When I was 21 I got to experience perverse sexual jealousy. Nick’s band (not a serious band, but able then to pick up occasional gigs at high school dances and small venues) had a series of performances at the S.I.R. Club.

This was 1971. The S.I.R. Club was on 6^th Street in San Francisco, between Market and Mission, a block away from the Greyhound Terminal. The Greyhound Terminal was probably then the seediest commercial site in downtown SF.

S.I.R. stood for Society for Individual Rights and it was – get ready – homosexual. This was before the birth of LGBT and similar initials; “homosexual” meant men who liked men.

The club was a lot smaller than the Greyhound station, and a little bit cleaner. The dance floor and bar area were fine, normal. But the little rooms created by the movable barriers, lined with mattresses and screening grainy films that featured pimply butts: that part was distasteful.

So I stayed away from the periphery. I stuck near the dance floor. I remember grabbing a random balloon and holding it so I could feel the bass guitar by the way it made the orb vibrate. I couldn’t dance except when the band was off and records were played, and even then it meant prevailing on Nick to take a break from his break to accommodate me.

Which he did. We enjoyed a fast number and when it was followed by a slow one we slipped into each other’s arms and began swaying to that. At some point during the slow dance I glanced around the floor. I saw looks of appreciation on the faces of the spectators. But those looks were not what I was used to. I’d become accustomed to seeing jealous faces on the other women when I danced with the keyboardist from the band. But there it was the men at the edge of the dance floor who were aiming the envy at me.