More Sex, Drugs & Disco: San Francisco Diaries From the Pre-AIDS Era

By Mark Abramson

In this sequel to "Sex, Drugs & Disco," Mark Abramson's diaries begin on January 1, 1980 with optimism for the new decade. San Francisco was a beacon of freedom for gay men from around the world, and he was there to write down the details of most of his tricks, love affairs, and all the fleeting encounters in between. Like the denizens of pre-war Berlin, we were scarcely aware of how special were the times we lived in, nor that our hedonistic joy in the celebration of gay liberation would soon be cut short by the terrible scourge of AIDS.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Abramson
• Release date: Mar 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370515066

Mark Abramson

Mark Abramson is the author of the best-selling Beach Reading mystery series published by Lethe Press. He has also written the non-fiction books "For My Brothers," an AIDS Memoir, and "Sex, Drugs & Disco - San Francisco Diaries from the pre-AIDS Era" and its sequel, "MORE Sex, Drugs & Disco." His next book "Minnesota Boy" is a memoir about his coming out years while in college in Minneapolis.

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Table of Contents

Copyright

Part I

Winter of 1980

Part II

Spring of 1980

Part III

Summer of 1980

Part IV

Autumn of 1980

Part V

Winter again

Part VI

Spring of 1981

Afterword…

Mark Abramson

Trademarks Acknowledgment

MORE Sex, Drugs & Disco 

Published by Minnesota Boy Press at Smashwords.com

© 2016 Mark Abramson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Published in the US and Australia by Wilde City Press 2016

Rereleased by Minnesota Boy Press, March 2017

Part I

In Sex, Drugs & Disco: San Francisco Diaries from the Pre-AIDS Era, the prequel to this book, I wrote about my arrival in San Francisco in 1975, fresh out of college and raring to go. By the 1980s, I was no longer so naive and innocent. I knew my way around every cruisy gay beach, park, bathhouse, and backroom bar in the city. Rent was cheap. Drinks were cheap. I was cheap!

Harvey Milk had been gone for a couple of years, but we were still reeling from his murder, especially those of us who knew him. But it didn’t matter whether you’d ever met him. He touched all of our lives. Harvey was our hero. He had stood up to the big, scary, hateful people of the times, people like John Briggs and Anita Bryant, the kind of people who tell lies about us. In my case, they probably weren’t lies, but I had no shame. Shame was for the closet. Coming out at nineteen, I had never really been in the closet. As soon as I figured out what gay people were, I knew I was one. I also knew when to be discreet and keep my mouth shut. Most of the time.

The gay men of my generation weren’t so much fighting for gay rights in the early ’80s as we were taking advantage of what we had won. We were hedonistic bodies and souls, rebelling against the Puritanism of the ’50s and latching on to the free love spirit of the ’60s. We were young. We had no idea that AIDS was about to decimate our lives.

As for me, I was always looking for love, but in the meanwhile, I wasn’t about to turn down all the sexual adventures that came my way. Sex, Drugs & Disco leaves off on New Year’s Eve of 1979 when I was getting ready to go out dancing. This book begins on the following day.

Winter of 1980

Tuesday, January 1, 1980 - New Years Day

I spent last night at the Galleria party, Dawn of the Decade. I’d like to call it awesome. I suppose it would have been if it were my first night in San Francisco and I’d never experienced a party like it before. I had a wonderful time. The Galleria is a great place for a party, with a big open bar area, laser light show, and good music. My biggest complaint was that, just before midnight, they played that endless song I’ve grown to hate, Enough is Enough by Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand. I promised myself that if I ever heard that song again, I would leave wherever I was. Enough was enough, all right, but the party was just getting started at midnight. Maybe the DJ meant we’d all had enough of the ’70s by playing that song one last time before 1980 started.

This afternoon, I took a nap, and I had the strangest dream. I was at my grandmother’s house in Iona, Minnesota. I was talking on the phone in the dining room at the foot of the open staircase, and a stranger, a big black man, was standing in front of me. He was masturbating right in front of my face, and he asked if I had any amyl nitrate. A woman in the kitchen said she was a friend of one of my sisters, and she told me she was cooking dinner for herself and the masturbating man. She said. Don’t worry, we’ll go upstairs to eat.

