Opera night.
I put on the suit I got in Vietnam. And then I went to Dream of the Red Chamber.
So many steps at the hall. So sheer. I thought of how the Aztecs would roll corpses down the pyramids. And if I would be beside them.
I was up in the top right in the nosebleed section, and I could see the nosebleed. I was so conscious of my nose, the feeling that it was dripping. The hook of it.
The actors were too forced, and I could see why opera is a dying art. That it has greatness in it. But it’s too late.
Halftime rolled around and I itched. A thought came to me. I went down to the box seats and sat in one empty. Two women came to my left in the other box seat. A little gap between us, so close yet so far.
I asked them their names and they said Barbara, and I burst out laughing. The society in the dinners and Lake Tahoe and the benefits. And the concert for the poor children, it all burst out of me in laughter. And I perceived something.
I asked, can I join you? And they said as they must, yes. As some real estate dipshit came in. And I left from one booth to another, freaking out Barbara and Barbara. The Barbarec people chittered at my aspect.
I sat with them and watched the second half from inside the velvet. The voices carried better from down there. The voices were still too forced, but the gilt was closer, and the chandeliers were closer, and the absurdity was closer. I could see the conductor’s back sweat through his tails. I could see the singers’ makeup cracking under the lights. I could see Barbara and Barbara not looking at each other.
The rest passed uneventfully. I walked out and then went onto the Civic Center. A black security guard said it’s the governor’s ball. And I grinned at him.
And then I took off like a shot to the tenderloin.
The denizens howled, rattled, demanded that we see them. And although tonight someone was looking, no one wanted to look. They wanted to go.
Fear couldn’t hold me. And maybe curiosity could.
The tenderloin is the most dangerous neighborhood in San Francisco. Messed up things happen there. But that night anyone messing with me would die. Anyone who strove to strike me would be struck into the ground themselves. And now I can see what the flirt girls meant about defiance within me.
I walked the blocks in my Vietnam suit. The denizens howled and I howled back inside, not at them but with them, since the howl was the only honest sound on the block. A man on a mattress called something I didn’t catch. A woman with a sheet around her shoulders looked through me. I looked back. There was no glass between us, no box seat, no gilt, no Barbara. Just sidewalk and breath and the orange streetlight that San Francisco loves so much.
The people in the tenderloin need so much love. More than I could give. More than they deserve, since many would happily see us struck down.
And perceiving, the sight disappeared into the night.