Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

Chapter Five: The San Francisco Lesbian Waltz - Xenophobia & House Music

2003 in San Francisco.

I was living in a wonderful apartment. Separated from Hans and living with roommates. My John Lennon Lost Years, being away from Hans.

My roommates were a young woman who was an English teacher at San Francisco's prestigious Lowell High School and a woman who used to curate the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The apartment itself was spacious. There was a wonderful backyard that produced plums and lemons, a kitchen to die for, and my room was always bright and cheerful, as sunlight would come through the thin white curtains.

Where I was staying was a prime location as the now defunct Spanganga Theater (which is the cousin for all purposes to the vibrant Darkroom Theater) was around the corner where we were doing a lot of shows and improv jams.

It was strange times: being separated, on my own, and yet Hans courting me like he had never courted me before.

I was in this apartment for less than three months when it all became more surreal than what it already was.

One morning, while taking out the garbage for recycling (something, to be painfully honest, Hans and I had never done and I was more than thrilled to finally become a participant in garbage sorting goodness), my roommate came outside and asked me a question that I will never forget:

Her: (a nice mix of nervous tension with a tinge of "who did we get as a roomie") Shaun? Is there anybody out there that HATES YOU?

I was holding three empty wine bottles when she asked me this at 7:30 in the morning on the back stairs. The response that I gave her is still a little foggy in remembering. I don't know if I said I beg your pardon? sarcastically, like it was a bad joke...or WHAT?!? incredulously. She then announced that someone had written hate crime graffiti all over the front of the house.

I was horrified, yet surprisingly it did not sink in at 7:35am that I was an African-American woman. It really did not sink in at all.

As I was walking down the long Chicago-like hallway of this apartment as though the hallway was "Panning and Trucking" like an Alfred Hitchcock movie taking forever to walk down, all I could think of was What in the love of all that is holy could be written outside?

I imagined in big block letters "Shaun Landry is a craptastic improviser" or "Shaun Landry can take her zip zap zop and shove it up her ass" or "Shaun Landry: Taft Hartlied SAG Hack."

Never sunk in...never sunk in that I was black. Never thought about it.

I lived in San Francisco. I lived in The Mission.

Around halfway through this long walk through the hallway my roomie comes from the doorway and says Never mind...it is (the other roomie).

My other roomie who worked for SFMOMA is Palestinian. This was roughly around the time when the war (thwarting the "Evil Doers"?...I can't remember anymore) started. What I saw on the stoop was pretty horrible and gave new meaning to the then overused term "Shock:"

"Die" written on the front door.

"Die Pig" and "Die Shit" written on the side walls.

Garbage thrown all over the door, front stoop and stairs.

"Kill Arabs" in big black letters, written in front of the house and on the street.

I just stood there, pretty horrified. It was a full-fledged Hate Crime nightmare. Something in the 30+ years on this planet that I had only heard about. Only heard about coming from places like the Midwest where I grew up. And geared towards "My Race."