I looked out the open window and saw another black man standing under a tree. He turned around and looked at me. He was very sexy. When I looked back at him a second time, he was opening his fly and started massaging his enormous cock. He said, I sure could use some poppers, too.

I told him, You’d better come inside here with that big old thing. Then I woke up.

I ran into Hiram Titus on the street today. He’s visiting from Minneapolis. We’re meeting later for a drink at the bar above Café San Marcos. Then I’m going to a tea dance at the Music Hall. I’ve been eating vanilla ice cream with cookies, leftover from Christmas, and drinking coffee as if it were still morning. I enter the ’80s with my body’s clock off-kilter, numbed from partying, in limbo somewhere between last night’s alcohol and drugs, caffeine, speed, and the ordinary horny cravings of my libido. Still, I’m feeling pretty good. At least I’m not depressed.

Thursday, January 3, 1980

Last night, I was depressed, but I wouldn’t give in to it. I slept instead, and woke mid-evening, in the dark. I was missing something—love, I suppose—and more than the pornographic physical love, whatever length of time that takes. I wanted sex, but I wanted more. I wanted sex with someone beautiful. I wanted something different from the simple horniness that hungers for a hard dick through a glory hole or an inspired cocksucker in a dark room. I wanted a great face and wide, flat nipples and a muscled ass and thighs, round, strong shoulders and biceps.

So, my roommate Emilio and I went to the Ritch Street Baths, and I started out having my usual not-so-great time. The only people I wanted intimidated me. I felt a constant sense of reaching out and jumping back in a reflex action without any relaxation or satisfaction. Then things changed. I smoked a joint with Emilio, and he started making jokes, comparing cruising for sex to fishing, how you have to make sure the bait is still alive, about the difference between trolling and casting, how he’d need a stringer to hang on to all the ones he wasn’t ready to take home yet. I started to laugh and see things in a different light. Nothing worse than taking things too seriously when you’re fighting off depression.

I took a good long look at myself in the mirror, and I looked fine. I was wearing my red gym shorts with my towel over one shoulder. I saw myself as a stranger would see me, as a sexual fantasy. Then I decided to stop looking for sex and let it come to me. I got a room on the third floor and watched the parade of bodies go by. I stood in my doorway and stroked myself half-hard inside my red shorts and soon found all the pornography I could ever want.

I probed my tongue into perfect assholes and fucked them. I watched my body in the mirror and watched other bodies—whole naked bodies, not just bits and pieces of flesh through clothes or through holes cut in plywood or Plexiglas. I had sex on a bed, not just in a parked car or in a foggy city park. The Ritch Street Baths were perfect for what I needed last night. I got to thinking that the trouble with bringing guys home from a bar is that you can’t tell what you’re getting until you get there. Then you’re stuck with them, at least for a few hours. Then there is the possibility of messy phone calls for weeks afterward sometimes, if you gave them your real number.

This sounds so cold. I try not to treat people that way. I am kind and always grateful. I always find a good word to say about anyone I’ve slept with. Even at the baths, when someone I’m not interested in comes to my room, I don’t say, Go away! Fuck off, you troll! and slam the door. Even if they persist after obvious hints, even if they become obnoxious, the worst I can manage to do is to verbalize, I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is going to work out. I’m going to go for a walk now. I can never be less than kind because I know the receiving end of coldness.

I think I like 1980 so far. I mailed off two magazine articles today. I always like to have something in the mail. Work was busy today. Valeria called to ask if I can help her make those stuffed grape leaves called dolmas for a party she’s catering on Saturday. The ’80s—a time to go forward. I am twenty-seven years old. I don’t have to force anything. I can take things as they come, which means I suppose it won’t kill me if I don’t fall in love this year. I am whole without a partner, and I am growing in that wholeness all the time.

Friday, January 4, 1980

I met Crawford Barton on New Year’s Day tea dance at the Music Hall. They were showing slides of his photographs as part of the light show over the dance floor. I mentioned that Wayne Quinn told me Crawford was doing a book on the Castro. Crawford said yes, that he will include photographs from 1970 through this year’s recent NY’s Eve Galleria party, Dawn of the Decade, and he’s looking for text. I told him I don’t write about the Castro much because I live here and it’s such a day-to-day part of my life. I like to write about extraordinary things that affect me more personally than the neighborhood. He was fondling my ass the whole while we talked, so I don’t think he heard a word I said anyway.

