caught in a time warp, stuck on the edge of 1976, trying to swim in midair, trying to escape the trappings of our life on earth.
Months after the breakup with Ed, Dad was still trying to heal himself. In his writings he describes a persistent sense of isolation and disconnectedness. “I fit in neither with the gay nor straight community because of Alysia and because of my attitudes, which are not click-ish nor faddish.” In addition to practicing tai chi, Dad quit smoking, drinking, and doing drugs. While I was at my grandparents’, he attended a six-week alternative medicine seminar where he learned to meditate and cleanse auras.
In the move from Oak Street, Dad also sold and gave away all of his dresses and most of his jewelry. “I’m just not that into drag anymore,” he wrote to John Dale, “not even on Halloween.” But he saved the best—the heavy Egyptian necklace and the scarves of Spanish lace—for me. In its place he adopted a butch look: handlebar moustache, plaid shirts rolled at the sleeve revealing furry forearms, worn blue jeans, and a heavy black leather jacket. Though Dad claimed not to be faddish, this look was so popular it came to be known as the Castro Clone. The uniform reflected a changing aesthetic among the city’s gay men, referencing working-class machismo instead of the more feminine style of generations past.
The prevalence of the Clone look coincided with a growing number of openly gay men moving to the city. Four thousand people marched in the first Gay Pride parade in 1972. In 1976, 120,000 took part, including Dad with me riding atop his shoulders. The face of San Francisco was being transformed by these new residents, who spent weekends in the Castro, enjoying lunch at the Patio Café, standing in clusters outside the Twin Peaks bar. I was especially fascinated by the well-built men with moustaches and tight jeans, hands in their neighbors’ back pockets, knocking back beers, staring and smiling, but rarely at me.
As a girl, I always longed to stay among them, to find my way into what I perceived as their tight sense of family. Dad wanted to as well and whenever he could, he did, leaving me with friends or neighbors while he tried to find love in the many gay bars. “I’m a poet,” he used to tell the strange young men. And in San Francisco, in 1976, this still meant something.
My dad was also struggling to find work, any work, to supplement the Social Security paid to us after my mom’s death so he could make the monthly rent. He sold blood, did substitute teaching at the Haight-Ashbury Daycare Center where I went each day, and painted their mural: “A jungle scene, the lions, monkey and giraffe looking very spiritual and mystical and happy. Quite colorful.”
He was also struggling to find his voice as a writer, and visited different bookstores around the city in search of community. He wrote in notebooks in cafés or at home when I wasn’t jumping all over his lap, craving some kind of attention, some kind of something that he didn’t quite know how to satisfy.
I still wanted simple things: sunny days, cartoons, and French toast, a dog or a cat, not the birds or fish which we had. In the living room, we kept a tank with guppies and kissing gouramis. Frustrated by a pet that could only be watched behind glass, whenever I was alone I grabbed the small net and scooped guppies into my hand. I watched their tiny blue and silver bodies, wet and squirming, tickling my bare palms. Sometimes a guppy would slip out of my hand onto the rug and I’d quickly retrieve it and throw it back in the tank. Sadly, a number of fish died after these games, but I still played them.
But more than any animal, I wanted my father. I wanted Him. I wanted him all to myself. Dad tried to oblige me. We still played our games of hide-and-seek in Golden Gate Park. Sometimes we skipped together. At home, he made me spaghetti. We’d “wrestle around the room” until I was red-faced and out of
Months after the breakup with Ed, Dad was still trying to heal himself. In his writings he describes a persistent sense of isolation and disconnectedness. “I fit in neither with the gay nor straight community because of Alysia and because of my attitudes, which are not click-ish nor faddish.” In addition to practicing tai chi, Dad quit smoking, drinking, and doing drugs. While I was at my grandparents’, he attended a six-week alternative medicine seminar where he learned to meditate and cleanse auras.
In the move from Oak Street, Dad also sold and gave away all of his dresses and most of his jewelry. “I’m just not that into drag anymore,” he wrote to John Dale, “not even on Halloween.” But he saved the best—the heavy Egyptian necklace and the scarves of Spanish lace—for me. In its place he adopted a butch look: handlebar moustache, plaid shirts rolled at the sleeve revealing furry forearms, worn blue jeans, and a heavy black leather jacket. Though Dad claimed not to be faddish, this look was so popular it came to be known as the Castro Clone. The uniform reflected a changing aesthetic among the city’s gay men, referencing working-class machismo instead of the more feminine style of generations past.
The prevalence of the Clone look coincided with a growing number of openly gay men moving to the city. Four thousand people marched in the first Gay Pride parade in 1972. In 1976, 120,000 took part, including Dad with me riding atop his shoulders. The face of San Francisco was being transformed by these new residents, who spent weekends in the Castro, enjoying lunch at the Patio Café, standing in clusters outside the Twin Peaks bar. I was especially fascinated by the well-built men with moustaches and tight jeans, hands in their neighbors’ back pockets, knocking back beers, staring and smiling, but rarely at me.
As a girl, I always longed to stay among them, to find my way into what I perceived as their tight sense of family. Dad wanted to as well and whenever he could, he did, leaving me with friends or neighbors while he tried to find love in the many gay bars. “I’m a poet,” he used to tell the strange young men. And in San Francisco, in 1976, this still meant something.
My dad was also struggling to find work, any work, to supplement the Social Security paid to us after my mom’s death so he could make the monthly rent. He sold blood, did substitute teaching at the Haight-Ashbury Daycare Center where I went each day, and painted their mural: “A jungle scene, the lions, monkey and giraffe looking very spiritual and mystical and happy. Quite colorful.”
He was also struggling to find his voice as a writer, and visited different bookstores around the city in search of community. He wrote in notebooks in cafés or at home when I wasn’t jumping all over his lap, craving some kind of attention, some kind of something that he didn’t quite know how to satisfy.
I still wanted simple things: sunny days, cartoons, and French toast, a dog or a cat, not the birds or fish which we had. In the living room, we kept a tank with guppies and kissing gouramis. Frustrated by a pet that could only be watched behind glass, whenever I was alone I grabbed the small net and scooped guppies into my hand. I watched their tiny blue and silver bodies, wet and squirming, tickling my bare palms. Sometimes a guppy would slip out of my hand onto the rug and I’d quickly retrieve it and throw it back in the tank. Sadly, a number of fish died after these games, but I still played them.
But more than any animal, I wanted my father. I wanted Him. I wanted him all to myself. Dad tried to oblige me. We still played our games of hide-and-seek in Golden Gate Park. Sometimes we skipped together. At home, he made me spaghetti. We’d “wrestle around the room” until I was red-faced and out of
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