It the pictures Silly
Please note: There's not much writing here, but in this case there are several photoablums, and I believe they are in black, cause the first one is and so maybe there's not a purple thing. Otherwise, then the color themes I try and carry through, but hey I'm human and I don't have a goddamn secretary!
In all of my life, perhaps this decade and this decade alone represented that moment in time when the world changes and you change as well. Not content to live in Santa Barbara working for the City in personnel, or in LA, more precisely, Santa Monica as an CETA auditor, I decided to follow other gay friends and move to San Francisco.
I had been working for the City's Fire Department as a CETA participant for once instead of running programs and believed that a job that I had already lost to this dud, a planning job no less, was the perfect job for me. I studied for the exam and thought that I passed with great success, and that was certainly the story as told by two of the three panelists doing the interviewing, Hank, the Department's Safety Officer, who we shared an office with (we two CETA employees) and our Supervisor, the supposed female token department position, Administrative Officer, who did the work of the budget and fun things like watch over CETA employees. The third was of course the Chief of the Department. Had I gone to his party prior to this I would have realized that Santa Barbara's middle class just wasn't ready for someone like me, although after that party, I was firmly convinced this to be the case.
But the real problem, after Carter had come to the White House he had determined to change the CETA program so that it would have a top level of pay that was considerably less than what we were making, going on for two years that I had been, I believe, at the department. So, finally, we couldn't refuse our raises and essentially were thrown out of our jobs because of this requirement, which, however allowed for us to receive services in which to help us find jobs. This is a chore that most people hate and I'm particularly compelling bad at.
And so the Chief made his selection which wasn't me, and why, because one of the old firefighters who hung out realized I was gay and made a big deal out of it. Until that time, it didn't seem that anyone cared too much, although one of the gay firefighters gave me one of those why can't you be more, I guess straight, discrete, what have you. I suppose he felt threatened if I were exposed he would be too. I just have never considered living the lie, and especially after Isla Vista, being an openly gay public figure, I wasn't about to go back into the closet, which I don't believe I was ever in to begin with, given everyone else had had a problem with this all my life.
I was no fool, I was certain that just because San Francisco had become the gay mecca that work life would be much better than down in southern Cal. But I hate cars in general, believing them to be an expensive nuisance and so the idea of taking the train downtown to work and living in a small city and living in the North, where I felt the educational would be such that even if I was at the bottom of the intellectual barrel it was still better than being in the middle of bunch of worker bees, which is what I considered Los Angeles and Southern California to be anyway. And, I hate the Los Angeles Police Department or what they call their police force and I call Hitler's second army. No, outside of the weather there is nothing than lots of cute surfer boys down there, but I had allot of good weather and never enough if any real surfers.
So why keep beating a dead horse, ride it to the finish line of where you're going before it drops. Of course, had I known what was going to happen to me that year. I might have kept my tugboat docked in the boring world I already lived.
However, we didn't forget our friends in Santa Barbara, and we finally hiked for the first time to our sacred waters known as Sespe Hot Springs, and here is a slide show of that trip so far. However, there are other pictures and of course the only time I was able to take a helicopter. Others took one another year, and then in the 1990s we had trip scheduled via helicopter and the night before I was to leave for Santa Barbara to meet up with others, the pilot calls to inform us that he can not take us in because the full effects of it being a wilderness area had finally taken hold he could not fly us in because of the ceiling imposed by it be a wilderness area. (Because machines are usually banned, then he could not go below the 3000 foot ceiling that's imposed.) Although I've always been supportive of the Wilderness Act and the basic understanding that roads (beyond hiking, or perhaps bicycles or horses) and their "subdivision of the landscape allowing for ever increasing human settlement, is the basic way we have managed to settle over the entire planet and divide it up for ownership by individuals or families, however, it seems very difficult that such a total ban would some day come back to bite us the butt and deny us our ability to visit what is about as sacred of any kind earthly place that exist.
My first years, especially the first year, while a little tough, did not diminish the fun however. Here are a few Pics illustrating close friends and fun times before the dark veil of HIV would descend.
While a new illness appeared in the gay community in 1981, the ramifications were still in the future. Little did I know I had already been exposed, but pay day was far in the future since it wouldn't be until mid decade that the breath and depth of the disease and its effect on the gay community in San Francisco would really start to emerge and then from mid to late 1980s would we start finding out who had become a infected.
Being a newcomer, as many of my close friends were, those most immediately affected were those who had been living here in the previous decade, in terms of losing loved ones, but that would not last until now it seems I am the only one left.
