Faerie, Alex, Deon, and I each lived in single studios in the Perramont Hotel. I woke up early and knocked on all their doors, and we walked together to Nathan's house, which was beautiful and modern, with three stories. They called it Windemere. August rented the ground floor. Nathan lived on the second, and the top level was communal space with an adjoined open-concept kitchen.
Nathan was cooking waffles from scratch and juicing fruit when we arrived. Naturally social and gregarious, Nathan loved hosting and meeting new people. He was thrilled when I invited three friends to join us for Chapter Two. I also invited Rufio, but he didn't respond and blocked my number. August and I avoided eye contact.
We all shared our names and pronouns and devoured breakfast, spending little time on small talk. Service would start soon, and we were eager to hit the road. The church with the golden dome next to Dolores Park was less than a mile away. For the third time, I walked around the building to the shed with a locker combination. 7-19-86. Down the stairs, we went into the creepy circular worship space, except this time, it was filled with people.
The six of us sat on pews arranged in a semi-circle. The stage and podium were empty, but actors meandered about the crowd, proselytizing about "light" and "Elsewhere." They wore bright, flowing robes with vibrant, colorful stoles.
At 8am, a gong sounded, and an ancient Asian woman entered the room from behind the podium. The actors went to the stage and began playing a harp, drum, and flutes. The leader carried a violin with her. As she preached from the pulpit, she played her violin, and the band played along. Her introduction was punctuated musically with a haunting, gorgeous tune.
"Friends, siblings, children, welcome.
We've known one another forever.
As galaxies gather and spin,
our gravity brings us together.
The stars in the skies,
like stars in your eyes,
in us all, a light shines within.
We meet anew. Again.
Trapped in this body.
Trapped in this skin.
Each, part of a whole.
Like cells in the body,
Each, cells in one heavenly body.
Different, indispensable."
The backup musicians continued playing softly as the cult leader-apparent of the group lowered her violin and began her sermon.
"Welcome. Thank you for shining with us this beautiful Sunday morning. My name is Reverend Wu. Please, sign in and take a pamphlet. Pass these around. Thank you.
"No doubt you've heard the lies about us, about our faith, about Eve. The Humdrum Institute claims that Eve is missing! They accuse us Nonchalant of kidnapping, treason, perfidy, and worse, but the truth will out!" The choir sang 'the truth will out' as an echo.
"Eve is not missing. Oh no. Eve is alive and found. Her light shines in Elsewhere like the dawn, a beacon illuminating the way. Did you know we're made of light? It's true. Our bodies make heat through electromagnetic radiation. Heat. Heat is just another kind of light. Infrared light. We cannot see infrared light, but did you know some snakes can? To a snake, we look like angels made of pure light. I wish I could show you, but you're not ready. You need to see the light for yourself.
"You are pilgrims on many paths, but today your winding roads merge into one highway. In your pamphlets, you'll find a map of The City. Eve left this map for us to follow her to Elsewhere. Follow in her steps like pilgrims. Let today's journey be a journey inside yourself. Let Eve lead you to yourself."
The musicians played into a crescendo. Smoke billowed in from the ceiling and wall behind Reverend Wu.
"We will meet again!" Reverend Wu proclaimed. "At the gates of Elsewhere! And beware the Humdrum Institute!"
Lights flickered as more smoke filled the stage, and after a brief, fantastic firework display, the room went dark. When the lights turned back on, Reverend Wu and the musicians were gone. Several people ran out when the smoke started. We didn't stay long, either, and hurried upstairs into fresh air.
We examined the brochure they gave us. It was a local district map of San Francisco. On the top of the first page was a link to a website with a single downloadable audio file. Nathan downloaded the first file and played it for us all to hear.
It was a recording of a man's voice. He sounded like a tour guide for cult initiates.
"Greetings and congratulations. You've embarked on a pilgrimage to your truest self. But before you can see the truth in yourself, you must see the world as it truly is. Nothing is what it seems. The world you thought you knew was an illusion. There is another world beneath this world of flesh and stone. Elsewhere. Like two sides of the same coin, our world and Elsewhere are the same, inseparable, but never touching.
