ABSTRACT
I truly enjoyed listening to José tell his life story. I particularly liked his penchant for mixing historic detail with wry commentary on the past and the present. At times his habit of skipping between decades was maddening, and perhaps he sometimes sacrificed historic detail for the sake of a good line or a pithy comment, but that is a part of his style. Like Shakespeare, he considers the value of the story and the sensibilities of his audience over the dry facts of an event. Of course, his manner of storytelling sometimes made my job rather difficult. For instance, I asked him one evening about a Mexican dancer he had mentioned briefly. He nodded, smiled, and began talking about his roommate, the female impersonator and mistress of ceremonies at the club called Finocchio's in the North Beach section of San Francisco.
