O.Q.S.

There is a cool breeze this Sunday afternoon on Bainbridge Island. I feel it on my bare feet. They're up on the crisp-linen slip-covered ottoman in my office. Paul's lawn mower must be down at the bottom of the property by the bamboo hedge. It isn't nearly as loud as when I was napping and I can hear clearly the 23 kids playing out on the cul de sac. My Julia Child poultry stock is simmering, never ever boiling, so I can have a pristine, clear broth for soup.

"Those awful middle class queens--which is what the gay movement has become---are so tiresome." Rupert Everett said to a reporter from The Daily Beast. Well, Paul and I are middle class and we are, in gay lingo, queens. If cooking and gardening on a summer Sunday afternoon is tiresome, then, I suppose, Rupert knows a thing or two.

Sunday in San Francisco was waking up hungover then taking off in all directions, brunch,gym,a nap, but typically getting to The I-Beam for tea dance.


The I Beam, at the top of Haight Street was the city's first big disco. A decorative I-Beam was suspended over a dance floor the size of a roller rink. Much dancing and beer drinking with friends followed by dinner at wherever was in. Then it was home alone for Masterpiece Theatre on PBS longing to have somebody to watch Sunday TV with, to finish up the week-end quietly.

San Francisco during the seventies was wild and exhilarating. Society and politics collided with religious fundamentalism resulting in a mega explosion.

Straight people had already got the sexual revolution going after the advent of The Pill. They were like freaking rabbits, hanging out in fern bars,trying to get laid being all hip, cool, and meaningful. Uhm. Ewww.

Hopping onto that love train, homosexual men, and according to evolved seventies women, men were predisposed to bang anything that moved, took promiscuity to an all new level.

What would have happened if activist gay leaders said to their audience, rather than make up rules (read morality) hold onto the old ones? Yes, gentlemen, fall in love, get married and settle down.

I remember the rallies. First on the agenda, fight Anita Bryant. Second, go get laid. Rather than chickens in every pot it was a dick in every orifice. I lived that life, like a lemming I realized years later. Now,looking around I don't see many fifty-two year old homos who survived the swim up a strong-current river called The Eighties. The decade was a holocaust from which some of us came out of scarred, more than ready to settle down, get married, mow lawns, make soup.

When Paul and I left the city for Bainbridge we were given a lovely parting gift. It is a framed placard, an ad from The SF Chronicle lifted from a paper vending box. Super imposed over a black and white photo is a stamp that says 100% San Francisco, as in 100% pure silk.

In the photo a group of hairless muscled gay men, gym rats, dressed identically are disco dancing. Their trunks, buff arms and defined legs are frozen mid-step atop a float at a late eighties Gay Pride Parade. They're wearing black lace-up work boots, white socks peeking out around the ankle, white form-fitting Calvin Klein jersey boxers, kerchiefs tied around their necks and sailor caps. It was so then and already outdated.

I've always believed the misty air above the semi-naked dancing sailors are ghosts of hundreds of disco going men, dead by that pride celebration.


At the blog This. That. No Other. are pictures of the recent Vancouver B.C Pride Parade. The last shot(left)in the series is like the The Chronicle ad. Both photos show hot dancing men--although these guys pale in comparison. The 53 year old blogger's comment,"People for the love of all things good and sweaty. Let. It. Die. Already."

When did the scent of cut grass and the aroma of chicken soup become more appealing than smoking cigars and drinking Jack Daniels at The Lone Star on a Saturday night? Two weeks ago. Really. It is amazing what a 14 karat gold band did to straighten up
my thinking.

BTW, O.Q.S. is Old Queen Syndrome. Paul's San Francisco real estate colleagues used the phrase to describe overly decorated houses owned by older gentlemen, like Paul Lynde or Charles Nelson Reilly---YouTube them.

O.Q.S. as a school of design included touches like hanging Mapplethorpe photographs of naked men and calla lilies on the powder room walls. Large scale tablescapes on glass coffee, side and sofa tables included massive marble obelisks and crystal spheres. Grass cloth wallpaper throughout with candelabras and chandeliers providing dramatic lighting. You get the picture.