Don and Clark

PBT (see The Book Business) was a relatively small independent bookstore, but we had some fairly nice windows looking out onto Castro Street (again, a typical Victorian residential building, this time converted to commercial use). We hired a professional, Don, to do our window displays. He also did the windows for fancy department stores downtown and worked part of the year in NYC doing photo styling. His own residences were always amazing. The kind of house where you have to take pictures the first time you get a tour. He loved lighting (he once launched himself down a flight of stairs while trying to install a dimmer switch in his apartment -- he adored dimers), he loved color, and he loved beautiful things. He also had a wonderfully caustic wit and, the clincher, the most wonderful cat in the world, by the name of Arthur. He gave amazing parties where he could shock everyone with the most appalling and tasteless jokes.

Clark was equally funny though not as caustic. Clark didn’t even work at the store but he was a regular customer and shared a passion for children’s books with J4. He was, in the vernacular of Tales of the City, an “A” gay -- from a very good local family. (I’ve always seen Michael Mouse -- the real protagonist of the Tales of the City books -- as a combination of Ari and Clark). Clark was very thin, and very nervous and was attempting to establish himself as a humorist.

He always referred to me as “Mr. Bear” and it was years before I caught on to the Teddy Bear reference. Here’s the best story I know about Clark: He had more than the normal array of issues and his “friends” at EST encouraged him to address some of his fears (of heights I guess) by trying skydiving. In his first (and only) jump he managed to break both his hips and ended up covered in casts and strapped into a pivoting hospital bed (at home) for months. After that, whenever he needed or wanted something, in any setting,  he would yell out “Nurse!” because he had been dependent for so long on the full time nurses his family provided for him while he was recovering.

There was an interesting aspect to being an outsider at the center of such a dramatic social phenomenon (the gay revolution in SF). For one thing, I seemed to notice things others didn’t (or didn’t want to) notice. Doctor’s offices started popping up all over the place that specialized in “gay” health concerns. There was one right across the light well from the bookstore office. I would listen to my friends relate all the bizarre medical problems they were having to deal with and I couldn’t help thinking, I know you guys are having fun but aren’t you also creating an ideal environment for the development and spread of STDs? 

Today at least one of the PBT staff is living with HIV (and doing well) but Ari, Don, Clark, and Pristine Condition all died of AIDS. Sadly, it seemed to be the best who died -- the most memorable characters certainly. I could say that I was particularly busy with my own life as they fell one by one in the great AIDS pandemic of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s -- before the drugs kicked in. Or that I might have been more helpful if I had already experienced the deaths of my parents and had become more comfortable with death. But the truth is that I just didn’t want to watch some of my favorite people wither and die -- because these deaths were not pretty. Life is a mixture of times you get it right and times you don’t. All you can do is try to learn from your experiences and then move on. And remember your own failings when you are tempted to judge the failings of others.