Page 153 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 123

There are two rooms. In the first, the bar itself runs the
length of the room. Men sit on bar stools, congregate at pinball
machines, mill around.
In the second room is a pool table covered with a piece of
plywood. This is sort of a back room. Men crowd shoulder to
shoulder. It’s a gently swaying crush. You could lift both your
feet and not fall. You could pass out and not hit the floor. The air
is heavy with smoke and body heat. Everyone is in some stage of
having sex. The room is half lit. Someone has unscrewed one of
the two naked red light bulbs. The press of men feels good against
my body. So many men crammed together in so small a place.
Tony Tavarossi told me most of them haven’t been in San
Francisco more than a year or two. Fresh meat. This is my first
night in town. Teddy says he likes the back room. I say dive back
in. He does.
I walk around. At the bar a blond in full leather, muscular,
tattooed, catches me by the shoulder. He says welcome to San
Francisco. I say thanks. He says you’re new in town. I say I hoped
it didn’t show. He says my name’s Jack Woods; let’s go home and
fuck. The fast invitation didn’t surprise me. What surprised me
was he felt free enough to use his whole name. Something nobody
does in Chicago.

A couple of years later, when the Tool Box was torn down “To Make
Room For Progress,” the wall with Arnett’s mural stood its ground, tower-
ing above the rubble, facing the sunlight and the street, no longer con-
cealed, upfront, thrusting those dark images of men at passers by and at
the hundreds, then thousands of men who were filling up the flats, lofts,
and single rooms at the old SRO hotels of Folsom and the Victorians of
Castro.
After the bars came the baths. The best baths were South of Market
renovations of rundown blue-collar hotels: separate rooms with the toilet
and shower down the hall. The best if not the first of the early baths was
the Barracks. On Folsom at Hallam Mews, the Barracks was behind and
upstairs over the Red Star Saloon. The Barracks perfected sportfucking.
Everyone went there, stopping in first at the Red Star for a twenty-five-
cent beer, smoking a joint, kicking back to the sounds of “It’s a Beautiful
Day” and Creedence and Janis and the Doors. On Buddy Night at the
Barracks, when two were admitted for the price of one, any man out
stag made a point to pick up a trick in the Red Star, both sauntering like

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