Sunday, January 6, 1980

I’ve just had one of the best nights of my life. I met a guy named Jonathan at the Music Hall. He is a sexy, handsome, gentle, pleasant, intelligent, sensitive, interesting man who invited me to his house to spend the night. I ate his ass—incredible ass, nipples, hairy chest, gorgeous eyes, beard, arms, face, hands, and what else can I say that would really pinpoint him? He was comfortable. I guess that might be the most important thing. And I was very turned-on—secure, calm, and excited at the same time. I fucked him until he shot thick white spurting drops across his chest and both our arms. This morning, we did it again in several positions. His ass is warm and firm and moist and delicious inside. My tongue will not forget it. He came again this morning, and I never came at all. I wanted to and nearly did several times, but I didn’t. I have a date to see him again on Wednesday. I think I’ll save it up, and by then, I’ll be crazed.

Monday, January 7, 1980

I need some new bath towels. I keep thinking about Jonathan. I loved going into the bathroom to piss and coming back to find him on the floor on his knees, his muscular back arched, his hard ass spread and waiting, and his balls hanging below. I pulled his hard cock back just enough to lick once from its tip to its base, moving to plop each of his balls into my mouth, then pressing my tongue into his asshole to suck and nuzzle until I made him moan out loud. I snapped on my leather cock ring, greased up, and slid in again.

This morning, the sun poured through the skylight in his bathroom. We washed each other’s backs in the huge glassed-in shower, and he offered me the decadence of an enormous silver-gray bath towel. It weighed as much as a piece of carpet that size but was as soft as every comfort I can imagine. I should get some new towels so that I can return the favor, along with English muffins, raspberry preserves, and real cream for our coffee. I want to provide something besides my cock and my tongue, although the sex is thrilling.

Friday, January 11, 1980

Last night, we went to the Museum of Modern Art on Van Ness. Jonathan and I were obviously together, holding hands or with arms entwined, fingertips at each other’s tongues, kissing gently in front of the Picassos, oblivious to the reactions of strangers. This is San Francisco in 1980, after all. Afterward, we went to the Pacific Exchange on Fillmore Street, and I drank three glasses of Scotch on the rocks.

We came back to my house for munchies, and he fucked me for the first time. I sat on his cock and came quickly all over his hairy chest. It was my first orgasm in about a week. I’m sure my body was going through some kind of chemical imbalance because of the build-up. Then I blew him and swallowed every drop. We curled up and slept with small kisses between shoulder blades and fingers kneading nipples all night.

Chris from the New Yorker came into the Pyramid Building for lunch today, and I stopped by her office on my way home to renew my subscription at her discount of twelve dollars a year, about a quarter of the newsstand price. She wants to go dancing with me sometime. I could take her to the Music Hall. The guys would love her, especially on a Sunday afternoon. She also told me she just ended a seventeen-year relationship with her husband this week. She said, When the moving van came, I thought I would break down, but when they drove away, I simply walked back inside and said, ‘Well, he’s gone…’ She said she’d call me this weekend if she can go dancing.

Saturday, January 12, 1980

I just worked nine days straight, and now I have one day off before I’m scheduled for the next thirteen days in a row. I don’t know whether it is worse to be worried about money or dead from exhaustion. I was thinking as I drove in the pouring rain down Market Street this afternoon that I dredge up and replay too many feelings from my past. I need to give myself a figurative slap in the face and say, Wake up, Mark! This is life! This is now! These are your times passing! I have to remember that in any relationship, two people’s feelings are involved, not just mine.

Someone would approach me differently, for example, if he had just:

1. Met someone else he liked the same day he met me.

2. Made a date with that person for later in the week.

3. Ended a three-year relationship.

4. Received a romantic letter from a fabulous trick he met on vacation.

5. Been rejected by someone I remind him of.

6. Really prefers black men or Asians.

7. Finally admitted to his extreme foot fetish.

8. Found out he had syphilis.

There are endless things I don’t know about Jonathan and endless things he doesn’t know about me. All that matters are the places where our lives coincide for good times.

