1977

1/4

Friday July 1

Montgomery Street

San Francisco

4:20 p.m.

My dearest, sainted, patient Deidre,

I am frankly quite stunned that I’m writing this. For a number of reasons which will become evident shortly, but among them is the fact that, like a butterfly or a shark (like to dip into all parts of the animal world for my analogies) I never stop moving from one thing to another. Read a chapter of a book then begin a drawing, then forget the drawing and begin the message on the back, then forget that because my handwriting is so bad and I’m saying nothing original anyway; have another stab at P.G. Wodehouse, feel my eyes tiring and attempt sleep but am distracted by the music on the radio, so I get up and find that my intense concentration is broken by the stream of frothing humanity (and cars) passing by the window up towards Telegraph Hill

and then, feeling boxed in, rush outside to join the merry throngs, discovering one, they’re none too merry to begin with and two, the great cavalcade seems to be carrying on regardless of my wallflower existence. I am that inconsequential, I feel, so I sink into the gutter and drag my sneakers (my feet in them) home.

Once home I become instantly pissed off with artificial light so I give sleep another go, this time successfully, but awake in an hour, my tongue swollen and dry, eyes unfocused and incredulous that it is not the next morning. And so I strain from one day to the next.

But here I am wide awake and eager to set off on the as-of-yet undetermined paths this letter will take. The afternoon sun is coming into the windows, nicely filling the kitchen here. Above the hotel, of the flea bag variety next door, and the more distant roofs of pink, white and cream stucco buildings climbing Nob Hill,

the predictable late afternoon low-lying clouds are moving in. Not too thickly this afternoon, it’s still warm out. Usually between four and six, a cool wind comes in with the fog and creates a mini dinner-hour autumn. Sweater weather. Broadway, a strip of neon debauchery directly in front of me is gearing up for the evening’s brouhaha. Young fellows in sunglasses solicit visitors from Toledo, Ohio to “come in, enjoy our girls, relax – sotto voce: get laid, drop 75 dollars – don’t be shy…”. As I’m in this cradle of nightclubbery, Broadway is a thoroughfare I utilize frequently. I patrol it westwards to go to the laundry, visit Chinatown or shop at the Italian markets on Columbus Street. And, inevitably, coming or going, even though my arms be full of domesticity like dirty socks or Quaker oatmeal, I am met with propositions at every doorway. But I revel in this, remembering Irma La Douce and attempting to misread this panorama as truly the bohemian life.

Despite a brief relapse just now harkening back to my ill-disciplined, unwilled days, i.e. I broke with this letter and diddled about taking a shower, dressing, making coffee and slipping a disc on the turntable (that is I put a record album on and did not scramble atop the phonograph in order to twist asunder my vertebrae), I am now reseated and scribbling.

A city is, to me, the most magical of all places. Nature may be grand and glorious but for me the most fascinating, exciting, heart-stopping parts of the world are cities.

I want to be a part of it. I want to feel myself awash in the energy that people are creating. I want to be dazzled by the lights and music of places where people go to be entertained. I want to hear their voices in conversations at cafés. I want to see the buildings their energies have created. I want to walk the streets that mesh around their existences. But I don’t want to be a camera, as Isherwood felt at one time apparently. I want to be a part and parcel of the whole thing.

My depressions usually result when I feel I’m not absorbing enough and more, when I’m not being absorbed enough. Nothing brings a smile to my face more readily than when ambling leisurely through undiscovered streets and buildings, reading a plaque that is letting me in on a secret of this or that place, buying fruit at a market and joking with the vendor, helping someone with directions, smiles and pleasantries from waiters or genuine concern from a clerk in a bookstore. This whole attitude was woven in Europe where the entire eight months my heart seldom stopped beating at time and a half. And on this trip, the same delight and almost drug-induced high prevails. I’ve discovered that it isn’t just Rues, Calles, Vias and Strasses that could do it or were the cause of it. It happened in smalltown Ohio, in Chicago, in Vancouver, but most particularly here. I guess because San Francisco is more like Europe (my first love and still the leader in my infatuations) than anywhere in North America so far.

