The Big Parade
Boys and girls and transgenders just wanna have fun.
In keeping with the prevailing Bay Area zeitgeist of June, we boarded the ferry in Vallejo to attend San Francisco's impressive Gay Pride festival. As usual, we arrived late, missing the parade. This bothered us little, since we doubted that it could much exceed in scale and dissipation the one we attended in the late '70s, when the emerging homosexual population of the city stood on the brink of their brave, new world. AIDS had not yet slithered into the Garden of Eden, Dan White had not yet murdered Harvey Milk, and single-issue politics had not yet perverted the city into an example of urban disfunction and childish self-indulgence.
At the time, we lived in one of Napa's unique mansions, the old Sawyer place at the corner of Laurel and Franklin, distinguished by its division down the center into a pair of not quite identical townhouses. Built by the paterfamilias who had founded the tannery down by the river on Coombs Street, the building reflected a belle epoque appreciation of Italianate influences, configured such that father and favored son could live side by side. The arrangement suited us well; over the years it had been divided into four apartments, two smallish units in the upper stories, and two generous residences below, each claiming elements of the big, intriguing basement, containing at one time servants' quarters and coal bunkers. Its woodwork wore a coat of old, gray paint, the edifice constructed on a foundation of cut stone; a plethora of gray cats lounged on the porches, like color-coordinated fixtures.
We inhabited various couches and spare beds until we reclaimed and transformed one of the coal rooms, but sleep seldom concerned us so exciting were the daily routines and celebrations. We were the only one bound by a schedule and routine job, a position as an assistant winemaker at a small concern now quite large; Jenny, the woman of the house, had some sort of income perhaps related to illicit substances, and her best friend and roommate, Sarah, earned a living as the stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold. Jonathon, a most swishing homosexual, waited tables and designed flamboyant clothing; Peter Frampton allegedly wore one of his creations during a concert tour.
He awakened early, and we'd begin the day reading the paper in the kitchen as Jonathon flitted between the stove and table, garish robe flapping around his knees, as he fixed us a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs, while insuring that the hot coffee never receded far in our cup. Jenny and Sarah arose later to like treatment, after which they'd settle into a languid routine of entertaining the day's many visitors. Jenny held court in her darkened living room of rattan furniture, accented by deco ceramics and swatches of brightly colored fabrics, candle light flickering off the myriad surfaces. Conversations went on for hours, participants dropping in and out over the course of the day, and we'd come home to debates of politics, bizarre gossip, discussions about music. It all seemed very sophisticated at the time, evoking all the best we remembered of the Haight-Ashbury, but refined by the passing of a dozen years, and transplanted to the Napa Valley.
Jonathon presided over dinner as well, preparing sumptuous little feasts, often attended by an outsider or two or three, and lubricated by the wine we typically brought home. Then we'd retire to one of the many exotic rooms of the house to continue the party that seemed never to end. On weekends, it wasn't unusual for us to stage a large blowout, with live music provided by some of our many friends, and partygoers often included bikers in their colors, mountainman re-enacters clad in buckskin and accessorized by knives, guns and tomahawks, and artists who worked in every sort of medium.
By then, the neighborhood just south of downtown bordered by Jefferson Street and the river had earned the name "Junky Acres," in acknowledgement of the decade's worth of inhabitance by the counter culture. Friends maintained apartments and houses throughout the area, and we knew someone on just about every block; parties erupted quickly and often, word-of-mouth allowing us to sample the variety.
It was at one of these that we encountered our housemate Jenny. Most of the guests were men--that wasn't particularly unusual--but they were unusually attentive. On encountering us, Jenny started in momentary disbelief, and, recovering herself, she asked increduously, What are YOU doing here?
What do you mean, we replied. We came to a party.
She all but collapsed into laughter, explaining the nature of the festivity.
Oh, we replied, understanding, finally, the source of the warm reception granted us. And over the course of the evening, we ran into many acquaintances, who, unlike us, were in on the secret. Napa, it seemed, harbored a large homosexual underground, which apparently included more friends than we would ever have expected. So, as June rolled around, we joined out of curiosity our housemates on their trek to the big parade in the city.
Market Street choked on the throngs of men lining the sidewalks, most of whom reflected the fashions later popularized by the Village People. Opulent floats and strange marching groups streamed in endless succession toward the Civic Center for hours; mustachioed men in elaborate drag, makeup and wigs characterized the dominant look of paraders--there were many Carmen Mirandas--while the lesbians gravitated toward tough, working-class garb and tatooed biceps. Clouds of cannabis smoke emerged here and there, and no one bothered to hide whatever it was they were drinking. The police, in large groups, maintained a discreet profile on side streets, eschewing the normal enforcement of the law in acknowledgement of vastly superior numbers.
We suspect that the crowd numbered in the many hundreds of thousands, and debauchery abounded. Men made out with each other in the most intimate manner on the street, and collective inebriation encouraged the widespread lack of inhibition. Interestingly, however, the sense of impending menace one might feel among two or three hundred thousand drunken men was completely absent; the crowd was universally good-natured, the vibe genial.
That night, we drove our friends home, accompanied by Jonathon's new love. We had trouble keeping our eyes on the road after catching sight of Jonathon and his friend, lips kissing greedily under matching handlebar mustaches, in the rearview mirror.
All of that came back to us while making our way to the party by City Hall, following the cleanup crews on Market Street after this year's parade. The Civic Center mall rocked with dancing and music at every corner, long lines snaked toward the food stands serving tritip sandwiches, shish kebabs, tacos, and the large Cuervo Tequila pavillion dispensed maragaritas by the thousands. Matching drag queens, Tinkerbells and bodybuilders in thongs stopped to pose for pictures, activists passed out propaganda, and the lone guy with the Jesus Loves You placard took special pleasure in circulating in a crowd that couldn't quite decide whose side he was really on. The ubiquitous Carmen Mirandas of the past had been supplanted by a surplus of aging, fleshy matrons with gray beards, dressed as if for a garden party in billowy dresses, floppy hats.
A radio station catering to the demographic supervised their stage from a red, doubledecker bus, the slogan--Come Together--prominently displayed with a picture of two guys getting ready for sex; techno music throbbed for the beautiful lipstick lesbians dancing suggestively for the gyrating audience. On the other side of the square, cowboys waltzed around to country western. All the streets radiating from the mall had been taken over by vendors and bands, and semi-naked male pornstars signed autographs. Wholly naked men also circulated throughout the venue, often displaying odd hardware on their genitals, and just as often wearing big boots and leather motorcycle hats reminiscent of Marlon Brando in "The Wild One."
Behind a certain fence, an even less-inhibited party carried on, where men romanced in tents, and others, fit and tan, walked around displaying large, erect members, often facing off against each other in a strange ritual rivalry the point of which evaded us.
Generally speaking, however, it all seemed rather tame compared to what we remembered from the past. Most of the partiers could have passed for straight, and the once-neurotic need to entertain with provocative behavior was no longer in evidence; gross public displays of "affection" were few and far between.
After a jury acquitted Dan White for killing the iconic homosexual Harvey Milk--eating too many Twinkies had made him do it--the outraged citizenry of the Castro District descended on this very square and rioted in a manner San Francisco hadn't seen in years. The city has changed dramatically since then, and along the way Dan White blew his brains out. The victory is complete.
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Copyright WineMerchant.com 2006