White Night; The Elephant Walk

 May 21-22, 1979

I missed Stonewall, but on White Night, I got slugged by a fat Irish cop in front of the Elephant Walk. 

A decade earlier, my response to Stonewall was to organize a stuffy seminar on the Church and Gay Rights at Woodstock College. My response to White Night was to become a radical. 

The San Francisco community’s response to White Night was far more ferocious than Stonewall. Our sense of outrage ran deep. In just a decade, we really had thrown off centuries of old stereotypes. A momentous change had happened in the community. For us, being gay was simply a fact of life. Stubborn segments of the general society were lagging behind, and they were about to feel the fury of the men and women they intended to keep in their place. We had won a place at the table, fair and square. It had been taken away violently, and the consequences of assassinating our leader were going to be a blink and a nod. Never again, and certainly not in San Francisco.

The verdict was announced late in the day, close to 5 o’clock. I remember because later the police claimed it was the end of a shift, and they had no time to prepare for the mayhem that ensued. I was working late in my wood shop on 22nd and Alabama. The Inner Mission, a very Hispanic neighborhood, was perhaps an unlikely place to hear about Dan White’s fate, but the whole city was listening to the news. I turned on the shop radio. Manslaughter. Dan White had been slapped on the wrists. He shot at close range, and killed two public figures. The jury of his peers was letting him off not because he binged on Twinkees but because they were sympathetic to what he stood for. We all knew this. A minimum sentence may have been the official outcome, but having tasted power by electing Milk, the GLBT community was not going to be silent. 

I decided to drive down Howard and cross Market at 9th Street. As I started north on Larkin, I passed a line of parked police cruisers. Within a few hours, these would be torched, but it was still fairly early in the evening. I decided not to join the crowd that was already forming outside City Hall. My motivation might just have been hunger. I needed to eat. 

At home on Pierce Street, Terry and I watched live TV coverage as the crowd grew to several thousand, and then in the dark we could see the flames of the burning police cars. We could hear the actual sirens in our kitchen. We were less than 14 blocks away. It was loud. I decided to walk to Castro Street. That was the community’s home. It was where the march formed if there was a protest. It was where we celebrated. I knew that there would be something going on. I had to be there, but I also had a strange sense of foreboding. 

There was stunned disbelief about White’s verdict, and the rage was not in hiding. It might have been after 10 or a little later that the first protesters from City Hall began to straggle into the Castro. They arrived in small groups, mostly on foot. No one was shouting, “Out of the Bars and Into the Streets.” It was not that kind of night. This was the debriefing after a battle. What happened? How many people were hurt? Who was arrested? What’s the current situation? Drinks were bought for the warriors. 

The crowd began to grow. I don’t remember thousands, but it was more than a few hundred. The bars were full with some spilling out onto the sidewalks. People were looking for their friends. It was pre-cell phone, so we relied on the more primitive communication of friends asking about friends. Each of the few buses that headed towards Noe Valley was full of weary men. Cabs picked up passengers quickly. But the fury had not finished its work.

I found a few friends from Alice, the gay Democratic Club, on 18th, standing near the entrance of the Elephant Walk. There was a heated discussion. Of course, we were talking politics. The real activists were already trying to formulate a strategy for the coming days and months. I was already disappointed in Harry Britt, the man whom Harvey had groomed as his successor and Mayor Feinstein had appointed to finish his term. I knew we couldn’t look to him for leadership. The majority supported Britt, or were willing to give him some time to learn to swim after being pushed into the pool. Filling Harvey’s shoes was an impossible job, and grudgingly I kept my mouth shut. 

But most of the guys just wanted to get some dirt. We were angry, and we were about to get more angry. The cops had targeted the Elephant Walk as point zero in their retaliation for the humiliation of losing control of the rioting, looting, and burning in the Civic Center. It was just after midnight or perhaps a little later that a pretty sizable phalanx of cops, swinging clubs in riot gear, appeared at Market Street and began slowly making their way down towards 18th. They stuck together but were not in tight formation, as if to protect themselves from what who knows. Probably more than a few still had grandmothers living close to Most Holy Redeemer two blocks away. Our neighborhood had been an Irish ghetto they’d abandoned for the carports of Daly City.

Then came one of those moments that sticks in your mind for life. I don’t think there were more than a dozen of us standing close to the front door of the Elephant Walk. We were just talking. At that point, there was no traffic on the street, but we were on the sidewalk. I remember I was standing on the left side of the door, perhaps 10 feet away, perhaps as close as 5 or 6 feet. Three or four cops, maybe 10, were leading the group. They speeded up, and I thought about ducking inside. One of the leaders hit me on the chest and pushed me aside. Looking at me directly he said, “Go home if you don’t want to get hurt.” I could feel his anger was much more violent than mine. He was armed, and his badge was hidden. There was going to be a fight. I realized we were overpowered and the dangers would be entirely felt by the men and women in the streets, not the cops.

I started to walk up Castro slowly and hesitantly at first. The crowd started to come out of the other bars and were taunting the cops. I looked back and saw the cops smash through the Elephant Walk’s lovely front doors with the huge brass tusk pulls. There was lots of screaming and shouting, breaking glass, the men who’d been inside began running out. Some were fighting back. I began to run up to get across Market Street knowing that many white gay men like myself would be punched, beaten and arrested that night along with many others. I stood guiltily behind the police lines on the northside of Market until the cops began threatening us as the fighting increased in the Castro. 

I was trapped in a wide range of feelings. They swung from indignation and anger to helplessness and finally just naked fear. Of course, I knew that we gays and lesbians were a minority, but somehow, this liberal former Jesuit believed that if the world were just, I would escape discrimination. The last vestiges of white classist privilege would prevail and save me from harm. I was wrong.

The only time that I experienced this kind of rage before was during the Roxbury riots that followed the killing of MLK in ‘68. I was a second-year novice doing my “Hospital Trial” at Mass General, where we served as orderlies in the Emergency Room. The stream of ambulances and police cars dumping off the victims of the riots was horrifying. Early in the morning, when all the gurneys on the platform of the ER dock were full, three Boston cops were rushing back to their cruisers. One turned to the other two and said, “Let’s get back and break some more skulls.” They used the n-word. They saw me and quickly apologized, “Sorry, Father, you just don’t know what it's like out there.” I was and am no street fighter, but my gut told me that an unprovoked attack had to be answered. There was no apology from the cops on White Night, and I still had no idea how to respond.

After Harvey’s death, I’d always been on the lookout for good gay candidates, and there have been several, but in general, I’ve been disappointed by the series of lackluster politicians who flooded San Francisco’s political life after Harvey opened the gates; Britt took being supervisor as a promotion from letter carrier and now he had Wednesday and Thursday afternoons free to play the ponies at Tanforan or Golden Gate Fields. He certainly was no Harvey Milk. But if gay men and women were to enter the world as equals with the rest of America, there is no reason why we should be spared the sad breed of political hacks. I just always hoped we could do better. I still do.

Remembering Harvey on his birthday!

Originally posted on August 12, 2009; reposted on July 13, 2018

November 27, 2008 was the 30th anniversary of the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone in San Francisco’s City Hall. Today, August 12th 2009, President Obama honored Harvey posthumously with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"He would become after several attempts one of the first openly gay Americans elected to public office. And his message of hope, hope unashamed, hope unafraid could never be silenced," said President Barack Obama. Thank you, Mr. President.

Robert Aitken once said to me, “We don’t realize that we’re making history while we’re living it.” Yesterday I had a long conversation with a young gay man from Pakistan. I was surprised that he knew so much about Harvey. He hadn’t even been born when Harvey was killed, but he had so many questions. He grew up with hope. Harvey you did good.

Here’s something I wrote 8 years ago.

Remembering Harvey!

If Harvey were alive today, he would only be 78. Though he didn’t live to see much real effect of the gay revolution, if he were still alive he’d be thrilled to see the massive demonstrations across the country protesting the passage of Proposition 8 here in California. He’d also be raising hell, tempering passions, and organizing a skillful, resolute opposition to the religious faction that opposes the rights of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people.

I met Harvey face to face many times, but I don’t know if I really registered in his world. That doesn't matter much. I liked him, and supported him in every election—among gay men he was not universally popular—yet I didn’t get as deeply involved in politics as I did after his assassination. In the early 70’s I wasn’t totally out. This middle class kid was not entirely comfortable in the Castro, but I knew that it was as close to gay heaven as I would ever get, and I was having a great time.

Rick Audet, San Francisco, USA

Harvey’s desk in the camera shop was in such perpetual disarray that you might have wondered how he could track his customers’ film, but he never lost any of mine. I would sit on the famous beat-up red couch while we did business and then was invited to stay for as long as I wanted. I always felt welcomed and, when I spoke, listened to.

During those times I mostly sat and listened. He did love to talk, and I sometimes had a hard time following his conversation. In the course of an hour, as customers, political friends, kids from the street, other Castro merchants came and went, he might talk about the flood of gay kids looking for work, experimenting sexually, VD, pumping up rents, leaving litter (and doggie poop!) in the gutter, upsetting the old line merchants, and scaring the widows who still lived in the neighborhood. 

I remember one afternoon very well. Three older, well dressed Irish ladies came in to complain, and ask Harvey to do something—his influence was already established—about what they considered the open sexuality of their new neighbors (I’d even say provocative judging the Castro of the ‘70’s by today’s standards). Worked out guys cruised shirtless on the corner of 18th and Castro in front of the old Hibernia Bank, known as Hibernia Beach, and the women thought it was, well, just too much. Harvey was masterful, listening carefully and answering every question honestly, but he didn't give an inch. The women might have left with some understanding of their new neighbors though not completely mollified.

He could laugh at any topic or take it with complete, serious concern depending on his audience. I always had a sense that he was probing for the deeply felt needs of the neighbors who ultimately became his constituents. When anyone asked him a question, that person became his total focus. It was clear that he had thought long and hard about the issues, and he always linked your concern to the general good. He was a real leader, crafting solutions while measuring the complexities and the barriers to full participation and acceptance in all levels of society.

But no matter how far ranging his conversations, he never lost sight of his primary focus: that gay men and women were entitled to equal rights without having to masquerade or make deals that would push us back in the closet. Though many talented gay men and women have followed him in San Francisco politics, I don’t think it was martyrdom that set the bar so high. He was just a born politician and became a true master in a very short time. 

On the marquee of the Castro Theater where the movie Milk opened last November 26th, there was the image of a political button: “Never Blend In.” I don’t remember if I ever heard Harvey say those words, but I do know that he embodied the openness about your gay lives they express. And it was the reason why many gay men didn’t much like him; they truly believed that “blending in” was the only strategy that would allow them to lead the kind of lives they wanted for themselves. [For a very thorough treatment of “blending in” and how it affects our rights as gay men and lesbians, I recommend, Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino]

Today is a good day to remind ourselves of what Harvey taught with his life: Never give in. Never think that you have to be other than you are! Keep up the fight. The only thing you have to lose is your humanity.

Issan Dorsey and Some Undisclosed Secrets of the AIDS Epidemic

What follows is an interview I did with Marlin Marynick for his book, Undisclosed: Secrets of the AIDS Epidemic.

1/27/2012

I'm a gay man in San Francisco. I've been living here since 1974. I'm a former Jesuit—I’d been in Berkeley studying theology—and when I came out, I stayed. I did all the crazy kind of things that people do when they first come out—particularly the men of my generation who were just beginning to do the things we were really capable of in spite of all the discrimination against us. I drove a cab for a number of years, and I started a wood shop, perfect for a guy with a degree in theology, but I didn't really feel much like practicing any religion. When I met Harvey Milk, I joined the fight for gay rights. I had a partner, and we tried to build a life here in gay Mecca.

