When Life is Like a Song

Or why I love San Francisco (and the surrounding area)

Three weekends back P, H, P and I decided we’d spend a Friday night chilling out at a bar rather than in the midst of a frenzied crowd at a club. We picked this bar called Van Kleef (or something like that) in Oakland. It had an attitude all its own – a long narrow corridor that ran along the bar, opened into a wider seating area at the back. The seating area was circumscribed by a high raised stage stacked with musical instruments – trumpets, guitars, even a piano. Dim, intimate lighting, high ceilings, and burgundy walls covered with somehow-Gothic but mostly themeless (to my admittedly untrained eye) paraphernalia rounded out the bar’s look. It all worked improbably well in creating a cosy, laid-back ambience even though the chairs were distinctly non-lounge-y: cushion-less, narrow and straight-backed.

It took us a while to find cocktails that the bar actually was able to make and beers that they stocked but once we did, we were able to spend a comfortable couple of hours solving the world’s problems. Having brought Kim Jong Il to his senses, we’d just started working on the vexed question of the Golan Heights when the bar began to fill up with people who looked like they’d all got the wrong address. They were decked up in ballroom fashions from the 1940s/50s. Men and some very butch looking women in tuxedos and bow ties. The women and perhaps some men in drag in lovely, brightly coloured gowns, high heels and wide-brimmed hats. We watched in fascination (and mounting embarrassment at our own t-shirt and jeans attire) as each new person glided out of the ballroom scenes in The Aviator and into the space in front the stage.

It turned out that the bar was hosting a themed birthday party for a transgender male-to-female (MTF) cabaret singer. The crowd was really diverse as perhaps only a crowd in SF or NYC or London can be. There were men, women, MTFs and FTMs. Gay men and lesbians and straight people. White people and black people. There may have been people of East Asian extraction. There were probably a couple of Hispanics sprinkled in. But if not, our table provided representation for brown-hued humanity – (unwitting) gatecrashers as is sometimes our race's wont to be. The birthday girl herself was dressed in something that made her look delicate and pretty – though I'm not quite sure what colour. My alcohol-addled mind was on sensory overload by then. You know how sometimes you miss the woods for the trees? Well I was doing the opposite. I was pretty much focused on the tableau (of glammahrous dresses) rather than the individuals wearing them. It was a little surreal.

But then of course, since we now had showbiz people in the same space as a stage stacked high with musical instruments, members of the party got up on stage one by one to sing to the birthday girl. One guy took the piano and sang a Monroesque Happy Birthday. His piano playing was way better than his singing from what I remember and happily it was not long before other members of the group divested him of the task of keeping the evening sounding mellifluous. For me the highlight of the evening came when a traditionally built black woman got in front of the microphone. She looked fabulous in a fire-engine red gown (I don’t use the word gratuitously here, this was one of those occasions where the adjective really did fit). She seemed to exude good humour and nice-ness. You just knew she was going to be a good singer. She had a bit of a Mata Amritanandmayi air to her - I had this irresistible urge to be hugged by her. Her face glowed with her inherent goodness or maybe with the reflection of the overhead light. She said she was going to sing the song that she had sung at the her friend's (the birthday girl) wedding. That’s when the husband walked over – dapper in black tie. He was also transgender – Female to Male. He held his hand out to his seated wife and she rose to meet him. And as he drew her close, the lady in red started singing. She sang what’s become one of my favourite songs since the Obama inauguration, At Last. She sang

At Last My love has come along
My lonely days are gone
And life is like a song…

I knew we'd stumbled into a magical moment. In a world that venerates love but then, often does all it can to keep its definition strait-jacketed or thwart it in favour of tradition or 'normality', these two had been improbably successful in finding themselves and then each other. And then even more improbably, a group of friends who celebrated them and their love.

Life can be beautiful sometimes.