Read Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle Online
Authors: Michael Thomas Ford
The stage was filled with gladiolas. The sign hanging across the back of the War Memorial Opera House said FLOWERS WHILE YOU LIVE . Thick clouds of pot smoke rose up from the orchestra section to our seats in the balcony. Not that we needed it. We were already high, soaring on the hits of coke we'd done not twenty minutes before. When the tall, skinny black man took the stage to the sound of disco music, accompanied by his two large female backup singers, we rose to our feet along with everyone else and cheered as Sylvester welcomed us to his show.
It seemed that every gay man in San Francisco was at that show on March 11, 1979. Sylvester had been our resident diva for more than a decade, first as a member of the brilliant but doomed performance group the Cockettes, then as a solo singer whose hits, including "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" and "Dance (Disco Heat)," were staples in discos around the world. With his striking looks and unforgettable falsetto, Sylvester was an out gay man who had made it big. He often performed on Sunday afternoons at the Elephant Walk. We loved him, and he loved us back.
Sylvester was at his best that night, moving from the dance energy of "Body Strong" to the lyric tenderness of the Beatles' "Blackbird," taking us on an emotional journey as he sang the songs that mattered most to him. The stage that was normally reserved for the grand spectacle of the world's greatest operas could barely contain the personality of one ferocious queen as she poured out her soul, accompanied by tuxedoed members of the symphony orchestra.
Midway through the show, the music stopped and Mayor Dianne Feinstein came on stage to present Sylvester with the key to the city and declare it officially "Sylvester Day" in San Francisco. Seeing her congratulate Sylvester was bittersweet for most of us. Feinstein had assumed the position of mayor the previous November, when former supervisor Dan White, who had resigned his position weeks before, snuck into City Hall through a basement window and shot and killed first Mayor George Moscone and then Supervisor Harvey Milk. It was a stunning blow to the city, and particularly to the gay community. Earlier in November the Briggs Initiative that Harvey had fought so hard against had failed by more than a million votes, thanks in large part to the help of former California Governor Ronald Reagan, who urged voters to reject Proposition 6. While we were celebrating that victory, Dan White took it away from us by emptying five bullets into our hero at point-blank range. The pain of losing Harvey Milk was still fresh almost four months later. Watching Mayor Feinstein (whom Harvey had infamously referred to as the "Wicked Witch of the West"), I couldn't help but wish that it was Harvey up there with Sylvester. I'd lost so much in those last few months of 1978, and I wanted some small part of it back. Harvey was gone. Brian was gone. Jack was gone. Gone, too, was Burt, one of the 913 victims of the cyanide-laced Flavor Aid drunk by the followers of Jim Jones at his compound in Guyana. Burt had joined the Peoples Temple at the insistence of a new boyfriend. I'd teased him about what I called his conversion-for-cock, but I'd never seen him happier. I learned of his death only days before Dan White murdered Milk and Moscone.
It seemed that the curse my grandmother believed had been lifted had in fact returned three times as strong, ripping from me everything I'd held close to my heart. Brian and Jack weren't dead, but I sometimes wished they were. After discovering them in bed together, I'd run to the first person I thought of. Andy convinced me to at least talk to Brian and Jack about what had happened, which I did during a tense meeting over coffee at Orphan Andy's. Brian said he'd grown bored with our sexual relationship and needed the freedom to sleep with other men. I understood that. Monogamy was the exception in those days, not the rule. (I suppose it may be now as well, but I don't think non-monogamy is currently practiced with quite the same level of enthusiasm as it was by us in those days.) I didn't begrudge him orgasms with other people; I only asked that he not have them with my best friend. He refused. He accused me of jealousy and insecurity. I accused him of cruelty and faithlessness. I moved out and back into the Diamond Street apartment, while Jack remained on Lower Terrace and moved from the guest bedroom into the master. Once again, he had taken something that belonged to me. We only spoke about it once, at his request. He said that he was sorry but he had fallen in love with Brian. I laughed and told him he didn't know what love was. I told him he would never know. I told him that this time I would never forgive him.
