My grandfather, at my age

Me and my maternal grandfather, "Pie" (Dec. 1901–Aug. 1982, so called because a visit with him always entailed grandmother's –Mimi's– unforgettable scratch-made apple pie à la mode, so warm and so cold, fragrant spice throughout the house, the main reason I needed to see them, in my child's greedy little mind), near the corner of Ferndale & Morris, across the street from their enchanted house (basement full of tools, attic full of treasure).

I'm, what?, three years old, making this 1959 or 60. So very strange that I can google the location today, and see the street view, and follow them to the water tower a couple of blocks away, and the train tracks in the other direction. I can hear the four-propellored Douglas DC-7s dopplering overhead on their way to Newark Metropolitan. I can hear the whistle and the rumble of the Erie-Lackawanna commuter train that took Pie to work.

I can see, hear, smell my grandfather, who was my current age in this photo, and remember his jaunty cane, his strong but labored breath (Lucky Strikes, emphysema...), his proud bearing, his strong hands, his thick Cantabrian accent. There is something poignant, graceful, dynamic about our stances in this photo, not so much posed as poised...

So many grays

This is me in front of my first home in San Francisco after dropping out of UC Santa Cruz in the early 1980s. I shared the flat with four other men, three queer and one questioning. I paid something like $141.00/ month for my share, on 14th Street, between Guerrero & Valencia. Biker bar on the corner. Frequent gunfire from the projects down the street. Colorful.

It was the terrible, early days of the AIDS epidemic, just before it was called that. In my household, it was mostly anguished, hushed talk about all the friends showing Kaposi's sarcoma lesions, 'the gay cancer,' wondering whether to gather at the bars & baths, and other early worries about what was going on.

One flatmate was a haughty, reclusive queen, very regal, very dark skinned, who never deigned to speak to the glum, naive straight kid. Another was a plump man of African heritage who was continually incredulous that a white boy could cook, or had rhythm, or could be smart or sensitive (regular serial comma). He deep fried chicken, ISTG, every damn day, in a cast iron pan. He was good at it. Didn't invite me to eat any.

The questioning kid, who may have just been aspiring rough trade, also never spoke to me, but didn't seem very bright, so I felt no loss at this.

The last roomie, the one who seemed the most sane, responsible and kind, was a ruddy complexioned, male pattern balding European American, and he was a nice guy. He was active in the community both socially and politically. He liked to wear fur and show a lot of bare skin. He was fatherly toward Master Roughtrade, who was, naturally, ungrateful. Some years later, I'd moved back to SF after living in New York and France. I glimpsed the last roomie in a restaurant, in the Castro, looking really strong and healthy, much more so than in those stressful days, and I felt happy that he'd survived and was now thriving.

I was depressed most of the time back then, and you might be able to see how skinny I was under my fogcoat. Long ago, but not so far away.

 

When I first learned to rock.

I only vaguely remember this rocking horse, my only equestrian companion, although it is clearly being ridden at my maternal grandparents' home in a New Jersey suburb, out in the enclosed porch addition where my grandfather had his ice cold Manhattan

every evening after a day at the office in the eponymous city, Ritz crackers and sharp cheddar on the side, a simple, hearty supper to follow. I now remember this is where I acquired a taste for Maraschino cherries, those fluorescent pseudo-fruit confections I always relished with my Shirley Temple at elegant restaurants in the country.

I keep discovering photos of my smiling young self, which confuses parts of me. There are defenders in me, strategic selves who would have me only remember the difficult, and rarely the sublime. But now I wish to reclaim the capacity for joy I clearly felt astride this springy steed, watched over by some loving adult, camera in hand. Yes–I would tell my defenders–I know there were hurtful experiences, but the scary places you would keep me from also contain these treasures, and the possibility of both recovering the sweetness of childhood in myself, and of freeing myself to encourage that recovery in others, is too important to miss. Stand down, my brave warriors, and let me be undefended when it's called for. Turn your eyes from my vulnerability, and see the strength I now possess. Let yourself fall, and have faith I will catch you, just as the earth catches my body, silence catches my attention, and love catches my desire. Stand down, and let someone much stronger watch over you for a change.

