“Sir, you’re next!” The timber of the woman’s hollow voice made her sound as though she were speaking from inside of a tin can.  She was addressing me through a microphone as she stood behind inch-thick Plexiglas.  The couple who had been talking to her a few minutes ago had left but I hadn’t realized it.  I was too busy having lapsed into a trance, watching the horror film that my life had become over the past 4 months.

 

A voice behind me demanded, “Hey dude, hurry the fuck up!”  His heaving “H” carried with it the fruity aroma of last night’s binge.  It and God only knows what other airborne ailments were running amok in that room.  I turned around to find a Young Turk, glowering at me with anarchy.  He wore patchwork leather pants—entirely too snug even for his skeleton like frame, a once white tee-shirt that simply read “FUCK!” and a pair of well worn Brogans.  Unfortunately, the foreboding that he’d meant to inspire in others was completely undone by his futile attempts spike his seriously thinning and receding blond hair.  I’m sure his stiffened locks had at one time frightened old ladies on the bus, but now they drooped impotently—hardly able to support the goo he’d applied to hold them erect.

 

“Sorry”, I whispered to him before stepping to the window in front of me.

 

“Have you filled out your forms completely sir?” the woman asked without looking up from the counter.

 

“I believe I have.” I said as I handed her the duplicates and triplicates that I had completed no more than a few minutes ago.

 

I stood there watching her lips move as she read the forms that I had handed to her through the narrow slit at the bottom of the window.  Her fingers rifled through my food stamp application, stopping occasionally for her finger to make the journey to and from her slightly protruding tongue before turning the next page.  Occasionally, she would move to peck at the numbers on her computer.  The ratcheted clockwork movement of her arms had me convinced that they’d been constructed of gears and pistons; just like those old mechanized Gypsies that read your fortune for a quarter at the county fair.

 

I stared at her face and tried to imagine her life outside of the aquarium in which she was on display.  The reels in my mind began to whir, projecting a warm and cozy scene.  I could see her tiptoeing into her child’s room and gently kissing its forehead…  “Wake up baby” she would coo.  “It’s time for mama’s baby to wake up and go to school”. 

I followed her into the kitchen where she poured a glass of “Sunny D” and sat down the box of Cheerios.  She hummed softly to herself as she sipped her second cup of coffee, occasionally dunking the day-old Krispy Kreme she’d found wrapped in a napkin while cleaning out her purse.  But as the hour neared 7am her mood began to darken with the dreadful though of another eight hours at her job as a public servant.  She yelled at her child, “Get your ass down here; I can’t be late to work again!”  She walked to the bathroom where dozens of bottles and tubes lay spent, scattered on top of her Formica vanity; like dead soldiers who she’d long ago drafted to fight in her war against aging.  She stood in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at a face that appeared to melt a little more each day.  I half expected her to begin reciting the incantation, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…”  I watched as she began to apply a thick band of brackish lip-liner that immediately bled into the cracks and crevices surrounding her mouth, giving her lips the appearance that they were going to break up and crumble from her face at any moment.  And now there she stood before me, her face like a neon sign clinging to the side of a fleabag motel, flashing the message, “Desensitized, Dejected, Depressed!”  There she stood, my own personal bureaucrat in a bubble.

 

Her voice shocked me back to reality, “Have you ever applied for food stamps before, sir?”  She still hadn’t looked at me.

 

“No ma’am” I whispered

 

“You have to be back here at one o’clock.  When you return you must present this form to the clerk at window “F”.  Do you understand sir?”  There was no hint of emotion behind her tin voice.  Her lack of cadence made her seem as if she had given these instructions so many times that they had just become just another means for her to exhale the air from her lungs.

 

I nodded my head and stepped away from the counter.  The punk who had been standing behind me rushed to fill the empty space I’d just vacated.  He very loudly began to demand the reinstatement of his welfare, which had apparently been discontinued.

 

His voice faded behind my as I traversed the maze of nylon ropes through which I had been herded earlier in the morning.  The gravity of my situation began to settle on me like the cold fog that blanketed the city outside.

I began to reel from the post-apocalyptic scene that surrounded me.  The musty stench that emanates from a man’s skin after going a week without being washed hung in the air like great gray ghosts.  The dull thud of the fluorescent lighting bounced off the dirty yellow walls, draining the last bit of hope from anyone’s face upon which it spilled.  The room rang with the rants of madmen who wore discarded grocery bags for shoes, and from screaming babies that reeked of stale urine and second hand smoke.  Everything about the place underscored the despicable state of my life

At that moment I hated myself.  I was furious for having fallen under San Francisco’s Siren Song, which urged me to leave my stable, predictable life for this unending nightmare.  I hated the Bush-i-nomics that had laid waste to a once thriving job market, forcing me into this exercise in humility.

