Gandhi Lied To Me

I’m grateful for Facebook. That’s not a popular sentiment nowadays, not since we’ve all awakened to the fact that it’s nothing but a soulless corporate entity whose algorithm of artificial rage may have been instrumental in the insurrection at the Capitol. I’m not grateful for its data mining skills or its propagation of click-bait links. I’m not grateful for the pictures of people’s food or their political opinions. But I am grateful that it has allowed me to reunite with people who otherwise would have faded into oblivion.

Usually, this comes in the form of a “friend request” from a former student, or a message like the one I received from the wife of my childhood best friend, but once, a couple of years ago, it came in the form of a video. Someone I hadn’t seen in decades posted a Youtube entitled “1984 Democratic Convention San Francisco - Newsreel,” a seven minute compilation of Bay Area news reports from the evening of July 19, 1984, and when I reached one minute fifty-five seconds, I found myself face to face with an old friend, someone I hadn’t thought of in a long time.

I laughed aloud when I saw him, my friend, he looked so completely clueless. In the video, he is wearing a red daishiki and oversized glasses. He is being led away, not by the fashion police, but by two of San Francisco’s finest, and he is yelling loudly, “OW!” as zip-tie handcuffs bite into his wrists. The look of pain is unmistakable, but there is something else in his expression: disbelief. His eyes say, “This cannot be happening!”

As I watched, I knew exactly what he was feeling because that skinny, stringy-haired, young man being dragged off to jail is me.

Or should I say “was me”? I showed the video to friends of mine, and none of them recognized the prisoner on the screen. The man they know is very different. The hair is mostly gone and almost entirely gray, and I’m unhappy to report that the person typing these words weighs fully a hundred pounds more than the young man being dragged along that street.

“Tho much is taken, much abides,” says the aging Odysseus, in Tennyson’s poem, a line I think about a lot lately. When I look at that news clip, it’s easy to see what has been taken (where did all that hair go?), but what abides? Well, the disbelief, for one thing. Even all these years later, that day seems more like a fever dream than an actual memory, and I still find myself wondering how the person I think I am, even the person I thought I was, could have ever found himself in such a situation.

To answer that question, you have to first understand that it was 1984, which meant that the future had arrived. And not the Jetsons future with flying cars and friendly, beeping, apron-wearing robot maids. It wasn’t even the 2001 future where the computers would supplant the human race, but at least they would do it with soothing voices.

No it was 1984 and every day we expected to see a giant boot stomping on the human face forever. And things were being stomped, or so it seemed. All of a sudden peace, love, and understanding was hilarious. Greed was good, and the Moral Majority were smugly in control. Every time you’d flip through all eight channels, you’d see Tammy-Faye Bakker weeping rivers of mascara over the unborn babies who, even if they did manage to avoid the abortionist’s knife, faced an even more dire fate if they succumbed to Satan’s temptation and listened to the recruiters for the homosexual lifestyle.

It was 1984 and AIDS was raging, and we didn’t know why. Stocks soared for the manufacturers of condoms and paper toilet seat covers.

It was 1984, and four years earlier evangelicals had led the push to oust a born-again Sunday school teacher in favor of our first divorced president - an actor, a TV personality, an old man with a famous, and rumored-to-be fake head of hair who promised to restore America’s greatness.

And he already had, at least according to some people. We’d already had a practice war, invading a tiny nation, less than a tenth the size of Rhode Island. The military and all its for-profit subsidiaries were booming. Weapon sales were through the roof and the president promised to extend this dominance to outer space.

I know it’s hard for you youngsters to relate to, but it was 1984, and half the country was as happy as a pig in shit, and half felt like the rug had been pulled from under them.

In San Francisco, where I had recently relocated, we were mostly in the rug-pulled camp, although a growing number of former counter-culturists had embraced the new ethos. Tired of marching for justice in Birkenstocks and socks, they drove to their corporate jobs in shiny Volvos with colorful stickers of dancing bears. Long locks had been shorn, though some rebels left a tiny ponytail – the party in the back. A new word had just been coined to describe these former hippies turned urban professionals – yuppies, and the name had stuck.

It was 1984 and in the most liberal city in the country, the only take-away from the revolution seemed to be a taste for organic yogurt and coffee in four syllables.

It was 1984, and I was 24, and I was a failure. It was why I was there, San Francisco I mean. A year before I had been living at home in the suburbs of Los Angeles, working at a menial job. I was doing nothing with my life, but it occurred to me that I were doing the same nothing somewhere else, at least that would be something.

And it worked. San Francisco cast a spell on me, an enchantment from which I’ve never completely awoken. Having lived all my life in the Southern California suburbs, I was immune to sun and green lawns. To me there was no difference between a palm tree and a telephone pole. But the fog flowing over Russian hill would quicken my pulse.

I went from a dead-end, low-pay, mind-numbing factory job to a dead-end, low-pay, mind-numbing security guard job. But now when my shift ended, I could peruse the books at City Lights, get a beer at Specs, or fill up on greasy chow fun at Sam Wo, famous for cheap food and rude waiters. (One of my favorite San Francisco memories: a customer complains – he didn’t realize his dish would be topped with a raw egg -- The waitress looks him straight in the eye and says, “You not a baby – you eat it.”)

And I’d walk. Everywhere. Straight across the Tenderloin at two in the morning enjoying, as only a church boy from the suburbs could, the dangerous appeal of seediness. Pimps, prostitutes, addicts, drunks, and me, -- walking briskly, always trying to project purpose, nonchalance, my body language shouting – “I belong here, I am not a victim.” And I never was.

They say wherever you go, there you are, and that’s true. Certainly, running away is not generally a good policy, but for me shifting cities was an antidote for a creeping depression I didn’t want to admit to. I was still myself but awake.

Oh, and I had found love, my then-girlfriend now wife Maria, a lovely grad student at Berkeley, so I was spending a lot of time on BART.

I still had times, whole days and weeks, of feeling old- so old and lost. Everyone else my age, I thought, was so certain, so confident. They had become grown-ups: nurses, accountants, engineers. And those who hadn’t really become anything much talked as if they had. I’m a writer, said the waiter; I’m a dancer, said the grocery clerk.