San Francisco is a small city. It was impossible to avoid Brian and Jack, particularly as Andy was still making films for Kestrel, although fewer and fewer of them. I think he made two in all of 1978. How he made up the difference in his income, I didn't know. But he always had money for rent, for going out, for drugs. Especially for drugs. Our use of cocaine, pot, and various other mood-enhancers skyrocketed. I went to work stoned, stayed stoned most of the day, and came home hungry for more. I slept little. My nose began to bleed from time to time when I snorted coke, but I ignored it as I ignored Jack and Brian whenever I saw them on the street.
It felt like the magic of the '70s was wearing thin. The ever-present smiley face that symbolized the decade began to annoy me with its relentless cheerfulness. I was tired of long hair on men and bell bottom jeans on anyone. Even disco had lost its charm, as bands who came late to the party raced to capitalize on the dying fad (even KISS released a dance single in "I Was Made for Lovin' You") or rebelled against the sound and turned out what DJs were calling New Wave. With bands like the Police and the Cars pushing '70s fixtures like Fleetwood Mac and Heart off the charts, it was as if the last crumbs of the decade were being swept under the rug in a giant cultural housecleaning. After it was all over, I would come to see the Sylvester concert as a farewell, both to the '70s and to San Francisco's innocence. The deflowering had begun with Harvey Milk's assassination. It ended in May, when Dan White went on trial. We all expected a quick and decisive conviction. White had confessed to the crimes, there was more than enough evidence against him, and there seemed to be no question that we would receive justice. The defense's argument that White had been mentally unstable at the time of the killings, as evidenced by his poor diet consisting largely of junk food, had resulted in the coining of the infamous "Twinkie Defense," the viability of which even the most lenient court observers found hard to swallow.
On May 21 the verdict in the White case was handed down, and finally I waited for some good news. Instead, it was announced that White had been found guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to only seven years in prison. I was stunned. Outside the apartment I could hear the sounds of people shouting angrily, and I knew that word was spreading quickly through the Castro. I went outside, looking for some way to vent the anger that was rising inside me. I found it in a group that had formed on Castro Street. There were perhaps only a hundred of us, but we were all furious and looking for an outlet. "Let's march to City Hall!" someone called out, and it sounded like a good idea to the rest of us. We began walking down Market Street, spreading out between the sidewalks and blocking traffic. As we marched, people joined our ranks, and within only a few blocks we had swelled to almost three hundred. Some marchers carried hastily-made signs proclaiming the injustice of the verdict. Others chanted, "All straight jury. No surprise. Dan White lives, and Harvey Milk dies," while some of us just walked, stone-faced and seething, toward the symbol of our betrayal. When we reached City Hall, the green was filled with more than a thousand protesters. Although police had been sent to keep an eye on us, they remained quietly in the background while we stood staring at the big glass eyes of the building where Harvey Milk had fought for our rights, and where he had died a martyr to the cause he'd spent his life representing. San Francisco's City Hall is a beautiful building, but that night we hated it. When some people at the front of the crowd began pulling at the metal grillwork covering the doors, a cheer went up. Soon the glass panes were shattered. Then someone slipped inside through a broken window and started a fire.
Sensing blood, the crowd erupted. In the ensuing turmoil, police cars parked along the street were set on fire. Finally, unable to remain silent bystanders, the police attacked. They met fierce resistance, as angry protesters fought back using whatever weapons they could find. Many of us fled back down Market Street, where glass covered the sidewalks as escaping marchers smashed store windows. But our fury had been slaked somewhat, and mostly we just wanted to get back to our own neighborhood and mourn in peace.
The police, however, had only begun. Angered at our refusal to back down, they came after us, waiting until we had gathered once more in the bars on Castro Street to talk about what had happened. Then, shortly after midnight on what would have been Harvey Milk's 49th birthday, they swarmed down the street. I was sitting in the Elephant Walk when the doors burst open and police ran in, swinging their batons at anything that moved. We had no time to react as they swept through the bar, smashing the bottles of liquor and smashing the heads of the patrons.