Then, all of a sudden in the mid-80’s, our friends began dying, huge numbers. . .first it was called gay cancer, then it was called GRID. . .nobody really knew what it was, but it was terrifying. Towards 1987-88 I felt that I had to do something, although this was also a process of me overcoming my own fears, of dealing with them. I had many friends that were diagnosed, and everybody was dealing with the fear, the loss and the not-knowing what we were really dealing with.

In 1988 I met a gay Buddhist priest, Issan Dorsey. Friends had told me that he was remarkable guy, but my first impressions were that he was actually rather ordinary, far more effeminate than any of my gay friends, and not in any way “spiritual” as I understood the word.

Issan, “Tommy” Dorsey, did have an unusual path to a Zen. He had been a professional drag queen, and a heavy drug abuser, which was not terribly out of the ordinary for gay San Franciscans 40 years ago. He was also a very bright, funny, human being, and he had just started an AIDS hospice. (He himself died at the Hospice of the disease on September 6, 1990—he’d contracted HIV from his partner, James). I was blessed to be able to be with him during the last few years of his life, and helped him create Maitri Home and Hospice for People with HIV.

I had first moved into the Zen center on Hartford Street to practice meditation, to get away from a relationship that was ending, and to put some perspective around all that. Very quickly after I packed my bags, my partner and I closed our business, we made and sold furniture, and ended our relationship. So there I was living in this Zen center-hospice, and I started doing some general carpentry work, fixing bathrooms, getting rooms ready for the men who would live with us. It just was the next thing to do, right in front of me. This quickly lead to finding money to pay for the building materials; then more organizational stuff; and by 1990, I followed Steve Allen as executive director of the hospice. Looking back, it was something that my Jesuit training, and everything, prepared me for though I didn't have much experience with non-profits and no experience in health care.

Back then people with HIV-AIDS died quickly after being diagnosed. . . 3 weeks, 6 weeks, a few months, perhaps a little bit longer in rare cases. It felt like we were picking up bodies off the street. Some months 100 men died in our neighborhood, the Castro. You'd walk down the street, pass someone you knew who looked pretty healthy. Then you'd see him 2 weeks later and he’d aged 40 years. Within a year or two I said to myself "Oh my god, where did my friends go." No one knew what to do, or how to behave around those infected—these were friends. Of course a lot of us were afraid of catching the disease, because no one knew how it was transmitted, although we had our suspicions, no one really knew. No one knew if it was poppers, or kissing, or if it really was sex and drugs and rock and roll. That didn't appear on the horizon for a while because no one wanted to give those things up. Sexual freedom was part of our emancipation, or that’s what we though. Denial was a big part of the epidemic’s horrifying spread through the community.

Issan said that the only real thing that we could do was to take care of what was in front of us, take care of life as it presented itself. He said HIV was like a guest who’d come and knocked at the door, and couldn’t be turned away. When one member of the small meditation community, JD, became so sick that his partner Pierre could no longer care for him, despite the misgivings of some in the community—Issan could be very firm, even stubborn, when he was sure of the next thing he had to do—he moved JD into the bedroom next to his. And he began looking after his immediate needs, which included martinis after evening meditation, spicy hot dogs, and cable TV. It was a very simple concept—just take care of people in the most basic way and sustain a normal life for as long as possible. And be as happy as you could—no matter what.

And then something unexpected happened, JD did not die quickly. The symptoms of the disease worsened, he could no longer walk, was bed-ridden, but when a supporter gave Maitri a motorized wheelchair, JD became a teenager with a hot rod, missing meals, staying out past curfew. He found a new boyfriend who was also disabled, and they began to spend the night together. We moved him from the second floor to the street level front room of the second building where he held court. Four or five other men would be in his room watching campy movies on VCR at all hours. He stocked his small refrigerator intended for medications with soda and beer, and in the front window a hydroponic wheatgrass farm, for health, of course. All this really tested some zennish sensibilities, and the CNA staff. But despite complaints, Issan remained firm in his support for JD. When JD returned one day from Oakland—he’d taken BART across the Bay—with an iguana, no one believed that he would actually take care of it himself. He did. In fact he smuggled his pet onto a plane when he went back to Florida to spend his last days with his mother. The story of the lizard squirming around under his shirt while JD locked himself in toilet at 30,000 feet became the stuff of legend. I think that JD’s story is also a real example of what kind of life is possible when your guests are not bound by some rigid rules for how you expect guests to behave.

