Page 355 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 325

decorated as the Castro. Windows at Gilded Age Antiques and Cliff’s
Variety and the Rugby Shop were dressed traditionally. Skating bears
and bowing elves vied with the Lacoste crocodile splash of designer jock
ensembles at the All American Boy store. A drapery of lights outlined the
windows and roof-tops up and down the four blocks of 18th and Castro.
The neighborhood merchants had chipped in to erect a fifty-foot tree on
a pedestal outside the Hibernia Bank.
The fir reminded Ryan of the year before, when Mayor Dianne Fein-
stein, always eager to press electoral flesh, had arrived at the crack of twi-
light to speak briefly and light the Castro Christmas Tree while the Gay
Men’s Chorus sang “Adeste Fidelis.” Di Fi, as the neighborhood called her,
shook hands all around and worked her way through the huge crowd of
men. She must have felt like the mayor of the town full of identical twins
all fucking each other. A video camera crew walked backward in front
of Her Honor. Their bright lights illuminated her fair skin against her
dark, conservative suit and her white blouse with its big bow. She hardly
deserved the El Lay critique laid on her by the piss-elegant Mr. Blackwell
on whose Worst Dressed List she regularly appeared, because, Blackwell
said, her sensible shoes and tailored shoulders made her look like a voting
booth. Under the bright video lights, she shook hundreds of male hands.
When she arrived at Kick holding Ryan’s hand in the huge crowd, she
stopped dead in her tracks. Kick smiled. He was not one of the identical
clones. The politics fell from Di Fi’s face. She reached her hand out to Kick
and on impulse, in this whole crowd of men, pulled herself to him. In the
stark spotlight in the twilight outside the Midnight Sun Bar, Di Fi leaned
into kiss Kick. He smiled as she moved toward his face. Instinctively, at
a range of three inches, eye to eye, the two knew the scenario of their
documentary encounter. Their mouths, aimed at each other, both turned
at the very last instant. They bumped cheeks and Di Fi kissed air. Kick
pulled back. They both smiled. She had for a moment that look in her eyes
that women have when they see a man whose classic Look they can only
hope to see once in a lifetime. Di Fi was no Judas in her kiss. She meant
it, but her miming one on Kick’s face earned her votes. A cheer rose up.
The Mayor of San Francisco had kissed Mr. San Francisco. She stepped
back from him to the roar of applause and catcalls. She had kissed the man
most men on Castro wished to kiss.
That was Christmas past. In the year since, AIDS had changed all
that. Ryan doubted if even a politician would kiss a gay man anymore.
Christmas Eve made Ryan indulgent. Christmas was the one holiday
that seemed to exhibit honorably the childlike innocence of homosexuality.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK