The Witness of High Hats
Lockie Hunter
At 22, I slept with my childhood teddy bear and my musician boyfriend in a 400 square foot studio in the TenderNob district of San Francisco. With one tattoo parlor, two fortunetellers and a sad hotel, the TenderNob is positioned between affluent Nob Hill and the transvestite-hooker district of the Tenderloin. Moving west from Tennessee, I was to be Mary Tyler Moore, hat high in the air, pleats twirling. I did toss the hat once, and a horizontal wind hosting the ever-present fog carried it down Jones Street, and it was run over by a taxi. My boyfriend cautioned against tossing the hat. "You toss it, and it will land in hooker pee or Gray Man will snatch it in the air and claim custody."
Gray Man lives on my stoop. He is not part of my chosen landscape, my attempt at Mary-Tyler-Mooreishness. He is pale with purple veins on his neck, face and arms. He wears a gray coat and has a beard, but perhaps he does not. Now, thirty years later, it is like squinting at too-brightly colored Polaroids, trying to recall the names of those that were once vital.
Gray Man spare-changes me. His upper… Read more »