Cowboy Confessional

I was amusingly annoyed while being swallowed by a gay surge.

After more than a decade haunting San Francisco, my alleged mind realized that the one interesting neighborhood I had never visited was the Castro district, Gaydom’s epicenter.  I went there today because the area was allegedly colorful place, and I don’t mean the endless collection of rainbow flags fluttering from nearly every vertical post not attached to a human body.  The food in every restaurant is supposedly excellent and the people are happy as well as gay.  Quirky stores supposedly hock more than endless tubes of lube.

What nobody alerted me to was a scheduled mass march against the recently passed Proposition 8, an unconscionable constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage.  As per typical San Francisco scripting, the march would start somewhere downtown, travel up Market Street and wind through the Castro.  As my over-sized pickup truck descended from Twin Peaks (from where you can get a 360^o view of Baghdad by the Bay, I drove headlong into a mobile mob shouting, waving (rainbow) flags and acting deadly serious … for a change.

Halted in my attempt to make a turn and with my windows rolled down, I watched as gays and lesbians swarmed Market Street like a hive of malcontent bees.  Being a writer I was absorbed in study of the varied individuals, their slogans and their state of determined agitation.  Theirs’ was an old fashioned civil rights march without potential lynching (well, if they did marry their partners they might tie a knot that feels like a noose, but my friends — that is matrimony — take your chances).

I looked forward and spied two lesbians who were about to come along my pickup’s port side.  Their expressions were not welcoming.  The more bullish of the dykes, and the one on a collision course with my side view mirror, was especially snarly.  It took me half a second to realize I was being stereotyped.  I had a big pick-up truck, a western shirt and a serious expression on my face as I intently studied the mob. The girls pegged me as an anti-gay-rights-redneck who invaded their home turf.

So I smiled.  Not a big grin which would have looked contrived, but just a half-cocked show of approval about their mission.  I added a little nod of my head which instantly canceled the antagonistic attitude coming at me.  Without words or gestures, she and I simultaneously raised hands and high-fived one another as she walked on past.

A lot of friends and family back home don’t understand why I linger in the Modern Sodom.  The main reason is that there are more odd episodes per minute in this town than anywhere else.  You can never be bored.  Truck drivin’ ex-cowboy slaps hands with activist lesbian during a constitutional protest rally … it could happen somewhere else, but likely won’t.

I wish I could report on the food and people of the Castro, but the place was jammed with humanity.  The resturants were full, the bars overflowing, and I had to settles for a slice of pizza and a short walkabout.  But the weekend is still fresh.  Maybe Sunday will be sedate.

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