I scorned them all as only the young can scorn. Because scorn is envy. Scorn is fear. To me it seemed like honesty. At Berkeley, in a gathering of future professors, future entrepreneurs, future singers, wannabe poets, when I was asked what I did, I’d say “Security Guard” loudly and look straight in their eyes. Accept me as I am, you snobs, was the message I thought I was sending. But in truth, I was afraid. I lacked the courage to say what I wanted, to state my dreams. And even now I will not tell you what they were.

The only thing that bugged me about San Francisco itself was the way so many of its inhabitants wanted to challenge me to a duel, or some such nonsense, when I told them I was from LA. Unbeknownst to me, I had walked into a battlefield, an epic rivalry between two mighty metropolitan areas. The only problem is that neither I nor anyone else from Los Angeles was aware that such a rivalry existed. In all the years of my youth, I never heard a single Angeleno say a bad word about the Bay Area, whereas in San Francisco people felt compelled to lecture me about the inferiority of my home town. At first, I’d just nod – occasionally attempting to interrupt the diatribe by pointing out the fact that I was agreeing with them. After all, I’d try to point out, I had chosen to move here, this wasn’t a forced relocation. But by and by I began to bristle.

The other comment that got old was that everyone I met in San Francisco told me the same thing about the city: too bad, you just missed it. “Shoulda been here in the 70s, it was wild then” or “Oh the Summer of Love-that was it” or “When I was a kid in the 50’s this city was so clean you could eat off the sidewalk.” The one thing you’ll never hear a San Franciscan say is “This is the golden age.” The truth is, I do it myself – “You shoulda been there,” I say, “You shoulda seen it in 1984.”

A lot of it of course is the same old human longing for youth. But some of it is true. My dad, who was stationed at Treasure Island during the war, would say “They ruined the city when they built that freeway,” a notion I scoffed at for years until the 1989 earthquake tumbled it to the ground in an extreme case of urban redevelopment. The decision was made to tear it down completely rather than repair it, and the first time I saw the new (old) waterfront from the Bay Bridge, I had to admit my father was right.

I found a room in a Victorian flat in the Lower Haight, which at the time was a Black neighborhood. I had three roommates. The nicest was Piak, a short order cook at Hamburger Mary’s who rose at ten on his days off and immediately began blasting reggae and puffing on an unwashed bong. Then there was Pier, a Glenn Close lookalike who’d just been hired at Boz Scaggs’ new restaurant. She often brought home a co-worker, an extremely nervous young man who I found out was AWOL from the army. He was clearly madly in love with her, which was bad news for him as Pier was (and presumably still is) a lesbian.

The lease-holder, Amanda, was a sweet young woman who seemed very sophisticated to me; she shopped at thrift stores, like the rest of us, but had an eye for the accessory that transformed the ordinary into Madonna-chic. Her boyfriend was a wealthy Salvadoran who claimed he was one of the “fourteen families” who used to rule that country. He was rumored to be a bigwig in the underground pharmaceutical economy, which might explain why I can hardly ever remember Amanda going to work, although I seem to recall some sort of retail job. They went to fancy restaurants and horseback riding on the beach. When I shuffled past her room on the way to the kitchen, I’d see her riding crop on the table beside her enormous bed.

Amanda (“It’s Latin for ‘to be loved’” she told me) actually had three boyfriends: Julio, the rich drug dealer, Bart, the poor (but very good looking) drug addict, and Peligro, the drummer for the Dead Kennedys. Peligro (birth name Darren Henley) was not around often, which was too bad; he was definitely the nicest, sanest of the three, and I am sorry to report that he died in 2022 of an overdose of fentanyl and heroin.

It doesn’t take a genius to detect some red flags in this domestic situation, particularly the persistence of drugs running through the various narratives. These came to a head in the notorious “Scarface” incident. I was working the graveyard shift at the time, and Maria spent the night alone at my place so we could do something the next day. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning she awoke to voices just outside my door. Amanda’s sister Melinda and two of her friends were loudly discussing something, interspersed with strange sniffing sounds.

Though loath to eavesdrop, Maria heard the entire tale. Amanda, who had recently broken up with Julio, had concocted a plan of revenge (for what I do not know). She pretended to reconcile with him, lured him out for a romantic evening, and while they were out Melinda and her friends stole his stash of cocaine.

Maria and I had just recently seen Scarface, and she spent the rest of that night expecting Al Pacino and his “little friend” to burst through the door and kill them all. That didn’t happen; in fact, he suspected nothing, and what was supposed to be a fake reconciliation became real. Once again, and for several months, I’d see Amanda heading out the door in her jodhpurs or dolling herself up for an evening at the Fairmont.

But her behavior became erratic. Sometimes she’d be dancing alone in the afternoon, the music blaring, her eyes glassy. Other times, she just would not leave her room. One evening, Piak heard her shouting into the telephone, and we never saw Julio again. Bart was now seen every day. When I woke up in the afternoon, I’d find him sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette.

In the end, when it all went to hell, Amanda jumped onto the BART tracks. Oh, she didn’t die, there was no train coming. She heeded the calls from the passersby and climbed back out before any appeared. Later, when I asked her why she had done it, she said, “Well, you know, shooting up gives you tracks, and Bart was the first one to ever shoot me up so when I saw the BART tracks . . .”

They didn’t even lock her up that time, which suggests to me that she was still able at that stage to turn on the charm, to give a plausible explanation, just as she had been doing for God knows how long with the landlord, and with us, as she had taken our monthly checks, yet failed to pay the rent.

We were evicted, of course, and the last I ever heard of Amanda she was picked up by the authorities because she was marching down Market Street with only a shower curtain loosely wrapped around her, waving a mop, and telling anyone who would listen that she was God.

But my story, the one I want to tell, took place earlier, after the final breakup with Julio but long before the descent into madness. At the time, I noticed very little change in her, but soon we began to acquire new roommates. The living room became a sort of proto-AirBnB as a string of travelers began sacking out on the fold-out, but it took me some time to realize that they were not friends, but customers. Next, 17 year old Melinda moved into the closet under the stairs, and finally one day I came into the kitchen to find cans of soup and bags of top ramen stacked on the table and a curtain across the entrance to the pantry; she had rented it out.

“The man behind the curtain” was John, who went by Quill, and we became good friends. He was older, already 33, which seemed pretty ancient to me at the time, the age Jesus was when he was crucified. He worked as a printer, and was a photographer and painter in his spare time. His paintings I guess would be classified as “naive.” There was often something imperfect about the dimensions, but they were incredibly detailed. He did one of the view from our flat. It wasn’t perfect, but it was full of life; all along the street, people were busy going about their daily lives while in the windows women shook out rugs or leant on their elbows observing the scene. Everything was accurate, but he had moved Two Jacks Liquors from two blocks away to directly across the street. “I want to live right next to 10 cent cigarettes,” he said. He bought them one at a time in order to cut down on his smoking.

Quill was clearly part of the hippie generation; his hair was long and his favorite musician was Canadian folkie Bruce Cockburn, but one of his many side pursuits was publishing an extremely low-tech magazine - more like a newsletter - of punk rock. And so I came to live on the periphery of the punk scene. I never fully understood exactly how he fit in with this world, but he did. My only inkling is that they shared a certain anarchistic view of life, particularly of the yuppies. Walk with Quill downtown and pretty soon he’d whisper, “Watch me fart on these rich people.” I’d look up and see a group of men in suits and there he was doing exactly what he said he would.

More and more folks with mohawks began hanging out. One guy I’ll never forget, Dave, I’ll call him, had stainless steel bolts in his head attached to a metal structure around his shoulders. He had broken his neck stage-diving at a Flipper show at the Mabuhay Gardens; no one had caught him. The punk ethos, in contrast to what they saw as the fake mellowness of the hippies, elevated the “hardcore,” a macho display of apathy, even regarding one’s own health and safety. Dave assured me he had no regrets and couldn’t wait to stage-dive again.

Most of the punks I met were quite young. Still, like all San Franciscans, they told me I had just missed it. “Punk is dead,” I was repeatedly told. There was only one club still adventurous, or perhaps desperate, enough to rent out its facilities to a bunch of folks who sang about destruction while their fans punched each other for fun. Even worse, The Vats had recently been closed, and according to all the punks, if you’ve never seen The Vats, you’ve never seen San Francisco. The former Hamms brewery had for a while been turned over to artists, mainly punks and speed freaks who squatted in the former offices and used the giant tanks as venues to destroy their hearing.

One particular friend of John’s was Al, a nice Jewish boy whose original name was Alan Schultz, but who is better known as Al Schvitz, the drummer for MDC. Even today, almost 40 years later, I occasionally see young people wearing MDC t-shirts, with the logo and what the three initials stood for on that particular album: Millions of Dead Cops, Multi-Death Corporation, Millions of Dead Children, Millions of Dead Chickens (they became vegetarians), and I wonder if the band members are getting any of that cash; I doubt it. Certainly, back in the day, those guys had zero money, and I remember I once ponied up 20 bucks to bail Al out of jail. In the process of writing this piece, I looked him up. He has a memoir for sale on Amazon. Apparently, he wrote it while he was imprisoned in San Quentin for selling meth.

It was probably Al who told me about the free concert, a benefit sort of called Rock Against Reagan, a protest, near the convention center where the democrats were busy nominating – I don’t know – some doomed fool. A vacant lot, which is now the Yerba Buena Gardens and the Metreon, was set aside as a protest site, and all week long various groups, from the Jesus freaks to the Teamsters had taken the stage at various times to express their views. Earlier that week the KKK had been set to rally but failed to show after 500 counter-protesters took to the streets. The show would take place on the last day of the convention, and large crowds were expected. Not only that, but the press was there from around the world, and some of those cameras were sure to turn away from the soporific proceedings inside the Moscone Center to what promised to be a circus atmosphere. Things were heating up, figuratively and literally. Thursday, July 19, 1984 was forecast to be a rarity in San Francisco: a hot summer day.

That day and the following were scheduled to be my “weekend” at work, and I was looking forward to the show. I wasn’t really into Punk Rock – more of a “New Wave” guy in those days, but I had seen the Dead Kennedys the year before at the Longshoremen’s Hall in Wilmington, and to this day Jello Biafra remains high on my very short list of charismatic performers whose “star power” was obvious from first sight. It was an exciting show; the first I’d ever been to that began with a plea to the audience to stay off the stage, something about the rental agreement for the hall. This was immediately and widely ignored. Every few seconds someone would climb up right next to the performers, and flail around for a few seconds before diving head first into the crowd below. I stood in the back mesmerized; what they were doing seemed so crazy, a trust fall into a pit of strangers.

The show ended early when the police raided the joint. One minute, Jello was singing “Holiday in Cambodia” and the next he was directing his anger, not at the government, but at his own fans. His voice dripping with sarcasm, he said, “Tomorrow you’ll all be telling me, ‘Jello, that was such a great show!’ Well it’s because of you we can’t play anywhere. I hope you’re happy. The cops are here, and there’s teargas in the hall.” I looked over and saw clouds of smoke rising from the center of the auditorium. It was probably a smoke grenade, not teargas, but plenty frightening nonetheless. Like everyone else, I headed to the exit, but when I got there I heard screaming. Only one of the double doors was open, the other either jammed or locked, and a young woman was being crushed by the desperate crowd. I was pressed into her myself, but I managed to straight-arm the door and push back enough to create a bubble of space, and she and I fled through it into the night.

It wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat, but I didn’t blame the band, and I was more than willing to see them again, especially as it would be free. My roommates were more excited to see the Dicks, a group from Austin whose lead singer was a portly gentleman with a pink Mohawk. They played me their records to get me up to speed. I remember one song in particular, a polite rebuke to indifferent slackers. The lyrics go: "I hope you get drafted/ I hope your mama cries/ You apolitical asshole/ I hope you're the first to die."

As to the protest, I was dubious, to say the least. Punks always struck me as naive. Their favorite symbol was the capital A with the circle around it representing anarchy. You’d see it scrawled on old buildings, carved into bus seats. “You know,” I’d tell them, “You’re not popular. If we actually had anarchy, all the good old boys from the suburbs would drive down here in their pick-up trucks and shoot you.”

