San Francisco State, 1972: I’d read a book about how to pick up girls. Actually, it was about how to get laid, and was entitled “Scoremanship”. I cannot recommend the book for its attitude, but it had this one magnificent technique for meeting women.
Step One: You go to someplace where there are lots of women, such as a beach, or in this instance in the halls of San Francisco State on a busy busy day such as registration.
Step Two: You walk up this beach or hallway, and whenever you see a woman whose looks you find pleasing, you say something. It can be anything, no matter how stupid. The important point is that you’ve spoken to her.
Step Three: No matter what her response, you keep walking past. Don’t stop and talk. This is a key point.
Step Four: When you get to the far end of the beach or the hallway, now you turn around and you come back.
Step Five: Now you’ll again encounter the woman. This time, on your way back, you again say something to her. But the difference is that this time you strike up a conversation, and in due time you ask her for a coffee date or whatever the next step is. If she won’t talk with you, head on back to the next one. But the surprising is that she will nearly always talk with you … on your return trip.
Why would this work? Why will she almost always talk with you when you return?
It’s because when you return she thinks she knows you! You’ve moved yourself into the class of guy who she’s talking with for the second time. You see, women can be protective and cautious the first time they meet somebody, but they don’t usually have a habit of being so cautious the second time they’re chatting with somebody, and you’ve just moved yourself into that category.
The second wonderful thing about this technique is that it helps you get beyond shyness. If you’ve ever felt tongue-tied in the past, this method is great. You see, there’s so little to lose, since you’re walking away. And if you say something so dumb that the sky should fall … who cares? And if you’ve spoken to a half-dozen women, you can blow it with five and still meet somebody, and that ain’t bad!
Using this particular method in the hallway at San Francisco State, on that particular morning, I met Barbara A., the writer, but that’s another story.
Van Ness and Geary, San Francisco, Halloween 1977: For sheer party extravagance, it’s hard to beat San Francisco’s gay streets, either Polk Street or Castro Street. It’s like Carnival.
Near Phnom Penh, Viet Nam, 1969: My friend Gregg L. was a writing buddy at 
“I kept running until I fell down, and just lay there, gasping for breath, scared as a ghost in hell. I was kind of thinking about how deserters are shot by firing squads, when the sargent found me, and he’d brought the company Commander.”
Henrietta, Texas, Summer 1922: 