By David Trinidad
Date: 23 December 1999

NIGHT AND FOG (San Francisco)

Once, depressed and drunk and on the worst wine,
Christopher N. and I sat out on the fire escape.
That was before he got weird, before I moved back
to L.A.: we shared a second-floor single apartment
in the Tenderloin. Christopher N. (an alias): seventeen,
innocent-looking, runaway from the complacent suburbs
across the bay, smiling defiler of the scriptures
of his strict father, a Baptist minister. That night on
the fire escape: genesis of intense gestalt friendship.
Ritual of confession. We hugged each other and cried.
That night I told him I'd someday write about us sitting
on the fire escape. Somewhere a phone was ringing. He
finished the last glass of Ripple (Pagan Pink) and pitched it
at the brick wall of the opposite building. It shattered and
we laughed.

Later, back inside: steam heat, *Discreet Music*, stamping
on cockroaches on red carpet cigarette scars. The walls 
cracked like in *Repulsion*. Lavender and green lanterned
light bulb of Blanche DuBois. Initiation rite: I gave him
my junior high school St. Christopher (with a surfer on
the other side).

Things he did I thought delightful: took taxis, wore suspenders,
spit on silver cars, drew dark circles around his eyes with 
shoe polish for poetic effect, cut pictures out of library
books and taped them to the apartment walls, insisted upon
passion, allowed himself spontaneous spasms of unlimited 
excess, praised Tim Curry, praised Bryan Ferry, praised the
gospel according to Pasolini, named his cat Icarus, created
his own art form (shock), hocked records he tired of listening
to to buy used books which he read and then hocked to buy our
booze, spraypainted D in front of ADA ST, cried when I told
him he was my Holly Golightly, cursed money for its ability
to corrupt purity.

But then he got weird. St. Christopher of the Club Baths. St.
Christopher of the trench coat and collect calls. His Philip
Marlowe hat. St. Christopher of the transfer ticket. Turned
eighteen. Moved into a condemned flat below Market. Folsom:
factories murmuring all night, leather bars. St.Christopher
of the post-fascist lost degeneration. Devout disciple of
Peter Berlin. St. Christopher of the punk rock safety pin.
Pierced his nipples. Placed explicit *Advocate* ad. St.
Christopher of the forbidden fetish. The decidedly strange
attraction to rubber. St. Christopher of the cock ring and
handcuffs. Spiked dildo. Branded asses. Undressing in the 
balcony of the Strand during *Maitresse*. Blond boy
snorting Rush stroking himself underneath smooth leather
sucked off behind bushes in Lafayette Park after dark.
St. Christopher with super-clap. St. Christopher of the
120 days of the Baptist apocalypse. Sexual dementor.
Collector of dentures and dead rats, bloodletters. St.
Christopher of the Castro hard hat and jockstrap. St.
Christopher kicking pigeons and poodles in Union Square.
St. Christopher picked up on Polk and Pine: twenty-five
dollars for shitting on his trick.

My last visit to San Francisco: saw vomit on the sidewalks,
saw piss streaming down steep streets. Bandaged panhandler.
Black kid lifting the crutches of a fallen drunkard. Transvestite
prostitute throwing beer bottles at a passing bus. Old women with
shopping bag suitcases picking in trash bins as if testing produce.
At the airport terminal, before he turned to go, Christopher N.
said: "You're so prissy I can't see how we could ever have been
friends." I flew home. *Angels of the complacent suburbs! of
discotheques! of hostile police!* Got drunk.

Jeannette MacDonald, there's a dark alley for every perversion
in your sickening city (water sports, B & D, fist fucking).
No one is ever innocent.