Tales of the City 01 - Tales of the City

going?”
    “Here and there.”
    “Trashing, huh?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Be careful, will you?”
    “What?”
    “Don’t do anything risky.”
    “You read the papers too much.”
    “Just be careful … and cheer up. Someday your prince will come.”
    Michael blew a kiss to her from the door. “Same to you, fella.”
    She rattled around the apartment for half an hour, talking to her rosy fishhooks cactus and fiddling with her I Ching coins.
    She decided against a Quaalude. Quaaludes made her feel sleazy. What was the point in feeling sleazy if you had no one to sleaze with?
    Could you conjugate that? To sleaze. I sleaze. You sleaze. We all have sleazen.
    Words constantly annoyed her like that, reminding her of the gulf between Art and Making a Living. “Mona’s good with words,” her mother used to say matter-of-factly, “if she can just learn to Make a Living at it.”
    Her mother Made a Living in real estate.
    Mona hadn’t spoken to her in eight months, not since mother had joined the Reagan campaign in Minneapolis and daughter had written home breezily about her Sexual Awareness Retreat at the Cosmic Light Fellowship.
    It didn’t matter.
    More and more it seemed that Mona’s real mother was a woman so in tune with creation that even her marijuana plants had names.
    So Mona trudged downstairs to tell Mrs. Madrigal the news.

If the Shoe Fits
    M ICHAEL DECIDED AGAINST THE MDA. THERE WERE rumors afoot that someone on MDA had dropped dead at The Barracks the week before. It probably wasn’t true, but what point was there in pressing your luck?
    Actually, there were lots of murky legends like that among gay people in San Francisco. God only knew where they originated!
    There was the Doodler, a sinister black man who sat at the bar and sketched your face … before taking you home to murder you.
    Not to mention the Man in the White Van, a faceless fiend whose unwitting passengers never found their way home again.
    And the Dempster Dumpster Killer, whose S & M fantasies knew no limit.
    It was almost enough to make you stick with Mary Tyler Moore.
    Once again, he ended up in the Castro. True, he badmouthed the gay ghetto at least twice a day, but there was a lot to be said for sheer numbers when you were looking for company.
    Toad Hall and The Midnight Sun were wall-to-wall flannel, as usual. He passed them up for The Twin Peaks, where his crew-neck sweater and corduroy trousers would seem less alien to the environment.
    Cruising, he had long ago decided, was a lot like hitchhiking.
    It was best to dress like the people you wanted to pick you up.
    “Crowded, huh?” The man at the bar was wearing Levi’s, a rugby shirt and red-white-and-blue Tigers. He had a pleasant, square-jawed face that reminded Michael of people he had once known in the Campus Crusade for Christ.
    “What is it?” asked Michael. “A full moon or something?”
    “Got me. I don’t keep up with that crap.”
    Point One in his favor. Despite Mona’s proselytizing, Michael was not big on astrology freaks. He grinned. “Don’t tell anybody, but the moon’s in Uranus.”
    The man stared dumbly, then got it. “The moon’s in your anus. That’s a riot!”
    Go ahead, Michael told himself. Ply him with cheap jokes. Have no shame.
    The man obviously liked him. “What are you drinking?”
    “Calistoga water.”
    “I figured that.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. You’re … healthy-looking.”
    “Thanks.”
    The man extended his hand. “I’m Chuck.”
    “Michael.”
    “Hi, Mike.”
    “Michael.”
    “Oh … You know what, man? I gotta tell you the truth. I scoped you out when you walked in here … and I said, ‘That’s the one, Chuck.’ I swear to God!”
    What was it with this butch number? “Keep it up,” Michael grinned. “I can use the strokes.”
    “You know what it was, man?”
    “No.”
    The man smiled self-assuredly, then pointed to Michael’s shoes. “Them.”
    “My shoes?”
    He nodded. “Weejuns.”
    “Yeah?”
    “And white socks.”
    “I see.”
    “They new?”
    “The Weejuns?”
    “Yeah.”
    “No. I just had them half-soled.”
    The man shook his head reverentially, still staring at the loafers. “Half-soled. Far fucking out!”
    “Excuse me, are you …?”
    “How many pairs you got?”
    “Just these.”
    “I have six pairs. Black, brown, scotch grain …”
    “You like ‘em, huh?”
    “You seen my ad in The Advocate?”
    “No.”
    “It says …” He held his hand up to make it