In my mid 20’s I decided to get married, have kids, become a real estate agent, focus on enjoying my life with my family and return to acting “later in life”. At that time I thought “later in life” would be when I would be around 40 years old. Well, things don’t always turn out as you think they will. The years rolled by and finally, in 2006, when I turned 50 years old, the time had come to re-start up my artistic life. Now, to start up “acting” again, unless one wants to perform solo, requires either producing one’s own plays or media or getting cast. I knew it would take some time to get cast and I wanted to do something artistic right away.

Ever since I discovered painting when I was a teenager on the inside of the Eat A Peach double album by the Allman Brothers I have loved paintings, drawing, sculpture, photography. I think I’ve read every issue of National Geographic ever published since the late 60’s. I took a class in Art History at Sonoma State College, my first year in college, but I never took a class in studio art. I was given a fantastic camera and with an incredibly sharp lens, a Nikon F 35mm film camera and a Nikkor lens as a graduation present by my Dad’s new wife in 1978. Her late husband had never used it so it was like new when I got it. It was still in pretty good shape by 2006. So to learn more about photography, and to just get myself back into artistic work, I decided to take photo classes at CCSF.

As fate would have it, the instructor is a wonderful, talented woman, Nadereh Degani I was in a class with mostly much younger students and she and the other students were so welcoming to me! The Spring semester in 2006 was probably the most troubling months in my entire life as my marriage of 25 years, which hadn’t been a good marriage for many, many years, was coming to an end. I was in an emotional upheaval half the time during this semester and I was still working taking care of my clients as a Realtor and finally, FINALLY feeling like I was in a place where I belonged as a burgeoning artist. As fate would have it, this semester was the LAST semester at CCSF that the introduction to photography class focused on film. Along with learning all about how to take pictures, I learned how to develop my film and print my images in the dark room. I have incredibly fond memories of a few quiet Saturdays during that very turbulent time in my life in which I spent hour upon hour in the dark room at CCSF printing my photos for this class. It was the best therapeutic escape anyone could hope for, especially when going through a rough time in their life. And I’m sure this is why I fell in love with taking photos and I’m so grateful to Nadereh for being such a wondeful professor and now someone who inspires me to continue to create beautiful photography.

I’m saving for “later in life” to share my stories with you about the life I led during the years 2000 to 2005. Let me just say that this life I had been living, the life I was to leave behind in the fall of 2006 when I finally separated and divorced my ex wife, inspired this first photo shoot I did for Nadereh’s class.

(Note: I met my wife, Le, in 2000. She came to live with me in January, 2007. We married in 2008 and we’re still going strong)

The assignment for this first photo shoot was to create a collection of images, with black and white film, with high contrast. An image of myself working as a realtor with a beautiful young lady by my side in some basement family room immediately popped into my head. At that time I was helping an elderly woman sell her home with a vintage 1950’s family room in her basement. She had moved out of the home so I decided to use the home for my first shoot. I went onto Model Mayhem, found a model, set a date to do the shoot and did the shoot! I set the timer on the camera to take the photos so I could “act” in the photos. Here’s me “acting” for the first time since the last play I was in back in the 1980s in which I appeared in a production put on by my friends who ran The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre called We Almost Made it to the Super Bowl by Robert Alexander in which I played a white quarterback who is being replaced by a black QB.

In the fall of 2006 I enrolled in another photography class at CCSF. For this semester’s project i had decided to do a photo shoot based on the true story of Rezanov and Arguello. I had found out abut the story at some point when I was a student at SFSU. I remember reading about the story often and one time I had heard on the radio that there was going to be mock trial or a debate in which people would try to determine whether this was truly a love affair or if it was just people in power jockeying for more power. It’s a beautiful story and one that I was particularly interested in as where some people enjoy and live their lives immersed in their own culture, while never denying my ancestry, for a variety of personal reasons I’ve never felt particularly attached to my ancestry. With the freedom we have here in the USA I’ve always been interested in learning about other cultures and interacting with people from other cultures. I love to study the history of when different groups of people met each other for the first time. So this story, which involves the Russians interacting with the Spanish on the opposite side of the globe from Europe, with a love interest to boot, has been a favorite of mine for my entire life.

OK, confession time……There was a book at the SFSU library that I wanted. I recall that I committed this heinous act of theft back when I was still enrolled at SFSU. But I just looked at the book and see there is a stamp indicating it was last received 04 -87.

I graduated from SFSU in 1978 and studied for a few years in the Theatre Arts Department so I think I was last enrolled in school there around 1982. I must have gone back to the library sometime after 1987 to get the book. As I was no longer enrolled in school, I guess it would have been difficult to check out the book. So I dropped it out the 2nd story window and went around to pick it up.

This story was quite famous in Russia/The Soviet Union. The story was the basis for one of the most popular Rock Operas at the time Juno and Avos . I bought the DVD which of course has no subtitles so it’s pretty hard to follow along.

I also had a copy of a book by Gertrude Atherton, Rezanov, but now I can’t find it!

I’m in love with this story. An I’m in love with visualizing the way the San Francisco Bay Area looked befoe the Spanish arrived and how it looked shortly thereafter, which is when this story takes place, in April, of 1806, exactly two hundred and ten years ago from the time I’m writing this in my website.

I have dreamed of writing a screenplay based on this story. Imagine seeing what the Bay Area looked like when it was still wild. Image flocks of birds flying over head so think they would turn the day into night…..Imagine seeing how the Ohlone lived on these very grounds we have named after an Italian Saint.

