In the first few days of November, France, the USA and the USSR all performed nuclear tests. There had been various attempts at peace in the Middle East, but that seemed to be an illusion. The reality paralleled circling sharks waiting for the bodies to drop. Nevertheless, I was feeling a bit more on my feet. I’d even managed to get a new part time job downtown at a department store, that paid enough to cover my modest bills and that I could walk to. This store had been around for nearly 100 years. The upper floors were each more elegant than the preceding one, and yet the store also sported a bargain basement. I’d purchased a plain black skirt and strappy black wedges for my feet. Even in those days, my long side braid was not department store fashion, but well applied makeup had me appear sufficiently professional. I’d been placed in the underwear section with an older matronly woman, Doris, who had been working in the store and this section for years. Doris was a no-nonsense yet warm woman with an accent I could not quite place. Each of us us sized the other up and we achieved a good working rhythm. When I first appeared, the store’s environment and worker’s morale were pretty good. However, after a few short weeks a new kind of restlessness took over. The older workers cast looks among themselves and did not seem happy. I asked Doris what was the matter and she paused, calling out to another woman on the floor, “Take over the counter for a while. I need to show Cornelia something.” We then went into the storage room and up some back stairs. A very old looking employees only sign was posted on the stair wall. This was like stepping back in time to the thirties and early forties. The furniture was old with the leather cracking, but still serviceable. “This,” said Doris, waving me into a room, “was the nurses station right next to the women’s room.” To my surprise there were two comfortable cots and a couple of sofas that one could lie on. I looked through another door and could see various types of chairs in a kitchen type room. “Why a nurse?” I asked.

“Because at that time the company cared about the ladies that worked for them,” Doris responded. “They knew that many working ladies went home to husbands, children and relatives they cared for and on weekends they went to church and did the laundry. The company gave us breaks whereby one could lie down and set an alarm. You could also ask the nurse to wake you or give you an aspirin or check your blood pressure if you were pregnant. Then you could picnic on the roof where you could see your children for a bit on the roof rides if they were properly watched.”

“Roof rides?” I responded.

“Yes, I will show you.” With that, we headed up some more stairs and were soon out in the late afternoon sun. There, I observed a few tables with chairs. Also, two laid back lounge chairs among strange looking big metal fixtures. “This was where they had a small carnival type place with rides right here on the roof,” Doris explained. “I have many happy memories here. Now they are like ghosts, existing only in the minds of people who came here and soon I and others will be ghosts even though we are still alive.”

I became quite alarmed because I liked Doris and she was training me in a way that felt comfortable to me. “Are you thinking of retiring?” I asked, afraid she was going to say she was dying or ill.

“Oh, no, but many others have been asked already. They will not dare to mess with me for several reasons.” Doris winked at me.

“Why are they asking people to retire if they do not want to?” I was confused. We had a lot of older customers from everywhere in the Bay Area as well as older tourists that came here to spend money. Those customers appeared to love Doris’s old world charm, as it made them feel special.

Doris let out a sigh. “The times are changing and the young have more money than before the war,” she explained, “I came here right after WWII and after I married. The war caused so much loss and suffering, and people wanted to be good to each other. Young people coming home from the war were happy to be alive and to be back in the arms of their parents who had survived the great depression. Now, here we are, with a nation full of slick spoiled kids that have money to throw away. They are hiring more young people from business schools or ones who have the right look. Even you are not safe. Even though you’re young and pretty, you look more like a girl from Europe or a flower child. It will take a year or two but if you do not wear more make-up and dress more sexy you will not last here.”

I looked over the roof, seeing the remains of what once was. “It’s hard to believe that they would even allow such heavy machines here and so many people with children on a roof.” I said, half to myself.

Doris chuckled “This building survived the great earthquake and then was redone and braced after the great fire. They knew what it could take and in those days children had more common sense and parents watched actually watched their children in stores. We watched too and the company watched out for us. To work for the great Emporium was something to be proud of, now this will change and I fear America will change too. Let’s go and make sure we have some music in our section.”

