Beach Reading

by Abramson, Mark

  As the only waiter, Tim had plenty to do. Even though half the tables were empty, the diners who did come in were spread out all over the room. With Artie alone behind the bar, it took longer than usual to get drinks. Even Jorge, the dishwasher and part-time busboy, took the night off for a rock concert at the Warfield with his newest girlfriend. No one at Arts had ever heard of the band, but that was no surprise.

  The first part of the shift Artie talked about nothing but Harley’s party. “I danced with Carol Doda!” he told everyone who sat down at the bar. Most of the customers knew who Carol Doda was and if they encouraged him Artie would regale them with stories of everyone else who was at the party, always returning to tales of the good old days in North Beach.

  Tim was glad to see Artie happy, but when he needed to order drinks he wished Jason or Patrick were behind the bar. At one point he stepped into the kitchen to pick up a dinner order and Arturo asked how things were going out front.

  “It’s busier than I expected, Arturo,” Tim said. “I think we could have used two waiters and two bartenders after all, but we’ll get by.”

  “I thought you were past pining over Jason, Tim,” Arturo said frowning.

  “That is not what I meant, Arturo!” Corey and Jean-Yves had helped take his mind off Jason. “I was talking about business.”

  “You know, Tim… Jason cares for you very much,” Arturo said. “He’s just not ready to settle down right now. You’ll meet someone when the time is right. Falling in love has more to do with being in the right place at the right time than almost anything else. I’m convinced of that.”

  “Oh, Arturo… I know you only mean the best for me, but… Are these plates ready?” Tim didn’t want to discuss it.

  “Yes, run along before they get cold.”

  As the evening wore on, Artie told everyone who would listen all about the party on Clementina Street, but gradually shifted his thoughts to the present day. Tim kept busy enough not to have time for a lot of questions, but whenever there was a lull, Artie wanted to know what his sudden friendship with Patrick was all about. “I didn’t think you even liked Patrick, Tim. I know he gets carried away with his causes, but he means well, you know.”

  “I have nothing against causes,” Tim protested, although he did in some cases. People who preached to their friends and co-workers about anything, whether they were reformed smokers, born-again Christians, over-zealous environmentalists or gay rights activists—they all made Tim uncomfortable. “It’s just a Minnesota thing.”

  “What were you doing at the airport this afternoon, Tim?” Artie finally put it to him so directly that Tim didn’t know how to avoid the truth. He didn’t want to explain Patrick’s plan before he knew if it would be successful. Something else occurred to Tim, too. Harley and Vanessa had said they found out about Dave Anderson’s connection with Tim when they came to Arts, but Tim hadn’t been the one to tell them.

  “Artie, did you ever hear of a guy named David Anderson?”

  “Sure, Vanessa and Harley were talking about him the other night when they were in for dinner. Why do you ask?” Artie could be just as aggravating as anyone.

  “What do you mean, Artie?” Tim demanded. “What did they say about Dave Anderson? Did they ask about him in connection with me?”

  “They asked me if I’d ever heard of him,” Artie admitted.

  “And… what did you tell them? Had you ever heard of him?”

  “Tim… you mentioned him yourself a long time ago.”

  “I never told you about Dave Anderson. I would have remembered something like that.”

  “No, but you must have told Jason about him. Arturo and I ran into you and Jason one day when you were both off work. It was a beautiful morning and he had the top down on the Thunderbird. I think he was picking you up to go to the beach. Jason was teasing you about something and you told him to shut up because he sounded just like Dave Anderson. You two were just horsing around, already smoking a joint in the driveway on Collingwood—we could smell it before we got downstairs to the gate. Arturo and I were so shocked to hear the name that I asked how you knew him. You tried to clam up pretty quick, but we got the gist.”

  “I don’t understand,” Tim said. “Jason and I went to the beach lots of times, but why would you remember that day? How could you know Dave Anderson?”