This whole feeling I’ve been trying to describe is at its most potent, and almost carnal, when everything seems to be working together.

Nighttime. A busy street.

Brightly lit “Now Appearings” “Nightlies” “Hotels” “Clubs” “Theaters” “Bijous.” People are crammed at tables talking. Laughing. Waiters in formal attire. Flowers being sold by the curb. The morning papers are coming out in their first editions. Cars’ white lights, red lights, amber lights. Street signs – Broadway, Columbus, Grant, Kearney – One Way, Stop, No Waiting. Different colors, shapes. Crowds and crowds of people littering the sidewalks and spilling out onto the streets, holding up traffic. The shows are letting out. Street musicians. A violin. A guitar. All down the glittering, undulating length of the street there are knots of excitement. And you feel the whole city, the whole magical place is so full it’s going to burst.

You know I haven’t felt quite this way about a city since Amsterdam and London. In Amsterdam I knew my time was limited and so packed my days with streets, canals, bars and bookstores. My allotment being more extensive here and also staying with people which entails doing dishes, cooking, lots of sleeping and side orders of relaxing conversations, has caused my explorations of San Francisco to be piecemeal and not as extensive as it probably would have been had I had only four days.

Our first glimpse of the place was as we whizzed out of a tunnel on the Sausalito side, and suddenly, towering in front of us was, appropriately enough, one of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Then rows of buildings reminding me of nothing so much as the Riviera or Seaside England à la Brighton. Blue water, white streets.

Our place is at the corner of Montgomery and Broadway streets. Further south Montgomery becomes a Wall St. Beginning at our corner and proceeding west, Broadway is an unbroken succession of nightclubs, cabarets, restaurants, hardcore peepshows, strip joints, porno places, theaters, etc. A few blocks down, Grant St. begins – the heart of Chinatown. Next to it, Columbus St. where City Lights bookstore is –

this being a Ferlinghetti enterprise,

Allen Ginsberg and other poets aligning themselves with it. Very bohemian. We are at the foot of Telegraph Hill, a big tourist draw and now a trés chic address. Offers a nice view of Alcatraz Island. North of Broadway, chinoiserie comes abruptly to a halt and a large, colorful Italian section replaces it. Lots of cafés and bars dispensing cappuccinos. Not to mention paninis.

This very area where I now sit writing is the oldest section of town and more specifically, the part that was once known as the Barbary Coast. Montgomery used to be the waterfront street and streets like Broadway and Pacific were boardwalks leading up from the wharves.

The center of what was once one of the most infamous dens of iniquity this side of Port Said is a few yards from our building. Some of the dancehalls are still preserved down on Pacific, one block away. In this area (now known as Jackson Square and the home of extremely fashionable interior design houses and antique shops) is

I love it. I love the cable

cars and and City Hall, which is more opulent than many seats of government.

Domed, pedimented, rusticated, quoined, columned, pilastered, corniced, entablatured, cupolaed. Get out your Companion to Architecture and discover just what the thing looks like from these adjectives.

also the site of the shop started by a certain Levi Strauss in the California Goldrush. And jeans were born.

I’ve decided to end this now. If I continue I’d only wax rapturous for another few pages which could, and probably has, become tedious already. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing now. My life lies before me waiting to be shaped. I am the Master of my Fate. Too bad I’m such a sniveling coward. I could probably make something of myself. I just phoned my parents, collect, and discovered all is stable at home. So that is not a worry. But I miss you and think of you every day in some connection. Either wondering when your next letter is coming or knowing you’d like something I see or remembering something we’ve done together. That feeling is much valued because I know it’s reciprocal.

Love, George

Friday July 1

Montgomery Street

San Francisco

9:20 p.m.

Dear Deidre,

The city is dark now and lights are on. I have just enveloped the five pages that comprise ‘Letter A’ to you. I have sworn that this San Francisco leg of the journey would see me write this letter. Letter A was a mere warm-up, but somehow when I got to page five it seemed that that wasn’t the spot to begin this. It requires a letter unto itself. It’s that important. I’m shaking now at the thought of the next paragraph, so bear with me if I lead into things.

