Even radicals have their limits, I discovered. Someone I've known and admired for about ten years, and have worked with on various AIDS activist projects has been a very successful real estate speculator in the area for even more years than that. I thought it fate, and wondered why I hadnt thought of calling him earlier anyway. There had always been a mutual respect between us, illuminated by that other empathy generated by our similar emotive-political cathexes in demonized sexual identities. But I soon learned that transgression stops at the property line.
Transgression is one thing, trespassing quite another.
At the news of my eviction, My friend believed me and even sympathized with the anguish I must have felt as he listened to my saga of the landlord trumped up a way to get me evicted so that he could cash in on the new SF golden goose of sky high rents. He also supported my hope that housing near the university for me might even be protected by the Americans for Disability Act. But, property owning and management was a serious business. There had to be rules. Otherwise there would be chaos.