I moved to San Francisco 31 years ago next month. I was soon to be 23 (4 days after arrival), married for a year and a half, and about to become a seminary student at the Baptist seminary at the edge of the known world. I had been told by many folks back in Arizona that I should not let "sin city" turn me around and that I should be very careful that what they taught me in seminary didn't somehow destroy my pure beliefs. Of course, most of the people that provided that advice didn't realize that, even then, my beliefs weren't even close to pure (hence the reason I was moving to San Francisco rather than Dallas). Despite the fact that we lived on the seminary campus in Mill Valley for the first three years of residence, I never felt like anything other than a citizen of San Francisco. My wife almost immediately got a job in the city. We went to a a wonderful very liberal, very political church in the city. I first volunteered and then was hired at a youth center in the Fillmore... We were San Franciscans in waiting, and upon my seminary graduation in 1980 we made it official. A couple of years later our daughter was born in San Francisco, where she still lives as a proud "San Francisco Native."
It was during this time that I stumbled upon Armisted Maupin's "Tales of The City." First, as a column in the Chronicle and later as the first book in this now 7 (a perfect number?) series.
From the first paragraph of the first story, I felt like I was a part of the Barbary Lane crowd. Sometimes I felt like one character, then at other times I felt like another. Most of the time I felt like I knew every one of the people (they were never characters) in the book and most of them were my friends. The ones I didn't fully know (for example, I didn't yet know anyone like Anna Madrigal) I came to love anyway and to look for them in the environment like someone searching for a unicorn or a magical wizard. I found them all soon enough.
When the series ended back in the 90s, I was overcome with a sadness much akin to the feeling you get when good friends - very good friends - move away, or otherwise disappear from your life. This happened at a time in my personal life (again a feeling of solidarity with the folks on the Lane) when I was a losing a lot of my personal flesh and blood friends. Losing them to AIDS, losing them to moves (both theirs and mine) out of The City, losing them through stupid disagreements, or simple relational laziness.
When the stories stopped coming, it was like my best friends had walked out on me and left me alone and dazed.
It was just about a year ago that I walked into Copperfields Books in Petaluma to be greeted by a new book display with the three word proclamation, "Michael Tolliver Lives!"It stopped me dead in my tracks.
Armistead Maupin had done it again. While I had thought that my friends were gone forever. I was surprised to find out that, just like me, they had been continuing with their lives. Growing better... different... older. Here's Michael - whose inevitable and eventual demise I had come to sadly accept in the same way I accepted the deaths of so many flesh and blood people - alive, reasonably well, and strolling the streets of The Castro. My personal reaction was much akin to that of a character on the first page of the new book. "Hey, you're supposed to be dead."
It took me a year to get up the courage to finally purchase the book and begin to dig into the lives of these people I had lost. And it took me all of three days (it would have been one, but I had work to do) to tear my way through the book, laughing, crying, gasping, and cheering all the way.
These are my friends! And despite the fact that we lost track of each other for so long, they've come back and I am discovering how deeply I missed them. I spoke about this with a friend the other day and she had the exact same reaction... "Michael's ALIVE!?!?"
Yeah... Michael's alive... and he's my age, and the day after the clerk at the grocery store gave me the "senior discount" upon checkout, Michael gets it from a waitress in Florida. His reaction was much the same as mine.
Anna makes me smile softly with her understanding and her peace. These days she reminds me of several folks I know and love. Brian's daughter Shawna (and Michael's daughter as well, really) reminds me of my daughter; in attitude, and humor, and dress. The City is still The City, no matter what they do to change her.
I've really missed these people. This really IS my life...
There IS No Fifth Destination.
