The sun found its way around the edge of the plywood that boarded-up the window in my playroom. I lit a cigarette and glanced at Terry. He was still sleeping. Naked. Terry Weekly, not yet thirty, had a dark mustache on his boyish face. He'd been featured as Tom White opposite Peter Fiske in Wakefield Poole's filmMoving. I was lucky. Terry had followed me home last night.
"Let's go to the flea market?" he said. "Sir!"
We finished our coffee in the front of my flat on Clementina Alley. The sun was streaming through the bay window. It was Saturday, May 14, 1977.
"Marin or Alameda?" I said.
"Alameda's better," Terry said.
Both markets had good points. Flea markets can be hit or miss. Once at the Marin County flea market I'd bought a human foot skeleton, wired together for medical instruction; picked up a hitchhiker in a gorilla suit; and coming home got stuck in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. The hitchhiking gorilla, in the back of my pickup, put on a great performance for the stalled motorists.
"Alameda it is then," I said.
We crossed the Oakland Bay Bridge, turned south, and soon found a parking space for Nelly-Belle, my pickup, near the entrance to the market. The sun was out but it was cool. A shirts or skins sort of day. We saw lots of skins.
You never know what, or who, you might find at a flea market. We found Michael Monroe and Ed Parente. Ed was gathering vintage doll parts for his sculptures. He'd pull off the heads, sometimes the limbs, put them in his rucksack, then toss the remains in a handy trash can. He paired his flea market trophies together with butterfly wings and nature's random ephemera in Lucite boxes that were featured at high-end galleries in the tonier parts of the City.
I kept my Nikon busy shooting the skins. By the time we made our rounds I'd finished my film, found a roll of architectural blueprints, and a bag of blue ribbon awards from the 1941 Alameda County Fair. The blueprints made great gift wrapping paper, the blue ribbons splendid name tags. Terry discovered a treasure trove of used wrestling singlets and some well-worn jockstraps. By chance I spotted a doughboy safety razor in a folding khaki kit from the First World War. It would pair well with my horn-handled straight razor for shaving scenes.
We were ready to leave. "Look at the guy by the carpets," Terry said.
Nudge, nudge.
I glanced toward the rug display. A man with nice shoulders and back-muscles had his T-shirt tucked under his belt on the right side of his ass. We couldn't see his face. He was headed for the exit. Knowing that some guys cruise best by walking away and feigning indifference, we followed him to the parking lot. We passed him. He followed us back to Nelly-Belle.
"Need a ride?" I said.
"My Honda's by the entrance gate," he said.
He followed us back to Clementina Alley. The doughboy's razor, used jockstraps, and wrestling singlets all came into play that Saturday afternoon. Yes, flea markets can be a hit or miss, but that Alameda flea market was definitely a hit.
Copyright 2014 [email protected] For further true gay adventures check out the award-winning Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco .