Being a Snob

I knew that one Armistead Maupin had written stuff that was well and widely received--by nobody that I respected or cared about--in its televised (ick!) version, by the name of 'Tales of the City,' and generally that it was about gay men and AIDS in San Francisco.  I even knew that Olivia Dukakis had a big role in it.  Something else, akin to my infallible Gaydar, also told me that Maupin was a Conservative, probably Effeminate, Aristocrat from Back East (double ick!): How could such a one understand, much less convey, the Divine Essence and Sacred Tragedy of My Holy City?  So, of course, I never watched it on television, and I turned away, from all reading and discussion of Maupin and his impious, presumptuous profanation, with the jaw-set and the eyes-glazed of one ignoring a fart-joke or a fart.

Then, a few months ago, I read H.L. Mencken's extraordinarily perceptive little essay on San Francisco--and a certain prejudice deep within me started, if not to crumble, to soften.

And then, of course, as recently as yesterday, I read the very essence-of-San-Francisco-revealed (by a native of Peoria!) in Some Dance to Remember.

And so at last, a few minutes ago, I wotthehell googled Armistead Maupin and actually read his wonderful essay entitled 'First Impressions of The City.'   I have, in the minutes since, got online to my account with the Hawaii State Library and put just about everything that Maupin wrote about San Francisco on reserve, and hope to be reading it tomorrow morning.