A Friend, from Lilli Ann, to China Town (a short Sketch)
A Friend, from Lilli Ann,
to China Town
(San Francisco, 1968)
From the very first moment we’d meet, Dan would give off a sudden and odd sense of a person understanding my undertaking in life. But it came at the oddest time, under odd circumstances. I was living in San Francisco, back in 1968, and Dan just started working at Lilli Ann, where I was working, I had been there for four months, Lilli Ann was dress designing company. We kind of bumped into one another, and he was looking for a place to live, he and his spunky brother, half brother, a few years younger than us two, at present they were being kicked out because of their rent being raised, and unaffordable for them.
I was working out at the karate dojo in Castro, living on Dolores Street in an old mansion, a female Colonial, retired from the Army, rented the rooms out. She was tall, with short blond hair, medium size boned, and kind of orderly. What you’d expect I suppose from such a person.
On the other hand, Dan was about my height, five food eight, perhaps Irish, like me, sandy brown hair, and took a different style of karate up, but was interested in some of my moves. He was considered good in his style, but I was considered better, if it came down to testing one another under fire.
Now I had been dating Colleen, she was ten-years my senior and she was looking for a place to live also. She had a white Cadillac car, and a good job. I’d often get a ride to work from her, and she’d have me buy her material, for making cloths, Lilli Ann was considered to have some of the best textiles in the world, Adolph Schuman, often went to France, checked out the mills to insure he got the best. In any case, it was a good arrangement, and we’d drink, got drunk and made love together when we were both available.
Well, she moved in, after Dan, but I met both of them around the same time, Dan a month earlier. And we all got along together. I suppose back then, it was all we could do to hold together, drink, and work together, and flop out together. We were all becoming a group of sorts. Dan’s brother was part of the group, but less a part.
I drank quite a lot in those days, and Dan found a girlfriend at work, a Spanish gal and had me talk to her, kind of fixing him up, I knew her better than he. And thus, they started dating, and she became part of the group. She liked me, and was concerned about my drinking, she told Dan so, and Dan told me, and I told Dan to tell her, “Mind her own business.” Fine, she took it lightly and somewhat avoided me when visiting Dan, and at work she smiled as usual. I think she was torn in that she’d have liked to have had a closer relationship with me, but it didn’t turn out that way, surely drinking was part of the issue.
As I implied, I came in drunk a lot, and fell to sleep a lot, or passed out a lot, and it was Colleen who was living in one of the rooms near Dan, and she was drinking and laughing with Dan and his brother a lot, and one evening, I came home, and heard them, they were having a party in their room and she was flirting, trying to kiss Dan, and yelled at her and Dan and the brother, less at the brother, and of course she scolded me for being jealous, and I told Dan, stay away, even if I didn’t care to date her anymore, and he said ok, with a slanting eye, and she said no, with a grudge. She said, “I am not your property, I am free to date and do as I please, I am not subject to you.”
It did come to pass, she left, and probably for the wiser. But I thought a lot of Dan for doing what he did, he avoided her, told her, and I heard him say it, “It’s best we keep our distance, I don’t want to lose Dennis as a friend, he was my friend first.” I guess he felt he owed it to me, I mean, I got him the apartment, and perhaps the girlfriend, at least the first date, and his brother got to smoke his pot unworried about the law, in his apartment, life was good. Plus, he didn’t really want an affair with her that might leak back to his new unofficial girlfriend.
As time moved on, Dan got more involved with his girlfriend, and I respected that, and we did less and less together, which was ok, but I seemed to have lost a good friend in the process, one I took time to cultivated a friendship with, and that hurt. But I would find out in life, there was much ahead of me, and perhaps there would not have been time to cultivate that friendship beyond what we did. Consequently, we did in our short time all we really could do. When my mother visited the city he even went to China Town with us, she liked him as well as I, and that was not a surprise to me.
I learned back then, I suppose, a good friend is worth its weight in any kind of precious metal; they are far and in-between, in one’s life time.