"But imagine for an instant if one drilled a hole through the center of that coin. Would the sides then touch? Could one reach through to the other side?
"Dolores Park, our lady of sorrows. This land was once a Jewish cemetery. Before that, it held the bodies of the city founders. And earlier still, Native people were born and buried here. History can be bulldozed away, but remnants remain if one knows where to look.
"This land is teeming with more life than you yet know. Follow the map Reverend Wu gave you. Find for yourself the holes in the surface of your existence."
The audio file faded into static noise. Nathan put his phone away, and we examined our maps. It sent us north up Church Street and provided historical anecdotes step by step. Three blocks up, the map told us to leave the sidewalk and go to the median. Palm trees decorated the grassy median every few yards. As instructed, we examined the trees closely and found tiny hand prints!
According to the map, these trees were gates for tiny winged fairies that traveled between our world and Elsewhere. In knotted holes in the trees, we found tiny furniture and stores of tiny foods. We carried on.
Our maps ended a few blocks west at a secondhand bookstore. We entered as inconspicuously as possible for six queers. Some pilgrims were wandering the shelves, and August noticed a mass of people huddled together in a darkened corner of the shop. We waited for the crowd to leave and then hurried to see what they were examining.
Among the books of religious studies, a single tome was chained to the wall. I opened it. It seemed like a book of riddles and newspaper clippings. More depictions of Elsewhere, an ephemeral place where spirits dance on the precipice of existence. The book was short and filled with abstract images and obscure occult references. I couldn't make sense of it. But Nathan recognized one edifice that appeared throughout the book: Coit Tower.
As we were flipping through the tome's pages, Faerie noticed a tiny home hidden between the bookshelves. Reaching in, she found the second clue: it was a miniature book, exactly like the one in my hand. And when she opened the book, she found a single link inside.
Nathan typed the URL into his phone and arrived at another site nearly identical to the previous one, with a single downloadable audio file. We put the books away and exited the bookstore. Once we were all outside and could hear Nathan's phone, he played the recording. The same voice as before congratulated us on making it this far. The voice told us to go to Coit Tower and directed us to a nearby cable car.
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Coit Tower was several miles away, but the cable car would get us there in 20 minutes. In the meantime, we figured out how this adventure was funded: the entire game was a tourist attraction. San Francisco cable cars were famous. People wrote songs about them. We jumped off near Telegraph Hill, not far from Coit Tower.
We hiked up and around the rocky terrain and learned about Lillie Hitchcock Coit, the wealthy and eccentric San Franciscan woman who chased fires. We finally found our next clue at the gift shop, of course. Alex found it, a postcard from Elsewhere. Eve was waving blithely on the front image, and on the back, a phone number.
We called the number, and each of us got an answering machine with the same voice as before. But this time, the voice told us to leave our names and phone numbers.
Was it a dead end? We scoured the area again to be sure we hadn't missed a clue and found nothing else.
After deliberating, we concluded that either the Humdrum Institute or Cult of Nonchalance would email us or call us back. Regardless, our urban hike had lasted several hours, and we were all ready to call it a day. Nathan invited us back to his home for lunch, and no one turned him down. So we jumped back on the cable car in the reverse direction and made our way to Windemere.
Nathan told us to wash our hands, while he prepared dinner and turned on music. "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed. Then he put a freshly baked loaf of challah on the table. After pouring us each a glass of wine, Nathan brought us bowls of matzah ball soup and said a short prayer in Hebrew. We thanked Nathan for his gracious hospitality, broke the challah, and ate together. The soup was followed by gefilte fish and mushroom gravy latkes. The fish was weird but pretty good. The latkes were fantastic, and we ate plenty. Deon finished first.
"This is been the best day I've had since coming to San Francisco. Thank you... all... for including me. It means a lot to me." Deon's voice wavered as he said it.
"Thank you, Deon," Nathan said. "It was a pleasure adventuring with you. How long have you been in San Francisco?"
"I basically ran away from South Carolina about 8 months ago."
"Whoa," August exclaimed. "Is it because you're gay?"
Deon laughed darkly and said, "That probably played a part, but I think being Black had more to do with it. My family lived in a college town, and some frat boys kept following me. They would throw rocks at me and yell stuff. One time, I woke up in the hospital; my momma gave me a bus ticket and said, 'you gotta get outta here.'"
