QUEER

What is Queer? An Identity, a look, a phase, a lifestyle, or perhaps how you love.

As I stepped behind Ryan to nibble on his ear, a gust of wind blew through the flat—carrying salted air mixed with eucalyptus as I moved to his neck.

“Someone grab it!” Alain commanded from the kitchen.

The wind picked up a long strip of brightly dyed pink fabric—making it dance toward the big bay windows.

“I’ve got it!” James yelled as he dove out of my bedroom, across the hall, and grabbed at the fabric like a drag queen diving for a loose dollar bill during 'Last Dance’.

“Be right back!” I said, taking one more bite of Ryan’s neck as I patted his hard, firm ass before running down the stairs. I got to the landing and saw the fabric tethered to a branch but still flickering, like a candle in the wind.

“If I jump high enough, I bet I can grab that branch,” I said as a broom dropped from the sky in front of me.

Then a pillow, then another pillow, then one of my boots came flying down. I looked up. “Aim it more out,” James directed Alain.

CRACK followed by a hard THUD as I looked down at the ground. “See, I got it!” Alain yelled in that thick French accent we all loved. My brass doorstop pinned the pink fabric to the newly cracked sidewalk.

“Jim!” came the yell from the man crossing the street. “Brenden!” I exclaimed. He walked up and hugged me. “Where’s Monica?” I asked.

He said, “She’s at home. I wanted to come over and see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“Alain is up there with Ryan and James sewing the pieces together,” I said.

“Cool, how big is it going to be?” Brenden asked.

“The base of the triangle is about seventy-five feet across, and the letters are three feet high. I’m hoping you can see it from at least five blocks away. We’ll know better once it’s up,” I said.

“I’d love to help hang it,” Brenden said.

“Dude, I’d love for you to help, then we can say it was the gays and straights that put it up,” I said. Then, after a quick thought, I asked, “Can you come back?”

“You bet, mind if I go up and look?” Brenden said.

There was no need to reply—he knew he didn’t need to ask.

I watched him bounce up the steps and mumbled under my breath, “God I wish he was gay.” Then I remembered the other three—I couldn’t handle a fourth.

I picked up the fabric and doorstop as I leapt up the stairs two at a time.

When I got to the old wooden landing, I turned left in the hallway toward the kitchen. I could hear that unmistakable sound that always put a smile on my face—the chorus of chitter chatter they make when they’re watching Ally McBeal.

The room was painted canary yellow with a turn-of-the-20th-century gas stove and sink and an “updated” refrigerator that was more like an icebox from the 1950s.

The kitchen was spacious and Alain had set up a table and sewing machine on one side with the long strips of dyed bright pink fabric running the length of the hallway.

“What’s the dark fabric for?” Brenden asked.

Ryan turned around—looking at Brenden—with lustful eyes and said, “It’s the border, silly, where we’ll put the holes for the rope to tie it down.”

“Are you talking about the fabric, or your ass?” James quipped.

“When do you guys think you’ll be ready to carry it over?” Brenden asked.

I replied, “We told them we’d be over around noon to hang it.”

“Great, I’ll see you guys in a couple of hours,” Brenden said as he gave Ryan a pat on his ass.

“You’re going to get yourself into trouble, mister!” Ryan yelled at Brenden. “See you guys later,” Brenden said as he took off running down the stairs and out the door.

After I made the grommet holes in the folded-over denim we rolled up the enormous pink triangle and picked it up as one piece for the first time.

“We’re going to need some help,” I said. “Take a break, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I ran over to ACT UP’s dispensary and got a few guys to help us.

James said, “Okay guys, on three—we pick it up: one, two, three!” We put the rolled-up fabric on our shoulders and walked a few blocks up to the intersection of Market and Castro.

I could see Steve and Mike up on the walkway of the apartment building above the Exxon gas station, overlooking Castro Street as it rolled over the hills into Noe Valley.

We set the fabric down and waited for Steve and Mike.

“I was starting to think you had chickened out, Jim,” Steve said.

“No way, I’m tired of seeing so many baby strollers on Castro Street—there’s more of them than men anymore,” I said to laughter.

“Okay, the owner of the building is a friend of mine. He said that we can leave it up until this evening,” Steve told us.

“No problem, we’re just so grateful,” I said.

We all lifted the rolled-up fabric and started our climb up to the building and then up the building’s stairs to the fourth floor. “I see why that ass is so perfect,” I said to Ryan, who was walking in front of me.

After we set down the rolled-up fabric, I saw Alain and Mike talking quietly. I mumbled, “I think that’s the first time they’ve talked since…” My out-loud thinking was cut short by Steve yelling, “Alright, let’s pick it up and put it over the side.”

Alain yelled, “Wait! It’s not ready. We need to secure it first,” as he started tying off the grommets of the inverted pink triangle’s base to the top floor’s railing.

There was Alain, me, James, Steve, Mike, and Ryan holding the unfurled fabric, and as we were about to let it go, we could see that a large crowd, a few hundred, had gathered at the intersection waiting to see what we were doing.

