Dreams and Nightmares 2: Panic in the Break Room

Panic in the Break Room


The Flood Building stands at Fifth and Market in downtown San Francisco. It was built before the 1906 earthquake and was considered one of the new “skyscrapers” at the time. Now it’s dwarfed between real skyscrapers, but it holds onto a classy style of architecture with certain elements that no longer exist. The doorway and windows have carved ornamentation. There is a solidity, an ornate heaviness which proclaims stability and protection for the people inside.  There are marble floors in the hallways, real wooden stalls in the bathrooms, and windows that actually open to let in fresh air during the many nice days enjoyed by the city.
            In the early 1980s I was working for a health insurance company whose offices were in the grand old Flood Building. Each morning I would emerge out of the MUNI station after my commute from the Sunset neighborhood, and come up to meet the decorated façade. The antique elevator, with its folding gates, would take me to the fifth floor which was completely devoted to my employer. The employee break room was in the corner of the building, which meant that if you opened windows on adjoining sides, you could get a nice cross draft. The weather in San Francisco made it seem like it was a perpetual spring, so the break room way usually refreshing. On one of those lovely mornings I went there for my 10:15 AM break. Normally I would have a cup of coffee, scrounge at leftover pastries, look at the newspapers strewn across the table, and laugh and joke with my new gay friends, Patrick and Donald, and some of the claims adjusters. We would tell each other about our adventures and I would realize how naïve I was about life in the big city, and how much fun I would have “learning” all about it.
That day, however, my eyes fell on the week’s copy of the BAR, the Bay Area Reporter, the biggest gay newspaper in the city at the time. For some reason I was alone. I remember being puzzled by the headline about a new gay “cancer” being discovered. The cases already reported in New York, LA, and San Francisco, seemed to defy the medical experts with regards to its origin or its treatment. They called it GRID, or gay related immunodeficiency. The edges of my vision became blurry as I stared at the story. There were donut crumbs on the table. The ashtray held a few cigarette butts from earlier breaks. The sun came through the hall windows in broad beams and fell onto the cool, gray, stone floors. It was quiet. The story stunned me, so that I momentarily forgot to breathe. I remember wondering about it, and being relieved that no one I knew had it, or anything like it. Those poor men, I thought. Thank God, I had nothing to worry about.

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