Even if people couldn’t see the compassion in what Issan was doing, most everyone trusted him enough to give money. Another friend of his bought the building next to our small Victorian house, and we bought back the lease. That gave us rooms for another 5 people. Within a year we had 8 beds for people with HIV-AIDS plus 6 people to take care of them, Issan, Phil Whalen, a zen priest, as was Steve Allen, and his wife, Angelique, Michael Jamvold, myself, and David Bullock. We shared a life together—we meditated, had fun. We worked hard and cried.

Maitri was a ragtag operation. We learned, and we would create a Buddhist hospice piece by piece. I began to spend time helping people get their paperwork arranged for the end of their life, getting everything straightened out with their partners, and their families, taking care of the kinds of things that come up towards the end of life. I asked social workers and lawyers to help and everyone I asked stepped forward.

What also started to become clear, we were charting new territory. We were the only Zen center in the United States to put meat, chicken and sausages on our vegetarian, Zen, table. People with HIV needed protein. There were a lot of other things that broke rules, both in Zen terms, and hospice-wise. When we had to take care of getting the drugs adjusted so that people could have a fairly comfortable life, we got help from Visiting Nurses and Hospice (Steve Allen worked out a contract with them to provide a full-time nurse and certified nursing attendants using moneys already allocated for care from the city). As I started to investigate how we could get money for hospice, I discovered that for most insurance and federal funding, people had to have a 6 month diagnosis to receive assistance and they couldn't take any drugs which would prolong life. Issan said that’s crazy because he wanted people to live and enjoy life as much as they could for as long as they could. There was a new, experimental drug called Foscarnet which prevented, or at least retarded, blindness caused by CMV retinitis. It had to be given intravenously. The nurses from hospice were not allowed to do that with hospice patients so I recruited a small group of volunteers who learned how to administer it. Then several patients wanted to sign up for drug trails of the new HIV drugs that began to appear. It would probably have been prohibited in more formal hospice settings, but somehow, I convinced VNA to not report any person at Maitri who enrolled in a drug trial.

The partner of my friend Michael who was dying called Maitiri “the house of death” when I suggested that he move Michael in. I was pretty offended. I saw what we were doing as creating a house of life. While I was trying to figure out how to keep the cable TV from being shut off, and lamb stew on the table, there were times I thought I was running “animal house.” There were lots of humorous, funny things going on all the time. Yes, people were dying, in the 2 + years I was there 82 people died in those 8 beds, and I was with almost every one of them. I won’t deny that it tested my defenses, that it was trying, and stressful work. There was always a poignancy about life at Maitri. But when death is simply part of life, it becomes easier to sustain what we think of as normal life.

Bit by bit, we did put something together, and what we created is now the longest surviving AIDS hospice, “home and hospice for people with AIDS,” in the city. The morbidity rate from HIV/AIDS has gone down enormously, thank god. Only a few people actually die in the hospice now, so the current staff deals with things like drug addiction, and adherence to medical protocol for the antiviral drugs, respite care, things that Issan would have encouraged us to do to make life as normal and happy for as long as it lasts. What we did in the early days of the epidemic and what continues to be done now is really extraordinary.

By the time he died, I realized that Issan was a truly extraordinary man. He had more than an extremely funny sense of humor. He’d worn a skirt, or as he used to say, "I still wear a skirt but I renounced the heels." His speech was always in entirely plain language. And he really was a Zen master. When this drag queen, substance abuser par excellence, started to sit in meditation with Susuki Roshi, he sat down and looked at the bottom of his feet, and said to himself, oh my god, they are dirty. . . and he started to clean up from drugs, and meditate. He also discovered what was important for his own life. In official Zen, he went as high as any man can go. For me he was an absolutely extraordinary, terrific human being.