My sugar rush from the Just Desserts’ carrot cake I ate for breakfast got me through cleaning my bedroom this morning, but left me drained by the time I drove to Mission Street. I found parking among the human ruins at 6th and Market and stopped to see Jim at Frisco Disco, but he wasn’t working, so I went to McDonald’s and ate some garbage food because I was starving.

Monday, January 14, 1980

Yesterday we had high winds and pouring sheets of rain. Ron called about having problems with his boyfriend Buzz, so he and I went to the Strand Theatre on Market Street to see Sunset Boulevard. Afterward, we went to the Latest Scoop and injected ourselves with caffeine and sugar—double chocolate fudge cake and cappuccino, to be precise.

Yesterday, Jonathan came over to spend the afternoon in bed, and we had a fire in my fireplace. It’s funny how we each have a wood-burning fireplace in our bedrooms and rarely use them. The doorbell rang three times while we were fucking, so there was a lot of frustration, but it enabled us to start over again each time. Hours later, he said, I’d like you to come to dinner this week.

Still later, during a break to throw another log on the fire and smoke another cigarette, I asked, What night do you want me to come to dinner?

He said, Dinner? What dinner?

You said you wanted me to come to dinner one night this week.

Oh no! It was just a slip. I thought I was saying ‘Fuck me! …come to dinner… Fuck me harder! …maybe Wednesday… Yeah, Fuck me good!’ It was just a weak moment in the midst of sex. I didn’t mean it!

Dinner is definitely Wednesday, unless I have to work. He has such a delicious ass. I could bury my face in it for hours, and I intend to. He stood up from the bed to go to the bathroom, and it took my breath away. I said, Stop! Wait a minute! He started to turn back, and I said, "No, turn around. He turned with his back to me, put his palms against the top of the door and moved his hips back and forth until we both laughed.

Tuesday, January 15, 1980

I just made perfect Hollandaise sauce for the first time in my life. I called Toshi for detailed instructions, including, …and if it separates, squeeze half a lemon in the bottom of a stainless steel bowl. Add the separated Hollandaise a little at a time, while beating it constantly with a wire whip. Mine separated, of course, and his trick worked.

Now a whole salmon is poaching in Court Bouillon, á lá Julia Child. It has about twenty minutes to go and then a feast. Schubert is playing on the stereo, and the rain outside goes on forever. I am sitting at the kitchen table, looking out at the wet garden. The window is open just far enough to let out my cigarette smoke. Emilio is having a nap. Jonathan is coming over later to meet Emilio and spend the night. I can’t believe he hasn’t met a single person I know yet. Well, maybe he has, but not through me. I told him Emilio has forbidden me to see him again until he has a chance to interview him.

Friday, January 18, 1980

It’s sunny and clear, but cold outside. At least it isn’t raining for the first time in so long I can’t remember. I am looking out at the garden and noticed the daffodils and tulips I planted are nearly ten inches tall after all this rain. Now I wish I’d planted more. Last night, I went to the ballet at the Opera House with Jonathan and Emilio and some trick he met on MUNI. They did one new piece and two old ones. Afterward, the bar at El Rio was packed, so we went out to the backyard, which was empty except for an obese, middle-aged black man singing along with Liza Minnelli to New York, New York at the top of his lungs. He was a little intimidating, but we stayed outside anyway. Jonathan told me about his brother in a Florida prison on drug charges and his own experiments with drugs in high school. He had some funny stories, and I had none. Not from high school, anyway.

Saturday, January 19, 1980

I’ve spent the last couple of hours working in the garden. The sun is bright and clear, even though it isn’t very warm. I worked last night, and then stayed at the restaurant until past midnight, drinking wine and smoking joints with Don, the manager. I thought it would be good to have a little break from Jonathan. I went to the Ambush to buy some poppers and proceeded to the Arena, and then on to the Handball Express. I don’t remember going there, but I do remember some guy fucking me in the orgy room and a big gang of people trying to get involved. Back out in the hallway, I ran into Armando’s upstairs neighbor, Bill, in full leather. We left immediately for his house, where he handcuffed me to his bed and fucked me four times. I wasn’t really into it, as loaded as I was, and it seemed silly to be with him since we’ve known each other for so long. I guess I felt I owed it to him, knowing how long he has wanted me and how kind he has always been to me when I needed kindness. I thought about that scene in Streetcar Named Desire when Stanley tells Blanche, We’ve had this date from the beginning…

I woke up about nine a.m. with an agonizing hangover. I heard Armando downstairs sneezing on his back deck. I ran down the front stairs and out to my car, hoping he wouldn’t see me. Armando was parked in the driveway, and I was parked across the street, so he was probably too drunk to notice it when he came in.