To someone who had grown up in the ‘60s, the power of protest was undeniable, but so was the backlash against it. It wasn’t hard to imagine how pictures of punks running rampage in liberal San Francisco would play out in the heartland. Perhaps the Democratic Convention wasn’t the best place to protest against Reagan? Mightn’t it be better to show solidarity to the person who could at least theoretically defeat him?

The stakes were high. Reagan had a vast nuclear arsenal at his disposal, and it didn't seem at all far-fetched that he would unleash it against what he had publicly labeled “the evil empire.” In fact, that summer, unaware that his microphone was live, Reagan was recorded “joking,” "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Also, he was old (73, which no longer seems so ancient). As a friend of mine said at the time, “I’m not worried he’ll press the button; I’m afraid he’ll nod off and fall on it.” More likely, we feared, the Soviets might be so alarmed at his rhetoric and his plan to build a “space shield” that they would launch the first strike themselves before the shield could be deployed. None of this was persuasive to anarchists whose proudest belief is that nothing matters. Reagan was Hitler, they thought, the worst man who ever lived. Also, he was identical to his opponent.

Still, it would be a spectacle, and I wanted to see it so I headed down to check it out. I can’t remember why I went alone, but I suppose I must have been asleep when everyone left. In those days I worked 11:00 PM to 8:00 A,M., holding down the fort in a downtown office building. It was exceedingly boring, with nothing to distract me but a radio and any book I happened to have brought with me. Never, at the time, would I have imagined that someday I would sometimes long for that boredom, that it would seem in retrospect to be the very essence of freedom. There was no internet, no instagram, no facebook, no twitter, no email. Just my own thoughts and no requirement that I share them with anyone else. I don’t even remember talking on the phone. There was one there at the guard station, but I’m pretty sure that personal calls were forbidden, and at any rate the only person I was likely to call, my girlfriend, was gone for the summer, working for her brother in Boston. Long distance was out of the question. It was a great opportunity to read as absolutely nothing happened after midnight, and as I was already entertaining the idea of becoming an English teacher, I began by reading all the books I had been assigned in high school, but had faked my way through. (They were all great.)

I suppose I went right home to sleep before the show, but I’m not sure. Memoir must be partially invented, at least for us mere mortals with faulty recall. I’m not sure about so many details, most of them completely unimportant, but others you’d think would be unforgettable. I want you to know, dear reader, that I’m not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. Everything in these pages is exactly as I remember it, except trivial details included to provide a coherent narrative and a few moments where my memory was contradicted by hard proof. For instance, later you’ll read about Klan hoods and Reagan masks. I don’t remember that at all, but I’ve seen photographic proof, and there’s no way I didn’t notice it at the time, so I’ve altered my tale. When I get to that part of the story, please note my use of the phrase “I’ll never forget.” That is called irony.

The only thing I know for sure is that I arrived alone, and that I never saw or spoke to anyone I knew until the next day, so I’m picturing waking in an empty house, no one talking outside my door, no Reggae bumping down the hall. Quieter than usual, but not quiet by any measure. My window is on the street and every ten minutes or so an electric bus zips by, the motor whining, the cables crackling pleasantly. One line runs less often, but the buses are diesel and I’m frequently awakened by their roar as they build up speed for the next hill. What else was I probably hearing? No doubt someone somewhere was shouting, and since it was 1984, there had to have been a boombox in the vicinity, maybe Grandmaster Flash warning “It’s hard as hell to fight it, don’t buy it!” Or, God forbid, a car alarm. I remember one of those going off beneath my window for over an hour, a deafening series of sirens, whistles and honks, until I longed for a shotgun or a rocket launcher.

But why go there? It was a beautiful sunny day, that much I know for sure. Picture it this way: I wake and nothing hurts, nothing creaks; I am young, and the first thing I remember is that I have no work for two days. I open the window and look out, soaking in the scene. I’m alone, it’s true, with no one to talk to, but also no one to answer to. I can do whatever I want as long as it doesn’t cost much money. I decide, in my invented memory, to forgo white bread toast and instant coffee and treat myself. I shuffle down the street, my street, to Two Jacks Seafood and slide into a wooden booth. The bacon there is thick and smoked, and I luxuriate over my hash browns, while I wade into that morning’s Chronicle.

What’s on the front page? Well, the convention, of course. San Francisco is mighty proud of itself for having been chosen to host this historic event. According to the paper, things are running smoothly, and people are looking forward to the day’s keynote from the candidate, and perhaps even moreso to hearing from Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman (and first Italian-American) on a major party national ticket.

But the Democrats can’t catch a break. This bit of positive publicity has been shifted below the fold by an unprecedented event: the worst mass shooting in American history. The day before, a man walked into a McDonalds in San Ysidro, California, with an Uzi and began shooting strangers. The sheer scale of the atrocity is unimaginable - the shooter fired over 250 rounds of ammunition and left 22 dead and 19 injured before being shot by police. The only event anyone can compare it to occurred 18 years earlier when an ex-Marine climbed a clock tower in Texas and started blasting, killing 17. But that was at a distance; this man shot many of his victims, who ranged in age from 8 months to 74 years, point blank. (Since that time, there have been 25 shootings that resulted in ten or more victims, seven of them more deadly than this one. But at the time, it was new. The phrase “Thoughts and prayers” hadn’t been coined yet, and no one said “Never again” because “again” seemed like an impossibility.) As always, we look for answers, and in the immediate aftermath of this particular tragedy, the focus is on “Vietnam Syndrome,” now known as PTSD, because the shooter reportedly announced that he had “killed a thousand” in Vietnam and intended to kill a thousand more. To the right wing, this was the result of the mistreatment our brave veterans received from an ungrateful public; to the left it was just more proof of the folly of that war. (In actual fact, the shooter was a liar: he had never served in the military at all.)

I read the article through to the end, and then I turn the page. What else is there to do? I don’t check any other news source, see how the foreign press is covering it, for instance, or what various famous people, or thousands of nobodies have to say about it. Nor, as a nobody myself, do I weigh in on the subject. I suppose I could call a friend to discuss it, but that would mean walking back to my apartment, trudging up the stairs, and dialing the number of someone who probably wouldn’t be there to pick up and who would never know that I had called. If the waitress had seen the page I was reading, she might have shaken her head and tsked, and I might have said,”Can you believe it?” and had one of those “The whole world’s gone to hell” conversations we sometimes have with strangers. But I’m alone in this brave new world where even murder has become depersonalized, severed from passion, where a stranger might take your life for no reason at all. So I turn the page, read the funnies.

