Page 131 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 101

Jew who had lost everything when her husband and family were run by
anti-Semites out of Cairo. They fled to Paris where they took refuge before
landing finally on Castro with all the other immigrants.
Maybe that common immigrant experience gave Mena her empathy
for homosexuals. Mena was a legend herself on a street of legends. She was,
in fact, practically the only woman many gay men encountered almost
daily. She saw to it that they were well fed. She was a businesswoman.
The value of the volume of foot traffic on Castro was not lost on her. She
had an uncanny head for figures. No Norse Cove customer ever received a
written check. Mena knew, absolutely to the penny, what each one owed.
For two years, Ryan ordered various breakfasts: cheese omelet, French
toast, corned beef hash and eggs. For two years, when he approached
Mena leaning on her cash register, she said, “$2.82” or “$3.12” or “$2.16.”
Always perfect, correct, exact.
One morning Ryan walked in and reversed the ritual. He said to her,
reversing her code, “$2.82.”
Mena gave the slightest sliver of a smile, as much as she ever gave
anyone, and within minutes that particular breakfast was brought to him.
Every morning Mena’s Norse Cove Deli roared with as much chatter
as any dining hall on any campus. On Annie Laurie’s first visit to San
Francisco, she looked around the Norse Cove, saying in all innocence, “Is
there a boys’ school nearby?”
Small fraternities emerged. Lions and tigers and bears. Some were
organized like the California Motor Club with its annual CMC carnival,
and the Pacific Drill Patrol with its members strutting about town in
police and military uniforms. Others were looser, sicker, and more elite
like the hyper-exclusive Rainbow Motorcycle Club whose members were
chosen because they were sex maniacs with public style.
Acid, and poppers particularly, caused more serious gay mutations.
Some gays, overdosed on Brut cologne, turned into twinkies. After assas-
sin Dan White’s “Twinkie Defense,” they mutated further into clones
living on Crisco and disco in San Francisco.
“Twinkies and clones live in the Castro,” Maneuvers said. “They are
always twenty-four and always no taller than five-foot-six. They sport
clipped black moustaches and short black hair, often with a gratuitous
bleached-blond lock left at the nape of the neck. Who can figure the
source of the breed? They are born to be gay waiters. They walk too fast
from here to there. They smoke Kents. They snort poppers while they
dance shirtless at discos. They wear size-small Lacoste crocodile shirts and
size 28-28 pressed jeans from All American Boy. They tuck red hankies

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