Sunday, January 20, 1980

Today is the Superbowl, and it’s also Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s wedding to investment banker Richard Blum. It is sunny and warm, and I am sitting on the garden bench. I worked last night until 12:30, and Jonathan had asked me to come over, but he was asleep by then. We watched about ten minutes of Saturday Night Live together before I turned off the TV, and he was already asleep again. This morning, we writhed and made out for a while, but didn’t really have sex. I fingered his butt, but I was paranoid about fucking him, thinking he’d want to clean up first. I was paranoid about kissing him because of the terrible taste in my mouth. I was paranoid period. I’m not sure why.

Monday, January 21, 1980

I had the whole day off today, woke up at Jonathan’s for a breakfast of champagne, orange juice, and birthday cake left over from his roommate Bob’s birthday yesterday. This afternoon, Emilio and I went fishing at Fort Baker in Marin County, just below the Golden Gate Bridge. We each caught a flounder, which I cleaned and put in the refrigerator.

Jonathan invited us to go with a bunch of his friends to the Stud on Folsom Street for Punk Night tonight. It’s every Monday. I don’t know who had this bright idea. I’ll try to talk Ron into joining us, since he hasn’t met Jonathan yet. He hates punk rock music as much as I do, so he should be good for moral support. Emilio said he might like to come, too.

I make little rules for myself, like: Don’t get involved with another alcoholic or Don’t fall in love with someone with a tiny cock, no matter how much you like his face or his ass, because someday you might want more than that and Don’t go to a party full of beautiful men when you’re feeling insecure about yourself. It never occurred to me to make a rule about not getting involved with someone who likes punk rock music. Jonathan doesn’t have purple streaks in his hair. Maybe it’s just a curiosity of his, but I need to pay close attention tonight, just in case I have to make a new rule.

I remember when I was a hippie, how straight people stared at me and made me feel. At least hippies had some values—peace, love, anti-war, and all that—before they got mixed up with bad drugs and dropping out of anything good about the system. The punk scene is probably similar in its rebellion, but there is something physically ugly about the look, and the music isn’t pretty. I hate sounding like the older generation when I’m only 27!

Just last week at the Warfield Theatre on Market Street, Linda Ronstadt gave a concert of her New Wave album, alongside Joan Baez singing folk songs. It was a benefit for the Cambodian Relief Fund. These are the times we live in. I shouldn’t generalize about punk, but I remember all those years I wasted time defending long hair when having my hair past my shoulders was a nuisance, anyway. I didn’t need to spend any more years defending my right to shock people on the bus. There are more important things, like repealing marijuana laws and fighting for gay rights and women’s rights. I will go to the Stud tonight and who knows? Maybe I’ll enjoy it.

Wednesday, January 23, 1980

Jonathan just left. We had a pleasant evening, but my night was filled with bad dreams about being in a haunted house in Marin County, and then the house moved to Castro Street. I was in an elevator with someone I barely knew, and there aren’t any elevators on Castro Street. The elevator turned into a rollercoaster, zooming through storerooms lined with post office boxes and lockers. It left us off in an apartment where three people tried to seduce me. One was the guy from the elevator, and the other two were his roommates. They all had long hair tied in ponytails and wore nothing but jock straps. One was playing a flute and one was playing an alto sax. I woke up in my own bed with Jonathan beside me. It sounded like he was dreaming, too. I thought I heard him saying, Yeah, man. Fuck me. Fuck that ass! So I did. He gradually woke up with me deep inside him and a bottle of poppers under his nose. I love fucking him.

Thursday, January 24, 1980

I think another rule: Don’t set eyes on the person you’re dating if you’re not going to sleep with him that night. I had a cheerful telephone conversation with Jonathan last night, and then I went out by myself. I enjoyed the social atmosphere of the bars, the eyes of men, and the sounds of pool balls hitting each other. I felt like a hot guy, and if anyone had asked me, I could have said, Yes, I’m seeing someone, but I’m free tonight.

