The weather was starting to change –coolness was coming into San Francisco. As I got to know my friends, and was partaking in the bars around the area, Joe looking for a place for me to stay, I was learning I was far from being educated in the world of sexuality. That is to say, I didn’t understand the world of homosexuality, and in San Francisco, especially the Castro area it was famous for it, if not down right swamped with homosexuals. Again my Midwestern lack of education came into play. I had been noticing a few things happening that was coming to light. If I knew anything in this area it was primitive at best. And for being prejudice, I didn’t even know the word existed. And so I was an unlearned as a carpenter needing an apprentice.
I had went into a bar the second month I had been in San Francisco, about a block and a half away from the dojo. I sat in the bar and drank for about an hour, and a young good looking man came up to me buying me drinks. I thought it strange at first, but back home it was common for someone to buy you or the whole bar a round of drinks, –nevertheless, having said that, as the time went on, he would not allow me to buy him any drinks back. Then he asked if we could go to his place and drink. I asked, “What for…” he said, “You really don’t know?” He quickly found out I didn’t, and I said I think I need to go. I explained I was taking karate at the dojo around the corner, and I was from Minnesota. I do not think I impressed him, other than being a virgin I suppose, in his eyes.
“Look at the pictures on the walls, around and towards the ceiling, the ones hanging by wires,” he asked me. And so I did.
“Now what do you see?”
“Almost completely naked men,” I said.
“You’re getting it,” he commented, “And don’t worry about buying me a drink, but you will be back for me, I know.” I told him I really had to go but I liked our conversation. I kicked myself in the ass for being so dump, when I left the bar. Then I got thinking about the guy who picked up my matches that fell out of my hands the other day, he almost fell over and got hurt trying to pick them up. He wanted to take me home. Things were starting to fall in place.
Under questioning myself, I tried to recall a few more instances. The guy in the bar by “Sammie’s” kept trying to put his arm around me one early evening, and I told him to stop or I’d get mad and have to do something. He just kept it up, and the bar tender didn’t’ do a thing, so I gave him a solid right elbow in the side of his rib, and he fell over onto the bar, I think I heard it split, and the bar tender called the cops on me.
I said:
“Why are you calling the cops on me, he’s the one attacking me, I’m just defending myself,” it wasn’t all truthful, and he knew it, but he was trying to violate me.
“Get out of her before the cops come and haul you in Mister,” he hollered at me, in fear I’d start trouble. It took me a while to put two and two together, and figure out it was a gay bar. Poor man, he was just trying to come on. I thought what next. I left the bar quickly, and watched my language, back then I hardly ever swore anyhow, it was not the thing to do. My mother chased me out of the house at age nine-teen for swearing and I guess I don’t blame her, and this was not the time or place to start.
Year’s later people back home would tell me I was living in a city of sin and perverted people that I had most likely slept with, to include men. I said nothing, for what could you say -these were people from my home town, and they would never understand, I mean never. And if I defended myself, they’d take that as a yes to me having sexual relations with men, and it would just get all around, and god help me with my mother, and you got it, everyone. Again, it was best to leave it alone when I did leave San Francisco.
But as I had learned in San Francisco, it was just a world I knew nothing about, it was part of the times, and it was the way it was. Like old man Mr. Green, it was just the way he was. If anything, I tried to understand, what I didn’t know, which was a lot. I never made protests for anything, Vietnam, Gays, you name it, and life was just too short to get so involved with trying to persuade or change someone to be like you.
I didn’t like drugs either, nor was I experienced in the homosexual world, or for that matter, not all that much in any world besides St. Paul. I had sex one evening with a white prostitute down on Mission Street where I worked by Lilli Ann, I was half drunk, and she was not at all what I wanted, a beast of the raw kind. Another time I had sex with another prostitute downtown San Francisco, she was a black woman, we screwed for hours and she said, “Man, you like to screw, but I got to go make money honey, you can sleep it off here.” She left, and when I woke up, she never took a thing, and I simply walked back to the dojo.
I wasn’t looking to carry on any long term relationship, and to be quite honest, I was wondering why men were finding me attractive, but felt it was best in leaving well enough alone, it would go away. If anything I was more scared to find out which ones were, and what approaching new friends might be of that nature, I needed to kind of rehearse and let them know this was not my preference. I guess it was not acceptable to me to hate, or for that matter beating up people for their likes and dislikes. I would prefer to fight for honor, sport and practice, or safety.
Poetry &
The Ghost
It was a Thursday evening, I had walked back to the dojo, –it was going on 5:30 PM, I had stopped at a Chinese restaurant, ate dinner, some rice with beef and dark gravy and green peppers over the rice, it was delicious, and had some tea, that sunk to the bottom of the tea-pot, that also was excellent. Then again, back to the dojo. By the time I reached the dojo, everyone had left, it was 7:00 PM, usually I got back early to work out, and Friday nights I avoided going back to the dojo because it was Black Belt night until 8:00 PM. None-the-less, I entered the dojo, and sat back placidly against the sofa, the counter to my left, the archway to the gym [dojo] straight ahead stared at me; as it normally did. And then it happened, it was close to 10:00 PM; — what everyone had told me about, the ghost, that is what happened, oh yes, I met him. I can’t describe it emotionally with prose, so I had to write it down after the meeting in poetic verse, I never did give it a name, the poem that is, so let’s do it now, how about “The Ghost of the Collingswood Dojo,” ok? And now for the poem:
I heard him last night