What I Know Now by Rodger Larson

Author:Rodger Larson [Larson, Rodger]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Boys -- Fiction, coming of age, Homosexuality
ISBN: 9780805048698
Google: bDgzGwAACAAJ
Publisher: Henry Holt
Published: 1997-02-14T13:00:00+00:00

“God! smell that coffee roasting,” Gene said. He rolled his window down all the way and turned his nose toward the opening, took some deep breaths. Almost nine-thirty and the evening smelled like breakfast to me. The pickup climbed a ramp that rose in a slow graceful curve up through an old industrial section of San Francisco.

“South of Mission,” Gene said.

We were heading toward the first tower of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The ramp passed by the upper floors of factory buildings. Through the lighted windows of a factory I saw a man without a shirt on loading cloth sacks onto a hand truck. Attached to the side of the brick building was the huge lighted figure of a man dressed like one of the three wise men, full yellow robe to his bare feet, turban on his head, and holding a bowl in his hands raised before him like he was making an offering. Large red letters below the man said, FOLGERS. I recognized him from the side of coffee cans. We passed just above his knees, a ripple painted in his yellow robe to look like he was moving.

I felt like the Studebaker was airborne; the concrete band we traveled soared above the buildings of the Mission District, no landmarks remained to ground us. High above on the Bay Bridge towers, a blue light flashed a warning to airplanes. Over my shoulder, out the rear window, the lights of San Francisco glittered, stacked up on hills and on one another, prettier than any picture I had ever seen and more exciting.

“Yerba Buena Island,” Gene said. The pickup entered a tunnel on the side of a mountain in the bay. Inside the tunnel was white tile and bright lights. Streams of traffic flowed in both directions, all these people coming from and going to San Francisco, I thought; it made me feel small.

Outside the tunnel the bridge soared again over the bay and ahead of us I saw the edge of San Francisco Bay—drawn clearly by lights, dense until they were stopped by the water.

“Over there to the left is Berkeley,” Gene said. “Oakland is directly ahead of us and Alameda to the right.” He pointed, his finger almost touching the windshield.

In front of us was a faint horizon of dark blue hills, behind the hills the night sky was a dense blue-black; it was rich and deep and went on forever. No stars shone yet in the sky, no moon. Lights from houses and streets shone thick and bright all over the hills and onto the flatland the bridge ramps dropped down to. I thought about the. people who lived behind the lights in houses on the hills and on the flat-land, and I thought of the stories of their lives and how important the people were to themselves and how I knew nothing about them or what was going on in their lives and that I didn’t really care because I didn’t know them, but that

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