"Do we really have to stop drinking orange juice?" Andy asked, looking at the button in his hand. Jack, Brian, and I had already pinned ours to our shirts.
"Only by itself," Jack told him. "It's all right if it's in a screwdriver." Andy nodded while the rest of us laughed. Harvey was right that something needed to be done about the Anita Bryants of the world. Her Save Our Children campaign, which she'd been waging for months in an apparently successful attempt at turning voters against the burgeoning gay rights movement, was only part of the growing anti-gay backlash. During the past eight years we'd become more and more visible in American society, and we were starting to find out that not all of America was happy about it. But Florida was far away, and social activism didn't really fit into the carefree world in which we lived in 1977. Despite his alleged aversion to homosexuals, Jimmy Carter had won the White House back from Nixon, Ford, and the Republicans. The unrest caused by Vietnam was fading. Life in San Francisco was pretty much near perfect for gay men, and we saw no reason to stir things up. We would wear the buttons Harvey had given us, but only because it required so little effort on our part. Personally, things were going well for me. Brian and I were 18 months into our relationship, and I was still as crazy about him as ever. Jack was about to receive his master's degree. And Andy, well, Andy was Andy. Or, rather, he was Brad Majors. His films had been huge successes, and he was now appearing regularly in magazines and on the screen. We couldn't go anywhere in the Castro without someone recognizing him, and frequently we found notes and love offerings left for him on the steps of our building.
After a couple more drinks, Jack went home to study and Brian and I decided to spend the night at his place. We left Andy talking to an admiring fan who had asked if he could buy him a beer and drove up Market Street to Brian's house on Lower Terrace. There we sat on the roof deck looking out on Twin Peaks and the lights of the city. Brian lit a joint, and we passed it between us as we wound down before bed.
"I think you have the best view in San Francisco," I told Brian. "I could do this every night." "Why don't you?" he asked.
"Why don't I what?"
"Do this every night. If you lived here, you could."
I laughed. "I can't afford to live up here," I said.
"I meant if you moved in with me," said Brian.
I looked at him. "You're serious."
He nodded. "Why not?" he said. "We've been together a while now. I've got this big place with just me in it. You wouldn't have to pay rent." "What about Jack and Andy?" I said.
"What about them? They're big boys. I think they can handle the place on their own." "Well, yeah," I said. "But…"
"But what?" said Brian. "You think you'd get tired of me if we lived together?"
"No, it's not that," I told him. "It's just that, well, I guess it's not anything. Not anything important anyway."
"Great," Brian said. "Then you'll move in. Why don't we go to our bedroom and celebrate?" I allowed him to take my hand and lead me back inside to the bedroom. Toour bedroom, as he'd put it. As he pulled my shirt over my head and bent his mouth to gently bite a nipple, I closed my eyes and thought about telling Jack and Andy that I was moving out. The three of us had been together for so long in various permutations that I couldn't quite imagine what life would be without them. Brian tugged on the buckle of my belt, pulling it open and unbuttoning my jeans. Kneeling in front of me, he took me into his mouth and began to coax forth an erection. Determined not to let my worries about the future spoil the night, I put my hands on his head and let myself slip into a dreamy state where all that mattered was he and I. I banished Andy and Jack from my thoughts, and when Brian pushed me gently onto the bed and climbed on top of me, pressing the warm center of his ass against the head of my cock, I was thinking only of him as I slipped inside.
Telling Jack and Andy turned out to be far less painful than I'd expected, which both relieved and annoyed me. I was hoping that they would be more disappointed than they were, but as Jack kept reminding me, I was only moving five minutes away. "It's not like you're going to Wyoming," he said.
"You're just going up the hill." The move itself was equally easy, as I owned almost nothing and Brian's house was fully stocked. I basically packed all of my clothes, records, and books into a couple of bags and boxes and moved them in one trip. By the following Saturday afternoon, I was out of one place and into another. Brian was gone a lot that summer, shooting films in LA, Palm Springs, and Catalina. The first VCRs had recently been made available to the public, and although they were prohibitively expensive, the porn industry had taken note. As a result, Brian and his crew were making a record number of new films, in the expectation that if men could one day watch movies in the privacy of their own homes instead of having to go to theaters, they might soon have a larger and more widespread audience for their work. I was left at home to feed Brian's 12-year-old cat, Ginger, and water the plants. Things settled down in the fall, and Brian and I fell naturally into a comfortable pattern. I liked being partnered. Domesticity suited me, and I spent a lot of time cooking dinner for our friends and throwing weekend parties that began on Friday afternoon and didn't end until dawn on Monday. Brian's work with Kestrel brought him into contact with a surprising number of interesting people, including some of San Francisco's brightest social, cultural, and political lights. Many were the evenings when our living room played host to conversations between novelists and residents of City Hall, newspapermen, and the gay sons of prominent San Francisco families. And the meetings of these minds were not always strictly cerebral. Once, opening the door to the second-floor bathroom, I interrupted a tryst between one of Kestrel's most celebrated tops and a cellist from the San Francisco Symphony, and on several occasions a noted—and married—weatherman well-known to viewers of the local CBS affiliate was discovered in the guest bedroom pinned at each end by obliging young men.
It all seems unreal now, but at the time it was just how we lived our lives. "Everybody was doing it," is never a good excuse, but in this instance it was largely true. Brian, myself, and our friends were not the exception to the rule; we were the rule itself. We enjoyed life because it was meant to be enjoyed. We didn't know yet that there might be consequences later on. Drugs and sex were harmless diversions. In the light of what happened later, it's easy to look back and assign blame. But I would argue that we were blameless. We were, in a sense, children who had finally reached the age of freedom. We believed that love could save us, and that our only responsibility was to live well. We didn't know that we might be killing ourselves and each other.
In November of 1977, Harvey Milk finally won his long-sought seat on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, beating out sixteen challengers and becoming the first openly-gay man elected to public office in America. Brian and I threw a victory party, attended by seemingly every gay man in the city, where we marked the historic occasion by partying in the street to ABBA's "Dancing Queen" and serving banana cream pie, in honor of gay activist Tom Higgins, who had hit Anita Bryant in the face with one during an appearance in Des Moines in October. Following the success of the boycott which had resulted in Bryant losing not only her juice-hawking job with the Florida Citrus Commission but a proposed television show as well, we were feeling victorious, and hoped for great things in 1978. Later that month, Andy and I flew back to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. In the nearly four years since my father's death, both my mother and Jack's parents had accepted the fact that we were not going to be marrying and producing grandchildren for them. Although we rarely discussed anything intimate during our weekly cross-country telephone calls, they understood that we were part of San Francisco's gay world, and they did their best to display an interest in our lives without asking for too many details. In my mother's case, this meant talking endlessly about the sit-com Soap , which had begun airing earlier in the year amidst much controversy surrounding its risque subject matter, which included a gay character, Jodie, played by the then unknown Billy Crystal. Jodie had qu
ickly become a favorite with my mother, and she discussed him as if he—and his life—were a substitute for me and mine. It was, I understood, her way of being able to talk about things she wasn't comfortable talking about directly. Unfortunately, she believed that Jodie was emblematic of all homosexuals, and that his trials and tribulations must also be ones I had or would experience.
"Did you see last night's episode?" she asked as we drove home from the airport. "No," I said. "I was busy packing."
"Dennis broke up with Jodie," she informed me, referring to the hyper-masculine football player boyfriend Soap 's writers had given Crystal's character. In order to make life easier for his closeted lover, Jodie had offered to have a sex-change operation, and had checked himself into the hospital in the previous week's episode.
"That's too bad," I said. Although I found Jodie amusing, I hated that he was depicted as a man who liked men because he was effeminate and therefore must be wired more like a woman. "He tried to kill himself," my mother said. "I don't know if he'll live."
She began to cry, loudly and violently. I was startled. "What?" I asked. "It's just a television show." "Promise me you won't kill yourself," she sobbed.
"I'm not going to kill myself," I reassured her. "Why would you think that?"
Her crying subsided as she wiped her eyes. "I read in Time that a lot of gay people do," she said. I gritted my teeth and tried not to say anything too sarcastic. She was clearly upset, and although I knew she had nothing to worry about, I needed to calm her down. Later, we could discuss her misconceptions in more detail.
"I'm happy, Mom," I said gently. "Brian and I are happy. I love San Francisco. I'm fine. You don't have to worry." She nodded silently, reaching over and patting my leg. "That's all I want," she said. "I want you to be happy."
"And I want you to be happy," I told her. "So stop worrying. Let's just have a nice Thanksgiving."
"That reminds me," she said, tucking her tissue back into her purse. "There will be someone else joining us tomorrow."
"Besides the Graces?"
She nodded. "His name is Walter Jacobsen," she said. "He's a landscaper. Patricia and I hired him to do the gardens this past summer." "And he's coming to Thanksgiving?" I said.
"Well, he's more than just a landscaper," my mother said. "He's sort of, well, the man I'm seeing." "You have a boyfriend?" I said, totally taken by surprise. "When did this happen?"
"He's not my boyfriend," she said. "Honestly, Ned, I'm forty-seven years old. You don't have boyfriends at my age. And we've been seeing each other for a few months now." "That's a boyfriend," I said. "Good for you."
"It's not like we're getting married," she said.
"But would you?" I asked. "Marry him, I mean. If he asked you?"
"Oh, I don't know," she replied.
"Come on, Mom," I said. "You're still young. It's okay to think about things like sex and getting married."
"Who said anything about sex?" she said sharply.
"Well, if you're not having sex with the guy, then what are you doing? You can't watch television and play canasta all the time."
She didn't respond, looking out the window as if something completely engrossing had caught her eye.
"So, you are having sex," I said, needling her. "Is he any good?"
