Tales of the City 03 - Further Tales of the City

presence.
    Afterwards, he had tacked this note to her door: HELP ME, IF YOU CAN, I’M FEELING DOWN, AND I DO APPRECIATE YOUR BEING ‘ROUND. I LOVE YOU—BRIAN.
    He was feeling down all right, but it had more to do with mid-life crisis than with the passing of a Beatle.
    For, on the day that John Lennon died, everyone in Brian Hawkins’ generation instantly and irrevocably turned forty.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last.
    “It doesn’t matter,” she said, leaning over to kiss his shoulder.
    “I’m just … edgy right now.”
    “I could sleep at my place tonight, if you need the …”
    “No. Stay. Please.”
    She answered with another peck on the shoulder. “Do me a favor,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Don’t become a lawyer on my account. I’m a big girl now. I don’t need any dragons slain on my behalf.”
    He looked into her radiant face. Sometimes she understood him better than anyone. “Right,” he murmured. “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends.”
    And sometimes she made him say the corniest things.

Cowpokes
    A CROSS TOWN ON VALENCIA STREET, MICHAEL AND Ned were sharing a Calistoga at Devil’s Herd, the city’s most popular gay country-western bar.
    What Michael liked most about the saloon was its authenticity: the twangy down-home band (Western Electric), the horse collars dangling from the ceiling, the folksy Annie Oakley dykes shouting “yahoo” from the bar.
    If he squinted his eyes just so, the dudes doing cowboy dancing could be grizzled buckeroos, horny claim-jumpers who were simply making do until the next shipment of saloon girls came in from the East.
    True, the beefcake cowboy murals struck a somewhat citified note in the overall scheme of things, but Michael didn’t mind. Someday, he believed, the homoerotic cave drawings in San Francisco’s gay bars would be afforded the same sort of reverence that is currently heaped upon WPA murals and deco apartment house lobbies.
    “Oh look!” a sophisticated but hunky workman would cry, peeling back a piece of rotting wallboard. “There seems to be a painting back here! My God, it’s from the school of Tom of Finland!”
The band was playing “Stand By Your Man.” As soon as they recognized the tune, Michael and Ned smiled in unison. “Jon was big on that one,” said Michael. “Just as a song, though. Not as a way of life.”
    Ned took a swig of the Calistoga. “I thought it was you that left him.”
    “Well, technically, maybe. We left each other, actually. It was a big relief to both of us. We were damn lucky, really. Sometimes it’s not that easy to pull out of an S & M relationship.”
    “Wait a minute. Since when were you guys …?”
    “S & M,” Michael repeated. “Streisand and Midler. He was into Streisand. I was into Midler. It was pure, unadulterated hell.”
    Ned laughed. “I guess I bit on that one.”
    “I’m serious,” said Michael. “We fought about it all the time. One Sunday afternoon when Jon was listening to “Evergreen” for about the three millionth time, I suddenly found myself asking him what exactly he saw in … I believe I referred to her as ‘that tone-deaf, big-nosed bitch.’”
    “Jesus. What did he say?”
    “He was quite adult about it, actually. He pointed out calmly that Bette’s nose is bigger than Barbra’s. I almost brained him with his goddamned Baccarat paperweight.”
    This time Ned guffawed, a sound that told Michael he had struck paydirt. Ned was the only person he knew who actually guffawed. “It’s the truth,” grinned Michael. “Every single word of it.”
    “Yeah,” said Ned, “but people don’t really break up over stuff like that.”
    “Well …” Michael thought for a moment. “I guess we just made each other do things we didn’t want to do. He made me alphabetize the classical albums by composer. I made him eat crunchy peanut butter instead of plain. He made me sleep in a room with eggplant walls. I made him eat off Fiesta Ware. We didn’t agree on much of anything, come to think of it, except Al Parker and Rocky Road ice cream.”
    “You ever mess around?”
    “You betcha. None o’ that nasty heterosexual role-playing for us. Lots of buddy nights at the baths. I can’t even count the number of times I rolled over in bed and told some hot stranger: ‘You’d like my lover.’”
    “What about rematches?”
    “Once,” said Michael grimly, “but never again. Jon sulked for a week. I saw his point, actually: once is recreation;