Growing Pains -short story for Elska Magazine
Kevin Adrian Lopez - 2023

I remember my first visit to San Francisco. I made the 8 hr drive from Southern California with my new boyfriend and his cousin. It was before people were streaming music and we realized too late into the journey that all we had brought in the car with us, was one cd, a Killers album. I had come to audition for a Summer dance program. I didn’t get in. Afterwards, we had dinner in North Beach and drove back home.

I remember my first stay in San Francisco. My boyfriend had gifted me a week long dance workshop. I stayed with a friend who lived in the Castro. He asked if i liked to walk. I said, “yes”. We walked from the Castro to the De Young Museum in the middle of Golden Gate Park. I realized I did not, in fact, like to walk.

I remember my first Summer in San Francisco. I had just graduated college, and I booked a job with a local dance company that kept me in the city for 2 months. I sublet a twin sized air mattress in the kitchen of a studio apartment from a very nice man in the Mission. I was able to walk to rehearsal, and would pickup shifts at any Starbucks that would have me. I fell in love with every person I met and every place I went.
I remember my first apartment in San Francisco. The more time I spent here, the more Southern California no longer felt like home. I rented a moving truck and my boyfriend drove me up. I found a room in an old Victorian flat. My roommates, Tony and Mikey, were two single men in their 70s who had no relation to each other, other than having been roommates for over 2 decades. I was two blocks away from Dolores Park, and would often go there to admire the city in my loneliness.

I remember my first friend in San Francisco. I was working at the Starbucks in the Castro, affectionately nicknamed, Bearbucks. After my first closing shift, my fellow barista took me to a bar next door called The Mix. The bartender was one of our regulars and greeted us with a shot of Jameson, which in the Castro, is actually just a glass of Jameson. That was the night I became a whiskey drinker.

I remember my first San Francisco drag show at the Cafe, hosted by Pollo Del Mar.
I remember being heartbroken in San Francisco. Long Distance is hard.
I remember fighting in San Francisco. My boyfriend moved up to join me. Transition is hard.

I remember moving into our first place together. It was called an efficiency studio. I could walk from wall to wall in 4 steps every direction, and our bathroom was down the hall to be shared with the other efficiency studio on the same floor.

I remember finally getting to leave that apartment.
I remember going out dancing in the Castro until last call was made at Badlands, and they would play “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” as the final song.
I remember having drunken messy arguments and walking home crying.
I remember trying to catch the last F train home.
I remember making friends.
I remember losing friends.
I remember marching in my first San Francisco Pride Parade with my boyfriend.
I remember my first Folsom Street Fair. I remember rolling at Outside Lands.
I remember my first time performing in drag.
I remember my first time hosting my own drag show.
I remember when my boyfriend became my fiancé.
I remember when the pandemic hit and the city had a silence I’d never witnessed.
I remember that silence broken by the loudest voices at the George Floyd protests June 2020.
I remember two years of the city adapting and relearning how to exist, how to thrive.
I remember when my fiancé became my husband.
I remember.

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