I brightened. “Really? What music do you like?”

“Oh, I like some of all music, it’s the over and over all day that becomes tiresome, but even though he looks so strange, I like the David Bowie . . . “

I walked home that night. As I walked down Market St., music darted from everywhere, coming from street musicians singing their last songs of the night to store fronts cleaning sidewalks and to passing cars. All was a colorful wave of sound from block to block. Disco, Rock, Punk, Folk, ethnic music and even a little country sound all reached my ears. It was a mellow November eve and my thoughts started to drift. I loved my new home and the streets of San Francisco and even though I missed friends, family, and most certainly past love, I had no regrets coming here. I knew my father was very worried about me, and I felt very separated from my mother and especially from my little sister. My father feared I lived in a den of sin. Why a den of sin? I asked myself. Were big cities inherently more sinful then small towns or perhaps was it just that cities, by being so big, therefore made sin more opportune and more culturally varied?

I mused upon this for a moment and it brought me back to a conversation I had with Esther a few days after his epic performance. “Esther, I am just confused. You can act and move the part of a women and you believe in and worship a Goddess yet you look like a man . . . at times a very glamorous man but still a man. You walk, talk and wear a bead like a man. So, why can’t you love a woman if you love a Goddess?”

Esther answered by breaking out with a rich laugh, throwing back his head as he lounged on his dais like Cleopatra, yet still somehow managing to look very manly. “Oh my . . . you don’t do casual conversation, do you?” he chuckled. I blushed and responded, “I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just everything here is so different from where I grew up. I am just trying to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Understand why you are gay. . ., a homosexual that can be so sensual and understand how a woman can feel like a woman when she moves, one who adores her feminine form but chooses to make love to a man.” My cheek’s felt hot to my touch and I was afraid I was asking something ridiculous like a child.

Esther looked away from me, his handsome face very serious and his eyes infinity sad. Taking a deep breath, he replied, “I do not have to explain myself or justify who I am to anyone but I will explain some things to you because I recognize that your questions come from a place of spiritual questing and a deep need to understand people and that you are innocent, not stupid.” He leaned over toward me and I felt like a deer caught in his headlights.

“So, first, let me tell you this. People are eternally conflicted for some truth that escapes us like water cupped in our hands as we desperately sip to drink the little we can. Such is how we are taught to see love and sex as a fleeting illusion that is sinful, dirty and ridiculous, an ugly reminder we are only God’s blessed animals and pets that must breed properly.”

My eyes flew open “Do you really believe that?!”

Esther shrugged his shoulders “I used to all the time, now only some of the time, because I was blessed when a great love found me who accepts me as a man, a sometime Goddess and a sinner,” he grinned.

“Well, I am happy for you,” I said dryly. “But it does not answer my question.”

Esther rolled his eyes. “You’re a troublesome girl.” he quipped, lying back. He paused, then spoke, “I was born to very wealthy Catholic parents and they didn’t know what to make of this very happy child that loved the world. I embarrassed them by wanting to sing and dance for their friends. I loved musicals and Fred Astaire, unfortunately Ginger too, even then I could dance both parts. When my father and brothers could not toughen me up to be a regular boy and my mother was “worried “about me, it was decided to send me to a monastery in another state. They must have thought that hopefully I was more suited for a religious life. The only thing, I was still ten, and twelve or at least almost twelve was the monastery’s rule for entry. A nice donation took care of that so there I was, this pretty boy sent off straight into the dragon’s mouth, leaving me to wonder if my family knew what went on there. No matter, or as I was later told, no one would believe me anyway.”

“There,” Esther continued, “I learned so much about loneliness, rage, sexual darkness, and how children can suffer the unspeakable in this world. Oddly, I also learned human devotion. I ran away as soon as I was old enough and finally landed here. So, my dear, there you have it. I would much rather have my heart and soul weighed on the scales of Egypt’s Maat then be judged by anyone else.” With this, Esther sat up, “Don’t you dare feel sorry or pity me. I have put it behind me best I can and I am content with who I am. Lordy, girl, you about got me to run to the bathhouse’s glory holes”.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Time for you to go, dear.” Now I laughed to myself, recalling the conversation as I turned on Tenth Street. Cassie had explained the difference between bathhouses and hot-tub’s and what glory holes were. I suppose if there was a den of iniquity in San Francisco it was there. Though if you were looking for a soak with jets for achy muscles you had lots of choices from family style for you and your kids to rock music, lights and a mirrored ceiling for you and your girl/boy-friend as well as the glory holes for the more kinkier tastes. The doggie diner was closing up, so I hurried my pace a bit as the street I was now walking on was dark with no people. A somewhat old looking blue truck pulled over across the street on the right-hand side of Tenth. Tenth was a wide street, and when this white man in his late thirties maybe early forties rolled down his windows he had to somewhat shout to ask me what time it was. “Oh, it should be well after ten by now,” I called back.

I started to walk on but the man called out “Can you help me? I am lost. I can show you a map.” He was a big beefy man and by the look of his truck I could believe he was from out of town but hairs on my neck stood up.

I shouted, “Wait! Get back in your truck! There is a gas station next exit that can give you better directions.”

The big beefy man hesitated but then started to make a run for me and cut me off. I was just going to scream when I hear from up the street this loud high pitched voice. “You get away from that little girl you ASShole!” This amazingly tall black women in a short sparkly red dress came running toward us. Both the man and I both froze and stared open mouthed at this vision. She screamed “Get back into your truck before I fuck you up!” She stopped and took off red glitter stiletto heels and even with those off she seemed as tall as a Detroit Piston. Heels in hand pointing out like the horns of a bull she charged at the man who now paled and ran to his truck, diving in. The woman stared at the truck for a moment and then ran to me as he peeled off down the street, turning for the lane that took one to the bridge. “Where do you live, sweetie?” I pointed to Project One and mumbled, “Thank-you.”

“I got the bastards plates. I am running to the police station and we are gonna get him,” my rescuer spoke excitedly and in a lower tone as she pulled some slippers out of her stylish purse and slipped them on.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Where you been girl? That’s the blue truck rapist. He has raped and beat four women between here and the lower mission, one still in the hospital!” She started running down the street waving a scolding finger at me as she called over her shoulder, “You better get you some heels, honey, or pepper spray or something!”

My heroine Queen quickly disappeared into the night. I got to the front door of Project One just as some punked out kids were coming out. I asked them if they had heard of the blue truck rapist. They responded, “Sure, it is all over the news.”

The next day I was having lunch with Cassie and Harry. They had their little TV on and it flashed the news story that the blue truck rapist had been caught on the Bay Bridge, thanks to a tip and drones on to Britain doing nuclear tests and back to soap-operas as we ate. Cassie and Harry also explained that they had heard that the rapist was from a few counties away and that he’d been on the prowl for women in neighborhoods that might be lesbians, as he was going to show them what a real man was. We were discussing how lucky I was when a news interruption came on and we saw hundreds of bodies on the ground, including children. We watched the screen with horror as the story unfolded concerning Jim Jones, the People’s Temple and that Congressmen Ryan also had been killed along with a journalist and others. After all was said and done, we knew nearly a thousand people were dead, many of whom had been from San Francisco. Cassie’s eyes were filled with tears, “The children, the babies. How can mothers kill their own children.”

We both looked at Harry for some sense or solace. It occurred to me that maybe I was somehow or in some ways out of touch with what was really going on around me, let alone what was happening in the world. Harry poured us each a little brandy and said quietly. “We do not know the whole story yet, but we do know that we live in a world where lots of people die for these scripts and books from the Middle East, where there is a God who goes about killing lots of people for one reason or another and encourages us to do the same despite the ten commandments.”

“I just can’t believe that’s right, Harry. I can’t believe that God wants that despite what the Bible says.”

Harry nodded sagely, “Well, that seems a rational way to look at things, but then again listen to the words of our music these days. It all seems somewhat predictive and makes you wonder who is right after all.”