Brown Coco Skin & Curly Black Hair

The DJ dropped "Finally" and every gay man in that San Francisco warehouse lost their fucking minds.

CeCe Peniston singing about the moment we'd all been waiting for. The moment when someone looks at you like you're the answer to a question they've been asking their whole lives.

Gary turned around. Red curly hair. Dark eyes. That look.

I flew back to Boston, quit my life, and moved cross-country for a man whose last name I didn't even know.

"Call me Gary," he'd said. Which should have been my first red flag.

But I was 27 and stupid and thought mystery was sexy instead of what it actually was: a warning label written in neon.

Content warnings: This podcast contains discussions of childhood sexual abuse, addiction, violence, death, and trauma. But it also full of profound love, transformation, and hope. Listener discretion advised.

Transcript

The Archaeologist of My Souls: 1 in 8.3 Billion

Chapter Six: Brown Coco Skin & Curly Black Hair

Content warnings: This podcast contains discussions of childhood sexual abuse, addiction, violence, death, and trauma. But it also full of profound love, transformation, and hope. Listener discretion advised.

I came to San Francisco the way you show up to your own intervention—high, underdressed, and thinking you're just going to stay a minute.

It was Halloween, 1990. I flew out from Boston with a friend who had an eyebrow ring and a post-op ex named Lane. So clearly, I was making excellent life choices and traveling with top-tier decision-makers. We landed, dropped acid because Tuesday, and by the time we hit the Castro, I knew I wasn't going back to Boston. Ever.

Within thirty minutes I had shed my safe Banana Republic weekend costume—because that's what it was, a costume for the life I was pretending to live—for fire engine red latex pants, thigh-high black equestrian riding boots, and enough jewelry to set off airport security in three states.

It was like walking into the apocalypse's going-away party. Glitter falling like radioactive snow. Leather mixed with lace mixed with what I'm pretty sure was actual chainmail. Men in heels that could puncture a tire. Drag queens dressed as nuns blessing people with Jell-O shots that tasted like communion wine and bad choices.

This wasn't a party. This was the end of the world, and everyone had gotten the memo except the rest of America.

And that was exactly what my soul had been screaming for.

Breakfast the next day was crystal meth and a martini. Not a metaphor. Not even planned. Just what happened when you rolled out of a stranger's apartment at 9 AM still buzzing from whatever had been in those Jell-O shots, and the person serving you scrambled eggs had been your drug dealer six hours earlier and would be DJ'ing at The EndUp later that night. San Francisco in the early '90s was a very small, very fucked-up family.

South of Market was still dangerous then. Still real. Before tech money turned it into a playground for people who wore hoodies that cost more than rent. The clubs had names that
sounded like biblical plagues: Colossus, The Box, Uranus, Junk, Pleasuredome, Osmosis, Dekadance. These were our churches, and we worshipped hard.

That's where I saw Gary.

Red hair. Curly. Dark eyes that held secrets. Moving to the music like he was having a religious experience and the religion was filth. And then the DJ dropped it—that song, the anthem that became the soundtrack to every gay awakening between 1990 and 1997.

"Finally it has happened to me, right in front of my face..."

The crowd went absolutely feral. This was our hymn, our declaration, our "I'm here and I'm queer and I'm not going anywhere" manifesto set to a beat you could feel in your soul. Bodies everywhere started moving like they'd been waiting their whole lives for this exact moment.

Gary turned around mid-thrust, our eyes locked across that sweaty dance floor, and I swear the entire universe paused to take notes. Because this was it—that finally moment CeCe was singing about. Finally, someone who looked at me like I was the answer to a question they'd been asking all their lives.

"Call me Gary," he said later, which should have been my first red flag. Who introduces themselves like that? Someone running from something, that's who. But I was twenty-seven and stupid and thought mystery was sexy instead of what it actually was: a warning label written in neon.

That weekend was chaos wearing a tiara. We didn't sleep, or if we did, it was on surfaces that probably violated multiple health codes. I remember a warehouse party where someone had filled a broken hot tub with gummy bears and called it art. I remember dancing until my feet bled inside my boots. I remember Gary's hands everywhere, like he was trying to claim territory.

We wore whatever made us feel invincible. Gender was a suggestion. Reality was optional. Identity was something you put on like makeup and washed off in the morning.
And that feeling—that finally, finally, FINALLY someone gets it—it was intoxicating.

So I flew back to Boston, broke up with my perfectly nice boyfriend who probably still wonders what the hell happened, threw my entire adult life onto the sidewalk, and moved cross-country for a man whose last name I didn't even know.

No plan. No savings. No backup anything. Just a suitcase full of club clothes and the absolute certainty that whatever was waiting for me in San Francisco had to be better than the slow death of Boston respectability.

I needed money, so naturally I climbed into a cage and started taking my clothes off for strangers. Go-go dancing, if you want to get technical about it. Though "dancing" is generous for what I was doing, which was more like "rhythmic grinding while questioning my life choices but loving the tips."

The clubs were packed every night with beautiful disasters just like me. People running from something, running toward something, or just running because standing still felt like dying. We were all dancing on the deck of the Titanic, and we knew it was sinking, and we were having the time of our fucking lives.

AIDS was killing us. The government didn't care. Our families had disowned us. So we turned trauma into choreography and heartbreak into hit songs. We made ourselves so fabulous that ignoring us became impossible.

Looking back, I can see what I couldn't then: I wasn't running toward Gary. I was running toward my own destruction, and he just happened to be standing at the finish line holding a martini and a suicide pact.

But for those first few months, before everything went to hell in a handbasket made of poppers and bad decisions, I felt more alive than I'd ever felt in my life. San Francisco was dangerous in all the right ways. It celebrated your weirdness, fed your addictions, and loved you exactly as broken as you were.

Which, it turns out, is exactly how it kills you.
Gary was the match, and I was the gasoline-soaked building. I just didn't know I was also going to be the fire department.

But that first night, dancing in a warehouse full of beautiful freaks while the city burned around us—literally, there were always fires somewhere in San Francisco—I thought I'd finally found my people. My tribe. My home.

I was right about the tribe part. I was just wrong about thinking that meant I was safe.

If you've ever made a decision so spectacularly stupid it felt like performance art, if you've ever followed your dick across the country and called it following your heart, if you've ever looked at a red flag and thought "that's a nice shade of crimson"—welcome to the club.

We meet at the bar. Bring cash. The drinks are strong, the music is loud, and the exit strategy is optional.

Just watch your back. And your drink. And maybe invest in some pepper spray.

Trust me on this one.