  “Oh, we didn’t—not that Dave Anderson. It’s a common name. We knew another Dave Anderson in Viet Nam, that’s all. He was the meanest son of a bitch you’d ever want to meet. That was why I remembered, but even if he were alive, he’d be at least sixty by now and I know he’s dead. I watched him die and I’m almost ashamed to say I didn’t feel bad about it. I can’t recall exactly how his name came up the other night, but I think Vanessa asked me. The Chronicle was sitting on the bar and there had been those pictures about the preacher coming to town, you know. We got to talking and I told her yes, that you and I both knew guys named David Anderson, but that was a long time ago. We were having such a nice time talking about show business that I didn’t want to even think about Vietnam. I told her I didn’t think you’d want to talk about Dave Anderson either, but he was someone in your past when you were a kid in Minnesota. So… what were you doing at the airport?”

  Tim was spared from giving a direct answer when his second floor neighbors from Collingwood Street, Ben and Jane Larson, came in with their daughter Sarah. “Hi, Artie!” Jane called from the front door as Ben picked up his little girl and set her on a barstool. “Are you serving straight people here tonight?”

  “Jane... Ben! Hello, Sarah. How’s my little cutie tonight? Yes, come in and sit down. We’re serving anyone with cash or credit,” Artie said.

  “The neighborhood seems kind of quiet for a Saturday,” Jane said.

  “We had a good rush earlier,” Artie explained. “Most of the boys have gone off to the big dance down at the Moscone Center. The rest of the evening looks like it will be straights and lesbians.”

  “Can you say hi to Artie, Sarah?” Ben asked his daughter. “You know Tim who lives downstairs from us, don’t you? This is where Tim and Artie work.”

  The little girl said hi, but was more interested in staring at the framed photographs of local celebrities on the wall behind the bar. “Who’s that man, Mommy? I think I saw him on TV. Who is the pretty blonde lady?”

  “That’s Robin Williams,” said Tim as he came up behind the little girl. “Do you get TV Land on cable? He was on Mork and Mindy. The blonde lady is Sharon Stone. She used to live here in town, but I think she moved away.”

  “Even Viv took off early tonight, but I don’t think she’s going dancing. She’s got a new gentleman friend—at her age! He’s a big old cowboy,” Artie said. “Jason is tending bar down at the dance party and Patrick is… Tim! You never did tell me about Patrick. What’s going on with you and him?”

  “I’d like a Shirley Temple and a hamburger, please,” Sarah blurted out.

  “Maybe we could all sit down at a table first and look at the menu?” Jane suggested.

  “Right this way,” said Tim, averting Artie’s questions again.

  It was nearly eleven when the last of Tim’s tables finished eating, but they were still lingering over coffee, a twenty-something straight couple oblivious to anyone but each other. Arturo came out of the kitchen and pronounced it closed. When he saw Tim still there, he asked him if he’d like to cut out. “There’s no sense in hanging around for one table, Tim. Have they paid their check? If those love birds want more coffee, they can get it themselves.”

  “Thanks, Arturo,” Tim said. “I might be able to catch up with some friends if I hurry.” Tim grabbed his jacket and nearly made it to the door when Artie tried to question him again, but he called back over his shoulder, “I promise I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, Artie. I’ve gotta go!”

  Chapter 14

  Tim stepped out onto Castro Street and walked north toward the corner of 18th until he could flag a cab going his direction. “
Civic Center, please,” he said to the driver, a middle-aged man with a long gray ponytail.

  “Don’t you mean the Moscone Center?” The driver assumed that Tim was another gay tourist. “That’s where the big dance party’s happening. You don’t want to go near the Civic Center. It’s a mess!”

  “No, I mean the Civic Center. I live here. That’s where I’m going. What do you mean, it’s a mess?”

  “I haven’t seen so many cops down there since the riots on the night of the Dan White verdict, but I reckon you’re too young to remember any of that…”

  If Tim hadn’t noticed the ponytail and gold hoop earring, the cab driver also had elaborate tattoos snaking up both arms from the wrists past his well-developed biceps. He had to be at least in his late fifties, but he still oozed a comfortable sensuality that bordered on downright sexiness. “You mean you were actually here for the gay riots?” Tim wondered if the driver knew Harley Wagner.

