Good Old Days??

Good lord.....I have been living in SF long enough to long for 'the good old days...'

When I could stand on Market St with all the tourists to watch the Gay Pride Parade....
When I could still stand for more than fifteen minutes without my back killing me...
When I still didn't even know any gay men & women
When I had a bunch of really good friends in my 'family group' who were gay or lesbian...
When I lived in a house on Hayes St with an old friend from Saginaw (now dead)....
When we used to have parties to watch the runners come down the Hayes St hill....
When I used to run for the bus to make it to work at UC/SF......
When I exercised happily by running across the street to have pool exercises at UC.....
When I had a prescription to use the HOT pool at CPMC after my knees were replaced...
When Bud and I used to go to classes at least twice a week at Fromm/USF.....
When Bud died leaving me in tears, feeling that my big brother had left me alone and ill.....

Of course the Gay Pride parade made me think of all of this...and my SF 'family'....only two of the eight or nine are still alive or here, sad to say. None of them succumbed to AIDS, thank goodness, just heart attacks mainly, or moving away because they can't afford to live here anymore. I think I may miss the wonderful parties at Bud's the most....I used to sit on the piano bench with his crazy friend Lyle, who sang in musicals... and sing, while he tried to find a song I didn't know the words to... hard. He's moved to Las Vegas to do shows. And poor Jan, my favorite of all my friends, who died for some mysterious reason they never figured out....it was as though she just faded away, very strange. Her sister told me they did an autopsy, but couldn't find a reason for her death. Yeah...there WAS no reason, she just shouldn't have died, leaving us with only half of Berkeley explored, and no list of what we each knew about the Bay Area. Even a bunch of my old (quite old) friends from Fromm have moved away....up to real 'Northern California' mainly, I guess to stay close to the ocean.

I could never go back to anywhere away from the Pacific Ocean, and particularly no where where I would be surrounded by republicans. There are so many reasons I worked so hard to get out here for good, starting, I suppose with dear Ned and his stories of a childhood in Sea Cliff, and his adventures in the Bay Area. I used to tell him of my darling Mary and Jones who took such good care of us in Memphis, and he told me of his Chinese nursemaid and took me to the restaurant she took him to as a child to have dim sum.

I wonder if he ever got to "Aunt Kate's" where we went for BBQ as children....I wonder if it is still there. I know the Peabody Hotel, where we helped gather up the ducks in the evening and take them up to bed, and go up in the morning to escort them down in the elevator in the morning, still is, as I have sent several of my friends there and had gushing postcards from them. "Lovely hotel....the ducks are still here....." Although I rather think the ducks are new replacement ones. Same kind at any rate. We lived there while Jessie looked for a suitable house for us, then a bit longer, until I got over one of my bouts of measles (not caught from the ducks, I'm sure). I lay in a large bed, windows drawn, surrounded by old magazines Alonzo Locke had rustled up for me, cutting out pics and pasting them into a large scrapbook with 'library paste,' (which doesn't seem to exist anymore) taking a taste of it now and then. Too bad it no longer exists, as my memories were much sharper when I could still smell the stuff.

Good heavens, the Gay Pride paraders must be dying of the heat! It is 78 in here, and it is always much cooler than the outside....much! So it must be hotter than hell out there. I shan't go out, as I do not like hot weather. I'll just pour myself a nice cup of iced tea and go back to work trying to write some poetry for the reading on July 21 in Yerba Buena Gardens. Hopefully it will not be as hot that day, as I have to wear a hat. Well dear Steve will have set up the tent over our seats, so we won't be in the sun, but the poor audience will be........oh, dear..............ah, well..................