 

It’s ironic that this city gave the world the fortune cookie.  My Father had already foretold my future, “Son,” he drawled as he thumped his Bible, “I have it on good faith right here that God did not mean for you to be a ‘homa-sexule’.  If you move out to that wicked city your life will be filled with nothing but misery and pain.”   And from the way things looked at the moment, his prophetic words were coming to pass.

Not since the War Between the States had divided our family into the abolitionists and the Johnny Rebels had a member of the Thomas clan left the sandy soils and Loblolly Pines of South Carolina.  The spiritual hunger that six months ago had sent me speeding across eight states and 4 time zones had mutated into a palpable hunger that now carried me South of Market to the welfare office in search of public assistance.

 

Having finally made my way out of the “Kafka Cavalcade” where I’d spent my morning I decided to try and find a quiet place where I could lose myself in last Sunday’s Merl Reagle crossword that I’d found earlier on the floor of the 38 Geary.

I walked up to Ninth Street and headed north to the City Library.  I climbed the three flights of stairs to the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center.  I passed through the ornate metal entrance and drank in the beauty of the small rotunda.  My eyes followed the curved Lacewood walls upward to the heavenly mural that hovered above me displaying the names of gay and lesbian luminaries.  A sense of belonging that I had never before felt began to caress my inner soul, gently messaging my aching spirit that had been knotted by my recent run of bad luck.

At that point I opted against my crossword puzzle, choosing instead to browse the copious collection of queer books carried by the large oak shelves.  I came across a recent copy of The Southern Voice (SoVo), an Atlanta based Southern LGBT publication that I used to find occasionally at some of the more progressive establishments back in Greenville, SC.  Seeing it reminded of the day about 2 years ago when I took a copy of SoVo to work with me so that I could share it with a gay colleague.  Somehow, my supervisor came across the newspaper and began to flip through it.  She later called me aside and asked that I never again bring pornography into the office.  I attempted to enlighten her as to the political and social virtues of SoVo, explaining that it is no more inappropriate than the copies of Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, and Redbook, which were scattered throughout our waiting room.  But she stood firm, explaining, “I personally do not have a problem with gay people—some of my closest friends are gay.  I just worry that other people might it offensive.

I picked up the newspaper and scanned the pages for the latest dish about the goings on below the Mason-Dixon.  As I looked over the campy articles I came across a story that demanded my full attention.  It told the appalling tale of a truck driver, Peter Oiler, who after 21 years of service had been fired from his job at Winn Dixie, a large Southern grocery store chain, because  his supervisors discovered that he is a cross-dresser when not at work.  Winn Dixie executives told him that his “behavior was harmful to the company’s image.”  The article went on to tell about the U.S. District Court Judge who dismissed the suit that Mr. Oiler had levied against his former employer, stating, “The federal ban on sex discrimination doesn’t apply to people who are transgendered.”

The southern-fried hatred that had flowed from these redneck adjudicators had taken this man’s livelihood, his health insurance, pension, and most damaging, his self-valuation.

As I stood there reading, the thoughts that had originally inspired my flight to the Left Coast ripped through me like Katrina had ripped through the Gulf.  I began to relive the feelings that had driven me to drive 12 hours and 700 miles the first day that I left Greenville.  I’d crossed the Little Pigeon River seven times as US-441 snaked its way through the Great Smokey Mountains, slowly distancing myself from the Crackers and cotton fields of my birthplace.  I remembered my elation at having finally made my way to Interstate 40—my very own yellow brick road.

I also began to think about the book of Exodus, written in the very Bible that has been used to justify all sorts of horrors throughout history.  It tells of the enslavement and torture of the Israelites at the hand of the Egyptians.  If you remember your Old Testament, after being freed by Ramses II, God didn’t instantly teleport his chosen people to the land of milk and honey.  They wandered the dessert for 40 years before making it to the Promise Land.  And along the way even Moses became so frustrated with “God’s Red Tape” that he broke the stony tablets on which the Lord’s fiery finger had written the Ten Commandments (a la Cecil B. DeMille).  And hopefully with the city’s generosity I wouldn’t have to wait for manna to fall from Heaven.

 

As I left the library and began the short walk back to the offices at 1235 Mission Street I pondered the day’s events.  I decided that my situation wasn’t nearly as dire as my myopic vision had earlier led me to believe. 

 

The book of Proverbs proclaims, “For a righteous man falls seven times and rises again.”  And though my move to San Francisco could hardly be described thus far as a tale told by Armistead Maupin, I had a renewed sense of optimism about my future in this city that welcomes my kind.