Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle

by Michael Thomas Ford

  At Market Street we walked back toward the Castro through the remnants of the parade that had passed through earlier in the day. We'd watched the entire thing, admiring the floats and cheering the groups of marchers, which ranged from gay Asians to leathermen, a baton-twirling contingent to the requisite drag queens. Seeing them all pass by as we stood on the corner of Market and 14th Street, I was reminded of what a strange family we all were. Now there are groups for everything, from gay firemen to lesbian lawyers. But back then we all banded together because we needed one another. We understood that there was strength in numbers, and our Freedom Day celebrations were all about celebrating our San Francisco community in all its diversity. They were also, naturally, about having a good time. Even in 1978, with the Briggs Initiative occupying our minds, we were in the mood to party, and the Castro was the scene of an all-out festival. Every bar was packed, and the crowds spilled into the streets. Everywhere you looked there were gay men and women openly expressing themselves, some more flamboyantly than others. I remember, in particular, three drag queens standing on the balcony of an apartment overlooking Castro Street and singing along to Linda Clifford's "If My Friends Could See Me Now" while an appreciative audience danced away beneath them.

  Brian, Jack, and I headed to the Elephant Walk, where the crowd was so thick that drink orders and money were passed along man-to-man until they reached the bar, with the drinks coming back the same way. The music, played at deafening levels, was all disco. I remember dancing to Lipstique's "At the Discotheque," A Taste of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie," and, of course, the Village People's "San Francisco," which was played every hour on the hour. We drank and danced well into the night, until finally I was exhausted. But when I told Andy I thought it might be time to head home, he took me by the hand and led me into the bathroom.

  "Here," he said, taking a small bottle from his jeans pocket. "Have some of this. It will keep you going." "Poppers?" I said.

  "No," said Andy, tipping the bottle and pouring a line of white powder onto the edge of the sink. "Coke."

  "I thought Brian told you not to use that stuff," I said as Andy bent down and inhaled the cocaine through a rolled-up dollar bill, first through one nostril and then the other.

  "He did," Andy said, pouring another line. "But he's got the wrong idea about it. You just have to know when to stop." I eyed the line of coke warily. I certainly wasn't against drugs, but Brian had made cocaine sound like something to be avoided at all costs. I looked at Andy. He was nodding his head to the music audible through the bathroom door.

  "You're sure it's safe?" I asked.

  "Safe as sugar," Andy assured me.

  I bent and imitated his sniffing maneuver. As the cocaine hit my sinuses, I wanted to sneeze. The feeling quickly dulled, becoming a warmth that trickled uncomfortably down the back of my throat. The taste was awful, and I gagged.

  "Hold on," Andy said, patting me on the back. "It'll stop." For a few seconds, all I wanted to do was rinse my throat. Then, as if by magic, the cocaine cast its spell on my neurotransmitters and the world opened up. My weariness fled, and I felt as if I could dance forever. I looked at Andy, who was watching me with a knowing expression. "Holy shit," I said.

  "It only lasts for about an hour," he told me, pressing the bottle into my hand. "Maybe less. Then you need to do another line."

  "What about you?" I asked.

  "I know where to get more," he answered. "That's all yours." We returned to the bar, where suddenly the music sounded as if it was coming from inside my head, transmitted through some internal wiring buried deep in my brain. I heard Donna Summer cooing "I Feel Love," and I wrapped myself in her voice. I barely noticed when Brian tapped me on the shoulder. He had to grab my arm before I stopped dancing and acknowledged him.

  "Hey, baby," I said, putting my hands around his waist and trying to get him to dance. "Hey, yourself," he said. "What got into you? Five minutes ago you wanted to go home." "I got my second wind," I told him.

  "Well, I'm beat," he said. "This old man has had enough gay freedom for one weekend. I'm going to head home, okay?"

  I nodded. "Okay," I told him. "I'll stay with Jack and Andy."

  "Jack left already," Brian informed me. "He said to say good-bye. But Andy's here somewhere." He kissed me. "You boys try to stay out of trouble," he said. I nodded and waved as he turned to go. A moment later, I was swept back into the song. All around me, men moved with the music and with each other. In the flashing glitter-ball light of the cocaine, they were all beautiful. I wanted to touch them, taste them, smell them. They were my brothers, and we were celebrating together. Nobody could stop us. I felt certain of that now. We were too powerful. I don't know what time it was when Andy finally pulled me out of the bar. I know I had used up all the cocaine in the bottle. When Andy saw that it was empty, he laughed. "Christ," he said, "you sucked that stuff up like a vacuum."

