Page 230 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

212 Gay Pioneers: How Drummer Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

to smell the Pain grow in me more, and more.
Mouth should drink from your juice cock, and
see you sit on my mouth as I ake in Pane.
Having my tongue dig in to you
as you show more parts of me to feel you.
Your ass should muffel my crys, and
having me suck on your ass hole and
when my cock sit up and hard,
Your hands and mine will Tuch my sole and
dance on my braine and you will know
that I am a brother of Pain and
you are the giver of Pain. And
in that I will show you my love of you and
Please you if you let me.
—Tony

In 1981, the fabled Barracks baths burned down slamming the Titanic
1970s to symbolic close. Tony had worked at the Barracks and its Red Star
Saloon. Collapsing with shingles and shigella, he had been admitted to San
Francisco General where I visited him in ICU. Unable to speak, he was alert.
Because one Barracks manager had crossed him, I tried cheering him with
the karma he loved: “The Barracks burned down yesterday. It’s the end of
an era.” Reaching for pencil and paper, he scrawled, “Good.” In the hall,
I asked his doctor, “What’s wrong with him?” She said, “We don’t know.
We’ve never seen a patient so distressed.” No one had yet heard of AIDS.
Tony Tavarossi died the next day, July 12, 1981. He was loved. His funeral
was enormous.
In 2010 when the San Francisco Planning Commission queried me
for suggestions about recognizing and protecting the GLBTQ social heri-
tage of South of Market, I recommended that a street might be named to
honor Tony Tavarossi who for all the Folsom fun and games was one of
those bartenders who are front-line inventors and caretakers of gay society.
His name, and the names of the other SoMa friends I nominated, such
as Anthony DeBlase, Thom Gunn, Robert Opel, Mister Marcus, Ron
Johnson, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Hank Diethelm, were included in the
booklet published by the Western SoMa Task Citizens Planning Task Force,
Recognizing, Protecting and Memorializing South of Market LGBTQ Social
Heritage Neighborhood Resources, March 2010.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 03-14-2017
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