She slapped me lightly on the arm. "Don't say such things," she said. "Do I ask you about your sex life?" "No," I said. "But I'm happy to tell you. Last night, for instance, Brian wanted to—" "Not another word," she demanded. "Just let me think that all you do is hold hands and kiss."
"Fine," I told her. "But you're missing out on a great opportunity here. I could teach old Walt a few things you might really like."
She smiled, trying not to laugh but letting out a girlish giggle. As we pulled into the driveway, she gathered herself together. "Thank you," she said. "For what?" I asked as I turned the car off.
"For showing me that I can have my own life," she said.
It was my turn to get teary. I leaned over and hugged her for a long moment. "You're welcome," I said.
"But I'm still going to have that talk with Walt."
CHAPTER 38
The two huge flags fluttering from the poles at U.N. Plaza were the talk of the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade. Everyone passing through the plaza on the way to the green outside City Hall stopped to look at them waving in the June breeze. Staring up at them, we felt as if we were citizens of our own country with our very own banner.
"Gilbert outdid himself," Jack remarked. "Those are beautiful."
"Thank you," said a voice behind us.
We turned to see Gilbert Baker standing there. Famous in San Francisco for the banners he sewed for various groups and causes, Gilbert's most recent project, done at the behest of Harvey Milk, was designing something to represent the gay community in the annual Freedom Day parade. The result, an eight-striped flag with rows of fuchsia, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, and purple, was breathtaking in its beauty and simplicity.
"The colors represent sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic, serenity, and spirit," Gilbert explained.
"Can you make us one to fly at the house?" Brian asked him. Gilbert nodded. "Can you imagine if every gay person in San Francisco had one?" he said. "We really would be over the rainbow," I told him, earning a chorus of groans from my friends. "We'll see you later, Gilbert," Brian said, then to us he added, "Let's go hear the speeches." "As long as it's not some old dyke talking about pussy," Andy remarked.
"Those old dykes and their pussies fought like hell to get this parade going," I reminded him. "I'd still rather see naked guys," said Andy.
"You see naked guys every time you go to work," Brian said. "How many of them can you see?" "Never enough," said Andy. "Never enough."
We walked through the plaza and past the Federal Building and the library to the Civic Center green. The entire area was thronged with people, and in the center of it all stood Harvey Milk on a platform, addressing the crowd.
"Let me tell you exactly what Senator Briggs wants to do," Harvey was saying. "Let me read to you from the text of Proposition 6." He picked up a paper and began quoting from it. "‘One of the most fundamental interests of the State is the establishment and the preservation of the family unit. Consistent with this interest is the State's duty to protect its impressionable youth from influences which are antithetical to this vital interest.'"
A chorus of boos met the reading. Harvey nodded. "It goes on," he said. "‘For these reasons, the State finds a compelling interest in refusing to employ and terminating the employment of a schoolteacher, a teacher's aide, a school administrator or a counselor, subject to reasonable restrictions and qualifications, who engages in public homosexual activity and/or public homosexual conduct directed at, or likely to come to the attention of, schoolchildren or other school employees.'"
"What the fuck is pubic homosexual conduct?" Jack asked.
As if hearing him, Harvey read, "‘Public homosexual conduct means the advocating, soliciting, imposing, encouraging, or promoting of private or public homosexual activity directed at, or likely to come to the attention of, schoolchildren and/or employees.'"
Harvey set down the papers he was reading from and looked at the crowd. "How many schoolteachers do we have here today?" he asked. Only a couple of hands were raised. Harvey scanned the group, counting. "Seven," he said. "Only seven who felt safe raising their hands. I'm sure there are many more of you out there who are afraid to raise your hands." He paused. "And you should be afraid," he said. "Those of you who raised your hands, you should be especially afraid, because you just participated in public homosexual conduct. You're participating in it just by being here today. And if Proposition 6 passes this fall, you could very well be out of your jobs."
There were murmurs from the crowd, as if this information was new to them. Harvey let them grumble for a minute before continuing. "I have more bad news," he said. "Proposition 6is going to pass. It's going to pass unless we do somethi
ng now to change the minds of the people of California. Right now the so-called Briggs Initiative has the approval of sixty-one percent of the voters. Sixty-one percent," he said again, letting the number sink in. "That's a lot of people who think people like you and me shouldn't be teaching their children."
He took a drink of water from a glass on the podium. "So," he said when he began speaking again. "What can we do? Gay brothers and sisters, you must come out. Come out to your parents. I know that it is hard and will hurt them, but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives. Come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your fellow workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop. Once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene."
His speech was met with thunderous applause. Brian turned to me. "Want to stick around for the rest?" he asked.
"Let's find a party," Andy suggested. "I want to have some fun today."
"Are you even registered to vote?" I asked him as we started pressing our way back through the crowd. He ignored me, smiling at a handsome man walking past wearing cut-off shorts and a T-shirt that read FREE PARKING IN REAR . I made a mental note to discuss the importance of civic duty with him later on, although I had a feeling it would do little good.