When I’m done with my breakfast, I walk to save the bus fare straight down Haight, past the French school, past the projects, under the freeway overpass, down to Market, across Van Ness, past the beautiful city hall and down to the Strand Theater where I check out the posters for whatever art house revivals or exploitation flicks are playing. I continue on, past the cable car turnaround in front of the big Woolworths, turn right on 4th and head down to the show.

Picture a big vacant lot, just dirt, with a stage at one end and thousands of people milling around. Some are die-hard punks with shaved heads and purple mohawks waiting impatiently for the music, and some are political activists, serious folks with an agenda who have come with a plan of action. Members of the Vote Peace coalition have a giant, papier-mache animal, the “Trojan Donkey.” Money and votes are fed into one end and missiles, tanks, and skeletons come out the other end. It’s Rock Against Reagan, but they hate the Democrats as well for their dealings with the military-industrial complex. This group has been leading tours of downtown businesses they claim are financing the war against the Sandinistas. On Monday, they staged an impromptu protest in front of the Diamond Shamrock Corporation, an oil company. Eighty-nine people were arrested, charged with felony “conspiracy to trespass.” Some of those who managed to elude the police take the stage to tell their story, to demean the “protest playpen,” the official protest area where we are all standing, and to announce that they are leading another “educational tour” for any interested people. Meanwhile, on the periphery of the scene, a group of men in suits from the JDL (Jewish Defense League) are hanging a racist effigy of Jesse Jackson while another group shouts at them.

Many in the crowd are carrying signs. “Reagan for Big Brother 1984” is popular, but I also see, “Feinswine for Mayor Daley,” “US Out of El Salvador,” “You Can’t Hug a Child with Nuclear Arms,” “Boycott South Africa,” and many others. Near me, in the center of the crowd, a mild, middle-aged man holds a large placard that reads, “God Bless Our President.” A group of young toughs ask him why he’s there and he says, “Well, I saw in the paper that this protest was happening, and I thought someone ought to be here with the other side.” The kids nod and turn away, but one slaps him lightly on the shoulder. “All right, Dude,” he says, “You got balls, I’ll say that.”

Most of the crowd, I think, are like me, just regular folks checking out the scene. There are many speakers on the agenda, but I don’t recall any of them. The first thing I remember is being overwhelmed by the volume of sound when the Dicks begin their set. I don’t know if anyone has studied it, but I’m fairly certain that former punks must have a high incidence of hearing loss, especially those I saw standing on the edge of the stage, literally hugging the loudspeakers. But the excitement is undeniable, and I edge forward, trying to get as close as I can without entering the mosh pit. There, a chaotic scene ensues, less like dancing than a brawl. Young men (and a few young women) lean forward and launch themselves across the center, windmilling their fists as they go. Considering how many are doing the same, and that at least one is wearing spiked bracelets, it’s surprising that there aren’t more injuries, although I do see one skinhead take a fist directly in the nose. When he looks down to see blood pouring down his bare chest, he smiles broadly, wipes a handful of gore across his bald head, and launches himself into the center once more.

When MDC takes the stage, the crowd goes wild. They are a locally-based band, and their music is familiar to the pierced-nose crowd. The lead singer, Dave Dictor, says, “I consider everybody here, except the narcs, the plain-clothes pigs that are here - there’s lots of them - don’t kid yourself - to be part of my family. My family is beautiful, but a little weird.” The pit boils with excitement, but I must admit, I’m not a fan. Their songs seem, to use a term I did not know at the time, deconstructed. Al is working hard keeping an incredibly fast beat, and bassist Franco Mares is keeping up fairly well, while guitarist Ron Posner slides up and down the neck in what could possibly be a chord structure, but the lyrics are incoherent. They are shouted, spit out rapidly and don’t seem to correspond at all to the rhythm, let alone to anything that might be called a melody. While researching for this piece, I found online a recording of most of their set, but I was unable to listen to the entire 18 minutes. I fast-forwarded through most of the songs that seem interchangeable to me and listened to the talking in between. Dictor is the first to break the news that will prove far more important to me personally than it seems at the time. Their manager, Tammy, was one of those arrested Monday, and like the rest is still inside. At 6:30, he says, there will be a “big procession up to the jail at 850 Bryant, so stick together.”

They also begin the chant I’ll hear on and off the rest of that day: “No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” The crowd booms it back, “No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” It echoes from the nearby office buildings and bores a hole into my brain. “No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” It’s in there still, smoldering, ready to catch fire whenever things are dry - a dull meeting, perhaps, and it will begin to crackle in a low drone, a background hum in the machinery of my mind. “No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!”

It’s a pep rally for folks who hated pep rallies in high school. There is a jubilance to shared anger, and if you let yourself accept it, the contact high is unavoidable. The fans cheer and the football players leap up, smashing their chests and their helmets into one another. The energy from the roar of the crowd is palpable, and, for a little while, I give into it. “No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” they chant, and as it happens I too am against war, racism, and fascism, so I join in. Why not? It’s fun. “No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” I shout, enjoying feeling a part of something, if only for a moment.

The crowd is surging behind me, and I find myself being pushed into the yawning mouth of the mosh pit just as the band launches into their final number. Suddenly, I’m in the middle of whirling fists. I dodge left and catch a glancing blow to my shoulder as the sweating, shirtless figure slides past. The edge of the pit behind me is a solid wall, and I try to escape to the side, but it’s the guy with the spiked bracelets, so I’m heading back to the right when a mohawked head slams into my stomach. The guy wraps me in a bear hug before I fall on my ass. He’s smiling, it’s a game.

So I play, for a while anyway. It’s a violent sport, but injuries are random, accidental. People aren’t necessarily trying to hurt each other, they’re just moving, fast, wheeling around in sweeping circles or bouncing back and forth in straight lines, and if they happen to crash - oh well. There are no referees, of course, and the only rule is “don’t flinch.” It’s basically a multi-player simultaneous game of chicken. I give it a try, I put my head down, close my eyes, and attempt a path straight across the circle. I don’t swing my fists; I can’t quite bring myself to punch a random stranger, but I’m not above running into them.

