Writings 9/30/15

When I Was 25 (in 3-word sentences)

Law school's over.

My first job. Court's law clerk.

AIDS is rampant. Too many funerals. Worry about friends.

Harvey Milk assassinated. Overlooking City Hall. Cop cars gather. March with candle. Attend his service. His recorded testament. Bullets open closets.

Join gay Lutherans. Trips to conventions. Flirtation in Minnesota. Canoe and kisses.

Fight Briggs Initiative. Surprisingly big win.

Equal rights marches. Swim on Sacramento. Rain mutes speakers.

Attend Daniel's seder. Too much wine. Tampons in bathroom. What a mensch!

Dan White's trial. Disappointing manslaughter verdict. Avoid the riot.

Join gay synagogue. Learn Hebrew songs. Lead many services. Chant the Torah.

Mothertongue Readers' Theater. Women speak openly. Love Corky Wick. That's for me. Write and perform. Survival, sexuality, peace.

March on Pride. Sing with synagogue. Blow plastic horn. Collect parade buttons. Feet get sore. Back gets sore. Crowds oppress me.

First SF relationship. Woman with baggage. Husband, child, dog. I end it. Breaks my heart. Grief outlasts relationship.

My next relationship. She moves nearby. Then moves repeatedly. We hold seders. We sing together. She wants kids. I do not. We break up. She moves away. Life goes on.

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Layers of Clothing

She often shares her belief in the layered approach to dressing. It offers many gradations of warmth, which are increasingly needed, as her ability to regulate her own temperature seems to be fading.

A T-shirt and a long-sleeved blouse are standard. Part of the reason for the T-shirt is modesty, because her button-front shirts often gap between the buttons, or a button comes undone.

But the warmth is the main thing, in an air-conditioned office or her cool flat. She usually also wears an overshirt of corduroy of chamois. This is part of the uniform of a butch lesbian of a certain age, and increases the number of pockets she has available for storage.

Below the waist, she always wears long pants, knee socks, and laced shoes. The pants used to be corduroy, but recently they tend to be blue or black jeans, perhaps because they don't wear out as quickly as corduroy does. Only when it's really hot out does she wear lighter-weight pants or ankle socks.

The clothes mask her shape, which has been getting steadily rounder over the years. And, more recently, they protect her skin, which has started to have skin cancers and sun allergy.
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Holiday from Hell

The worst holiday I can remember is when my father and I hiked to join my brother for the last night of Boy Scout Camp on some lake in the woods. I'm not an outdoorswoman. The scenery was spectacular, but I spent all of the hike in discomfort from having soft, tender feet in suboptimal shoes on an uneven path laden with sharp rocks. I must have been carrying a small pack, and probably got tired easily and often.

Then I can't imagine that the camp was very comfortable, the food very good, or that it was easy to fall asleep or find the facilities. I faintly recall some oddness about the sleeping arrangements -- were some folks seeking paired privacy?

What I do remember is slipping on a stone and somehow both cutting and bruising the sole of one foot, so that each step on the hike out was particularly painful. But at least we didn't travel very fast. My father was having g.i. problems, and he stopped to vomit at least once on the way back to the car.

Yep, that part of the holiday was a great deal of not fun. There may have been some pleasures on the road driving to or from the lake, but that part of the trip is shrouded in the mists of time.
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Harvey and Me

I was working at my desk in the southwest corner of the old State Building when we noticed an unusual number of police cars parked hastily in front of City Hall. We wondered if something was up.

I don't remember who first found out, or how, but we came to learn that our mayor had just been assassinated, along with the City's first openly gay supervisor, my district's supervisor, Harvey Milk.

I was still in the closet at work, and was unable to share my full horror and grief in the offices of the appellate court where I was a law clerk. But I soon found out, from other gay friends, that a candlelight vigil would be held that night in front of City Hall.

I attended the event, and was comforted to be surrounded by gay and lesbian mourners.

I also attended a Jewish service for Supervisor Milk. Maybe it was there that I heard the statement he had recorded, anticipating that he might be killed in office. He said, "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

I took his words to heart, and was soon marching on Sacramento for equal employment rights, co-chairing the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, and representing my synagogue in the World congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations.

I've been out of the closet ever since, and am not going back.