< PreviousJack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS WORK 10Jim Stewart I wanted to say I’d leave it there on the stoop, in homage to junk that accumulates on front porches and along back roads across America. I thought better of it. “My truck’s parked right there, the GMC,” I said, nodding toward Nelly Belle in front of us. “Since it’s Saturday, and the street’s not too busy, I think I can maneuver the truck crossways in the street. I can put the tailgate down, back up against the street steps, and load it right here from the stoop.” “That should work.” Thank God, I thought. Clarence wasn’t going to give me a list of reasons why it wouldn’t work. “Want to give me a hand with the old stove?” I said. He did. The stove was much lighter and easier to maneuver onto the stoop. I backed up the truck and we loaded the stove and refrigerator. I left Clarence to pull his maroon Ranchero into my parking spot. He said he would leave the boxes of tile for the bathroom upstairs. It proved easy pushing both the stove and refrigerator out of the pickup at the dump. On the way back from the dump I debated with myself whether the tile would be like I first envisioned it, or maybe baby blue with a cluster of violets in the center. They were neither. They were French tiles, like the ones I had seen in the fleabag hotel I stayed at on the Isle St. Louis, in Paris, the summer I was 21. Their shape, of square-circle-triangle in chocolate, caramel, and cream, looked very ancien régime. They were perfect for the bathroom with the clawfooted tub. Maybe Clarence would be an easier landlord to work with than I had thought. The transformation of the stage set had started; when fin- ished, the flat would be changed from a dangerous-bad-side-of- town-abandoned-derelict-building to a mysterious personal per- formance space embracing sex, art, and the at-home salon. All would be secreted away, on a far-from-forlorn alley, in burgeoning SoMa, the South of Market district of San Francisco. It was 1976. My stomach told me it was time for supper. It was almost dark. I was tired. A trip to the Norse Café in the Castro was out of the question. Then I remembered. It was Monday. The H. Salt Esq., a couple of blocks away on 7th Street near Howard, had a Monday night special. For 99¢ you got “authentic English Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS WORK Folsom Street Blues11 fish and chips,” complete with malt vinegar. True, they weren’t wrapped in the London Times but for 99¢ they weren’t bad. I parked Nelly Belle just back from the little chain outlet, went in, and laid down my 99¢. I scooped up my two cod fillets and French fries, doused them with malt vinegar, went back out- side, and hopped into my pickup for an English picnic. The over- head streetlight was burned out. That’s probably why I noticed the candle burning in the top floor bay window of a rundown two-flat across the street. The flickering light was casting shadows. They were moving with a certain regularity, would stop and then start again. I stared long at the shape in the window. A man was jack- ing off in candlelight, by the bay window. He stopped. I quickly turned the pickup’s parking lights on, then off again. The masturbation continued. I unbuttoned my 501s and pulled out my cock. I paced my jerking rhythm to that in the candlelit window. It felt great. I wanted him to know how much he was appreciated. I turned on a small light on the dashboard and increased my pace. The phantom exhibitionist also increased his pace, to match mine. Voyeur and exhibition- ist merged, became one. We each licked the warm sticky results from our hands for the benefit of the other. Not bad. Dinner and a show for 99¢. I looked at my watch. It was 9:30 PM. I switched off the dashboard light and looked up at the bay window. The candle had been extinguished. The show was over. The following Monday I returned at 9:15 for the fish special. I also got a repeat participa- tory performance in the candlelit bay window. This continued for a month. Then I missed a Monday. The following Monday the window was dark. Moving day was a bitch. The contents of my GMC covered wagon I had moved to California, a little over six months before, were scattered between two locations. Nearly half of my stuff I had left at Jack Fritscher’s house on 25th Street. The rest was at my apartment near Castro, on Noe Street. The most important items to move, of course, were my camera and equipment and my carpenter’s tools. They were the instruments of my livelihood. Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS WORK 12Jim Stewart My goods also included an assortment of mismatched mid- 19th century walnut and cherry furniture, well-worn Middle Eastern tribal rugs, old theater spotlights, odd mirrors, modern paintings, a variety of old steamer trunks and ancestral pine primitive chests filled with frayed volumes of leather books, vin- tage photographs, and an assortment of woodland Indian baskets, salt-glazed stoneware jugs, as well as odd items of chipped china, tarnished silver, and pewter that pique one’s interest when viewed in low light. There was more. I had to move a collection of clothes that alluded to military men, lumberjacks, cowboys, jocks, farm boys, hardhats, and other blue-collar males. Then there were the leath- ers, including a couple of motorcycle jackets, chaps, leather pants, and vests. With all this was a hooded handwoven wool burnoose from my visit to Tangiers, my academic gown complete with hood striped with bright colored silks, a black Edwardian suit I bought in Paris, and other dapper duds. And of course my old Harris Tweed sports jacket. There was also the mounted deer head of an eight-point buck my dad shot the fall I turned 13. I’m a collector. It was all grist for personal performance theater and photo shoots. It also led to some smoking-hot sex. It was art. Jack Fritscher and his lover David Sparrow had offered to help me move. I planned the move on a Saturday, when Clementina Street was not as crowded. Saturday had been a good day to take the stove and refrigerator to the dump. I hoped it would be the same for the move. We loaded both my truck and Jack’s Toyota for the trips from his place on 25th and Douglass and my former digs on Noe Street. All had gone well. We managed to find park- ing spaces where we needed them. The move was nearly finished. “This is the last load from the truck,” David said, as he brought an armload of clothes up the long stairway and into the middle room. He laid them across the old steamer trunk my great-Aunt Mae had left behind when she died at the state mental hospital during the height of the Great Depression. “Did we get everything out of your Land Cruiser, Jack?” “I think there’s a couple of old used jockstraps left in the back if you want them.” Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS WORK Folsom Street Blues13 We all laughed. Jack Fritscher, my bridge to the leather world of San Fran- cisco, had been carrying used jockstraps in his Toyota Land Cruiser since his days as a college professor. Whenever he offered someone a ride, Jack would wait for their reaction to the aroma. Some confused it with that new-car smell. Others were surprised they suddenly had secret thoughts of their high school football coach. “Well, I guess that’s it. Thanks for all your help,” I said as I looked around the room piled high with my possessions. “Well, don’t we get the grand tour?” Jack said. “All we’ve seen so far is this room and the stairway.” “The best two rooms in the place,” I joked half seriously. “Of course you get the grand tour.” I walked over to the double pocket doors leading to the front parlor. I got one door open just over six inches when it refused to slide any further out of its pocket. The other door refused to budge at all. There was a nervous chuckle all around as Jack and David eyed each other. “Well, I think that needs a little work,” I said. “We can go in the other way.” I led them into the hallway and back into the front parlor. “That’s a beautiful fireplace,” Jack said. “Isn’t it?” I agreed. “It’s amazing it has never been painted.” It was indeed a handsome fireplace. The old oak surround still had the patina of its original finish. A beveled plate glass mirror, uncracked, was still mounted between two slender Doric oak col- umns above the mantel. All the tiny green glazed tiles surround- ing the fire box were intact. “Does that heater work?” David asked, pointing to an ancient enameled-metal gas burner from the 1940s that sat in front of the fireplace. “I don’t know, but it’s going to the dump,” I said. “We don’t want you asphyxiated,” Jack said. “I really like the French curve at the ceiling,” I said. “Both this room and the middle room have it.” Jack and David cast their eyes upward. Nearly a quarter of the plaster from the ceiling was missing, revealing the old wooden lath underneath. The French curve was intact. Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS WORK 14Jim Stewart “And the bay windows,” I continued, “they’re in the front bedroom as well. Aren’t they neat?” We all looked toward the front bay windows. Frayed sash- weight cords dangled from all three units. The upper window on the right was cracked. Looking through the streaks left from dirt and rain, the bay windows revealed a panoramic view of overhead wires and several crossarms for both electric and phone wires. A round electrical transformer dominated the view out the cracked window. “That’s Chuck Arnett’s place right across the street there,” I added, as way of compensation. And so the grand tour went. Neither Jack nor David seemed impressed with the well-worn 1950s linoleum in the kitchen that displayed grease outlines and rust circles where the stove and refrigerator had sat They left shortly afterward, but not before Jack had asked me quietly if I was sure I knew what I was doing here, and what sort of papers I had signed. I reminded him of the little workingman’s Victorian I had restored back in Michigan. He hadn’t seen the “before” scenes of that little beauty. It was comforting to know they had my best interests at heart. After they left, I locked up the place and headed for the Ambush. Had I really gotten in over my head? I kept thinking of the East Village roach-infested tenement I had stayed in over Thanksgiving dur- ing my last year as an undergrad. At least here the bathtub wasn’t in the kitchen under a breadboard. Boy, did I need a beer.Next >