I spend too much time being paranoid, and I also have a tendency to put things in pornographic terms—Porno-think. I objectify the person I’m with in order to come, and then I feel guilty for my orgasm and try to make up for it by acting more affectionate than I feel. It’s like saying, I know I just used you for sex, but I’ll make it up to you by kissing you and holding you all night long.

Emilio suggested setting aside time to discuss what Jonathan and I want and whether our needs are being met. That could be heavy. So what? Should I risk it now? If we survive, we’ll be stronger, better than being kept alive by drugs and artificial machinery. In other words, pull the plug and see whether Karen Ann Quinlan dies? Karen Ann Quinlan has been in the news a lot lately because the doctors considered her brain dead, her parents won a court decision to turn off life support, but she didn’t die. There are lots of sick jokes going around. What did Karen Ann Quinlan get for her birthday? A mood ring.

Saturday, January 26, 1980

I am a vegetable today. Last night at Up&Coming, I took three hits of white cross speed to get through my work shift, and then I went on to the Music Hall, where I snorted four lines of MDA, and I don’t know how many lines of cocaine. Both of Jonathan’s roommates were there, welcoming me into their fold, their dances, their circle of friends, introducing me to people all night as, Mark, Jon’s new boyfriend, and turning me on to still more drugs. Roger said, Jonathan is a workaholic. He’s under a lot of pressure these days. Take it easy with him. If he likes you now, he’ll still like you three weeks from now. He’s not fickle, at least not in that way.

Bob said, Everything fell apart for Jonathan when he lost his last job, and he was so in love with this man, too. The relationship fell apart just when he needed it most. He still hasn’t gotten over it.

I said, I know nothing about any of this! When did all this happen?

October…

I think it was obvious that I was stoned and torturing myself over things I couldn’t understand. I drove to the Boot Camp, which is no longer a bar, but just an after-hours sex club. I indulged in sex like a greedy kid on a playground, not waiting in line. I was sneaking into the candy store after it was closed, getting all I could, knowing I’d be sick later, but that this was my only chance to take in everything I’d been deprived of lately, or only had meted out to me in bite-sized pieces. Now, I could swim in it, drown in it, and nothing else mattered.

Sunday, January 27, 1980

I have to work a double shift at Up&Coming today, and I should be getting ready, but I’m sitting at the kitchen window smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee instead. Mom and Dad called from Minnesota this morning, worried about all the earthquakes we’ve had lately. They’ve made the national news, I guess. I told them I couldn’t even feel Thursday’s 5.6, but I was at work and running around a lot. Last night, we had a 5.4, and I was home in the kitchen. I felt the house shake and saw the hanging plants swaying.

Monday, January 28, 1980

Last night was crazy at Up&Coming. I worked a double yesterday without even time enough to take a walk around the block between brunch and dinner. They hired a new maitre d’ named Jerry. He arrived about six thirty, when we’d been busy since six. It slowed down by eight thirty, so he decided to close. He took in the sign and turned out all the lights on the front of the building. I cleaned the bar area, broke down the back waiters’ station, and cleared some of the tables. I hated being there with him, anyway. He was camping it up and screaming and grabbing my ass all night like a fool. At nine fifteen, the owners walked in, and they were furious he’d closed the place. They told Jerry he would never work for them again and raised all sorts of holy hell. I was glad they didn’t implicate me. I was just tired and wanted to go home.

Tuesday, January 29, 1980 – 3:30 p.m.

I am having a cigarette at the kitchen window, watching smoke curl out over the garden. Daffodils are in bud, and the Princess flowers are opening in clusters like grapes, ready to make bright splashes of purple against the concrete foundation of the house next door. I picked the first Camellia last night, and it sits in a bowl of water on the table. It is the color of overripe watermelon, pinkish red and as tight with petals as any rose. The calla lilies bordering the garden are huge and leaning in a little, each cluster of leaves with at least a half dozen white flowers on ripe stems ready to unfurl.

The neighbor’s fuchsia has boughs overlapping the wooden fence, where the flowers will fall to the ground outside our back door. The primroses in the window box make up the foreground of this picture. Tulips and dahlias and anemones aren’t nearly ready yet, but it is only January, and it’s a cold day. I want to plant bougainvillea this summer. Those are the only textures this garden is missing. A plot of ground this size in San Francisco deserves at least one bougainvillea, either orange or deep red. That will be the plant I’ll leave behind, climbing the post long after I have moved on to another place and time.