Our friendship has seen an imbalance however. This, as we both know, is my lack of soul exposure. A conciliatory reason was simply a character trait. There were parts of me no one could reach and that was just something that was so. But it isn’t true. You could always give more because you felt you had nothing to hide. But I had secrets I have felt until now I couldn’t reveal and thus I had to distance myself all the time, from you, from everyone. Well everyone doesn’t matter too very much, but what we have is too precious to let stagnate. And unless I am willing to jump in head first and give as much as I receive, then that is what will happen I think. So…

Since that day in grade eleven when I first saw you as the strange girl who dressed in black and performed in that sad “She’s Dead” sketch to our embrace at the Tax Office before my departure, we have grown closer and closer. You are one of the two people who mean most to me in my life.

What I’m bracing myself to say is that I am, in the vernacular, gay. Homosexual. I have paused just now to soak in the fact that I’ve actually written it. It’s true. And not something I’ve just discovered recently. No revelation. It has been clear to me, despite some minor agonizing over it and attempts to believe that heterosexuality would win through, since I was about eleven. Strangely, the fact has never bothered me particularly, nor does it now. I’ve never had to look the thing squarely in the face before now though, so that might go some way to explain my lack of anxiety.

I really don’t know where to begin. I’m not shaking anymore. The most important thing is to realize that the me you knew is still me. I am the same person. I haven’t changed a notch. The homosexual George has been the person you met, liked (presumably) and became close to. I’ve always been this way and the only difference is that I’m telling you what constitutes me, now. This obstacle broached, we can move on to new things without my feeling I can’t give too much away. Deidre, I want you to know that any questions, ANY, about anything, any aspect of me or ‘gayness’ you want to know is fine. I’m sorry this all is in a letter – it wasn’t so much a question of being afraid to confess (don’t mean to sound as if any of this is sinlike) in person, but more the feeling that I didn’t want to hold off any longer. Now is the time. You have to know.

Blindness because of love, I think, kept me in everyone’s eyes as a singular anomaly. “But George couldn’t be gay.” But he is. That’s why we could be such good friends and feel none of the heterosexual tensions that would have to be overcome. Thus I find it easier to become friends with and remain close to females. With males there is more chance of eroticism and emotion being involved. I love you. But I’m not in love with you. Not that heart-tearing feeling of hate/love that ruins so many promising friendships.

One thing you must also be aware of as regards faggots, queers, sodomites, gays, homosexuals is that there is no more basic licentiousness than in heterosexuals or straights. I am certainly not attracted to every male, and find only a few out of the great numbers on display that I can even talk to and feel understood by. But it does happen and has happened on this trip. Attraction I mean. Emotion and carnality I mean.

And this brings us round to David. I ‘came out’ or revealed myself as homosexual for the first time to anyone, last November. And David was the recipient. Simply because he was someone who had been honest about himself with me and everyone, and had also shown some attraction for me. I was never in love really with him. But he was someone and remains someone very special, because he saw me through that initial rough spot. He’s kind, good-natured, caring. And I care for him and am thankful to him very much. Unfortunately he has fallen quite deeply in love. He says for the first time in his life. And I am unable to reciprocate. I have felt the same things he is feeling now, and understand how it hurts when my attentions are directed towards other people. But I can’t – and he realizes this intellectually – cater to him. Still it’s hurting him an awful lot. We’ve talked and talked about it and both know what’s going on. Things are as sane and open as, I think, they could possibly be.

Really the whole trip has been one long agony for him. The whole situation has made David sick, almost physically. Then here in San Francisco, Mecca of the Gay World, it finally got to him. And he left, unannounced. I came home last Friday night to a note, a bag of my clothes and a pile of my books. He’d gone. I phoned him late last night to see that he’s alright and he is. We’re still on very good terms.

And this is part of the reason I love San Francisco. Castro Street, Polk Street. Two great gay ghettos. Five local gay newspapers. One quarter of a million people on Gay Pride Day.