All I could say was, "shit."
"You're in the same program as Bastian?" Nathan asked.
"Yeah, we all live in the Castro Housing studios," he said, gesturing to Alex, Faerie, and myself.
"That's good... Bastian told me about Larkin Services. They do good work. I'm glad you got help." Nathan turned to Alex and Faerie, sitting close together. "How about you two? Both of you've been pretty quiet all day. Where do you come from?"
Alex answered for them both, "Upstate New York. We came together about a year ago. Sorry if we've been rude. It's just... sorry, but... religious stuff is... well, I guess I'm not used to feeling safe around religious people. And there has been a lot of religious stuff today... sorry."
I silently shared Alex and Faerie's discomfort around religious people, icons, and rituals, but they seemed more than uncomfortable. They seemed almost frightened.
Nathan chuckled warmly. "No offense taken. Honestly, I don't blame you. Some people have weaponized religion. They worship white patriarchy and money. This might seem off-topic, but... have you heard of the Institute of Sex Research?"
Blank stares and shrugs. Nathan continued, "I didn't expect you would. It's not something widely known... Before the Nazis took over Germany, there was a college that studied sex and gender. They were ahead of their time. Hell, they were ahead of our time. One of the founders was what we now call a trans man. They advocated acceptance and support for people experiencing what they called gender inversion.
"When Hitler seized power, Nazi youth brigades decided their studies were 'un-German,' and the school was destroyed. All the books burned in the street. Decades of research-and lives were destroyed. Set us back generations... My parents taught me that as a kid, along with the Torah and Jewish history. I don't say that to be macabre, but rather that our people died together. Whatever else we are, I consider us brothers and sisters."
We all fell silent. Direct references to the Holocaust had that effect on most people. Faerie broke the silence.
"I had no idea. I thought the Holocaust was all about Jews."
"Hitler's 'final solution' was for Jewish people, that's true, but the Nazis murdered anyone they considered... I guess... 'undesirable.' Political opponents. Gays and trans folks were brutalized and massacred. Roma, or 'gypsies', too. In truth, disabled people were the first and most devastated by the Nazi's genocide. Nazis had enough hate to spread around, and they did."
"Well, thank God it's 2009, and Nazis are a thing of the past," August cheered. "Nathan, you're bumming everybody out. Tell us about your drag persona."
Nathan lit up and grinned. "Oh, you mean Holly Cost. Yeah, last Halloween, I went in drag and performed "Razzle Dazzle" from Chicago."
I laughed uproariously with August. Faerie looked appalled. Alex and Deon appeared at once amused, confused, and fearful.
"That's hilarious," I said obliviously.
"No, it's not! That's awful. How can you joke about that?" Faerie demanded.
August and I were stunned. Deon looked down and shrunk in his seat. Alex seemed disappointed and irritated. We looked at Nathan for a response. He appeared off guard but lost none of his affability.
He shrugged and said, "It's hard not finding humor in persecution. You can either laugh or run, and I can't run. I mean, look at me. I am very Jewish. If my options are to laugh or cry, I'd rather laugh. You have to, or life gets too depressing."
Deon perked up to say, "I feel that."
Faerie lost some earlier steam but hadn't cooled completely. She went silent and red in the face. Alex spoke up on her behalf. "Still, it's weird to pretend you're a woman just to make crude jokes. The whole concept of drag is sexist. You're a man wearing a woman's face like a costume. That's like blackface or wearing a Native American headdress for Halloween."
Nathan stopped smiling, but if he was angry, he didn't show it.
"Drag is nothing like blackface. Sure, it's gender performance, but aren't we all performing gender? How is drag different?"
Faerie spoke passionately. "I am not performing gender! I am a woman. I am not acting! I don't go home and stop being a woman."
Nathan's composure was deteriorating. "I never suggested otherwise," he said tersely. "Look, I treat you with respect and accept you as you present yourself. Why can't you extend the same courtesy to drag queens?"
"Because they get rich and famous pretending to be me, while I get shit on because I don't dance for tips and wear clown make-up!"
