I was called "faggot" today.

Again. In San Francisco. By the same individual (a guy who lives in the next building over from mine) who I mentioned in a comment some weeks ago on the same subject.

It happened again today, just the same way it's happened before, while I was quietly working in the garden behind my building. Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted--not by anything loud or visually startling--just the word "faggot!" hissed through the back fence by a "neighbor" to whom I've never spoken, someone I've rarely even seen.

But something else happened here recently, to someone else--which is what I really want to diary about.

Today's San Francisco Chronicle reports that a murder victim has been identified:

A transgender sex worker found strangled last week near Interstate 280 in Potrero Hill was identified Thursday as a 27-year-old Nicaraguan immigrant.

Ruby Ordenana, also known as Ruby Rodriguez, was last seen in the Tenderloin the day before the slaying, said Alexandra Byerly, a project coordinator for EL-LA, a local nonprofit group working with the transgender community.

I read the article shortly after coming inside from the garden. And there was something a bit further down that struck me with a force that was nearly physical.

Byerly said there is fear in the community because another transgender sex worker in the Tenderloin had been beaten and raped during the summer and left in the same area.

I never met Ruby Rodriquez. But my heart breaks for her. And I am reminded, for about the zillionth time, how fragile, how mutable the peace of a garden can be, even in this most tolerant and accepting of places.

Fear in the community. Ah, yes. I know the feeling. I've known it for a long time.