In today’s mail, there was a cardboard cylinder with a poster advertising the new club called Dreamland, opening Friday, February 8th. There is also a letter, and handwritten across the bottom is, Dream a little dream with me – Love, Derald. There are two tickets enclosed. It doesn’t even mention the membership fee, which I heard is going to be at least a hundred dollars.

With a hundred bucks, I could buy a year’s membership at the new gym on 11th and Howard, but the offer is only good until the end of this week. I could put a hundred dollars into repairs on my car, or start saving for a vacation. Emilio and I have been talking about a fishing trip to Ensenada. I could take a drive somewhere with Jonathan, if he ever has the time away from work. Maybe I should plan another trip to Minnesota.

We’ve had earthquakes every day, lately. According to the Chronicle, there have been over a hundred since Thursday, though I’ve only felt a 5.4 and a 5.6. The article said the chances of a really destructive one in this decade are fifty-fifty or better.

The earth seems tense, especially on a cold day, or am I projecting the tension from my body? I wonder if I will be able to relax on the beach this summer. I can’t really swim. There is no safe place to lie in the sun, except in parks on the tops of hills, far from tall buildings. I think I’d like to be in Dolores Park when the big one comes. I would feel safest there. It could toss me around on the grass, but I would be unharmed. Jonathan just called, and I’m taking him to dinner at Yoshida-Ya at Union and Webster at seven. I love the food there. He will, too.

Wednesday, January 30, 1980

It’s already noon, and I feel like I’m wasting it, but it’s wonderful to have the whole day off. Jonathan and I woke up around six a.m. when the garbage trucks rang their bells outside. We had sex, then another hour’s sleep, sex again, and finally got up for orange juice and coffee in the kitchen. It’s sunny but cold today. He left about eight forty-five, and I went back to bed for another minute, but slept until eleven thirty.

We had a wonderful dinner at Yoshida-Ya last night. He confessed what I’d already heard from his roommates, that he had been in love with a man who’d ditched him in October after a year together. He’s still trying to sort it out and get his life back on track. It sounded familiar. I was there a year ago with Armando. Even though I knew the futility, I kept holding on. Jonathan is doing better than I did. He’s also worried about his job and all his real estate investments. He is determined not to have to work a day after forty, but he is a workaholic. I should be. Whenever I feel a touch of that, it never lasts.

8 p.m.

Emilio and I did the thrift stores on Fillmore and the big Salvation Army in the Mission on Valencia Street. I bought a pale blue shirt with flecks of red and green because it reminds me of a shirt I had when I was a little boy. I also found a red satin jacket and two green vases that match the ones I have. I stopped at All American Boy, and Ron was ready for his break. We ate cheesecake on the white wrought-iron bench surrounding the old tree out in front of the store. I wish all my ex-boyfriends could turn into friends like Ron. I stopped at Cliff’s for a pastry cutter, a new coffee filter, and a soft white light bulb for my bedside lamp. I am baking onion potato bread and herb-wheat bread with sage, eggs, celery salt, and Bernstein’s Italian dressing. It smells wonderful. Jonathan is having dinner with an old friend, Ernie, who is moving to Florida in the morning, but we’ll get together later. I’ve been horny all day thinking about his ass.

Thursday, January 31, 1980

Tonight is Wayne Quinn’s birthday party. I smoked a joint after work with my busboy, Rick. Maybe some coffee and Mozart and another cigarette would get me motivated. If I don’t do laundry today, I’ll have to do it on Saturday. I love to have my Saturdays free. A week from tomorrow is the grand opening of Dreamland. Jonathan is going as my date to use the other free ticket I got from Derald. It should be fun.

Friday, February 1, 1980

I am sitting on the garden bench facing west, away from the house, and it’s warm here. It looks like it could still rain by the weekend, but I see a little sun on the rooftops and on the neighbor’s lemon tree, hanging heavy with fruit over the fence into our yard. I’m thinking I should give a garden party this summer. When the grass is thick and green, we can hang the hammock between the posts below the deck. When everything is in full bloom, we’ll spread a table full of breads and cheeses and buckets of wine on ice. Maybe