A Footbridge to Hell Called Love

The evening of February 8, 2023 turned out to be a special one. Not only it was the inaugural reading from my newly published novella, the room of one of the best Green Arcade Bookstore was packed with with my closet friends, fellow writers, musicians, film people, library coworkers, neighbors, and my dear wife. The scene was a spitting image of the First Movement of the novella, which opens with the protagonist arriving at his friend Jerry's place for a party with food, music, reading, flirting, making out and heartbreaks.
   I spoke a little bit about the seeds and growth of the novella and the San Francisco Quartet, hinting at three more novellas to come, all ready to be published. I spoke about the San Francisco of the late 80s and early to mid-90s, especially the Mission District, and how my literary, artsy friends and I witness its decline due to city's corruption and techie invasion. Then I read from four different parts of the novella to give the reader a sense of the text's and by default the main character Aslam's evolution. There followed a discussion about my characters being composites of people I have known. There was an interesting question from a fellow writer friend about why not choosing to write non-fiction. To which I replied that fiction was my main modus operandi. There was another related question about whether I'd ever write poetry. The answer was same that fiction was my primary lens. I may, like anyone else, write poetry someday, but I am not a poet, though I have tremendous respect for poets and find it essential that prose writers must read poetry on an ongoing basis. At the end of the evening, Green Arcade had sold all copies of the novella. I felt, after all, San Francisco was still alive as a literary city, crippled, but fighting back, with all the angst and anger, tricks and tools at her disposal, the corporate onslaught.


Andrew Gillis emailed the following message after my reading and I share it here with his permission:

Hi Moazzam,
   You were busy on your way out this evening so didn't tell you how much I enjoyed your
reading and how it really evoked my long gone Mission of the 90's - or mostly gone? I
arrived in SF in May of '96, so in time to still catch some of the wonderful weirdness
leftover from the previous decades that hadn't been corporatized and monetized out of
existence as it pretty much has by now.

Your descriptions of the party and the dialogue of that era somehow reminded me that it
was a time where people were more courageous, more experimental than they are now.
   The clothing was much more colourful, body piercings and tattoos were still edgy and
not just an expensive fashion accessory. I've said this before and sometimes people say
those are just superficial trappings but I think it takes real courage to wear weird clothing,
to cut or colour your hair in ways that few people have done (green hair doesn't make
you a radical in 2023), so I think these were emblems of the desire not to push one's own envelope.
   Today's tech crowd seem to be interested in aggressively conforming with their thoroughly homogeneous GAP look. They also really seem to want not to stand out. Once they were
filling the bars, restaurants and apartments of the displaced, it really did change the
character, the energy of the city.
   And even in the dialogue of your reading I got snippets of the energy and excitement of
being in a place where you could experiment with your sexuality, your spirituality, or
drugs, music, art, politics and you would have plenty of company and you would be
supported in your adventures. Years ago a young woman I met said she moved to SF
from some small Midwest town, in her words, to be a lesbian because this is where
freaks from all over the world come and feel like they've found a home.
   I know it's easy to idealize that time and it had its issues, and there are still a lot of great
people and events here - a surprising number of my pals have hung on - but a lustre and
a feeling has surely left. Maybe some other city somewhere in the planet is taking up the
mantle - Berlin? Barcelona? Some Asian cities I'm too ignorant to know about?
   So thanks for the visit back to my past through your past Moazzam and for telling good stories.
Cheers!

          Andy

Thank you, Andy, for your detailed feelings so similar to mine! In a way, this novella is (and the following ones too ) a lament, a love letter, and perhaps a bit of retaliation, and also testimony to our collective fight back!

May I share your comments with others, like on my blog? With or without your name? With your initials?

best,

-moazzam

 

Hey Moazzam,

We are undeniably of a certain SF era, a certain phenomenon of The Mission (largely). And yes, let's keep fighting back to protect what little is left of that spirit or at least to maintain the possibility of something else experimental and beautiful to blossom for the young people who are here and continue to come here who are interested in pushing their own envelope rather than just for a "good job"!

And by all means share my comments on your blog and using my name is fine.

Thanks for articulating the way you do,

Andy