I never make it to stage right. Within seconds of reaching the center, I am getting knocked on all sides, bouncing back and forth like a ping-pong ball in a pinball machine. It may be random, but it feels like I’m being targeted; my height makes me easy to see, and the fact that I am skinny as a stick probably makes smashing into me seem like a good bet. Plus I stand out in this crowd. My thick glasses and Supercuts hair style give me the classic nerd look, and then there’s the shirt: I’m probably the only white guy in history to wear a daishiki in a mosh pit.

When I open my eyes I see there is a closer zone of safety. The area directly in front of the stage is an oasis of peace, and I make for it. The sound level there is still intense, but more manageable as the speakers are aimed past me. And though I still get jostled a bit, I find if I hold onto the stage supports, I can keep myself upright. I am looking directly up to the singer. I can see the sweat dripping off his forehead, the spray of saliva as he spits out his hatred for the police or Nancy Reagan or something like that.

When the set ends, the crowd calms down a bit, although speaker after speaker tries to keep them riled. People are angry about Reaganomics; it feels like what’s trickling down isn’t money. People are angry about CIA operatives secretly helping paramilitaries in Central America kill civilians, including four American nuns. People are angry about billions spent on nuclear weapons while folks are sleeping in doorways. People are angry about a growing police state aimed at anyone who expresses dissent, and this one really strikes a nerve as the speakers are able to literally point to hundreds of uniformed officers standing by. And the crowd gets really heated when they announce that the group who left on the “educational tour” is in jail, well 87 of them anyway. While walking up Kearny Street they were surrounded by police on dirt bikes and arrested for blocking the sidewalk (although they were moving at the time). This is in addition to the 89 arrested earlier in the week. “Remember,” we’re told, “We’re all going to march to the Hall of Injustice as soon as the Dead Kennedys finish their show.”

At the mention of the band’s name, the crowd begins to sweep forward. This is the moment most of them have been waiting for. New people squeeze in on both sides of me, pressing up against my shoulders. I grip the scaffold; I don’t want to lose my place. Whoever is behind me is so close I can feel their body heat on my back, and I begin to feel the onset of claustrophobia. I’ve experienced it before, in crowded elevators, but never outside. I’m already sweating from the heat and from my pathetic attempt at slam-dancing, but this is different. Beads of perspiration stand on my forehead. I think about sliding out, but I tell myself to quit being such a wimp. For once, I’m right at the center of the action. “Calm down,” I tell myself, “and enjoy it.”

I’ll never forget what happens next. The speaker glances backstage and smirks, then he starts to chant,“No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” I stay quiet this time, I’m being jostled and I concentrate on keeping my hold on the stage. “No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” rises behind me. “No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” and then right in the middle of the chant four figures stride onto the stage wearing Klan hoods and stand right above me, taunting the audience, which chants even louder in response.

When they rip off the hoods and reveal what is underneath, the chant rises to a barbaric yawp. All four are wearing rubber masks caricaturing our beloved president. The Reagan closest to me grabs the mike and begins to harangue the crowd in his trademark nasal voice with its piercing snideness. Meanwhile the other three have discarded their masks and picked up their instruments. Peligro hits the beat, and they launch into their first number - “Moral Majority.” And the audience surges forward, thousands of people with only one goal: to get as close to the stage as possible. But that’s where I am.

There’s no mosh pit this time, the crowd is too big and too tightly packed, so the hardcore fans can no longer bash each other’s brains out. There is only one outlet for their energy, and some begin to use it. One or two at a time, they hoist themselves up on the stage where they skank briefly, dodging the security guards on each side of the performers, before jumping off head-first into the crowd. Of course, each jumper opens a new spot by the edge of the stage, which is immediately fought over by two or three people. The result is a constant flux, a roiling motion of bodies pushing, and I am being knocked back and forth, but I try to hold on and concentrate on the performance taking place only a few feet away.

It’s a surreal sight, the president’s head atop a sweating, muscular body, the president screaming out, “Stodgy ayatollahs in their double-knit ties/ Burn lots of books so they can feed you their lies.” But it’s hard to listen when you’re busy trying to avoid being crushed. My midsection is being forced into the edge of the stage, and it takes all my strength to push away.

How long does this go on? I can’t recall. I know I lasted at least a few songs. I know I saw Jello rip off the mask and hurl it into the crowd and saw the mob dive for it like a wedding bouquet. I don’t remember what song especially excited the crowd so that the pressure on my back was no longer just uncomfortable, but dangerous, but at some point I decided I had to get out, and that I was going to do what I had wanted to do all along. I put my palms down on the top of the stage and begin to lift myself up. The folks behind me are only too happy to help, and before I can reconsider, they’ve pushed me up and taken my place.

And there I am, on the stage in front of a thousand screaming fans. I should dance, at least a little, but I freeze. I look back over my shoulders at the screaming, sweating crowd. It does not inspire confidence. I see the security guy moving toward me from the wings, and I think I should probably just surrender to him, but in front of me, only a foot or two away, is Jello Biafra, in the middle of his song, gazing at me with a look of utter disdain, so without turning around for a second glance, I leap backward into the crowd.

They say time slows down at moments like this. I don’t know if that’s true; more likely, our thoughts always speed along, but we just don’t notice. But I can tell you there was enough time, while I sailed through the air, to imagine the crowd parting, letting me drop. Enough time to imagine my neck snapping like a stick. But before I can envisage life as a paralytic, I am being caught. I feel my body dip, then rise again as dozens of hands lift me and pass me back. For a moment, I am a rock star, a hero, the king of the world. But when I reach the less populated section of the audience, I can feel my weight sagging. In the end, it’s just two guys holding me and they set me down, laughing. I’m laughing too.

It’s slightly less than a mile from the concert site to the Hall of Justice so when the show ends and they announce that we’re all going to march down there and demand that they free the prisoners, I decide to tag along. Not that I believe anyone will be freed; everyone knows that’s just talk, but I want to see what happens.

