Page 171 - Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco

Folsom Street Blues 155

fates suddenly caused our community to drop like flies.
Because of that art salon on Clementina, and because of all
of us knowing one another’s works, one of the shots I had taken
of Robert Opel—when he and I were fooling jackanapes with
my nickel-plated pistol, the skull, and my camera that spring day
in 1979—became part of the Robert Opel legend. Jack Fritscher
published my “Robert Opel with Skull” with Opel’s obituary in
Drummer, issue Number 31, 1979. It was seen around the world.
It was a pictograph of the way we were. Of what once was.
Decades later, in 2010, the photos “Robert Opel with Skull”
and “Camille O’Grady with Skull” were hung at SF Camerawork
in “An Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area, Part 2: The
Future Lasts Forever.”