“Ready!” I yelled. “On three—one, two, three!” And we let the four-story-length inverted pink triangle unfurl in the wind as guys on the floors below grabbed for the ropes attached to the grommets.

I ran as fast as I could back down the stairs, down to the gas station, and over to Twin Peaks bar, and then I saw the crowd—so large it had shut down traffic in the intersection. I then allowed myself to look up. “OH MY GOD!” I screamed.

There in three-foot-tall letters, like the Hollywood sign, the triangle screamed: “KEEP THE CASTRO QUEER”

Alain walked up and hugged me.

“We did it,” I said. “Thank you so much, I love you.”

He smiled, hugged me again, and said, “Me too.”

We stood there together as one unit, smiling, watching the crowd react to our message when Brenden walked up.

“Sorry I wasn’t here when you guys carried it over,” he said.

“No worries, Alain finished earlier than we had planned. What do you think?” I asked.

“Man, I love it,” he said.

One of Alain’s friends and an old roommate named France walked over with her camera in hand. As they spoke in French, I looked out over the crowd and saw people having pictures taken of themselves with the triangle in the background.

I mumbled aloud, “My queer family created this moment in the City’s history.”

The next morning, after picking up the newspaper, my heart skipped a beat looking at the San Francisco Chronicle masthead and our not-so-little triangle and its queer message. I ran back up the steps to Alain’s bedroom and jumped in bed with him.

“Frenchie, look!” I exclaimed as I shoved the newspaper into his still-asleep face.

“What?” he said. “What do you want?”

“Look!” I shouted.

He rubbed his eyes, rising out of bed and taking the newspaper with him. He looked at it, put it under his arm, and went into the bathroom.

Brrnng Brrnng—the phones rang in unison. I picked up the receiver off his desk, saying, “Hello.”

“Hey Jim, it’s Monica. Do you have a few minutes?” came the voice on the other end.

“Sure, what’s up? Did you see the story in the newspaper?” I asked.

“That’s why I’m calling,” Monica said.

“Okay, you sound upset. What’s up?” I asked.

“I just can’t believe you did that. And what you said to the reporter. I feel… I just can’t believe you believe in creating an area where only gay people can live. That’s discriminatory,” she said.

“Monica—” I said as she cut me off.

“How do you go about making sure only gay people can live there? What kind of test are you going to give them!” she demanded.

“Monica, to me queer isn’t just about who you sleep with, it’s a state of mind,” I said.

“Bullshit, Jim. That’s bullshit and you know it,” Monica cut me off again.

“I just don’t know what to say. I’ve got to go,” Monica said, hanging up the phone.

“Who was that?” Alain asked as he came out of the bathroom and into the kitchen.

“It was Monica. She’s upset for some reason about the triangle,” I said. “Here’s your espresso.”

No response as he was reading the newspaper. I sat down at the table, rubbing my hand across it as I could still see him and Ryan hunkered over the sewing machine yesterday.

“What are you thinking about? You’re smiling too big,” Alain said.

“Oh nothing,” I replied.

“That’s great, Jim,” Alain said, setting down the newspaper and picking up his espresso.

“Why was Monica calling? What was she upset about?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. She said I was being discriminatory with the triangle… honestly, let me have one day,” I said.

“Whatever,” Alain said.

A few days later, as I was getting off the bus after work, I saw a guy getting on wearing a T-shirt with a photograph of the “Keep the Castro Queer” triangle.

I turned around, jumped back on the bus as people looked at me. I walked up to the guy and said, “That’s me. That’s me on your T-shirt.” He looked puzzled and then glanced down at the front of his shirt.

“That’s you? How—what do you mean?” he asked.

“It’s my baby, my creation,” I said with exuberance.

“No way, I just loved it—we all did. They’re selling this T-shirt, postcards, birthday cards, and other stuff with your triangle on them at that store where the old tattoo parlor used to be, right behind Twin Peaks,” he said.

“That’s so freaking awesome!” I yelled as the people on the bus looked at me.

The next stop was Castro Street, right across from the shop selling my triangle. I walked in and saw T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts with my triangle on them. “Holy shit!” I said.

“Can I help you? What’s your size?” the man asked me.

“No, no, I don’t want to buy one—well, yes I do. But that’s not… that’s me, holy shit, that’s my triangle!” I exclaimed.

“We took the photograph. You hung it publicly, so we can sell our picture of it,” said the man, shifting from friendly to guarded.

“I don’t care about that, man,” I said. “Sell as many as you want—I love you!” Then I kissed him on the cheek and ran outside to hurry home to tell Alain.

“You should tell them you want 10%!” Alain said excitedly after I told him.

“Gilbert could’ve gotten rights to the flag, but he didn’t—he said it was his gift to the world,” I told Alain. “This wasn’t about money. We did it to try and wake the neighborhood up before we’re driven out. I can only hope my message of ‘Keep the Castro Queer’ catches on.”