I have also decided to come out so that someone who knows me now or does in the future, who knows I’m homosexual, might feel less intimidated about opening up and revealing themselves. Like I did with David. I’m not willing to hide it any longer. It’s not doing me any good and perhaps by coming out I’ll offer an insight into homosexuality that you and

our friends wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. And for me, it’s a really fine feeling.

I’m enjoying myself; the people I’m meeting and the people I’m attracted to. And this certainly is the place to be attracted to people. The fruit (if you’ll pardon the expression) is ripe for picking.

I won’t call this quits yet. It’s now 2:40 a.m. I’ll reread the emotionalism in the morning and decide whether or not to rip the thing up.

It’s now Saturday, 8:20 p.m. I read over what I’ve said. It’s not particularly eloquent, and somehow doesn’t cover all points, but the nub of the thing is there. The important thing is that you know and not, I suppose, how beautifully written the tale was.

I feel that anything more I’d write now would be repetitive and of not much benefit for either of us. As far as this news goes, on the one hand I don’t much like the thought of it spreading like wildfire and my being met with dozens of denizens in the know upon my return, but on the other hand I might as well quit this feigned normalcy cold turkey. I leave it to your discretion. I hate to think of you back home, alone when you read this, unable to discuss it with anyone. Let me make it clear to you that the onus is by no means on you to bear the glad tidings to people. It is my responsibility. But I want you to feel free to be able to tell anyone or talk about it without restriction. You are the first of my ‘pre-November 1976’ friends that I have come out to. I don’t feel strange about being quite up-front to anyone straight or gay whom I met after that initial confession to David. But it’s taken me until now to be able to come clean with you who have known me differently. Remember though, I am still me. Nothing has changed.

My parents are still in the dark and I really don’t know when I’ll take steps to make it otherwise, especially with my father being as sick as he is. Frankly I can’t conceive myself ever telling them, but then, eight months ago I was sure that this would be something I’d just live with the rest of my life (like diabetes) unable to tell anyone. But look at me now.

Deidre, I wish I could be there to hold you, and make you understand. I don’t doubt that you do, but it must seem an enormous about- face on my part, as if I’ve been lying all this time. Well, I have been. It wasn’t a question of doubting your capacity for understanding or compassion, but rather my own fears, cowardice and anxieties. But they’re melting away fairly rapidly now.

I tried not to feign heterosexuality too much. I could never bring myself, like so many others, to attempt dating or ‘going with someone.’ Even when I was at my most passionate over Beth (one of the five people I’ve been in love with – two female, three male), when I went red and choked out incomprehensible inanities, when my palms were damp and my heart geared into fifth, even then I thought I just couldn’t make a move because it wouldn’t be fair to her, what with me being homosexual. It sounds paradoxical, but that’s the way it is.

At the top of this page I said I felt anything more I said would be of no great benefit and repetitive. But here we are, moving decidedly onto page five. I’ll also ask you to understand my procrastination at writing the letter I had promised to you. I knew when I finally sat down to do it I would feel compelled to come up with what has preceded thus far, and the thought knotted my stomach. As long as I shot forth postcards periodically I felt I could stave off your lust for literature without being too depth-plumbing. You may now plumb me at will. I am as an open book, and I mean this seriously.

On the stereo now Judy Garland is singing “San Francisco, Open Your Golden Gate.” Broadway is lighting up. Saturday night is awaiting in the city. You know, I’m making one fuck of a stab at being part of it. It’s great.

Deidre, I love you,

George

Friday July 22

6:00 p.m.

Montgomery Street

Deidre,

This must be a sufficient reply for all three letters I’ve received from you. I was very touched and very relieved. Relieved not because I doubted your favorable reaction to my essential self, but just to hear from you and hear of your support and love. I need both a lot.

I was touched by your feeling that my attempts and concern for your mental and emotional well-being were so precious and valuable. Somehow my solicitude was something I never thought of as such. Nor did I stop to wonder if my presumption about your reaction was correct. I just knew what would be happening on that end and tried in my writing to you to make sure that the shock of the revelation could be cushioned as best as possible without my being there to take you in my arms.