  "I feel fantastic," I said as we walked up 18th Street.

  "Yeah, well, lay off for a while," he said. "You're new to it."

  As we passed the Pendulum, we saw that there was a large crowd standing on the sidewalk, all looking west toward the corner of 18th and Diamond. There the sky was lit up by red and white flashes. With the cocaine still playing billiards with the dopamine in my brain, to me it looked like fireworks, and for a moment I thought we were witnessing some spectacular display. As Andy and I pressed through the sea of onlookers, I expected to see someone juggling flaming torches or eating fire.

  "Some queen probably built a bonfire in the middle of the street," I joked to Andy. "It's an ambulance," someone said.

  "Then some queen probably fell off her high heels," Andy joked, and we laughed. A big leatherman turned and glared at us. "It's not funny," he said, the lights glinting off the metal rings of the harness he wore. "A couple of fag bashers got some guy."

  We kept walking, weaving through the maze of men who were watching the proceedings. At Collingwood, a police officer stopped us. "Where are you going?" he asked.

  "Diamond," Andy answered. "I live there."

  The cop waved us through and we drew nearer to the ambulance. On the sidewalk, two EMTs were bent over a body. Blood was spattered on the concrete, and there seemed to be a lot of it. "Poor guy," Andy said as we started to walk around the ambulance. "That looks bad." I looked again at the apparently unconscious victim. Beside one of the EMTs' feet a baseball cap lay on the sidewalk. The crown was crumpled, but I could see the letters stitched on it—HCHS—in cream thread against a maroon background. HCHS. Herndon Central High School. Home of the Herndon Wildcats.

  My first reaction was surprise that someone else might have attended Herndon. I hadn't seen a cap like that since high school, except for the one Jack continued to wear ten years after he'd last played for the Wildcats baseball team. I always teased him about holding on to it, but he insisted on keeping it. Fighting the cocaine coursing through my blood, I struggled to remember whether Jack had worn his cap that day. I closed my eyes and tried to picture him standing at the parade. I saw the work boots, the jeans, the T-shirt featuring an image of Mighty Mouse with his fist in the air and a raised eyebrow. I saw his face with the moustache and beard he'd recently started to let grow. And on his head, the cap, pulled low over his eyes, the material worn and the lettering starting to fray slightly. Just like the cap on the ground. I stared at it, hoping that I was wrong, that I'd misread the lettering.

  Crossing the street, I knelt and picked it up.

  "Hey," a police officer called out, running over to me. "Don't touch anything."

  "I know him," I said, looking over the shoulders of the EMTs to the figure on the ground. Beneath the blood that covered his features, I recognized the face instantly. "He's my friend." "What's his name?" one of the EMTs asked me.

  "Jack," I said.

  The EMT shook Jack's shoulder gently. "Jack," he called out. "Jack. Can you hear me?" Jack's eyelids fluttered but remained closed.

  "Let's get him into the a
mbulance," one EMT said to the other. By this time, Andy had joined me. When he saw that it was Jack being transferred to a stretcher, he put his hand on my shoulder. "Is he…"

  "He's alive," I said. "Can we go with you?" I asked the EMTs.

  "Not in the ambulance," one of them told me, shutting the door. "But you can meet us at the hospital. We're taking him to UCSF Medical." I nodded as they got into the ambulance and turned on the siren, the noise piercing through the sound of Bionic Boogie's "Dance Little Dreamer," which spilled out of the Pendulum's two doors. As they pulled away, I turned to Andy, my heart pounding in my chest and my mind spinning. "We need to get a cab," I said dully.

  As Andy ran to try and flag down a ride, I looked back at where Jack had been lying. I saw once again the blood. What had happened to him? I wondered. Who had wanted to hurt him so badly? I couldn't even begin to imagine.

  "Ned!" Andy called out to me from the corner, where he'd managed to get a taxi. I started to move, then noticed that Jack's baseball cap was still on the ground. I picked it up and held it in my hand as I ran toward Andy and the waiting cab.

