When I was in college the Shah of Iran was in power. Woodbury College was one of the few American universities approved by the government of Iran, so my university was, I would say, about three-fourths Iranian students.

It was business, art, and fashion, and it was crazy! Just crazy! The Iranian students had unlimited funds. I mean they had unlimited money.

I was studying fashion design. I had no talent for selling; never had, never will. But as far as my illustrations and design go, I was really good. So the major wasn’t quite the right fit for me.

When the Shah of Iran fell, I had gotten a job designing women’s clothes for a company. We were backed by Iranian backers, and we lost everything. That was it; I was out of a job. All of my Iranian friends disappeared, they lost everything.

In college I studied religions. I was always fascinated by them. I always had a spiritual side although I was never a Christian. I’ve always questioned things. I studied history, art, and fashion design.

One of my first relationships was a surfer. It was your basic high school boyfriend situation. He had a cool car, a 1969 Plymouth sport fury. It was a convertible and we used to drive around with the top down and the surfboard sticking out the back. There were lots of parties at the beaches.

After high school I had a few short-lived relationships before I met my boyfriend in college. He was interesting. He owned three used-clothing stores. At the time he was selling old Hollywood studio costumes and amazing clothes from the nineteen twenties through the nineteen fifties.

I started working with him. We turned the stores around and re-merchandised them. I did the window displays. That actually started a whole new career for me, and I started doing window displays all over West Hollywood. I did this for the next twenty years, and eventually ended up working for Ralph Lauren. 

That first serious relationship was hardly drama-free, and when it ended it changed my life forever. We wound up moving to San Francisco on a whim. Our moving truck was stolen. Everything was gone… all of my personal possessions, all of our art deco furniture, and everything from our stores was gone.

I was nineteen and he was 24 and we had no idea what we were doing. We didn’t have any insurance. He flipped out and moved back to Boston to live with mommy and daddy, abandoning me in San Francisco. I knew no one.

But I had an overnight bank and a warehouse space that we had rented. I didn’t want to go back to L.A. that way, not as a failure. I didn’t want to move back with my parents but the thought of moving back to Downey into my old room made me practically throw up in traffic!

So I stayed and toughed it out in San Francisco.

I made friends with a real estate agent and got him to get me out of the contract.

I had been a member of the West Hollywood Gay marching band and one day I saw one of my former band members. He was all dressed up and had a saxophone case.

He told me that he belonged to the marching band. He told me that they were playing in some of the parades and that there were about 120 people in the band.

My dad had been a drummer in the Paul Whiteman band. He taught me how to play drums. I had played drums all through school and the band member told me that the band needed drummers. In San Francisco I needed a social group so I joined the San Francisco gay men’s marching band. I actually ended up living with some people who took me in since I had nowhere to go.

It was scary times. Everyone heard how I had been abandoned in the city.

So that’s how I met Tony, my partner of 25 years. He was a drummer in the San Francisco gay men’s marching band. This was in 1978 and 1979, and Tony was openly gay.

Tony had just come from Guyana, where he had been the reporter for KSFO. He was covering the Jim Jones People’s Temple tragedy and had won a Peabody award for his reporting. He was a well-known radio personality in San Francisco.

Tony was working for KSFO based out of the Fairmont hotel in San Francisco. I used to go and visit him. We started dating. I used to terrorize him. I found out that Tony spooks easily. He would be working at night at the radio station by himself and I would call him, but I wouldn’t say anything.

He used to say: “KSFO. Is anyone there?”

And I used to say: “play Misty for me.”

I loved that movie. And in spite of me doing that and thinking it was funny, we started going out. We lived together for 25 years.

I had a big group of friends in Los Angeles including my oldest and dearest friend, Jim McDermott. Then Tony and I made all these great friends in San Francisco so we had a north – south connection going.

Tony and I used to come down to Capitola and Santa Cruz and hang out all the time. So we had some wonderful nice friends from San Francisco and some crazy friends from Los Angeles.