We met at a party thrown by one of Charlie's best friends from Hoover High, who was a former boyfriend of mine. We were so taken with each other we talked all night. The rest of the boys headed out to the bars, we just hung there chatting about anything and everything. I gave him refreshments. Next day we Got Together in the apt. I shared with Sally G. at 5054 Niagara, went to the beach at Pescadero...there was a beach there then, before the sea wall got built and all the sand washed away the first winter.
We walked a precinct (this one) for Larry Kapiloff, our first date. It was the '70's: a door would open and billows of smoke would er billow out, or there'd be some chopped material on a table, or a woman sheets to the wind would greet you at 10 am.
I had met Thom at The Barbary Coast, we hit it off. He was living with Sally G. in a tiny apartment upstairs from a garage on Adams Ave. The three of us basically lived there for several months, many good times. Thom was figuring out if he was gay or not, ultimately he went back to his wife and kids, deciding "not", but in the mean time we had fun times including some trips to San Francisco, to Tim & Kathy's on Belvedere, in the Haight, where oddly enough Charlie had had a job at the UC Med Center doing his conscientious objector work in a rat lab. He lived in Oakland, commuted over the Bay Bridge in a large white Chev van with no side windows, only a rear window and side mirrors for view and no clutch but was able to park the thing, parallel, even on those steep SF hills, while I would kill it 30 times on flat land.
Sally had been a nun in Seattle, but fell away from the calling, she moved to San Diego, became a liberated woman, a teacher, and came to be Thom's GF, then my roommate on Niagara. She had tried marriage and her former husband showed up at the Hole one day, getting in touch with his gay side. Quite a Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman tale. Sally returned to Washington State where she ran a fabric store, then into a traditional Catholic marriage.
Charlie and I just hung out with each other, we liked each other, I finally noticed I was spending almost all my nights with him at his apartment on Pescadero, half a block from the beach, and at some point just officially moved in. Politics was always real important, we agreed about 95 % of the time, Charlie was always a committed activist, much more than me, but I joined him in precinct walks, the Demo Club, and various Demo organizations and meetings.
