Just four more weeks and I’ll be taking the Bar. It seems so far away, but also way too soon. Today’s learning moment: restitutionary remedies are not available for the torts of encroachment or ejectment. Who knew?

Plans for this evening: the gym, more flashcards, more practice questions, and early to bed.

Farmers’ market report: Mission figs, pork, tomatillos, English peas, eggs, Red Haven peaches (perfection), cucumbers, zucchini, and some nameless pink flowers.

It was a long weekend. Lots of studying (but never enough). Lots of family time. And a quick visit to the Parade.

1. Thanks for helping me over 50,000 hits.
2. I hope you enjoyed the solstice.
3. Since the Parade is this weekend here in San Francisco, I am re-posting something I wrote four years ago about what should be called Gay Freedom Day, and not that other, trivializing name ("Pr-d-").

San Francisco used to have the Gay Freedom Day parade, not a “Pride” parade. “Pride” sufficed for other, less evolved, cities. The parade here wasn’t a endless cortège of various corporate entities, it didn’t have an official lite beer, and most importantly, the route wasn’t lined with barricades and overbearing monitors. You could easily step off the curb and become part of the action.

People do feel ashamed about being gay, and it’s good that they can overcome it, but they should not then have pride in their homosexuality. There is nothing to be proud about being gay (Exhibit 1: flagging) any more than there is to be proud about being straight (Exhibit 2: e.g. La Spears' marital and child-rearing practices). Gay Freedom Day was about being free to be gay and being free from oppression, which is what Polk Street and later the Castro represented: a place where you could build your life; love freely; gather your chosen family; and pursue a career, if so inclined. In other words, make something of yourself, and all the while being free to be as gay as you wanted.

Where does pride enter into all of this? It doesn’t and it can’t, except as one small part of living outside the closet. Choosing “pride” as the organizing principle has stripped the parade of most of its political power; hence the recurrent debates about the inanity of each parade’s stated theme.

There should be no Pride Parade in San Francisco: it should be a proper march. All those who wish to participate should gather, with their friends or with their contingent, at the foot of Market Street at 9AM on the last Sunday in June and march up to the Civic Center. Unless they have mobility problems, no gay men or lesbians should be standing on the sidewalk watching: they should be in the march. If heterosexual passers-by happen to watch, that’s fine. If not, oh well. I’ve ridden my bicycle in the parade the last few years with Mikes on Bikes: no message but our general faggotry: it’s the way the whole day should go. 

So, dear readers, don’t watch the Parade, be the Parade.

OK, I am officially gruel’d. It has been a long week, and it’s only Thursday morning. Three more days of classes, three more days of homework, and then it’s Sunday, Gay Freedom Day, which means the Parade, and then homework, and then a family party to celebrate five (or perhaps seven, if the twins are born soon) birthdays and two fathers.

I had a great dinner last night with Mr. Frank Green (thanks, Ted!). It was great to finally meet him after years of e-mail and phone calls. We went to Delfina (escarole salad with a poached egg; three crostini: fava bean, white bean and bottarga, chicken liver; ahi tuna with lentils and leeks; rabbit loin with polenta; and strawberries in zabaglione; and a bottle of Malvasia). I took him for a long, frigid hike up to the top of Dolores Park, and then up 20th Street to Sanchez Street, down the steps (where Sanchez is too steep for a road), into the Castro, and thence into a taxi.

I, for one, am enjoying the long days. Sunshine in the morning! Sunshine in the evening! Though I do worry that the excess of ultraviolet radiation will fade my carpets, my paintings, and my embroidered Sikh textiles.

Steve died eleven years ago today. I can hardly believe it. I was just a puppy then. My life in eleven years: 30 pounds, a mini-career as a cook, another as a technical writer; and then trade school, and no serious boyfriends in between (until now). When I see guys who would be his age (48), I wonder what he would have been like, where he would be working, where we would be living --  if things had gone differently.

The porch of the neighbor who was killed is covered, like the gates of Buckingham Palace after Princess Diana’s death, with flowers and photos and candles. It has become a magnet for the neighborhood Pharisees who wish to be seen publicly praying for the victim. In this rootless culture, a compost heap of flowers brought by strangers seems to be the one ritualized post-death gesture we can agree to. Early this afternoon an Englishwoman set up a little altar with even more candles, photos, and devotional figurines and began ringing a little bell as she sat on the sidewalk and chanted. I stomped out her ghastly sweet incense in the gutter as soon as the coast was clear. (It was filling my apartment with throat-burning stench).

A morning marked by some disgruntlement and miscommunications (and bad news for a friend). I hope it doesn’t portend something worse.

A very long weekend indeed. Much studying. Some disgruntlement. Lots of neighborhood drama when a young resident was discovered dead in his apartment Saturday morning (blood all over his porch). The police are keeping mum, which doesn’t make it any easier. I hardly knew him, but I always saw him with a smile on his face.

Farmers’ market report: salmon, tiny turnips with their greens, apricots (Blenheims, of course), beef, chard, and something else I cannot recall at the moment.

The editor and I went down to Santa Cruz for a birthday party Saturday afternoon. Lots of fun and mint juleps. Our hostess was born in the South, so we had pimento cheese spread on saltines, cheese straws, deviled eggs, ham biscuits, fried chicken, coleslaw, potato salad, cucumbers, tomatoes, black-eyed peas, collard greens, green beans, corn, and more, and then pecan pie, red velvet cake, coconut cake, yellow cake with chocolate frosting, peach cobbler, sweet potato pie, cherries, and strawberries. The editor and I stayed at a motel near the Boardwalk. Urchins began playing in the pool at 7:35 a.m. We had brunch with our hostess. I then studied in the sunny backyard with the puppy while the rest went to the Santa Cruz gay pride parade. We came back on Highway 1 (the edge of the western world) this afternoon. We saw riders on day one of  the AIDS/LifeCycle for about 30 miles between Santa Cruz and San Gregorio.

Memorial Day. Time to impeach Chimpy and the puppet master.

It was good to have a day off, but I feel guilty for not studying eight hours today (or yesterday). I did have a series of rejuvenating naps, however. Last night we went to a great dinner (asparagus salad, homemade artichoke ravioli, cherry and peach galette) at the new house of old friends. They met the editor for the first time, and everyone got along swimmingly. Today, the editor and I bought new shoes, ate tacos, and (after a suitable pause for digestion) worked out together for the first time. He showed me a lot of great new exercises.

Tomorrow: class, strawberry jam, a bunch of thank-you notes, the gym, and studying (diligent studying).

I made a momentous career decision yesterday. The road forked, and I chose one path. It was the hardest decision I’ve had to make in years.  I chose convention and lucre and opportunity over something comfortable.

I have begun studying for the Bar. Classes every morning, homework every day. It’s going to be great.

What’s on tap for the next week:

• Getting ready for my two last finals;
• Making a  big  (life-altering) job decision;
• Going to El Rio on Sunday, if it doesn’t rain;
• Purging all the old trade school crap in my apartment, along with old clothes, shoes, and other detritus that I now associate with the soon-to-be ended trade school phase of my life;
• Mastering the no-knead bread recipe (my second try last night was also a bit flat, though tasty);
• Finishing the moral character application;
• Solving the personal financial crisis I now find myself in;
• Planning my trip to NYC and Montréal (never mind preceding item); and
• Fixing a great meal after my last final for the editor and the friends who saw me through the whole ordeal of the last two years. I was going to take them out to dinner, but then I thought that I could make something much, much better if I simply cooked it myself.