if people always become what they pretend to be, but I certainly did. And, as an unanticipated result, my baseline emotional state reset from Glum to Chipper. This transformation felt nothing short of miraculous, and Go-Go became my de facto religion, the mystico-philosophical framework I relied on to provide life-guidance and console me in times of trouble. When overwhelmed by romantic loneliness, I listened to Girl Groups whose hilariously over-the-top lamentations made the very concept of heartbreak seem amusingly kitsch. When mocked or beaten up for being “a fucking faggot” by my peers, I found solace in the adoration of David Bowie, who was clearly some sort of saint or deity who’d fallen to Earth in order to repeal all gender norms. And when the sheer dullness of life got me down, I’d frug and twist around my room till I felt nothing but up, up, up.
My Go-Go worldview faced its first severe test in November 1978 when Dan White shot Harvey Milk, the most visible face of the Gay Rights movement. The assassination left me utterly gobsmacked. For months I read every story in every paper trying to comprehend the horror. After White got off with a wrist slap seven-year sentence, I heard a lady on the bus defending him because “the gays have gone too far.” I’d known most straight people didn’t like homosexuals. I hadn’t realized so many wanted us dead. This was scary and annoying, sure, but also thrilling. Being disliked is a wishy-washy experience compared to being homicidally detested.
Thrilling or not, I had to fit the reality of belonging to a despised minority into my flippant worldview. I did this by developing the conceit that I was Glamorously Doomed. My life was a comedy, but a black comedy. My enemies, a category I perceived as consisting of, but not restricted to, right-wingers, sports enthusiasts, and the religiously inclined, were the antagonists required of any good drama. Likewise, my troubles and travails were simply necessary plot complications. Me? I was the hilariously ill-fated protagonist: broke, homely, and afflicted with an artistic temperament, but not endowed with any discernable talent. I was born to lose. And yet by losing glamorously—dressed to the nines with a quip on my lip—I would actually win. Like the debris Retro Queens snapped up in thrift stores to repurpose as vintage collectables, the magic of camp would transform me into something of value. Being Glamorously Doomed meant I could revel in my own disgrace, laugh in the face of failure, and wear society’s scorn like a feather boa. I might be destined for disaster, but my disasters would be faaabulous!
Chapter 3: 1979: The Manly, Manly Clones of Castro Street
I NEVER WENT BACK TO POLK Street after that first, fateful pick-up, but a couple years later, I decided to try my luck elsewhere. By that time I’d graduated high school, moved to the city to attend San Francisco State, and was living in a squalid flat full of kids a mere mile away from the Castro, land of the Clones. Conventional wisdom had it the Castro Clones were rejecting the disempowering stereotype of the “Sissy” and reclaiming their masculinity: that the whole conflation of male-on-male love with effeminacy was a mistake based on 19th century pseudo-science and from now on the archetypical gay man would be a “Manly Man.” As a result of this thinking, the Castro resembled an open-air costume ball where everyone had decided to dress as either the Brawny Paper Towel Man or one of the Village People. This masquerade of manliness was not just ubiquitous, but mandatory. Clone sentiment toward non-Clones was summed up by the (allegedly) comical tee shirt slogan “No mustache, no banana.” Femme guys were about as popular as women, and in 1978 they actually outlawed drag at the gay parade.
I arrived in the Castro on a typical San Francisco summer evening, chilly and foggy, but everyone was dressed for heat. Lumberjack shirts were unbuttoned to reveal chiseled torsos, tee shirts were sleeveless to display bulging biceps, and shorts were cut high to showcase muscular thighs. All Clones were The Strong Silent Type, so there was none of Polk Street’s carnivalesque sparkle. Cruising was a serious business on Castro, not an occasion for giggling or screaming out “Hey girlfriend!” I desperately hoped one of these creatures might be so indiscriminately randy he’d give me a try. But, there I was, in my utterly wrong outfit: Beatle boots, black peg-leg jeans and mint green button-down shirt, Clairol blue-black hair, and my usual full face of make-up.
Oh, have I not mentioned the make-up? Well, it started in high school when I gave up trying to cure my horrendous acne with Clearasil and started hiding it with foundation. I could never find a shade to match my fair-but-blotchy skin and wound up looking rather wan and pasty. This necessitated subtle blush to liven my cheeks and a hint of lipstick. My eyebrows were already dyed black to match my hair, so, to make my lashes match, I gobbed on black mascara, which quite naturally demanded eyeliner, which then begged for a little eye shadow. Despite how this sounds, I was not exploring what we now call Gender Issues. I felt fey, but still 100 percent boy. Besides, my make-up didn’t make me look girly, but more like synth-pop superstar Gary Numan.
After a few small eternities of being ignored while watching the Clones around me hook up with breathtaking speed and ease, I grew bored and started peeking into bars. In every one, I saw guys posing like macho mannequins while their eyes scanned the crowd with robotic efficiency for attractive male flesh. There wasn’t a lot of chat, which made sense to me. If you’re just going to hop in bed with someone then leave and hop in bed with someone else, why waste time with socializing? So many men, so little time! This compulsive style of cruising wasn’t confined to the bars. All around were gay barbershops, gay restaurants, gay laundromats, gay everything, and in all these places the Clones cruised and cruised and cruised.
Eventually I spotted a fellow youngster loitering seductively next to a gay lamppost in front of a gay hardware store. He was extraordinarily ordinary with a forgettable face, medium blah hair, and a nothing outfit. His selling point for me was that, unlike every other male within a ten-block radius, he didn’t sport a mustache (I really didn’t care for mustaches). As I steeled myself to walk over and say hello, my palms grew clammy, my pulse raced, and my feet froze.
“He’s just a guy,” I told my feet. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
My feet remained firmly in place.
“Forward march!” I commanded.
No dice.
I tried humor. “Feets get movin’!”
Nada.
“Look,” I reasoned, “Someone has to make the first move. Maybe he’s shy.”
My feet remained unmoved.
I broke down and whined, “Is it a crime to say hello? Am I not a human being? We’re in the middle of a sexual revolution yet I remain trapped in the Bastille of chastity. Why are you destroying my life? Have pity on me!” My feet were having none of it. Realizing I was licked, I gave up and shuffled home to my empty, empty room.
Determined to try, try again, I began going to the Castro a few times a week to stand around. Usually I was invisible, but sometimes clones took time out of their busy erotic schedules to glare disapprovingly at my outfits. Once, a Clone with crazy, coked-out eyes actually spat on me! Eventually, in desperation, I tried butching up. Being eighteen, I felt I could still pull off a juvenile delinquent look and donned tight jeans, a black tee shirt, and black Converse All Stars, then greased my hair into a Rockabilly waterfall. Nobody glared at my outfit, but nobody said hello either. In my heart of hearts, I ultimately didn’t care for several reasons, mostly having to do with the aforementioned mustaches.
First, in my mind, mustaches were inextricably linked to adulthood, a condition I associated with home mortgages, light jazz, auto insurance, decrepitude, and death. Second, mustaches reminded me of barbershop quartets, which I have never enjoyed. Third, I felt unshakably certain that the proper accessory of choice at that moment was not the mustache, but the skinny tie. Fourth, the Clones’ uniformity revealed