I understand exactly how you feel, or felt at the time of writing. The boggled, stupefied, maybe even almost vacuous feeling when suddenly you discover an enormous and hitherto hidden section of a person whom you had thought you knew so well. The important thing is to realize that I am exactly the same person you have known and have known well. My feelings, my thoughts, my emotions, my looks, my actions, my pedanticism, my cynicism, my merry wit and incoherence all remain intact. Everything about me that our relationship exposed and flourished on, or in spite of, is valid and real. The homosexual me, is not something I’ve suddenly slipped into; it’s something that is as indivisible from me as anyone’s sexuality is. It is me. And always has been. A part of the integral figure and that integral figure’s thoughts, words and ideas, upsets and exhilarations were and are the ones you know. They haven’t changed. And, as you are well aware, it is only an adjustment to the revelation itself and not to the meat of the revelation that is required. I never thought that my being gay would be an obstacle for you, but I did know what kind of a jolt a surprise like that would have.

I feel as if I don’t know what I’m talking about. As though I’m repeating things that we both understand and that really don’t need to be said over and over again. But I think they do need to be said over and over again. That’s where the understanding will come from. That is how we’ll discover new aspects of ourselves and each other – trying to communicate what we’re experiencing, sensing. A turn of phrase may spark a question and that in turn opens a door to a whole other roomful of ourselves.

Do you ever feel mentally constipated? So clogged up you’re sure you, or rather your cerebral self, isn’t adding anything to the letter, or conversation, or essay. But in the hopes that some particularly literate paragraph will act as a laxative further down the page you let your hand continue writing quasi-inanities, always aware that the mind and hand aren’t really connecting. It’s like living off the fat of my brain until it’s forced to work on its own again.

Though in reality it happened only seldom, the possibility of some heavier feelings coming into the picture when other males were concerned was always there. As I wrote before, I believe I have been in love five times. Infatuated more, perhaps (I can think of at least two recently). I’m not willing to separate and sanctify ‘love’ apart from anything else. It is by no means, as far as I’m concerned, a holy thing that happens once, or perhaps twice, in a lifetime. Those feelings I had were intense, rending, shattering, inexplicable and visceral. There were degrees in each case. But the essential feeling was still there. And it was more than being “in like.” It was being “in love.” But for people to remain together or to want to be together it takes more than just those feelings. Emotional involvement, physical attraction, respect, admiration, interest I think must all be reciprocal. And the people one will remain with the longest are often the ones that you don’t collapse over. But I can’t say, then, that I discount the ones I have collapsed over as something ephemeral and not really love.

In the past, the only time I ever tried to formulate a relationship with a woman to any extent, consciously, as if to prove myself, was with Susan, the Susan you asked about in your letter. She was sweet and kind and I could honestly say I fell “in like” with her. But I knew the futility of trying to make more of it than that, and partly for her reasons and certainly because I knew my homosexuality precluded the flowering of things much further at that point, we went our separate ways. The fact that I was homosexual never surfaced however.

Rosa, the Italian girl, was no more than a thoughtful traveling companion who put up with me from London to Rome and back again. And when I yelled at her for waiting until I was on top of the roundabout to tell me when to turn droit ou gauche, destra e sinestre, or for

leading me, in Rome, down a one way street the wrong way to make a blind left turn into a tunnel because her mother always came that route, she overcame her aristocratic Italian inclinations and apologized. As you know, eight hours on the road and European drivers do nothing to recommend me for sainthood.