I’ve seen a lot of protests on TV, so I know how they play out. It’s a theatrical presentation that never seems to go out of fashion. There will be marching and chanting, and then the protesters will sit down and refuse to move. Then a policeman will get on a bullhorn and give the order to disperse. At that point, they will begin to arrest people. I’ve seen it a hundred times: some will come calmly while others will refuse to participate in their own arrest and will instead go limp. This is called nonviolent resistance, “satyagraha,” and I learned all about it last year in the film that won best picture.

So when they march, I march, but I stay in the back. According to media reports, there are around two thousand of us, and I’m probably #1990 because I never think of myself as a protester, just as someone observing a protest. To me, the protesters, the real protesters, are those terribly serious people I know will lay down their bodies and allow themselves to be arrested, and I have no intention of doing that. My plan, from the very beginning, is very simple: I think to myself, “When the police say ‘disperse,’ I will disperse.”

So when they chant, I chant, if I feel like it. I stay silent for “Let them go!” because it seems silly to me, but “The people united will never be defeated!” is a good one, and I join in. It’s a nice sentiment, even though everyone knows it’s more aspirational than descriptive. Unfortunately, the people united are often defeated. Or maybe it is literally true, but we just can’t ever seem to unite.

We move along at a brisk pace. I doubt the organizers were issued a permit for our little parade, but I believe the authorities must have been informed of the proposed route because every cross street is blocked by police, at least when I walk by. I am in the straggler group, which is noticeably younger and more chaotic than the more disciplined protesters at the head of the parade. This is a peaceful protest - no reports of property damage or violence (at least on the part of the protesters), but there is some aggressive posturing by a few of the punks.

Like many young men chafing at the knowledge of their own insignificance, they become intoxicated by even a hint of power. Seeing the police standing stock still, clearly under orders to not react, brings out the worst in them. Secure in their numbers, they hurl insults at the cops they pass or slap the hoods of their cars, like cats at the top of a fence taunting the barking dogs below. Some of these are just normal guys who happen to like punk rock. Tomorrow, they’ll take off their leather jackets with the metal studs and return to their nine to five jobs in the suburbs, but right now they are trying to show their mohawked brethren just how “hardcore” they are. The others, street kids who squat in abandoned buildings and who scrape by turning tricks or selling dime bags to tourists, are used to being ordered around by the police. For them, this is an occasion for revenge. They shout things I cannot repeat. It’s not always fun being a policeman, and it’s easy to see that many of them are mighty tempted to break ranks and fight back; they glare at us as we pass with “just you wait” expressions on their faces.

I never reach the Hall of Justice. When we are about a block away, we run into a line of uniforms standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking the street. Past them, I get glimpses of a large crowd sitting peacefully, waiting to be arrested. None of us stragglers knows what is going on, as far as I can tell. We find ourselves in the middle of an intersection, but we are not blocking it, no matter what it later says in the press. There’s nothing to block; all traffic has been diverted away from the area.

A small crowd is milling around in the middle of the intersection, and some are chanting. Most of them, like the crowd I’ve been walking with, are kids really, aged probably 16-18, but there are a few older guys here who seem to be in charge as they are chanting louder than anyone else. Down in front, closer to the police line, are the serious protesters. A few are engaged in a “die-in”, lying on the pavement in various attitudes of suffering like the vulcanized bodies at Pompeii, while others sketch chalk outlines around them. Some of these get up and move to other spots; the chalk itself their protest, a reminder of the nuclear annihilation that might well await us all. Others stay right where they are, apparently content to wait calmly for their own arrest. And it appears that this will not be long. The officers have their billy clubs at the ready, and they seem to outnumber the protesters.

One young woman in a floral peasant dress has a small pad and pen in her hand. She is walking down the line of police officers, noting down their badge numbers. When she is about halfway across the street, one cop steps forward and swings his club like a baseball bat, right into her abdomen. With a cry, she doubles over and falls to the ground, and two other officers step forward and grab her. The line divides like the sea for Israel, and she is dragged back behind it. Without even looking in that direction, the others shift their positions to fill in the gap. It is so quick and so smooth, that it must have been practiced. If I hadn’t been looking at that moment, I would have never believed it happened.

It seems crystal clear now that I should have left at that point, but in fact, witnessing this brutality inflames me, gets me chanting along with the rest, although I never abandon my plan. I look to the curb, making sure there is nothing to impede my progress. When the time comes, and the order is given, I will walk calmly to the curb, around the corner, away from the scene, and make my way home.

But the order doesn’t come, not for a while anyway. Something is happening behind the police line, a flurry of activity that turns out to be the arrival of horses. A signal is given and an elaborate procedure that would be the envy of any drill team commences. Smoothly, flawlessly, without ever leaving the tiniest gap, the foot soldiers file out and are replaced by the cavalry. Now knee to knee instead of shoulder to shoulder, a new corps of police stretches across the street. They are dressed just like the others, except that the clubs they carry are twice as long.

Immediately, there is the crackle of a bullhorn. “Attention!,” it begins, “This is an unlawful assembly.” The “die-in” crew remains where they are, looking unafraid of the massive creatures standing only a few feet away. I am not afraid either. The curb is only a dozen feet away, and I start walking, feeling somewhat relieved that this adventure is coming to an end. And neither am I afraid for the young folks lying in the street because I’ve seen a movie - and perhaps you’ve seen it too. In a key scene, a scrappy, young Indian lawyer is leading a peaceful march when the authorities show up on horseback. The poor protesters are terrified that they will be trampled, but a humble farmer saves the day by getting everyone to lie down. A horse, he explains, will not step on a prone person. And sure enough, though spurred by their cruel masters, the horses rear up and refuse to proceed across the bodies.

“If you fail to disperse,” the voice goes on, but before the sentence is finished, the horses are high-stepping toward us, fast. My walk turns into a run, but even so, I never reach the curb. Someone has grabbed me by the arms, and I turn around and look into the faces of the two older guys, the ones who were leading the chants. They never identify themselves, or even tell me I’m under arrest. They just spin me around and manhandle my arms behind my back and bind them with a plastic zip-tie.

The backs of my wrists are facing each other, and the pain is intense, but I am distracted from it for a moment by what I see going on behind me: a 1,000 pound horse is stepping full-force on the ribcage of a young man while another kicks a young woman in the head.