Bless you, teacher!

Terence McKenna & Mark Pesce – Techno-Pagans at the End of History. This is a picture I took of Terence, the only time I saw him up close, at Esalen in August 1998. He had not yet discovered the tumor that was at that moment growing in his brain, the tumor that would take his life, after experimental cancer treatment, and a shitload of hashish, in April 2000. I had just discovered him a couple of months before, shelving BLs (mostly gorgeous books in Hebrew with color splashed, dappled edges, far too many to fit on the shelves) in a library at Stanford University, when I espied a strangely hued paperback with a wacky cover, The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History (a collection of essays from various publications), a book that completely changed my life, and goes on changing it every day. Miss you, Terence!

Because of you, I've made so many friends, and grown so much professionally. I've gotten to know your lovely family. Because of you, I got tenure as a librarian, and collected over a 1,000 books on psychedelics and cannabis. Because of you, I've started on a quest that has already taken me very far, and is still gathering momentum. Bless you, teacher! 

Of course, I also miss Mark, but that's a different story. He's alive and well and living on the other side of the Equator and the Date Line, and even when he's here, I don't see him any more.

Lovers in the garden

My parents, Bibi and John, almost swallowed by the foliage on the larger of two bridges over the pond in Claude Monet's fabulous garden. A bridge depicted in so many paintings, paintings of which my parents were, who isn't?, very fond. 

All those water lilies, colors, reflections, light. All the dreamy, nameless, but very specific, sensations available in that garden, that Monet has planted in so many imaginations, forever. And there they were, on their last voyage together in France, in August 2000. 

They've both left this garden, in two different Augusts, since then, but their ashes are side by side at home in Malibu, and if there's any justice for lovers, their spirits are still side by side, in a garden, filled with light, to which we'll all return

Somewhere behind California Street

Here's me, in my work uniform as a student at UCSC in the very late 1970s, in my busy, ramshackle, noisy/noisome, student-infested, off-street love nest ostensibly addressed "California Street." Many memories made here, as I moved from apartment to apartment, bed to bed, affair to affair, and still wound up being lonely and depressed most of the time, before I dropped out. Totally my own fault for not grabbing (both literally and metaphorically) all the drugs, good times, gusto and ass flung my way. Not that I didn't make friends (one to this day), make love and waste time with the best of them, just on a smaller scale.

Irritated all, disappointed many, ignored some, impressed a couple, and got to know too few of the other inmates. Heard everyone do everything at all times of day or night, there being naught but black plastic sheeting between ill-fitting planks lining the halls full of terrarium carpeting. The building was perfectly sprung for amplifying the weakest temblor, and I felt them all, rocking me to sleep, rocking me awake, and just rocking us in flagrante delicto. Salad days, and most of that from the dumpsters downtown. I'd only trade these memories for better ones of things I never tried.

Portrait of the artist

Here's a portrait of the artist as a young man, visible only as the shadow of the photographer on a bright autumn day. I vaguely remember the Brownie style camera, its airy heft, looking through the viewfinder, the plastic clicks of cocking the shutter, of taking a photo.

Here are Mark and Matthew, comrades in arms, guns at the ready, taking a break from patrolling the 3600 block of S Street, N.W., Washington D.C., a neighborhood I later learned was called Burleith, just uphill from Georgetown, and a short walk west of Dumbarton Oaks and the Naval Observatory. I was only two blocks from Kindergarten, and I came back across town years later to attend Gordon Junior High, another block east.

I remember the alley behind the houses where I searched for treasure in the cracks, a natural occupation for a child who always kept his head down. Washers, bolts, springs, and other wayward hardware, the occasional penny. Potential untapped. Mine to keep.

I remember the fragrant wisteria climbing a tree high into the cloud-strewn welkin, distant and cerulean. The shining realm to which I longed to escape, eyes straining to glimpse the path to safety, to glory, to my real home. The mourning doves who, alone, knew my sadness in exile, and returned my plaintive whistle.

Just out of the frame, up the walk, the sturdy wooden door, locked, the pyracanthas standing mute sentry before the bricks. The house, silent and dark. And I, keyless and home too soon, sink into despair at this, the emblem of my young life.