You must understand that my silence all these years as regards my being gay had little if nothing to do with my lack of trust or faith in you or anyone around me. It had to come from within me, it had to be my decision, an intellectual, conscious realization of who I was and what constituted me. You gave me all the trust and honesty and sincerity I could wish for from a friend. And now I’m trying to reciprocate. To show you that I’m now willing to give all of myself and not hold back. But those first tentative steps towards coming to terms in a concrete sense with being gay, which I took last November, had to be taken with someone who was gay themselves. Someone who could help me accept and understand as well as someone who understood. As things unfolded and I became more certain of myself as homosexual, more aware of my homosexual self with other homosexuals and the care and normalcy I experienced, then and only then could I take further steps to bridge the gap between the world of George that you knew and that of the one that is now. Part of the reason I think coming out is important is that aside from my own health, someone else may feel as if they’re ready to do something about their own homosexuality and may feel that they can talk to someone who they know to be gay easier than they can their own, perhaps closer, non-homosexual friends.

Please don’t think that this is an aspect of me that you somehow can’t be a part of or not understand. I have more faith in you than that. And you can be a part of it inasmuch as you are a human being with emotions and thoughts just as I am. In fact you are a part of the homosexual me by virtue of me telling you I’m homosexual. You weren’t before I told you.

At this end of the whole affair, I am very well. I can almost say, happier and more content that I have been in a long time. But despite all the emotional and sexual and sensual and some intellectual fulfillment I’m getting, there remains that residual discontent at my inabilities, that feeling I’m not absorbing enough, creating enough, living enough.

That sometimes I’m a spectator. Like going to Enrico’s down the street and feeling the café life is surrounding a bubble I’m in, and my bubble and my exclusion is precisely the fact that I want to be a part of everything so much. I know that being a part of life is no more than living, but still something less intellectual, something baser in me propels me toward an attempt to be especially a part of the ebb and flow of things – to see more than others, to appreciate a simple street, an arrangement of flowers, the way an architect has captured space, or the shape of a body. I feel as though I want so much and can manage to get so little.

But all these feelings, or rather this feeling, is fortunately displaced to a very great extent by the strange and marvelous turn of events and ensuing existence being enjoyed by me now in San Francisco.

When David and I pulled into San Francisco, it was to stay with a friend of his, Craig. Things between us were already deteriorating, but I was glad David was there as Craig seemed to be a talker and what’s worse an opinionated talker. The first evening out he gave me a headache and I thanked god David was there to absorb it while I could pretend to be drifting off in a reverie.

Now enter into the picture Carlos. This is Craig’s roommate. Tall, dark, slim. Because he is a dancer he was seldom home at all. Always off somewhere rehearsing or performing and teaching. When he was here at Montgomery Street he was often upstairs at his mother’s apartment. So for the first week I saw little of him and expected it to remain that way. Craig had told me his roommate was just never here. All the more room for me to mooch I figured.

About a week after my arrival in San Francisco, I came home from a profitable day of absorbing the city. I heard noise from within so decided not to go scavenging in the recesses of any number of pockets looking for a key and knocked. Carlos opened the door and was brilliant enough to kiss me hello. I was a little taken aback but this was a fine greeting as I had found him attractive from the start. That night, though he had never eaten downstairs before, he decided to stay for dinner. We spent the evening together at bars with Craig.

The first place, a leather bar where it is kosher to come appareled in motorcycle-cum-Nazi gear, they were showing Annie Get Your Gun on TV and the clientele ran mostly to paunchy middle-aged men mincing around in these ludicrous outfits. The second establishment we visited was on Fulsom Street, a place notorious for fist-fucking. A diversion which does nothing to tickle my fancy. Fulsom St., however, seems to thrive on this sort of thing, or at least pretend to. People smother their forearms up to the elbow with Crisco and explore one another’s digestive tracts. Alright for some I suppose. Carlos and I left.

We spent that night together and every one since. We just began living together, continuing doing what it was we had employed ourselves doing before we met, but centering ourselves around each other more, simply because we enjoyed the other’s company.

During this, what we both considered to be no more than a pleasant interlude, I was corresponding with Steve who I had met on the trip out here. I could tell from the sound of his voice on the phone when he would call and the tone of his letters that he was expecting something to happen between us when we saw one another again. He expected us to be lovers. I did nothing to discourage this expectation because I didn’t know what would happen between us when he came out to the West Coast. I wasn’t pining for him, or missing him. But, I thought, give it a chance.