  Two hours later, we still didn't know the extent of Jack's injuries. He'd been rushed from the ambulance into an operating room, where doctors were working on his battered body. As Andy and I sat waiting for news of his condition, I looked up every time a door opened or I heard a voice.

  "What's taking so long?" I asked Andy, knowing he couldn't answer my question, but needing to voice my concern, if only to keep the thought from repeating itself over and over inside my head. I was still holding Jack's baseball cap in my hands, and I couldn't stop rubbing it with my fingers, as if somehow he would be able to feel it and be comforted.

  "Oh, God," I said. "What if he dies?"

  "He's not going to die," Andy said.

  "How do you know?" I said angrily. "How the fuck do you know what's going to happen to him. You're not a goddamned doctor." Andy crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair, ignoring me. Part of me wanted to slap him for assuming that Jack would be okay, but another part wanted him to say it again. I needed that reassurance, as I had none of my own. But Andy remained silent, looking at the floor.

  "You can't die," I said softly, when it became clear that Andy wasn't going to comfort me. "You can't die."

  I closed my eyes and repeated the phrase like a mantra, rocking gently and running my fingers around the edge of Jack's hat, as if saying a rosary. "You can't die. You can't die. You can't die." The cocaine high I'd been riding earlier in the evening had become a downward slide, and now I felt as if I were sitting in a black room, looking for an exit but finding none. My head hurt, I felt sick, and I couldn't stop telling myself that what had happened to Jack was my fault.

  "I should have walked with him," I said. "I shouldn't have stayed. Why was I so stupid?" "You should call Brian," Andy suggested.

  "I can't," I said. "I can't even remember the number. Can you call him?"

  Andy nodded. "I'll be back in a minute," he said before heading down the hall toward the pay phone. I knew he was probably relieved to be away from my anxiety, and I couldn't blame him. But I also resented what I saw as his lack of real concern for Jack. He wasn't Jack's best friend, though, I told myself. He was just someone Jack had slept with a few times. A trick, really. Nothing special. That wasn't true, and I knew it. Andy was Jack's friend, too. In some ways, he'd treated Jack better than I had. I began to enumerate my sins against the man who had been my friend and lover: Jealousy, anger, infidelity. Why had I been so spiteful, so ready to turn my back on him? All the excuses I'd used to justify my actions now seemed petty and insubstantial. I loved Jack, and he couldn't die. He just couldn't.

  I held his hat to my face and wept into it. I was so wrapped in grief that when I felt a hand on my shoulder, I cried out. I stared at the person in front of me, a tall, bearded man whose face registered concern and weariness.

  "Mr. Brummel?" he asked.

  "Is he dead?" I blurted out.

  "I'm Dr. Stanislaus," the man said. "And, no, he isn't dead."

  I burst into tears again, this time from relief. Dr. Stanislaus waited until I'd calmed down a little before continuing. "He's going to be fine, but his injuries are extensive," he said. "In addition to a broken nose, he has a punctured lung, several cracked ribs, a shattered tibia, and numerous contusions. We've stitched him up and fixed everything we can. Now it's up to his body to do the rest."

  "But you're sure he's not going to die?"

  The doctor nodded. "None of his injuries is life-threatening. The cuts and bruises make him look a lot worse than he really is, so keep that in mind when you see him."

  "When can I do that?" I asked. "Not now," he answered. "He's heavily sedated anyway, so he wouldn't even know you were there. But I'm sure he'll be happy to see a friendly face when he wakes up. Come by around eleven. He should be up by then."

  "I will," I said. "And thank you." Dr. Stanislaus walked off, leaving me alone. I looked at my watch. It was almost five-thirty. The whole night had slipped by, and suddenly I felt the accumulated weight of worry and lack of sleep. I closed my eyes as exhaustion washed over me. Where was Andy? Then I remembered. He was calling Brian. Well, I thought, he'd be back soon. Then I would tell him that Jack was going to be okay. Jack was going to be okay. He was. The doctor had promised. I would tell Andy when he came back. I just needed to rest for a minute. Then we could go home. I sighed deeply, and a moment later, I was asleep.