  “Hell, yeah! 1979… I helped turn over the first police car at the corner of Grove and Polk and we used my Zippo lighter to torch it! This is the same lighter right here! I should bring it to that antiques roadshow on TV and tell them the story. It might be worth a lot of money by now. The first police car… whoosh!” He snapped the lighter open and lit a small clay pipe. Tim soon caught a whiff of pot and sat back in his seat as the driver accelerated down Market Street.

  “Wanna hit?”

  “Sure, man…thanks!” Tim pulled himself forward with both hands on the back of the front seat before the light changed to green at Sanchez and he was thrown back again.

  “That mutha-fucka killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone and they gave him a slap on the wrist! I grew up in New York, but I been here since ’67—‘Summer of Love,’ man.” The driver still had a trace of a Brooklyn accent and Tim realized that this guy, though he might not be someone Tim would even notice in a Castro Street bar, was still hot! It gave him hope for a long life to a ripe old age in San Francisco.

  The driver continued, “That was when Dianne Feinstein was mayor and she acted like we should all just be good little boys and go home and play nice. There was nothing but sheer rage coming out of all of us. By the time of the Dan White verdict, it was a decade after the drag queens in New York had fought back at Stonewall and we’d had some minor battles under our belts already, but this one was our turn. It was still a few years before AIDS hit, before Feinstein shut down the bathhouses, when we had to re-shift the focus to burying our dead.”

  “Wow!” Tim felt like a kid in front of his favorite cartoon show on a Saturday morning. Although he was never fond of history in books in school, he loved hearing real people tell about the times they’d lived through that he’d missed out on. “I wish I could have been here for the riots.”

  “It was really something, man… and then later that night the cops swept down Castro Street and bashed heads at the Elephant Walk. That’s where that bar called Harvey’s is now, right on the corner of 18th and Castro. The cops had no business coming down here… you want I should turn north on Franklin and try to get up closer on Grove Street? The television crews are blocking a lot of the area, not to mention the security and the limousines for all the big-shots.”

  “No, that’s okay. Stay on Market Street,” Tim said. “The corner of 9th is fine.” Part of Tim wished he could have been there in 1979, but he also noticed searchlights streaking across the sky a few blocks off to his right. The party at the Moscone Center would be getting into full swing and Tim wished he could be there, too. Jason would be tending bar and no doubt have his shirt off by now, raking in the tips. Jean-Yves would be there, too. Tim had a wicked desire to find out where Jason was working and take Jean-Yves right up to that bar to order drinks and show him off. Nah… it was a childish fantasy… first things first… he had to find Patrick.

  Tim over-tipped the driver, but it was worth it to meet someone besides Harley Wagner who had been in San Francisco the night of the White Night riots. That was two people in one week and it put Tim in the mood for whatever was about to go down. He looked at his watch. It was a few minutes past 11:30. He might still make it there in time to see what was going to happen. Tim ran across Market, then Larkin at Hayes and he came around the East side of the Civic Auditorium. He hadn’t been here since the Pride Celebration after the gay parade and that was during daylight hours. Now it was night and a blanket of fog had come in, but Tim was too excited to feel the cold.

  He heard the crackle of police walkie-talkies and paramedics on distant radios. Tim noticed a cluster of official vehicles in front of the main library and the red taillights of chartered busses across the plaza on McAllister Street. Rounding the corner onto Grove Street, his first sight was a group of boys in white shirts and ties kneeling in a circle. The oldest of them was maybe in his early twenties. Some were really cute, Tim thought, and that led to thoughts of Corey again and Tim fought off feeling horny. Then he got close enough to realize the boys were on their knees in a circle because they were praying. Tim could smell their cheap aftershave and noticed the acne on the back of one boy’s neck. They reminded him of the young Mormons that he sometimes saw on MUNI busses wearing their suits with nametags and trying to strike up conversations with souls that needed saving.

