You Can Say You Knew Me When (21 page)

F
lat, shadowless light washed my bedroom. It was Sunday morning and I was alone. My father’s letters sat on my nightstand, disorderly and curled at the edges from so much handling. In the dark hours before I fell asleep, I’d skimmed them again, reminding myself what else I knew about Don Drebinski, the facts not part of his obituary. Now I phoned Woody, left a froggy-voiced message on his home machine: “I’m awake. Call me.” He didn’t, and soon I was restless, sucking down mugs of coffee and repeatedly checking e-mail. No word from him. I paced for an hour. I tried his cell phone, left another message. I was paying the price for blowing off dinner.

A breeze brushed tree branches against my kitchen window, and a giddy play of sunshine and shadow tickled the cabinets. The world outside my claustrophobic apartment was calling. If Woody wasn’t going to phone me, I wasn’t going to stick around. I quickly layered clothes over my unwashed skin, left my apartment and unlocked my bike, which I stored in the covered walkway alongside my building. I had a new plan: motion as the cure.

A bicycle has been a reliable salvation all my life, going back to the first shiny three-speed that helped me escape endless, torturous middle-school days, my books in a wire basket, the thin, speedy wheels propelling me onto the side streets of Greenlawn, looking for other troublemakers on their own slick three-speeds. A wheeled army of misfit teens, lighting up cigarettes in the town park. I have always turned to a bicycle to lift me from bad moods, from brain jumbles needing to be undone and simmering, ugly emotions. Even during my years in New York, I would pedal along East River Park and revel in the high-rise atmosphere, or across Fourth Street to the West Side, to the still-undeveloped piers, where I cruised guys sitting shirtless in their cars. I felt like a kid when I got on my bike. A leg thrown over the crossbar, a foot finding the metal grip of the pedal, weight surging downward to start this small miracle of propulsion, of balance. The smell of rubber tires triggering a primal urge: escape.

I liked to say, in the boastful way of the urban cyclist, that bicycling was the fastest way around San Francisco—faster than the unreliable Muni system and the always-gridlocked traffic; faster, and easier on the shins, than trudging up and down hills on foot—though it was also one of the most dangerous. So now, unlike in Greenlawn, I mounted my bike with a helmet on my head and gloves to protect my hands should I wind up skidding along the pavement, and I cuffed my pants to keep them out of the chain. All this precaution left me feeling dorky, like I was my own mother bundling me up for the elements, but in ten years in San Francisco I’d fallen half a dozen times because of my own clumsiness or the obliviousness of others; I’d been doored, I’d been sideswiped, I’d been knocked down by that U-turning SUV on Valencia. I secretly yearned to be a bare-headed bike stud zipping confidently in and out of slow-moving traffic, a carefree messenger with tattoos on my overdeveloped calves, but I had an ingrained fear of injury that went all the way back to some lesson passed on by my father:
Protect yourself. Avoid trauma to the head.

I rode through the warm Mission to the Castro, where the sidewalks hummed with relaxed-fit gays moving toward brunch, into the Lower Haight, where the pierced-and-tattooed subculture mixed with homeboys yelling to each other from opposite corners. Onward I pedaled, making my way to the Panhandle, a length of park where winding, paved paths were thronged with cyclists, rollerbladers, couples guiding strollers, the homeless pushing shopping carts, old-timers toddling between benches. On the grass, tai chi, Frisbee, guitar playing and gossip unfolded. I watched a shirts versus skins basketball game, marveling at taut, unselfconscious flesh. I grumbled at a teetering drunk veering sideways into my oncoming treads. The air carried conga drumming and pot smoke my way; I thought eagerly of the joint I’d stuffed in my pocket before leaving home.

On Sundays the city banned cars from the Golden Gate Park’s main thoroughfare, so when I crossed Stanyan, I flowed into a wide boulevard crammed with even more of the Sunday masses. I slowed down to watch a line of rollerskaters dancing with ritualized precision, a lesbian couple teaching their son to bike without training wheels, a group of pretty, teenaged Latinas flirting with boys whose jeans drooped below their butts. Late-winter wildflowers crowned the hillsides. Eucalyptus infused the air. Up ahead I saw a face that pulled me toward it: a long-haired Asian guy in cool eyeglasses and a ratty thermal shirt. He could have been Brady’s gay brother. Our eyes met in a moment of mutual check-you-out that I felt under my ribs. I held my breath, and his stare, until he turned away. I looked back, but he was gone.

