Sometime back in the late ‘80s I found myself in a situation that had become like a ritual or a regular occurrence a couple times a week. I would meet up with some friends at the Stud Bar after work, namely rock journalist and provocateur Adam Block and photographer Marc Geller, and we would close the bar, jump into Marc’s car – a Citroen station wagon – cruise a few times down Ringold alley, then drive to North Beach Adam’s apartment on Grant Avenue. He would often lure us up to his flat, a disheveled wonderland of literature, art, and piles upon piles of promo records and CD’s, with promises of playing us some as-yet-unreleased album or a videotape of some important and exclusive nature, or drugs, of course, and we would have lively conversations till the wee hours of the morning.
On one such night, Adam read us a fascinating letter from a friend who was traveling in the south, specifically Tennessee. This well written missive told of an adventure that completely captivated me. Adam’s friend was in Nashville, Tennessee or a smaller town near there, where he had met a pretty punk rock boy with purple hair in a gay bar who took him home to some broken down tobacco farm where he lived with his barefoot and pregnant sister and had an upstairs room filled with posters of Adam Ant and giant Ankh symbols painted on the walls. They had incredible sex and indulged in drugs, and he ended up staying with him for a few days.
I was fascinated with the juxtaposition of cultures, the fey punk rock boy on a white trash tobacco farm in rural Tennessee, but what really got me was the boy’s name, Bobo. In a drunken willful way, when I heard that name I stated that I wanted Bobo to be my nickname. It all sounded so cool. I would live to regret this wish, for very soon after that Adam and Marc began calling me Bobo, and Adam even started referring to me as Bobo in print, as we wrote for the same gay weekly back then. It bothered me when people started to refer to me as such, and I tried to downplay or stanch its widespread use. But I had to accept it from Adam and Marc, because it was, of course, my wish, and they applied my new nickname diligently.
Well, time rolled on. and only a small elite handful of folks called me Bobo due to my consistent damage control of denying that was my nickname and asking that it not be used whenever I heard it, or heard Booboo instead. which was worse. Okay, so that is the set-up or background necessary for this particular tale.
One Sunday night I took a cab to the greatest club ever created in San Francisco, Club Uranus, where I could be found every Sunday for about four years. Uranus was hosted by The End Up, a clubland institution since before I ever hit this town, and I had several close friends who worked there; some still do. Uranus was a magnificent turf for the angry new gay activists, the new breed of drag queens or shock drag, the hottest baby-dykes ever, members of the old-school drag who got it, and your basic pierced and tattooed art-fags and amphetamine friendly socialites. It was the birthplace of the new subcultural elite and freaky sexy go-go creatures. It was home. That particular night as I got out of the cab, I spotted a small angelic punk rocker standing near the side door. He was so beautiful he seemed to be glowing slightly, and when he smiled at me as I stared at him, I was drawn to him like a moth to a bug-light. I said hi and asked him if he’d been inside yet. His smile was so warm, his manners somewhat formal and his soft voice had a lazy southern lilt to it. He frowned and said no, he had tried but he didnt have an ID. I remembered occasionally assisting young people enter the club by climbing over the back fence, but that was pretty risky, and he told me he had already tried that anyway.
He was slowly accepting the fact that he wasn’t getting in to the club that night, and I really felt bad for him having to miss out on all that glorious fun. I continued chatting with him, until it became clear that I wasn’t going in to the club either. I was so taken by him that I invited him home. On our way there he told me his name was Thomas and that he came to San Francisco from Georgia with his close friend named Bubba. I laughed and asked if Bubba was his real name, and he said it was a nickname, but all his friends and family called him that. I explained that I had a similar nickname, Bobo, which I was reluctantly stuck with by just a few friends. He kind of froze for a second and said, “Thats my nickname back at home.” I began to tingle as the coincidence began to hit me. “Did you live on a tobacco farm in Tennessee with your pregnant sister?”
“Yes, Sir,” he replied.
“And did you have a room with a large Ankh painted on the ceiling, lots of Adam Ant posters, purple hair?”
“How do you know all this?” he asked, starting to look worried.
I couldn’t believe it. I was sitting in a cab on my way to my place with the very same guy from whom my nickname was taken. Bobo meets the real Bobo, several years after I mouthed off and ended up with that as my nickname. I couldn’t believe it and quickly explained how this all happened. He was dumfounded and kind of delighted, being pretty new in town and not knowing many people here yet. It pleased him that his name preceeded him to San Francisco.
We arrived to my apartment and got stoned and continued our conversation. He started to tell me about his family. When he got to his father you could tell he really didn’t get along with him, and he was likely driven from his home by this animosity, not an uncommon story really. He threw in that his father was a very powerful man in his home town, wealthy and successful. I said he sounded like the opposite of my father, who was perpetually unemployed until he became the janitor at my grade school. I laughed and added, “Plus he only had one leg!”
Thomas fixed me with an intense gaze and said, “My daddy only has one leg too!”
“No fucking way!” I was completely amazed by yet another coincidence.
“How’d your dad lose his leg?” I asked, tentatively but definitely wanting to know. I seriously doubted he had lost it due to a self-inflicted wound to get out of the Army during peace-time way before Viet Nam like my dad, but really needed to know.
“I shot it off with a shotgun,” Thomas said matter-of-factly, “I don’t know how many times I tried to kill my Daddy.”
Others may have worried about that last comment. I didn’t. I just grabbed him and kissed him deeply for the first of many times that night. There’s just something about a guy who can handle a shotgun that I’ll always appreciate.