Don't Cry for Me, San Francisco

Don't Cry for Me, San Francisco is Emmett Shields fourth book with 1stBooks Library, after Bun Bait, Lost and Found in San Francisco, and Land of the Green Gold. Don't Cry for Me is a sequel to Lost and Found in which we met the alter ego of a young writer as he and his friends and lovers lived their twenties at high speed prior to the advent of AIDS. With the coming of the plague, friends and lovers died leaving we survivors with a loss of innocence. It is at this point in the post-epidemic struggle where Don't Cry for Me, San Francisco begins. Shock was not necessarily the goal of this writer in choosing an in-your-face attitude toward gays, lesbians, bi-'s, straights, and the sexually confused. The writer's goal was to be authentic in the telling of what life is like in San Francisco where all the fortunate ones live and love and die. With the pain and blood from police nightsticks now a memory, gays and lesbians have become a political power structure and one or the other will probably follow Willie Brown into the Mayor's office. With historical precedence, we can say that the more Baghdad-by-the-Bay changes the more it remains the same. In the most integrated city in our country, cultures mix well. Most noticeably, the haute monde mixes well with the gay glitterati, while on a dark street in some crumbling neighborhood, sounds of violins blend with the haunting laments of the authentic tango that may be danced by a blue-collar type with bulging biceps who handles his black male lover with terpsichorean dexterity. So authentic is the place, the music and the dance that for awhile old timers forget that they are not in Buenos Aires. San Francisco is often spoken of as a collage of colors and sounds and nothing seen is quite what it suggests. Ambiguity reigns, in the City by the bay, and long may she wave.