  CHAPTER 39

  Giving your mother away at her wedding is, I think, one of the odder experiences a son can have. As I walked mine down the aisle and handed her off to Walter Jacobsen, I wondered what my father would think of the man my mother was marrying. Walter was a quiet man, and from what I could tell, he treated my mother well. Most of all, she was happy. When she'd called a few weeks earlier to tell me she was getting married, I'd been surprised. It had only been eight months since I'd met Walter at Thanksgiving, and I'd barely gotten used to the idea of my mother dating, let alone marrying. Now I was sitting in the front pew at Ebenezer Lutheran Church watching her exchange vows with a man I barely knew.

  "You did very well." My grandmother, seated beside me, patted my arm. "Your father and grandfather would be proud." My mother's mother, Violet Renard O'Reilly, was a tiny woman, almost elfin, with the dark eyes of her French-Canadian ancestors and the personality of her maiden surname. She'd met my grandfather, Seamus O'Reilly, at the age of 19 while working for Canadian National Railways in 1926. My grandfather, seven years her senior and a doctor with an appointment at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, was on his way to a conference at McGill University in Montreal when he realized, to his dismay, that he had left the notes for his lecture on the train, which had already left the station on its way to Trois-Rivières.

  Rushing to the ticket window, he came face-to-face with a raven-haired beauty who took pity on his miserable attempts at explaining in grade-school French what had happened. In perfect English, my grandmother told him not to worry and radioed the station at Drummondville to request that the young doctor's notes be returned on the next westbound train. As thanks, my grandfather offered to take her to supper, an invitation she refused on the grounds that it would hardly be proper. But he could not forget the lovely young woman, and after giving his lecture the next day, he'd returned to the station and asked her again if she would dine with him. This time she agreed, later saying that during the night she'd made a deal with the Virgin Mary that if the handsome American came to her a second time, she would consider it a sign.

  Their courtship was conducted largely by letter, with my grandfather making a handful of visits to Montreal over the next six months to try to gain the acceptance of my grandmother's family, who were deeply suspicious of his Irish heritage but liked the idea of Violet marrying a physician. Ultimately, my grandfather's medical degree trumped his ancestry, and in October of 1927, the eldest of the three Renard daughters became the first member of her family i
n three hundred years to leave Quebec when she was brought to Chicago and ensconced in a house on Aldine Avenue in the city's Lake View neighborhood. A son was born a year later, and my mother two years after that. Violet and Seamus's marriage was a happy one, but the male O'Reillys were unlucky. My mother's brother, called Killian, died at the age of six from rheumatic fever. My grandfather followed him in 1946, four years before my birth, felled by a heart attack while lunching with colleagues visiting from New York's Bellevue Hospital. Violet, having lost her son and husband by the age of 39 (and her soldier brother to suicide the year before), decided that she would not invite further heartbreak, and vowed never to remarry. She also discouraged my mother from taking a husband, and when a few years later my mother met and fell in love with my father, Violet did her best to talk her daughter out of it. Failing in this, a week after the wedding she moved back to Montreal, claiming that despite her bargain with the Blessed Mother, her bad luck was due to having left the city of her birth in the first place. For the duration of my parents' marriage, she had not crossed the border into the United States, fearing disaster if she did. As a result, I knew her mostly through letters, phone calls, and anecdotes told to me by my mother. I had seen her only a few times in person, when my parents took me to see her in Canada. The last time had been more than ten years before. My mother, recalling the tragedy of her uncle's death, had not informed Violet of my time in the army, and so she remained ignorant of my experiences in Vietnam, believing me to have been too busy at college to correspond. When my father died, Violet had been forced to reexamine her theory about the nature of the curse she believed to be upon her. As she'd not placed one toe over the line between her country and ours in thirty years, she felt she could hardly be held responsible for her son-in-law's early demise. Although some of her family suggested that the legacy of her youthful indiscretion might very well have been transferred to her daughter, she rejected that as unfair and mean-spirited on the part of the fates. At any rate, she said, if it was the case, there was nothing she could do about it now, and as her subsequent behavior would apparently have no effect on the outcome anyway, she declared her exile over. Seated beside me, she watched, sharp-eyed, as Walter and my mother exchanged vows. Oddly, the fact that my mother had abandoned Catholicism early on, and was marrying for the second time in a Protestant church, didn't seem to bother her in the slightest. I suspect now that she might have considered it deserved retribution against Mary for misleading her all those years ago, but if so, she kept her feelings to herself.