“I’m old,” Marc Tosca says. “However, considering the alternative, am quite pleased. Walking upright all these years, having traveled the world, Antarctica the exception, am thus extremely opinionated.”
This neat summary, however, doesn’t even begin to illuminate his story.
“I’m really a Puerto Rican kid from the South Bronx,” said Marc, when pressed. “While I’ve suffered reversals of fortune, life has indeed been very good to me.”
Marc was born in 1942 in Gurabo, Puerto Rico and lost his left eye at the age of 6 months old. During WWII, he was brought to the mainland for surgery, his family relocating to the Bronx.
“The eye patch becoming a part of me ever since,” he says. “Really its the best thing that ever happened to me (aka Cash’s song, “A Boy Named Sue”). Never mind keeping me out of Vietnam. Where, no doubt I would have been killed by friendly fire.”
He says, it’s also “distinctive” and with a distinct lift in his voice. “I walk into a room and it attracts attention.” Wherein most adults assume it’s phony, children shout out “pirate!” However, within the LGBT community it’s considered sheer theatrics, thus a tacky reaction. Nonetheless, considering they took notice of him, he’s flattered just the same.
Growing up in the Bronx was tough enough. If you weren’t into sports – and he isn’t, a result of no one wanting a one-eyed team mate, you were “different”. And being different was a bad thing. So he had an extremely rough time in his youth. Add to that, being Puerto Rican, “Prejudice AND Homophobia, it was all bad,” he said.
So at an early age, Marc learned to add humor to everything, he said, which helped him to find “my own way of being tough.”
In 1962, Marc went to Los (La La Land) Angeles for a vacation and fell in love with its environment. Though he went back to New York, in 1965 he resigned his job and relocated to La La Land.
Throughout his stay in La La Land, he’d more than occasionally fly to San Francisco for the week-end to partake in what San Francisco was becoming.
After five years in La La Land, he woke up one morning, concluding he was not in pictures. Nor did he have a track home, 2.5 kids and the station wagon. Thus, he relocated to San Francisco in Nov. ’70.
San Francisco being more diverse and more like a city then La La Land,” said Marc, “I could dress up for work – suit/vest/tie – which is how I liked to go to work. In La La Land, they didn’t like that.”
His fondest memories of those first years in San Francisco were of New Year’s Eve at the intersection of Montgomery/Bush streets and “the throwing out of calendars from office windows, which would rain down on the street like confetti.”
For downtown guys like Marc, there was the mother church, “Sutter’s Mill,” A watering hole in the city’s Financial District where the professional gays went for lunch, then cocktails after work. “I was always there – even had my name on a brass plate, (aka Dutch Masters), on the bar.”
Marc having successful careers, retiring in his early thirties, had enabled him, along with his other half, Harry, to buy a ranch (527+ acres, 7,000 sq. ft. house) in Mendocino County. As with so many of their generation, both were HIV+. “I’ve been positive since the flood,” he says. Though he watched Harry, longtime friends and colleagues die from the disease “by the hundreds,” he just kept going.
Mark said, “Unbeknownst to us, while only 2 1/2 hours from San Francisco, Mendocino County reeked (Huey Long would have died from envy) of, among other things, homophobia.” The latter, resulted in the Federal Court action, TOSCA vs. MENDOCINO COUNTY. “Harry, fortunately did not have to bear the experience of it all.” The action, (a first In Mendocino County), proved victorious. On the other hand, financially, (legal costs in excess of $1mil) resulted in financial ruin and thus, bankruptcy.
In Dec. ’03 (another experience spared Harry), Marc was given the diagnosis of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Stage IV. After 4 months at CPMC-SF, and aggressive chemotherapy, he’s been in remission ever since. He had been given only two weeks to live, if he did not do chemotherapy.
Once having had six residences, (two in CA, TX, NY, MA, and PR), and given the bankruptcy, Marc found himself basically “homeless” and renting a tiny room in a friend’s house. Incidentally, New York had involved another lawsuit in the name of “discrimination,” (Google search “end of co-op dispute”).
Marc being reduced solely to that of Social Security income, and housing becoming his primary problem, he was fortunate indeed being introduced to OPENHOUSE.
Marc says Michelle Alcedo at OPENHOUSE was indeed most instrumental in helping him secure a studio apartment at a new senior development. OPENHOUSE expresses real passion for its work, with its staff is doing it for all the right reasons.
Marc says his biggest problem now is gravity. “It’s a never ending battle and the only one in which we ALL eventually lose.”
However, until that time comes to pass, he’ll continue life’s fight for survival, especially against ANY sort of discrimination. Lessons, most thankfully learned only too well from his Bronx upbringing.
“Now in the second half of my seventh decade, age is irrelevant. But rather, life has afforded enormous opportunities. And, most obviously, still does,” shares Marc.
As to that of six residences versus the present studio, Marc says, “In short, it’s a hell of a lot less maintenance.”