Faerie's intensity surprised everyone except Alex, who looked frustrated and sad. August, Deon, and I were too unsure of the subject matter to interject. Nathan, sadly, was getting riled up and defensive. His voice rose an octave and a decibel.
"No one is pretending to be you. You're a woman. I'm genderfluid. My identity is just as valid as yours! Look, I'm sorry most people are transphobic, but not everything is about you!"
Faerie stood up with righteous fury, her chair sliding across the floor. "I should know better than try to be friends with a bunch of white gays. I'll see myself out."
"Cough," said Deon.
"Uhh..." August chimed in.
"Before dessert?" Nathan asked.
I stayed quiet but felt insulted. Faerie was already walking downstairs. Alex went after her but stopped. He turned to face the rest of us, looking conflicted and sad. His mouth opened and shut, then he turned and followed Faerie downstairs.
Nathan sighed in remorse. "Shit, uh... fuck it, let's uh... have dessert. Anybody want dessert?"
"I'll stay for dessert," said Deon, who looked unsure whether to follow them a moment earlier.
Nathan got up to fetch it from the kitchen. An awkward silence ensued until Nathan filled it with a joke about Passover desserts. His hands trembled as he brought the tray of rugelach, which were like fancy cinnamon rolls with chocolate, hazelnuts, and jam.
We didn't say much until they were all eaten. Nathan told a few more campy jokes, and the atmosphere mellowed, enough so that Deon waded back into fraught waters.
"Can I ask another heavy question?" he requested.
Nathan looked nervous but said, "Sure."
"I was thinkin' 'bout what Faerie before she left. Are Jews white? I never thought about it before, but now it feels strange."
Nathan sighed dramatically, relishing the opportunity to monologue, dreading the subject matter.
"You can ask a room full of Jews that question, and a fight will break out. No one agrees on anything, let alone everything. The short answer is it's complicated. Jews can come from anywhere and in any color. While some disagree, it's commonly accepted that Jewishness can be both a religion and an ancestry. The religion is Judaism; the ancestry would be 'Jewish People.' Many ancestral Jews, but not all, are white. Jesus was Jewish, but he was not white. Because of the Diaspora, Jews spread across Europe, Africa, and some even as far as Russia and Asia.
"Jews that migrated to Europe integrated into whiter cultures. By the time the concept of 'whiteness' was invented, many ancestral Jews were folded into it. But because antisemitism is ancient and insidious, their whiteness was always conditional. Jews with darker skin were excluded from most white privileges. Even within Jewish communities, there's a lot of colorism; that's like the price of admission into whiteness: you've got to shit on people darker than you.
"Incidentally, that's how it worked for the Irish, too. When war and famine ravaged Ireland, Irish refugees came to America and were treated like garbage. White America eventually accepted and embraced the Irish, but only after they joined police forces and unions that brutalized and excluded Black folks. That's how the Irish 'earned' their inclusion into whiteness.
"But to get to the heart of your question, one has to ask: who are white people? What is whiteness? Am I white?
"Again, you're going to get a lot of varied, passionate responses. I can only answer for myself, and you should take it with a grain of salt.
"I think of whiteness as separate and distinct from having white, pale, or fair skin. Whiteness isn't so much a biological ancestry as it is a belief system. It's like a religion, and like any religion, it only has as much power as we give it.
"Whiteness is a racist illusion. There was never any unified European culture before evil people invented chattel slavery and racism to justify their crimes against humanity. Racism was wielded in the most horrific ways imaginable against our fellow brothers and sisters.
"And the entire terminology is based on nonsense. I mean, look at Sebastian. He's the palest person at this table, and even he's not white. He's like a pinkish-beige. Or take the word Caucasian. That word denotes a group of people from the Caucasus region near what we call the Middle East, and most Caucasians are brown.
"So when Faerie called me white, l didn't bark because whiteness is an idea, and I don't align myself with it. I get white privileges, I know that, but that's different from being white. The purpose of whiteness is to divide people based on superficial nonsense. That's it. Whiteness is racism. Some people disagree, so I tend to keep that opinion to myself."
The conversation winded down as we finished our dessert. It was getting late, so we thanked Nathan for his hospitality and went home with a lot on our minds.