The following morning it was time to take a walk and check out the neighborhood. As our walk progressed, I noticed there seemed to be men, lots of men, everywhere I looked. There were women too but they seemed to be in the minority. Two attractive women and two even more attractive men walked up to a bus stop. How nice, I thought; two nice married couples leaving for work together. In due time, the bus drove up. They turned to each other and kissed. However, it was a little bit different from what I expected. The men kissed each other as did the women. Two hearty, on-the-lips goodbye kisses! Well! I had this strong suspicion I was in the presence of some "queers". That was the very unsympathetic, close-minded term bestowed upon these people back where I came from. I'd heard about these folks but had never seen them and if I had, I was oblivious to the fact. And so it was that we were drop-kicked into a completely foreign environment at the height of all its glory. We lived there for almost four years!
I didn't have much spare time to ponder my new surroundings because for many days, every waking moment was spent getting the store ready. Both my husband and I found ourselves doing a lot of things we'd never done before. I didn't know I could do it but I became an amateur window dresser for a brief time. The store was located at 24th and Mission Streets and I was hit with another round of culture shock: the Mission District. This neighborhood was made up of Hispanics, Filipinos and Samoans. By this time I was up to my chin in culture shock and on the verge of drowning. My husband took to life in the city like a duck to water. I, however, did not.
When I wasn't down at the store helping to get ready for opening day, I stayed in our apartment. I knew I was going to have to leave my self-imposed fortress and find a job at some point but I wasn't ready yet. I had never lived in any city in my whole life and unlike my husband, I was the duck out of water. As the weeks went by, I felt as if I had retreated to a dark closet, curled up in a fetal position, figuratively speaking, of course.
Eventually I decided to join the world once more and ventured out and gota job. My husband was doing well with the store and became quite fluent in Spanish as well. At long last, we went out and about the city and let its magic embrace us. We went out to dinner at least three times a week and ate and discovered our way around San Francisco. It was wonderful. We made friends of varied sexual orientation and learned that gay people are pretty much just like everyone else in almost every other facet of life. A good lesson to be learned.
About eight months later, we moved from our tiny apartment to a spacious "flat" just a few blocks away. Large Victorian homes were divided into four separate living compartments or flats. We moved into these quaint rooms around Independence Day in 1977. I didn't know it at the time but I was already pregnant with our first child during this move. Can you imagine how conspicuous a pregnant woman was in a gay neighborhood? Think about it. I was definitely the odd one.
No comments:
Post a Comment