Background
I was raised in Wisconsin. I went to two Ivy League schools and spent two years in Chile in the Peace Corps. I’ve lived in San Franciscan since 1971 having passed through Hanover, New Hampshire, Boston, Philadelphia and Santiago, Chile. Along the way I collected master’s degrees in City Planning and Poetry.
I am a father, grandfather, and have been partnered for six years with John Cadle and two standard poodles. I am a spiritual humanist who wears T-shirts and jeans and learned more about life in my first five years in San Francisco than all the years in Ivy schools. I am the author of Do You Live Around Here? a memoir. My poetry appeared in ZYYZZYVA, and I am currently working on a novel.
Coming Out
Coming out was positive from the get go. The men who embraced me in 1972 believed in free love and were determined to be accepted as who they were. We dressed like blue collar workers and shunned affectations. The leather community focused on South of Market where men lived in tiny old homes or warehouses and were great for sex. Men in the Castro were into Levis and flannel shirts and were great sex, and Polk Street was popular with more effemininate men and men who came out ten or so years before me. My first years out were spent at the Stud then a Hippie bar with candles and lots of dope. Before I came out in 1972 there had been run-ins with the San Francisco cops, but they were already in the process of accepting us as a community and as officers when I was roaming the streets . Bars and baths were where it happened, and drag was passé.
San Francisco has always been a city that welcomed outsiders, so we were more interested in impressing each other as gay men enjoying life than the rest of the community that by and large left us alone.
From eighth grade on my family and another spent a great deal of time of time together, and with my parents eventually married the other couple, so I had four parents and four step siblings for many years. My father was so disappointed he sent a letter to my wife apologizing for my manhood. My mother accepted my being gay more easily without any real idea of what it meant. She and my first partner spent a week at a resort in the Caribbean run by two queens she described as nice men with antiques in every room. When I met the daughter of one of my father’s most admired businessmen who was a lesbian we agreed to tell our parents about each other. Then my father knew men like him had queer kids, so he could no longer think he’d made a mistake. My stepmother, a wealthy woman was very uncomfortable with it until I introduced her to Jim Hormel a friend who was wealthier than she was. Knowing her people were gay, and Jim is the nicest guy in the world, made it easier for her to swallow. My son has always been comfortable with my life and friends. When I asked if it bothered him he said he friends thought it was cool he had a gay dad.
Now when I think of the agony of twenty seven years of wanting to be normal and all the machinations of trying to convince myself and everyone around me I was straight it seems a terrible waste of time. Being out allowed me to do things I never would have done, and I don’t just mean sexually, like becoming a national gay leader and raising millions of dollars for the Gay & Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public Library. Being a gay man is exactly what I was supposed to be. It just took me a while to get there..
My Neighorhood
I moved to the Alamo Square thirty years ago when no one dared entering the park at night. Three years later I got mugged on my way home a neighbor’s. I was unconscious for four days after the doctors drilled a hole in my head to relieve blood massing on my brain. If my partner Michael hadn’t called the only doctor he knew who was one of his regulars at Toad Hall where he was a bartender I’d be a vegetable. Clearly I was living in a transition neighborhood.
I bought three flats on a lot two and a half feet wider than standard city lots. It’s a splendid building of original redwood construction. Over time I’ve rehabilitated the second floor flat and replaced the bathroom and kitchen twice on the third floor where I live. My son lives on the first floor where I’m replacing his old shower with a soaking tub and converting the two front rooms into a studio for friends and visitors. The basement has space for cars, storage and play.
I moved just as the neighborhood began recovering from redevelopment that demolished blocks of Victorians and replaced them with dangerous public housing. That process stalled when the market went bad. In the past six or so years Alamo Square has become trendy with hordes of 30-something white people who make a lot of noise and testy mothers who hate our dogs. With a famous row of Victorians on the East side of the park double decker tourist busses now crowd our streets. Parking is close to impossible.
Divisadero Street once a barren stretch of empty shops and shuttered banks is now home to lively cafes and a farmers market on Sunday. We have one trendy restaurant, a hip Cajun cafe and a specialty pizza parlor. The video rental store is closing, but the Laundromats and the barbeque smoker remain. One corner store sells organic food while the others sick to liquor, beer and cigarettes.
I’ve watched the neighborhood change mostly for the better, but because it’s San Francisco only the rich can afford it now. Without the diversity of young artists the neighborhood is poorer. It’s no longer an undiscovered gem but may represent the essence the San Francisco of 2011.
- Chuck
