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.