Before I can process any of this, I am turned over to two uniformed officers who lead me to a fenced-off holding area. There are over three hundred of us, according to the news reports, but only a few dozen where I am kept. We are there for hours, but all I remember is huddling by a wall to be in the shade, then later huddling in the last patch of warmth as the sun dipped and the cold set in. There is much less complaining than one might expect, but many people are shivering.

At some point, an angel of a deputy comes by and recuffs those of us whose hands have gone numb. My arms are still behind my back, but the relief of having my wrists face each other, of being able to wiggle my fingers and rub my freezing hands together is so great that this discomfort feels like pleasure. My mental state goes through a similar transformation. Bewilderment and fear give way to anger and outrage and finally to acceptance. There is absolutely nothing I can do except grit my teeth and get through this.

The vast majority of arrestees that day are cited on misdemeanor charges and released on their own recognizance, but a small group is taken to jail. I am one of them, for reasons that I still can’t fathom. The only explanation I can imagine is that I am older than most of the others, so they think I am a leader. When I’m booked in they show me the arrest information filled out by the arresting officer. Like everyone else, mine says “resisting arrest,” but it also says, “inciting a riot” and “battery on a police officer.” The word “felony” is circled.

Jail is not as bad as I fear; there is no strip search. We are put together in what I guess is a holding cell. At some point we are offered our one phone call, but I don’t bother. No one will be missing me; my roommates probably think I’m at work. And as for work, if I am released tomorrow, they don’t need to know about this. Later that night, a lawyer speaks to us. He is from the ACLU. He tells us that they will be representing us and takes our contact information. When he’s gone, one of the punks, a very young-looking gentleman who for some reason was allowed to keep his spiked boots, says, “That dude’s out of luck. We ain’t got a fucking buck between us,” and his friends all laugh. I think about explaining pro bono work and what the ACLU stands for, but I keep quiet. I’m an outsider, and I really don’t care to change that. I lean against the wall and close my eyes.

In the morning they feed us - a slice of white bread, a slice of lunchmeat, and a small bowl of Captain Crunch with no milk. I eat every bite. Who knows how long I’ll be in there? But before I get to find out what constitutes lunch, we are released on our own recognizance.

Walking out into the sunlight feels wrong. Was it really only yesterday? Not even. I think. Less than 24 hours ago I was dipping my toast into the yolk and reading about how the world was falling apart. I stop in a liquor store to buy a paper, which I glance through as I wander down to Market Street.

A bright yellow streetcar, an antique from Portugal, clanks along, a family of tourists pasted to the windows. Men in suits stride by, and a panhandler hits them up for a quarter. All around me the workday world goes on normally. I open to the first page and dive into the coverage. The emphasis is on the outstanding job the police have done. An editorial reminds readers that it could have turned out like Chicago in 1968 and praises their restraint. Three hundred arrested, which brings the total for the week up to around 500, they say, but only nine have been charged with felonies.

“Why me?” I want to ask the lady on the bench next to me. I want to tell her all about my strange toe-dip into the ocean of the justice system, but of course, I don’t. In fact, by the time the bus rolls up to Haight and Pierce, I have decided to tell no one, certainly not Maria. It would only make her worried, not least about her own bad judgment of choosing a jailbird for a beau.

But no sooner do I turn the key in the lock than Amanda bolts out of her room. “Andy!” she says, “Are you all right? We heard you got arrested! You better call Maria, she keeps calling.”

She’s glad to hear my voice, which is good, and although she might think I was stupid for what I did, she doesn’t say so.

“But how did you know about it?” I ask.

“Margo saw you on TV.”

Her sister in El Cerrito had called her. She had been watching the nightly news when she saw a familiar face with a very unfamiliar expression being carted off to jail.

The ending of this story is anti-climactic in the extreme. It seemed likely to me that they’d drop the felony charges in exchange for a guilty plea to the misdemeanor, but weeks of stewing about my upcoming arraignment had only increased my indignation. I walked to the Hall of Justice that afternoon determined to fight. I would demand a jury trial and be vindicated, I thought. But when I got there, the overworked attorney informed me I wasn’t on the list.

“There is no record of your arrest,” she said. I told her that I thought it was because my arrest had been filmed by the news, and they knew it was bogus, but she didn’t think so. “I think they probably just lost it,” she said. “They’re pretty disorganized.”

And that was it. I couldn’t fight; there was nothing to fight. Officially, it had never happened. Gone down the memory hole.

I am still indignant, I still felt my arrest was unjust. The “battery” I committed apparently consisted of turning around when grabbed by a stranger. But the indignation was dwarfed almost immediately by embarrassment. Embarrassment that I didn’t have more sense, that I didn’t realize the danger I was in. Embarrassment that I was swept along in a cause that wasn’t really mine. Embarrassment that I was so much less sure of myself and my place in the world than either the young woman jotting down badge numbers or the policeman who slammed her in the stomach with his club, both of whom undoubtedly went home that night secure that they had behaved correctly. Embarrassment that I was so stupid that I thought I could march in the middle of a protest and not be a protester.

I laughed aloud when I first saw the news clip from that night because the skinny kid being carted away looked so clueless, but I’ve watched it since. I’ve replayed it again and again, staring at those confused eyes, and now, when I look at that young man, I feel something else: empathy. He is young, younger than any of my children, and he is afraid. Afraid of jail to be sure, but more than that - afraid of the future. Afraid that he’ll never belong. Afraid of the chaos, of a world where a trip to McDonalds might be a death sentence, a world where any day the bombs he’s expected since he huddled head in hands under his school desk in first grade may rain down. After all, it was 1984, and it seemed like the world was going to end.

It didn’t, though. Life went on and both indignation and embarrassment faded, and that day took on the veneer of inevitability that coats all the past. I seldom thought about it, but when I did, there was one detail that I never understood, and years later, when I found out that a co-worker owned a horse, I asked the question that had been nagging at me.

“Did you ever see ‘Gandhi’?” I asked her. She had, so I asked her about the scene where the farmer saves the day by having the people lie down because horses will not step on prone bodies. “Is that true?” I wanted to know. “Will a horse refuse to step on a person?” When she said it was true, that horses are very reluctant to step on anything that appears unsafe or unsteady, I told her what I had witnessed in 1984.

“Oh, that’s different,” she told me. “Police horses are specially trained to step on people.”