SAN FRANCISCO – With the Pacific at their shoes, people roam, dream and venture in San Francisco’s dazzling waterfront, winding streets and hills halfway through the skies. They scale the hilly streets at dawn to welcome the sunrise and wait for the cable bells to ring jubilantly. They see the city with a cable pole with the height of the chill catching the fresh breeze capped by a piping hot clam chowder soup at the Fishermans Wharf.
In the heart of the Castro district is a world of its own: a special enclave—a home to hilarious and lively irreverent folks that move way too fast to be completely described.
One need not look for arched eyebrows or limped wrists. Their hearts are on the hood of their cars—the comic stand up, who thinks that character development consists of the worst quality and present them as entertainment in a parody done either with affection or cruelty, or mordant wit. It’s not just comedy but pathos, as artists create poignant, bittersweet relentless, tales about themselves. They have a peculiar and worthy place in a society that perks up at the opportunity to observe and divulge all things private with a sense of irony. The end impression is not comedy but pathos—very witty, but malevolent.
So it depends, on what you mean by “gay.” In this generation, it means an alternate lifestyle. I remembered when one of my closest friends—actor Bernardo Bernardo—told me is gay. With that revelation, came the witty humor. He told me how we covered Moses together (when he parted the Red Sea), and the photo ops of Rita Hayworth.
In older sense—in the 60’s—it was gay Paris, gay caballero, nosegay, Enola Gay and so forth.
Some may did it humorous too, when one realize that they are well-versed in bar tending. You wonder why one insists on calling himself Margarita, when Shirley Temple is taken, and Virgin Mary didn’t seem just to fit their lifestyle.
Time spent with these wickedly delicious friends are as gay as any picnic in the East of Eden. These polished little marbles of misanthropy, show a yet cruel but funny world can.
On Gay Pride March in San Francisco or Halloween Night in Hollywood they are always present. Some groups are grossly overdressed and others just as extremely underdressed. You don’t even have to look for arched eyebrows or limp wrists, family ties are either nuclear or dysfunctional as compared to an overwhelmingly straight world in whose corridors they are always threatened.One need not look for arched eyebrows or limped wrists. Their hearts are on the hood of their cars, the comic stand up: as ever, who thinks that character development consists of the worst quality and present them as entertainment in a parody done either in either with affection or cruelty, or mordant wit…, not just comedy but pathos: as artists that can cross pollinate humor and pathos to create poignant, bittersweet relentless, tales about themselves they have a peculiar and worthy place in a society that perks up at the opportunity that pruriently observe and divulge all things private with a sense of irony and laugh tract so that even as they slap their audience with political diatribe…the final impression is not comedy but pathos, very witty, but malevolent.
So it depends, on what you mean by gay: in the newer sense , alternate lifestyle…one of my closest friends Bernardo Bernardo tells me, he is gay…reminding me, how we covered Moses together, when he parted the Red Sea, and the photo ops of Rita Hayworth: in the older sense, in the 60’s, it was gay Paree, gay caballero, nosegay, Enola Gay. They are their best bartending, as you wonder why one insists on calling himself Margarita, when Shirley Temple is taken, and Virgin Mary didn’t seem just to fit their lifestyle. Time spent with these wickedly delicious friends are as gay as any picnic in the East of Eden, these polished little marbles of misanthropy, show a yet cruel world can be a funny one.
On Gay Pride March here or Halloween Night in Hollywood they are on display. Some groups were grossly overdressed and others just as extremely underdressed. You don’t even have to look for arched eyebrows or limp wrists, as family ties are either nuclear or dysfunctional compared to an overwhelmingly straight world.
To know more about gay people, I turn to the works of Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, EU Foster, Christopher Isherwood, Tenessee Williams and of course, Truman Capote. I was hoping to understand more about their lifestyle as they live in a rare section of society. However, it was inadequate.
No one knows why homosexuality exists, and in spite of theories—like existence of a gene, environment factors, or traced back from a domineering mother/father—it was suggested that it is not biological. but a choice.
In the middle of 1900 the first magazine called One: The Homosexual Magazine published in New York, had this salient features. It was a magazine dealing primarily with homosexuality from the scientific, historical and critical point of view. It aimed to sponsor educational programs, lectures and concerts for the aid and benefit of social variants and to promote among the general public an interest knowledge and understanding of the problems of variations. It also supported research and promote the integration into society of such persons whose behavior and inclination vary from the current and moral social standard.
It was a master stroke of consciousness raising, that reached to the core of what being gay was all about. IT started a movement as they came forward and joined their brothers and sisters in the march toward a new concept in society.
And now having been the subject of countless books, magazines, articles, talk show—they are out, proud and free.
Today, you think they’ll go away. They didn’t, they haven’t and they won’t. They are not just a passing phase with cultural miliposts. Thy are not only in the heart of San Francisco’s Castro, but in the heart of every breathing, living creature, that loves and lives and breathes unbridled romance.
