A few weeks ago I got a ticket from my office to a fundraiser benefitting the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Center. It was my second time at Backflip in one week, which was kinda freaky, but this was a very different group of folks. These people had money, and those that didn't were pretty good at pretending they did.
The evening centered around a "celebrity pool toss", and I was pretty amazed by the sums people were bidding to have certain local society folks tossed into the pool. The whole evening was a yawn, but the drinks and food were free, and very good...
At one point, I was standing on the crowded balcony overlooking the action below, and watching the adorable group of lifeguards goofing off in the pool. One of them was a rather butch woman with huge shoulders and an incredibly muscular build. The woman standing next to me on the balcony suddenly said, "I almost fell over and died when they told me that was a woman."
I paused a moment, and managed a small "yep" instead of something rude.
but she continued: "I mean, I thought maybe it was a guy trying to be... cute, or weird, or something."
I decided again to keep my mouth shut. There was a pause. Oh, no. She'd decided to interpret my taciturn responses for agreement, and she continued:
"It's just not normal."
That was it. I turned to her with the sweetest, most saccharine smile I could muster, and said, practically through clenched teeth, hoping I sounded just like Glenda the Good Witch, "Oh, come on, honey. You live in San Francisco now. You don't get to say things like that any more. None of us is normal here."
There was a very long silence. She didn't turn her gaze from the pool, and I walked away.
Very sadly, that wasn't the worst of the evening. There was a most fabulous drag queen who got an egg thrown at her, and it ruined her cape. I only talked to her briefly on her way out, and her 7 foot tall self was totally shaken. "Honey, I've had a lot happen to me in this town, and I've been called a lot of nasty things, but I've never been egged. I certainly never expected something like this to happen here. I don't think I'll be back at this place for a long time." She was pissed, and ready to kick somebody's ass.
I got really drunk that night, and left in a really sour mood.
And there was no way I was going to venture out into the Castro on Halloween. My faith in people is pretty much shot these days, anyway.