and over. That and Buffy Sainte-Marie singing “I’ll reel and I’ll fall and I’ll rise on Co-dine“

It was September, 1964. I was in the bughouse after finding myself hanging by my thumbs out the bay window of our flat on Golden Gate Avenue, Hayes Valley, San Francisco. Laughing.

It hadn’t been such a bad summer, really. For one thing, A Hard Day’s Night came out, and everyone I knew was busily revising their opinions about rock n roll. The Beatles were, you know – far out! Actually though, I’m not sure we were saying “Far Out!” yet in the summer of 1964. But we definitely would not have said they were “Totally cool!”. ‘Totally’ was still the province of as yet unheard of Valley Girls.

Maybe we said the Beatles were hip to the jive! Hep to the haps! I will go look in my 1964 journals. Meanwhile…

Top 40 was the steady background noise on our totally cool underground midnight hi-fi radios just like on every other young person’s radio in America – squares and coolguys, beatniks, accountants, soldiers, FBI agents, we all listened to the same 40 songs over and over. That was all there was, except for KJAZ and KIBE, our jazz and classical stations, and KDIA, the r&b station across the bay in Oakland. In San Francisco, Top 40 was KYA, the Boss of the Bay, and the hippest DJ was Russ “The Moose” Syracuse, who had the midnight to dawn slot.

Oh sorry, I digress. I was plugging Hard Day’s Night. The Beatles had been around all year but it was the movie that changed everything among the hippies.

I didn’t know quite what to make of it when Bill Laird, my bearded beatnik photographer friend, told me I HAD to see A Hard Day’s Night. A teenager movie? Well, OK…But as soon as the Beatles split into the baggage car and started singing “I Should Have Known Better” and John whipped out his harmonica and all the little birds were grinning in the boxcar too – Linda Lovely and Bill and Muttsie and I were all hooked, dazzled, thrilled. We stayed to watch it three times.

Hey, they were the Fab Four, and they were just as cool as we were! How could that have happened?

The Beatles blew into our lives and nearly took over. I dreamed I was friends with John and Paul. The 1964 presidential election was coming up – and on our bay window we posted a sign, RINGO FOR PRESIDENT. I bought a Beatles fan magazine. We cut out the photos and got stoned and made Beatles collages. The sound track from Hard Day’s Night never stopped. Even Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, my previous favorite record, was gathering dust. We all listened to Russ the Moose with fresh ears. Even Peter and Gordon sounded cool. They were English! They had Beatle cuts!

“I don’t care what they say, I won’t stay in a world without love…”

Another song I was mad about, now forgotten, was Shirley Ellis’ “Let’s Get Down To The Real Nitty-Gritty.” Oh man, I can still hear those horns in my head doing their downslide. They thrilled my insides.

“Some people know about it, some don’t.”

I guess I know about it, I thought as I hung out the window by my fingernail fragments. Enough of grim reality. Enough of suffering. I’m shutting my mind off as of this moment. Here I go! Into the great eternal Now! Yes!

Having made my decision I climbed back in through the bay window and waited expectantly for the Great Now to appear. What would it look like to live with no past to remember, no future to groan over? No future left or past. The Zen moment. Ah! An apple! Shall I touch its blistery skin?

So, the next day I’m sitting cross-legged in Washington Square, North Beach, talking to an older friend about my newfound decision to eliminate the negative, discard the past and refute the future. I’d forgotten Chuck was studying to be a psychiatrist. And that he had a part-time job in the same office as my Dad.

Next thing I knew it was Thorazine and “Sally, don’t you go downtown.” I was in the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, the bughouse, with Peter B., later one of the founding Diggers, also having a momentary lapse of judgment, and Loretta W., the first dyke I ever knew.

Hey, if I called her gay — that would be an anachronism too. In September 1964, the sexes were divided into straights, dykes (butch or femme) and fags. And I was totally blind to the offensive, dehumanizing implications of those words. Peter B., on the other hand, saw them perfectly clearly. I was a little in awe of him. He had a lofty intelligence. He stood on the sidelines, thinking, smiling ironically. He was a Ponderer.

Anyway, Loretta and Peter and I were pals. After a hard day at the bughouse, Peter and I would adjourn to a Divisadero Street r&b bar for a quick shot of red-eye. I studied his words, his facial expressions and his half-smiles. I wanted some of that east coast hipster cool, too.

Loretta taught me all about committing suicide and how it might get you into Langley Porter. She was older than me – at least thirty – and had had a sad awakening in the shower with her Marin County ex-lover.

“Saddest thing in the whole wide world – see your baby with another girl.”

Loretta looked just like George Harrison. Pixie cut. Rail thin. Blue jeans, scuffed tennies and a man’s dress shirt with the tails hanging out. Screwy as a loon but much funnier than a loon. We played badminton together and went roller skating together and laughed at each other’s cracks in group therapy. We drove to LA over Christmas and slept at her other ex-lover’s house in Coldwater Canyon. There was nobody home so we drank the lady’s scotch and looked out over the LA lights and played the brand new Beatles ’65 continuously and non-stop. And had a fine time, just the two of us.

“Oh dear what can I do – Baby’s in Black and I’m feeling blue, tell me oh what can I do?.”

Peter never laughed. He was New York sardonic. But he was funny too. And he saw deeper than me or Loretta. We were sad clowns but he saw the truth about the corruption of the world. Or at least he had thought about it, while Loretta and I were more thinking about the Beatles and the ouch inside our respective hearts. When we felt anything at all. Which was hard to do when you’re loaded on Thorazine.

I gave up on the Thorazine after a couple of weeks. Decided I’d rather suffer than feel nothing. Than I checked out and moved to the Haight-Ashbury, not ready to face my future, but definitely ready to get into my present. Seems like all the hippies were migrating into that neighborhood – and that’s where I wanted to be too. Knowing the Beatles were coming along with me. I never saw Loretta no more. But Loretta, if you’re out there, thanks for being my pal when I really needed a pal. I never have forgotten you.

Langley Porter pic from their web site.
Hard Day’s Night LP cover from Blogcritics Magazine
Sally Go Round The Roses 45 from Head Heritage.
Nitty Gritty 45 from my collection
Baby’s In Black from Beatles Sheet Music