A Tiny Red Book from San Francisco

be gay and share your things

I have one copy of The *F-word(s) & Their Friends Between Revolutions. I bought it while I was in San Francisco with my dad last spring. We had just taken the highway down the coast, starting in Brookings, while listening to a lot of Bruce Cockburn. I had one injection of the vaccine in my body, my head was shaved, I had just gone to Portland for my first tattoo, and most of my anxiety stemmed from not wanting to leave Highway 66—which, if you know me well, is odd for me. I am good at leaving.

The book sat in the back of the car on our way back up to Ashland. There was a full moon, lightning strikes over Mt. Shasta, and my tired dad, in the passenger seat, eating a granola bar while telling me to slow down. I couldn’t wait to get home and read that book.

My dad left the next morning and a friend arrived the morning after that. Over the summer we read the book next to each other, on the deck, while Shane cut limbs to prevent fires and Patrick masons jars of milk and black tea. Among other things.

But it was more than a book. It was a fairytale, a dream, a way to fight against heteropatriarchy. It was a way to be queer. Now, in another time and place, me and the friend who read the book together are taking care of each other. Whenever the steam rises from a bath or a pomegranate is shared or a hand is touched I’m reminded of this book. I’m reminded of how queer people take care of each other. We know how to, how to open the door for each other. We had all done it that summer, on Highway 66, where it was so hard to leave.

There are illustrations in the book. Here is one:

You should really go buy the book, if you can. You should go to City of Lights in San Francisco, ask where the book is and, if you’re lucky, a person named Billy will lead you into a small basement and show you right where it is.

But, since you probably are not in San Francisco, here is portion from one of the pages: “The strong women told the f-words that the more you share, the less you need. At first the *f-words thought the strong women were being either obtuse or utopian. But as they began to share their clothes and their secrets and their magic potions and their spaces and their incantations and their animals and their books and their visions and their food, they learned, slowly, that the more they shared with each other, the more there was that could be shared and the less any one *f-word needed. The more that goes around, the more you get back.”

…

I’ve been resting in places I never would’ve believed to find rest, had you suggested a year earlier. That’s what time does—rolls us into heaps of something else. Sails us away to new places. I am lucky, yet I deserve to be this lucky. We all do. Keep loving whatever you love and leave behind what you don’t. And if you have to leave what you love, love it still. And then share it, whatever it is. It is the best thing we can do.

Jo