I steered into a thicket of chilly, forested trails, out of sight of the regular folk, where I knew I’d find men standing at intervals, gaping with that familiar hunger, more attenuated here because it was Sunday, the weekend’s possibilities nearly over. I pedaled slowly and took in some very bold, locked gazes, and others, more timid, eyes shifting away, wallflowers at the prom. I wasn’t just looking, I was cruising, and I was surprised at how little guilt was attached to this knowledge. I felt anonymous, separate from my life and its demands. Not an individual bound by rules, but a piece of the larger, interlocking jigsaw, a necessary element of the city, doing my part to keep San Francisco the kind of place where guys got on their bikes on Sunday afternoons in pursuit of sex. But this wasn’t really my scene. Middle-of-the-road fashion was the rule: patterned sweaters over pale blue jeans, imitation motorcycle jackets with khakis and white sneakers. Ian and I liked to joke that these trails were the best place in San Francisco to pick up a high school teacher.

I blasted out of the bramble, back onto the main drive. Around a bend, the Pacific came into view, blue-gray under silver-gray clouds, the air suddenly stinging with salt. I crossed the Great Highway and navigated the parking lot—cars jockeying for spaces, surfers peeling off wetsuits, dogs sniffing among the trash cans—and found a post to which I could lock my bike. At the top of a grassy dune I sat down and sparked up. Gulls arced overhead, their throaty squawks like little sirens. The edge of the ocean rippled and flattened on the sand, then slid back again into the vastness, perpetuating the cycle.

I pictured Teddy—out of work, late on his rent, pining for Ray—walking to the beach to clear his head. Forty years ago, contemplating this same infinite horizon. Did this view make him feel connected to everything around him, or apart from it? Strong enough to master this new city, or insignificant and far from home? I remembered us together—an actual picture from the past, not an imagined one—down the Jersey Shore. His arm sweeping through the air to explain the path of the Gulf Stream, how it traveled up from the Caribbean to give us warm water to swim in, how different this was from the ocean in California.
At this latitude, you can’t swim in the Pacific. The water travels down from Alaska. When you’re used to the Atlantic, the Pacific will make you feel all turned around.

I could still redeem myself with Woody if I made the effort to hook up with him for the remainder of the afternoon. I looked around for a pay phone, but there was none along the beach.
Maybe I can borrow a cell phone from a stranger.
That’s a call Woody would love to get. His annoyance would melt away knowing I had given in to the convenience of this reviled technology
.
For the sake of forgiveness, I would offer him the chance to say “I told you so.” My relationship for a cell phone!

Oh, but look at me, heading not toward a crowd of strangers bearing Nokias, but onto the park road, back toward the lust-filled woods. I found another set of trails, different from the stretch I’d traveled earlier but equally notorious. Into my view came an older guy—older as in sixties or seventies, his face long and deeply lined, set off by a powerful jaw and a full crown of white hair with peaks like coconut frosting. He stood tall, six-foot-two, I guessed, with a trim body and slightly stooped shoulders, and stared back unabashedly from large, deep-set eyes bravely telegraphing desire. Grandpa was cruising me.

I rode past, then thought, Why not? and turned to look back over my shoulder. His gaze held tight. I’d give him something to brag about to the old-timers slugging Irish coffee at Twin Peaks—
This youngster flirted with me today—
a little boost, a charitable return. His eyes were focused, plain in their intent. He could easily be seventy. He could be Don Drebinski himself—could have been. The fact of Don’s death returned in a gust, and I shook my head as if to clear a bad dream.

Next thing I knew I was pedaling toward him. This old guy in the park. This not-Don. He stood stock-still, waiting, his face impossible to read. “Hello,” I said.

“Nice day for a ride.” His voice had a sardonic creak, a William Burroughs archness. Come to think of it, he was a bit like Burroughs in his stance and looks, though not so pallid or strung out. Heartier.

“I love riding out to the ocean,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow, offered a knowing smirk. “And cruising the park?”

I smiled. This guy was nothing if not confident. He’s no closeted schoolteacher, he’s Grandpa Stud, still working the trails decades beyond his heyday.

“Did you bike far? You’re very fit,” he said approvingly, daring to eye me up and down. I liked this attention. I might feel out of shape alongside the hardbodies at Dolores Beach, but to Grandpa I was still a hottie.

“From the Mission.” I felt like showing off, turning him on. “It’s great for my legs. Keeps me solid.”

Silence lingered; him grinning, me wondering what to say or do. Up until now, this had hewn to the shape and substance of any other sexual transaction: the genesis of eye contact, the butterflies of excitement, the upswing of momentum. And now, the pause at the crossroads: Pursue? Retreat? The moment where you commit or pass. I wasn’t actually planning to have sex with this geezer, right? Must find another option. Like conversation.

I introduced myself by name.

“Walt,” he said, offering a handshake, bony but strong.

I small-talked about the weather. I mentioned the fact that the trails in this part of the park were being widened. “I guess the powers-that-be know what goes on back here.”

“Every few years they try to clear out the cocksuckers. But we’re like weeds, we always grow back.”

I laughed again. “So you’ve been coming here for a long time?”

“I’d venture a lot longer than you.”

“I’ve been in San Francisco for ten years. Among my friends I’m considered a lifer.”

“Among my friends you’re fresh as a farm boy.”

I might have blushed then, as though he’d just announced his plan to deflower me on a hay bale, and felt a twinge of stiffness under my pants. I remembered something Ian once told me about dancing on stage in his early twenties, when he was a go-go boy at a nightclub: “I get hard because they want me.” The undeniable connection between self-esteem and arousal. Feel yourself elevated, objectified, and feel your nerves respond.

Walt drew me back with a question: “Shall I show you something?”

He waved me along the path. I dismounted, curious, and pushed the bike, adjusting to his slower pace, noting the crunch of gravel and pine needles under our feet. He led me toward an old windmill tucked amid the tall trees. This was one of two windmills in the park; the other stood back by the road, renovated and landscaped, skirted by flowers, backdrop for a million snapshots. This one was ringed with bike tracks and boot prints. Garbage clung to its base—beer bottles, tissues, wrappers. I didn’t actually see a used condom, but it was that kind of place.

“This,” Walt said, tracing a crooked finger along an invisible circumference, “was the site of the biggest orgy I’ve ever seen. Dozens and dozens of fellows going at it.”

I widened my eyes. “Here? When?”

My response had amused him. His mischievous smile pushed life into his sunken cheeks. “There was a time when they hardly patrolled at all.”

“Was this in the sixties?”

“Young man, I’m speaking of the
forties.
After the war. This plot of land was notorious.” He pivoted on his heels, sweeping his arm, inviting me to redraw the landscape with my own imagination. Dense vegetation swelled at each side of the muddy trail. The natural architecture of the bushes yielded caverns and crannies, dark grottoes canopied by twisty branches. I resurrected horny men from bygone decades, watched as they met at the windmill and ventured off, coupling, tripling, quadrupling, entire fleets of hunky sailors making the filthy best of shore leave. A Paul Cadmus painting come to life.

“With all due respect, Walt, I think you might be embellishing. I mean, the forties? Being queer was against the law.”

He puffed a bit of air, a dismissive
pffft.
“Us enlisted men, we didn’t care so much. We’d just risked life and limb for this country. We’d seen young men fall. To have survived, well, you felt like you were invincible. It gave you a very big appetite for life.” He slapped his palms, brushed them together. “There were arrests, always. If you were a soldier, they’d put you in the stockades on Treasure Island. For the rest of us, the worst was later. The fifties. That’s when the bars were raided all the time. Your name could wind up published in the newspaper.” I redrew the porn tableaux, colored this time in anxious shades: your brain teetering between the explosion of desire and the fear of arrest, while a hot piece of sailor ass backed up onto your cock, the ocean roaring just beyond the fragrant, flowering bushes.

I felt the pressure of Walt’s hand on the seat of my pants. “For a few years after the war,” he was saying, “oh, times were good.”

I couldn’t help but grin. “You know, Walt, I have a boyfriend.”

“Good for you. I myself have a husband.”

“And he’s okay with you—with this?”