Turning history into a two hour drama takes skill, talent, determination and the priority to DO IT. One day, I hope I will have that determination.

In the meantime, in the fall of 2006, I did have the determination to do a photo shoot based on this story, at the Presidio in San Francisco, the same location where the story had taken place, with myself,playing the part of Rezanov.

A few weeks prior to my scheduled shoot date I attended a meeting at an insurance broker’s office of local merchants on the block where my real estate office was located to help promote our businesses. One of the clerks in the Insurance broker’s office attended the meeting to take notes. After the meeting we spent some time talking and I let him know that I was planning a shoot based on the story of Rezanov and Arguello. His family was from Mexico and I know that Spaniards are Europeans and a “typical” Spaniard may not look like a “typical” Mexican. But for the purpose of my little photo shoot, a good looking young man from mexico could play the part of Arguello’s brother for my photo shoot. So Fernando came to the shoot and we became friends.

I had moved out of my home with my wife and teenage kids on September 1, 2006. I was living alone for the first time in my entire life, at age 50. I had last seen the woman who would be my new wife on her birthday, February 12, 2006. I knew that if I called her up and let her know that I was now separated, we would immediately get back together. I needed some time be just by myself. To not be in a romantic relationship, to live free from the life I had been living and be ready for a new life.

But I am a lover boy! I like to be alone but I also like to be with people. Having a family, being with people who I feel close to has always been the highest priority in my life. So while I was still close to my kids and had a good male friend in SF and a few in other parts of the country, and have a brother in SF who was busy with his life, I was without a close adult family like friend with whom. So my new friend Fernando, a kid in his 20’s became my new pal. I brought him to Warrior games. He brought me to a rave. I met him Mom and sister and her husband and got to know his family. When his Mom’s husband was about to die and he wanted to leave his wife his real estate I helped her become the owner which was easy for me to do as I was a notary and knew how to prepare the documents.

I am a fourth generation American. I have one great grandparent born in the USA, in Zanesville, Ohio. She passed away the day before I was born. What makes America great is that people like Fernando and his family have come to the USA. I had spend the previous 25 Thanksgiving and Christmas days with my soon to be ex wife. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, 2006, I was with Fernando and his family.

Fernando and I never talked about his sexuality. He knew I liked women. Of course I had spent the previous 25 New Years’ Eves with my ex wife. As New Year’s eve approached in 2006 I began to wonder more and more who I would be kissing at midnight on New Year’s eve. I was considering all options, including moving back to Los Angeles. But I had a relationship with Lem who I met in 2000, and saw periodically for the next 5 years. I loved her and she had a wonderful family both in San Jose and in Thu Duc, which is really just the northern part of the city of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, in Viet Nam. I made a decision.. After Christmas I decided to give her a call and see if she was around as I knew she traveled back to Viet Nam periodically. She was in San Francisco, staying with a friend. We got together a few days before New Year. We spent New Years eve together that’s who I kissed that night. She moved in later that week.

Fernando and I continued to see each other but not as often as now I was living with Le. We had a connection that was for life. It was probably later that year in 2007, or it maybe it was 2008. Fernando worked at different bars/restaurants as a waiter. He was working down near the Ferry Building when I was out one night and had a few drinks at his bar. I went home with him and drank a shit load of tequila and I got totally shit faced drunk, which I rarely do. Truly. I’m big, over 6’3” over 225 pounds back then and it would just take a LOT of alcohol to get me shit faced. I would smoke weed too which puts a damper on my drinking. But this night, I got blasted. Fernando drove me home to his house. He must have helped me down the steps to get into his place. I remember laying on the floor in his living room, shirt unbuttoned, Fernando holding me, caressing me, kissing me as I passed out. I woke up around 3 in the morning. Sober enough to drive home.

I don’t recall if we ever spoke about his holding me, kissing me. It seemed fine to me. I was totally gone. I never asked Fernando if he liked men. What difference would it have made for me know. In San Francisco, there is obviously no stigma about being a gay man. But Fernando’s personal thoughts on whether he was gay or not was his business.

I loved having a young friend who worked at a cool bar in San Francisco. Every couple of months I’d find myself at the bar at the restaurant where he would be working, showing the photo I shot of him during our photo shoot to the pretty waitresses or some guy or gal sitting next to me. I had always dreamed that some day, when he had his immigration status all good, and I had the money, we would go to Mexico City, his home town, together and party!

In 2018 I got a call from someone I didn’t know. It wasn’t a new client or film maker asking me to be in a production. Fernando’s sister had divorced her husband and remarried. Her new husband called me to say that Fernando had died! I printed up the photo I had shot of him, framed it and brought with me to his memorial mass. I knew a couple of his friends and found out from them at the Memorial that he had OD’d. I never found out if it was intentional. No need for me to know. Fernando is just one more person I truly loved who has passed away, who’s spirit I now carry with me, who’s spirit moves me to live my life as fully as I can so as to be able to bring beauty and joy and humor to those of us who are still alive, as I KNOW Fernando would want me to do. I miss him dearly.

So in appreciation for the love that I have for Fernando Nava, please enjoy these photos I shot, with the help of a fellow student as my assistant, Branden Mulhern, at The Presidio of San Francisco and printed in the dark room at CCSF in the fall of 2006; a portrayal of the Story of Rezanov and Arguello