I tried to push my way through the oncoming stream, but took only a step before a baton crashed against the side of my face and sent me reeling. I collapsed on the floor, where the last thing I saw before I blacked out was the sneering face of a San Francisco police officer as he loomed over me. When I woke up, it was over. The Elephant Walk was a shambles, its beautiful etched-glass doors shattered and the tables overturned. Those who weren't too badly bloodied were helping those who were, and for a moment I thought I was back at Quan Loi as choppers unloaded the wounded and the dead. Then I remembered where I was, and I sat up, my head screaming in protest.
He helped me up and I leaned against the bar, avoiding the pieces of glass and pools of alcohol. Through the broken doors I could see people picking their way through wreckage strewn across the sidewalk. It looked like a bomb had gone off or a tornado had torn through. Looking at it all, I couldn't help but remember that on the night of Harvey's murder, the Elephant Walk had been decorated to celebrate its fourth anniversary. The owner had instead closed the bar in honor of the Mayor of Castro Street. Now the bar that had paid homage to our fallen hero had become another victim of his killer. Our city had betrayed us twice in one day, and I'd had enough.
I left the bar and walked home, the pain in my head subsiding enough for me to walk without stumbling. I knew I would have bruises for some time. The deeper wounds would take much longer to heal, if they ever did. I realized as I looked around me that I had fallen out of love with the city that had enchanted me as a 19-year-old seeing it for the very first time.
When I got to the house, I called out to Andy. When he didn't respond, I went to his bedroom and looked in. He was asleep, snoring loudly. Beside his bed was a mirror with just the faintest dusting of powder on it. An empty bottle of wine lay on the floor beside it. He'd slept through everything. Instead of waking him up, I went to the kitchen and found a fifth of Jack Daniels. I took it to the living room, where I sat in the armchair and drank it straight from the bottle until the pain inside of me became a dull thud, as if my heart had slowed down to the point where it beat only once a minute. I listened to myself breathe and thought unexpectedly of Dylan Thomas, the poet who had downed eighteen shots of whiskey at the White Horse Tavern in New York and died not long after. We had read some of Thomas's poetry in my English Literature class at Penn. I had found it dense, but wonderful, and had purchased a volume of his work, which I took with me to Vietnam, where I read it from time to time to remind myself that humans were capable of great beauty.
I went to the bookcase on the far side of the room and found the book. Battered and dog-eared, it was falling apart. I returned to the chair and held it in my hands, looking for one of my favorite poems. Titled
"Ceremony After a Fire Raid," it was written about the death of a child during a bomb raid on London in World War II. A meditation on grief and incomprehensible loss, I'd read it often when the strain of preparing bodies in the GR had become too much. I read it again now, stopping when I came to the third stanza.
Forgive
Us forgive
Us
Your death that myselves the believers
May hold it in a great flood
Till the blood shall spurt,
And the dust shall sing like a bird
As the grains blow, as your death grows, through our heart. Reading those words, my heart broke open. Although written about a child, I saw that Thomas's poem could have been written about Harvey Milk, or the city of San Francisco, or about anything that has been loved and lost to great disaster. I wept for all such losses, and for the holes they left in the souls of those of us who survived them.
I knew then what I had to do. As if a star had come out to guide me to safety through a storm, I saw where my course lay. The revelation frightened me, but I knew it to be true. Even through the fog of whiskey I knew it. And now that I understood what I had to do, I felt a strange peace come over me. Closing my eyes, I surrendered to it, and fell asleep with the sound of dust singing like a bird in my ears.
On the night of December 8, 1980, the radio was playing Bruce Springsteen's "Jungleland" when the song suddenly faded and DJ Vin Scelsa cut through. "This is WNEW-FM in New York," he said, his voice halting. "I have the extremely sad task of informing you that John Lennon died tonight." There was a pause as Scelsa drew an audible breath and fought back tears before continuing. "I am at a loss for words. I think for the first time in my career on the radio I don't have anything to say."