  Aside from the men who attended the rally, Arlo Montgomery had drawn a wide array of onlookers, press and protesters of every persuasion from pro-Israel and anti-gay picketers to Green Party members and advocates for the homeless and the disabled. A couple of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence dressed in red, white and blue were sitting down next to their glittering high heeled shoes and rubbing their tired feet. Tim saw a large flash of something white come sailing through the air and land in the middle of the prayer group, but not before it sliced a deep cut in the ear of one of the smaller kids. Blood poured down the boy’s white shirt and splattered across his clip-on necktie. The weapon was only a pasteboard sign on a stick. It said something about the wages of sin. Tim thought the little boy’s blood was splattered across the sign, but it was red paint from an artist’s depiction of hellfire lit by the spinning red light of a nearby fire truck. The little boy put his hands to the sides of his head and yelled, “Ouch! I’m bleeding!” Tears rolled down his cheeks and mixed with the blood.

  Tim helped the poor kid stand up while the others rejoined hands and went on praying. They seemed more intent on re-closing their circle with their backs to the world than stopping to care for the injured boy. Tim wondered what the kid was doing out there in the first place. “Come on!” Tim yelled. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to put pressure on the boy’s ear. “Come on! Come with me. There’s an ambulance on the corner. I’ll take you over there and they can patch you up. What’s your name?”

  “Luke… who are you?”

  “My name is Tim. Where are you from?”

  “Minnesota,” the boy said. He looked dazed and scared, but he allowed Tim to lead him away. “It’s my first time in Frisco.”

  “No kidding! I’m from Minnesota, too!”

  “Oh, yeah? My dad’s a preacher and we came out here on an old school bus. Him and me and my brothers follow Pastor Montgomery all over the place. Sometimes we go camping and we sleep in the bus and sometimes he lets some of us stay in his hotel room with him, but not me, not yet... he says I’m too little. The twins over there are John and Joseph. They just turned seventeen. They’re Pastor Montgomery’s favorites. We used to pass the collection plates, but now they sell tickets in advance and his men find us odd jobs to do. Tonight we handed out programs but everyone’s inside now so we’re finished.”

  “Here’s the ambulance,” Tim said. “These people will patch you up.”

  “Hey, thanks a lot, mister…”

  “Don’t mention it… but think of me next time you’re praying for the sinners… or against us. I’m one of them. I’m gay.” The paramedics pulled the boy into an ambulance before Tim could tell whether he’d heard Tim’s last words, but he felt good for having sa
id them. Now he wanted to find Patrick and Barry, but the scene outside was chaotic. Police were lined up with their backs to the auditorium and an even larger group of young dykes with signs and whistles taunted them from the opposite side of Grove Street.

  “Hey-Hey! Ho-Ho! Homophobia’s got to go!” they shouted, following the lead of the big leather-clad one with a bullhorn. Tim thought they needed a catchier chant, but he couldn’t think of any at the moment. It seemed like more testosterone was coming from the line of lesbians protesting than from all the armed policemen, many of whom looked bored.

  The entrances to the auditorium were closed and blocked by a pair of security guards in front of each doorway. The audience must all be in their seats by now, even the VIP section. Tim tied his necktie as he walked behind the row of police. He wanted to look like he could have been one of the ushers who just stepped outside for some fresh air or maybe a cigarette break. Did any of the guys who followed Arlo Montgomery smoke cigarettes, Tim wondered? He wished he had a joint about now.

  “Hey Tim! Over here!” Patrick and Barry yelled at him. Barry had his heavy backpack on his shoulders.

  “What’s going on, you guys? I got here as fast as I could.” Tim could see that things hadn’t gone as planned.

  “They wouldn’t let us inside. They said they had enough ushers. The only guys from our group that got in were the ones who were here last night and they were assigned to sections way up high in the balconies. I think Arlo’s people got suspicious of us.”

  “Maybe it’s because you’re carrying that huge backpack, Barry?”

  “These damned flyers weigh a ton, but I think Arlo’s henchmen are really nervous because your buddy Dave Anderson didn’t turn up.”

  “Where are all the gay protesters?” Tim asked. “It looks like everyone out here except that bunch of dykes has another agenda.”