In due time he flew directly to San Francisco. Because of me. I knew that something was wrong from the start. He was brimming with emotions when we met and I was trying, stupidly, to pretend the same. You know me, avoid-heartbreak-with-pretence-and-make-things-doubly-bad-George. What put me off was his physical affection in public. A groping, holding, fawning, cloying display that has never been a sight I particularly search out, whether it’s straight or gay. If confronted with this I know he would say that he is only being true to his affections and is not going to pretend otherwise. A valid argument. I also know that it’s a gay political statement on his part. And I felt roped unwittingly into it. It is not something I enjoy, attracting attention in public with that kind of feigned sexual play. But because I felt that if I backed off it would be an indication that I was trying to hide 1) being gay and 2) my feelings at all, I succumbed and went along with it. I felt all the more bullied because his emotions seemed to be soliciting the same from me though I didn’t feel the same.

Steve and I came home early. We were in the single bed when Carlos came in shortly afterwards. He sat out in the kitchen for the longest time. And I was agonizing over how badly he must be feeling. I was sick because of that and because of my continued pretense with Steve. Finally I excused myself from Steve and I went out and talked to Carlos.

I told him what I was feeling between Steve and I and how I didn’t want him to think that what had transpired between he and I was negated by Steve’s arrival. We talked and he shyly ventured the idea that he thought he loved me a little. And I strangely thought that I perhaps felt the same thing. I began to shake and became damp around the eyes but didn’t quite know how I was feeling. We decided that he would stay upstairs at his mother’s for at least that night and we’d work something out the next day.

I woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep, worrying about how I was going to tell Steve about what I thought had happened between Carlos and I the past two weeks. It seemed I was forced to deal with more emotional upset just when David had subsided from the scene.

That morning I made excuses to do laundry because I felt I had to get away from Steve to think. So I washed, I thought, I worried.

That night I told Steve and ended up cradling him while he cried in the back streets of Chinatown for about one and a half hours. I should have expected it, he’s so overwhelmingly emotional sometimes. But then he has this habit of playing the nonchalant toast of the town. So easy-going that he has no upsets and breezes through everything. But it seems whatever it was that he was either feeling for me or expected of

of me was deeply rooted enough to shake his c’est la vie attitude. But I was glad I brought things out and I honestly attempted to ease things as best I could by explaining everything and reassuring him that it had nothing to do with the essential Steve.

Later that night Carlos and I took a drive out to the Pacific. There in the dark, on the beach, he brought out a bottle of champagne which we drank in short order. I think it was probably more the wind and the cold than anything, but Carlos shook so much when I poured the bubbly he couldn’t keep any in his glass. I came to the point right away (I’ve been doing a lot of that lately) and he said he was feeling about me the same as I felt for him. That was one hell of a day for me.

It’s a month today precisely that Carlos and I have been together. And it has been really good. Neither of us is looking forward to anything; whatever happens, happens. But I’m not going to hold back for fear of being hurt, I’m letting myself feel whatever there is. The future will come soon enough and I’m not going to spend my time trying to foresee specifics. For now though, I’m very happy and don’t want things to stop. The only reason for leaving San Francisco at this time is an emergency at home with my father.

I received a letter from my mother recently. The chemotherapy treatments are not having any limiting effect on the cancer and they’re making my father sick as a dog for four out of seven days a week. In the letter my mother asks me not to let my father know the treatments aren’t working. She says he tries so hard to be cheerful when I phone. O.K., I know they just want everything to be smooth sailing but it isn’t. He’s dying of cancer and this silly secret-keeping is going to kill him a lot sooner. At least within the confines of the family it would seem healthier to be more honest. So the situation at home is not quite so stable as I thought it might be for a few months. And that fact leaves all my plans tentative.

It is now Monday July 26th, 4:00 p.m. All of the preceding has been written at intervals over the last four days and I am going to close things up now. Write me as soon as you can. I’m looking for your correspondence every day. Remember if you have any questions about me, about being gay, about what goes on where, I’ll give you the low down, in detail.

I love you Deidre,

George