San Fransicko: Receptionists, Adulterists, Larcenists, and Satanists

by C.T. Madrigal

At twenty one, I retired from seven years of drag. I wasn’t a superstar, I had no pageant crowns, there weren’t any office parties or engraved keepsakes commemorating my years of service. Still, lip-synching in the sort of clubs that would book a fourteen-year-old runaway dropout had been my career, it was all I knew.

I left Oklahoma with a purse full of dollar tips, coins for tolls, and some past-due bills. Two other delinquent queens came with me, and we rode a rickshaw of a rental van across the country to San Francisco, a golden city with diminishing patience for messes like us.

S.F. in the early nineties was to me what S.F. of the seventies had been for our drag mothers. Gays owned the nightlife, with warehouse discotheques to the left of our hotel room, and a legendary underground drag scene to the right. We heard the sound of construction (something being built) amid the sounds of rebellion (something being protested), day and night. San Francisco was alive in all directions and churning with change, and sex was everywhere if your trousers were open to it. It should have been the best time of my life, not the nightmare of receptionists, adulterists, larcenists, and satanists that it was.

SAN FRANSICKO is C.T. Madrigal’s second memoir. In the first, OKLAHOMO, he was a kid who was queer in all senses of the word, and unwanted by everyone but the neighborhood deviants. The young runaway was salvaged by elder drag queens, taught to tease wigs and to lip-synch songs in the highest of heels. And at the end of that memoir, he’d left that Oklahoma life in search of another. It’s a heavy story, but not just. It’s also funny because life’s absurdities can be comical when shaken through a writer’s sieve. And, amid the misery, OKLAHOMO can pan for comedy gold with the best of them. The same can be said for his follow up, SAN FRANSICKO.

When Madrigal moves west for a kind of adventure, it quickly becomes a sort of torture. He's an adult now, with none of the skills that that implies. And, despite a motley crew of memorable characters, he’s as congenitally lonely an adult as he was a little boy ("a million people are stacked like Jenga blocks in buildings all around me, and I am violently alone.") As with all the world's great cities, San Francisco can be an irregular fit for anyone with Lip-Synching and Apartment Squatting at the top of his resume. And if you think love will save him, it probably won't. Sometimes it takes more than a move to reboot a faulty life.

SAN FRANSICKO is a love letter to San Francisco of the nineties. And it’s hate mail for every heavy thing that can be hemmed into the lives of those queer youths who make it to the iconic city by the bay (the worst of which, the author may have stitched himself.) As with his childhood memoir, OKLAHOMO, Madrigal treats tourists to endoscopic peeks into a city’s gay underbelly. And he serves SF locals some hypnotically nostalgic nods to “hotels for men”, Trannyshack, pre-tech neighborhoods, and many of the golden city’s other lost treasures.

347 pages, Paperback

Published January 29, 2022

About the author

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/c.t.madrigal

I should be read for not reading more. Some bitter queen who's just been kicked off Rupaul's Drag Race should sashay over to my bed, where I've succumbed to another marathon of HGTV's House Hunters, and read me for filth. "CLOSE that bag of chips and OPEN a damn book!"

She's right, that judgmental bitch, I need to read a book. I try...I really do. I buy books, I have thousands of them, and occasionally I'll take a dozen to my room. In bed, I caress them as I would a new lover, running eager fingers down their rigid spines.

Under their covers, I study a page from this one and a paragraph from that one. Inevitably, I find a line that's really smart, an epiphany for humanity tucked in a tiny sentence; it makes me jealous. A few more sentences, a lot more jealousy, I should be writing. I close my books, and the affair pauses there.

My chips (some in a bag, another on my shoulder) and I move to the computer where I pound on my keyboard, determined to type something that will enlighten mankind. A boyfriend who is tidier than me returns my jilted books to the dusty shelves where they'll rest for another season of House Hunters.

So there it is: writing is the enemy of reading, kids. Never write.

As an adult I’ve read one book in its entirety. I won't tell you the name of the book for fear of having plagiarized the story entirely. I’ve read large chunks of a few other books, and little nibbles of a few hundred more. If you talk to me about the classics I'll nod agreement, "Yes, Frankenstein certainly was a feminist fable about the need for women in procreation," knowing nothing about what you've just said.

I am embarrassed by these facts, as if they were a crotchward dribble on my pants front, and I hope that Goodreads is going to replace them with facts I can be proud of. Dangling prepositions aside, I am too good a writer to be such a bad reader.

THAT'S THE END of my blurb, but I've one more thing to add. I've seen that many of you have given my books 5 star reviews, and some others are reading them now, or have marked them to read. I've studied your cute little faces, hoping to telepathize my appreciation for the support. Like many writers—many people, I am no stranger to a bad day. Seeing the group of you always makes a crap day better; thank you.

CTM

Reviews

[Gunnar Lundberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m sure amazon suggested this book due to the sheer number of recent searches around Kathy Acker, Diane di Prima, queercore, and other adjacent subjects.

And boy did it deliver! This memoir made me feel how I imagine straight men feel after reading Kerouac’s On the Road.

Madrigal’s truest talent lies in not only keeping the reader engaged and interested, but also constructing a compelling image of San Francisco at the time. This memoir is a fantastic addition to the queer/counterculture canon based in/around San Francisco.

[Candy · Rating 5 out of 5]

San Fransicko earned 5 stars because I enjoyed it on so many levels: i would look up a word definition, movie reference, footage of the Steve Lady, pine for antiques on Etsy, marvel over his photography, or read passages out loud to a friend. In so many ways San Fransicko entertained me.

[Roman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book ("San Francisco"), along with Madrigal's other memoir ("Oklahomo") because both were on the suggested reading list in the psychology department at Berkeley. Didn't really know what to expect but I was floored by the story and the writing. "San Fransicko" is the more adult of the two, in terms of the authors age, and in terms of some of the subject matter, which was gut-punch heavy at times but without being a depressing read, in fact it's very witty (but not in the annoying way). It's not a short book, but I probably read it faster than any book I can remember, I just loved it.

[Terry T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read C.T. Madrigal's memoir Oklahomo first, and it was one of my favorite books of the year. A year after I read it, his follow-up San Fransicko came out, and WOW...what a book. Unlike his first memoir, this one is written in the present tense, and the story has an immediacy that was gripping. It's nearly a day-by-day account of a messed up year in his young adulthood. The book is sad and surprising and funny, and even though it's not a short read, it's the kind of book that I had to read quickly because I really wanted to know what was next. Hope there's another.

[Dottie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a follow up to "Oklahomo". That said, this book is different in many ways. The author is older, and he moves from a small town to a big city where everything changes, it's not a kid's story any more. The writing is incredibly tight, the storytelling is gripping. There's still humor and gay camp, but the drama is real and gut wrenching, I actually cried. Titillated by some parts, shellshocked by others. A magnificent sequel.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read both of his memoirs, though out of order (read San Fransicko first). I have to say, it blew my mind. I don't know that I ever read a memoir that felt more honest, yet the storytelling was wildly entertaining. Delicious book.