Written 5-29-2008
to China Town
(San Francisco, 1968)
From the very first moment we’d meet, Dan would give off a sudden and odd sense of a person understanding my undertaking in life. But it came at the oddest time, under odd circumstances. I was living in San Francisco, back in 1968, and Dan just started working at Lilli Ann, where I was working, I had been there for four months, Lilli Ann was dress designing company. We kind of bumped into one another, and he was looking for a place to live, he and his spunky brother, half brother, a few years younger than us two, at present they were being kicked out because of their rent being raised, and unaffordable for them.
I was working out at the karate dojo in Castro, living on Dolores Street in an old mansion, a female Colonial, retired from the Army, rented the rooms out. She was tall, with short blond hair, medium size boned, and kind of orderly. What you’d expect I suppose from such a person.
On the other hand, Dan was about my height, five food eight, perhaps Irish, like me, sandy brown hair, and took a different style of karate up, but was interested in some of my moves. He was considered good in his style, but I was considered better, if it came down to testing one another under fire.
Now I had been dating Colleen, she was ten-years my senior and she was looking for a place to live also. She had a white Cadillac car, and a good job. I’d often get a ride to work from her, and she’d have me buy her material, for making cloths, Lilli Ann was considered to have some of the best textiles in the world, Adolph Schuman, often went to France, checked out the mills to insure he got the best. In any case, it was a good arrangement, and we’d drink, got drunk and made love together when we were both available.
Well, she moved in, after Dan, but I met both of them around the same time, Dan a month earlier. And we all got along together. I suppose back then, it was all we could do to hold together, drink, and work together, and flop out together. We were all becoming a group of sorts. Dan’s brother was part of the group, but less a part.
I drank quite a lot in those days, and Dan found a girlfriend at work, a Spanish gal and had me talk to her, kind of fixing him up, I knew her better than he. And thus, they started dating, and she became part of the group. She liked me, and was concerned about my drinking, she told Dan so, and Dan told me, and I told Dan to tell her, “Mind her own business.” Fine, she took it lightly and somewhat avoided me when visiting Dan, and at work she smiled as usual. I think she was torn in that she’d have liked to have had a closer relationship with me, but it didn’t turn out that way, surely drinking was part of the issue.
As I implied, I came in drunk a lot, and fell to sleep a lot, or passed out a lot, and it was Colleen who was living in one of the rooms near Dan, and she was drinking and laughing with Dan and his brother a lot, and one evening, I came home, and heard them, they were having a party in their room and she was flirting, trying to kiss Dan, and yelled at her and Dan and the brother, less at the brother, and of course she scolded me for being jealous, and I told Dan, stay away, even if I didn’t care to date her anymore, and he said ok, with a slanting eye, and she said no, with a grudge. She said, “I am not your property, I am free to date and do as I please, I am not subject to you.”
It did come to pass, she left, and probably for the wiser. But I thought a lot of Dan for doing what he did, he avoided her, told her, and I heard him say it, “It’s best we keep our distance, I don’t want to lose Dennis as a friend, he was my friend first.” I guess he felt he owed it to me, I mean, I got him the apartment, and perhaps the girlfriend, at least the first date, and his brother got to smoke his pot unworried about the law, in his apartment, life was good. Plus, he didn’t really want an affair with her that might leak back to his new unofficial girlfriend.
As time moved on, Dan got more involved with his girlfriend, and I respected that, and we did less and less together, which was ok, but I seemed to have lost a good friend in the process, one I took time to cultivated a friendship with, and that hurt. But I would find out in life, there was much ahead of me, and perhaps there would not have been time to cultivate that friendship beyond what we did. Consequently, we did in our short time all we really could do. When my mother visited the city he even went to China Town with us, she liked him as well as I, and that was not a surprise to me.
I learned back then, I suppose, a good friend is worth its weight in any kind of precious metal; they are far and in-between, in one’s life time.
Written 5-29-2008
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 3:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home