From "The Memoirs, Volume Two" -

            I was back in San Francisco and enjoying my studio and generally pretty busy but always thinking of what to do next, you know.  It also happened that the San Francisco “Forty-Niner” football team were just about the hottest team in the, well, world, I guess.

            Now, I have never followed football nor found it interesting nor particularly sexy nor anything, really, but the so-called “Forty-Niner Fever” happened to be sweeping the city.  I guess they were about to win the, like, World Series or such, and I couldn’t help but notice lots of references to “Sweet Sixteen” Joe Montana (that was his number), who was, I guess, star quarter-back, or such, and lots of pictures of him in the papers, as well as others of the team like Dwight Clark, a fairly hunky guy, a black guy named Freddie Solomon and a guy named Craig Puki, which sounded like a sexy name, to me at least.

            And “Forty-Niner Fever” was even coming a bit into the gay bars on Castro and Folsom and such and they were all offering half-priced drinks during the games.

            Well Sweet Sixteen Joe Montana was everybody’s hero and you started hearing jokes about “sexy” Sweet Sixteen in the bars and guys like swooning over him.  I thought it was all pretty stupid and decided it could use a bit of off-color ribbing.

            So I started cutting out some photos from the papers and came up with a silly little collage which spoofed the fever thing in the form of a porno advertisement.  I called it “49’er FOLLIES” and printed up a couple hundred on hot pink paper.

            Most of my friends thought it was a riot, of course, sharing the same disrespectful humor I had and laughed at the joke.  I showed it to David, a straight guy, of course, and he howled!  He showed it to his real-straight business partner, however, and the poor guy was speechless.

“He … He can’t DO this!” he stuttered.

“Well,” said David laughing, “He did!”

            I wanted to paste them up on the walls around the Castro Street bars and get a big reaction if I could.  Joy offered to help.  We put them all over the place and got a lot of attention and even a couple photos in the local press. 

The gay papers loved it, of course, and I got a little more reputation.

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   ...NEXT:  SAMUEL BECKETT'S "HAPPY DAYS"