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June 17, 2008It can’t be helpedIt must be doneNOW DOWN WITH YOUR BREECHESand out with your bum! I found that written in an unfamiliar hand, credited to James Joyce, on a 3 x 5 card stuck inside John Brandi’s book of poetry Weeding the Cosmos, of which Natalie Goldberg wrote, ‘As delicious as discovering the moon over and over again, this book says–Wake up! Be amazed at what happens, no matter what.” On the reverse side I had written, “Love, love, love, sunshine.” – James Taylor, and crossed it out with an X. IT CAN’T BE HELPED,it must be done, tomorrow, I leave pleasant Page St. for the wilds of the Mission or the “Mastro,” where the Mission meets the Castro. Though I haven’t had a single nervous breakdown over this humongous transition, when the stagers left my house the other day, I felt utterly wretched and cried many bitter tears. As I sat on the kitchen floor packing plates and sobbing, Zazu came over and cracked a few Kit ‘n’ Kaboodles crunchies with her teeth. The sight of this little creature with her head bent to a bowl, and the plight of all the world that needs to be fed, made me feel ineffably sad for all living creatures, and all their needs that aren’t being met, and disgusted with myself for how bloated and overblown I allowed my life to become. SUNDAY, JUNE 8th. TONIGHT’S MY LAST NIGHTin this joint, but I don’t have time for clever yet profound reflections, just for exhaustion, the kind that keeps you from sleeping. And when I can’t sleep, I write. Do you mind if I ask you what you do? asked one of the stagers, marveling at my eclectic art collection. “I’m a writer,” I said, grateful that that’s all I do do, now, with no parenthesis of “I work as a professional paper pusher in a business office.” I had stopped at my former office to pick up some paint samples from my former coworker, now my landlord, and all the ugliness of working full time came flooding back. Please God, spare me. I claim sanity today for having removed that deadly trigger from my life. It pushed every button I had to be pushed. MONDAY, the 9th. MOVING DAY.As days go, it was a moving one. TONIGHT’S MY FIRST NIGHTin this joint. Beyond exhausted, but am so glad to be out of that railroad flat and into an open, flowing space of sunlight and fresh air. I feel like I have San Francisco at my feet now, as opposed to my dark writing studio facing the building next door. The cats are glad, too, that their ordeal is over. I locked them in the bedroom for five hours while three Starving Students trampled throughout the flat; after I let them out I was gone for five hours making the move. I left my heart with them. They must have felt terrified and abandoned. When I get back to the flat, Zazu excitedly trots to the door to greet me, but Zzyzzy hides without a peep for half an hour behind the washer, it turns out. After my friend Daniel and I hustle them into boxes to transport them to their new home, Zazu is out of her carrier and exploring in no time; Zzyzzy lingers in his in a daze of confusion. Now they’re both curled on my faux sheepskin coverlet, sleeping it all off.
TUESDAY, the 10th. FIRST DAY AT HOME.This day belongs to me. It’s Christmas in June, as I open box after box of my wonderful beloved stuff like I just bought it. I’m impatient to unwrap the newspaper. Oh, I love this piece! Masks, statues, sculptures, Buddhas, rugs, paintings, everything looking both familiar and brand new in its new context. I am so over that flat, I can’t believe I still have to sell it. I made the move, isn’t that enough? It’s like attending to the funereal details of my own death. I thought I’d wickedly miss the Lower Haight, but it now seems like fairy tale play land compared to San Francisco’s own Third World, the Mission. Yet, I didn’t realize how bored I was with LH until I left it. Well, as Tom Stoppard put it, “Every exit is an entry somewhere else.” WEDNESDAY, the 11th. PAINTING DAY.Rosa Iversen, Norwegian-Peruvian hellfire spitfire, and her smiling associate Lupe do a bang-up job returning my banged-up flat to presentability. Meanwhile, back at the ranch… THE TOILET TOWEL INCIDENTTwo days into my tenancy, my toilet ceased to flush—and, mirabile dictu, it was someone else’s problem! My landlord came over in my absence and in the course of fixing it, flooded the floor and grabbed the first thing handy—my bath towel hanging on the shower railing. When I came in and noticed it was gone, I thought the plumber must be some kind of freako fetishist who goes around to women’s apartments taking their towels, preferably used. Later I found it crumpled and heavy with water behind the glass shower doors, in the tub. I had to throw it out. Kind of an out, out, damn spot situation. However serviceable a life it might have had after cleaning, it would always be the toilet towel. THURSDAY, the 12th.Paint job at the flat finished up and that is one major phew! crossed off the list. Later in the afternoon, I show the place to a prospective buyer, a friend of a TIC cotenant. It is still heaped with the detritus of my life, which the painters have moved into an indecipherable jumble in the middle of each room. A giant Buddha hand here, a yucca tree there, an angel, a crucified statue, Matt Gonzalez’s screenprinted face peering out from a scattered pile of framed art, and off to the side, the kitchen sink. The friendly young woman and her companion are a little taken aback by the amazing and formidable miscellany. I am only overwhelmed by what’s left. But she says, most people stuff their places with junk; at least I have nice things. She says she wishes she could have seen it before I dismantled it. And yet in four days I have erected another Xanadu to supplant it. THIS OVERSTUFFED MARSHMALLOWof a couch I write these words upon I inherited from the Quintin Mecke campaign and the massive armchair/scratching post I paired it with, dominate the whole living room. But I would rather have comfort than room to move. I spend most of my time at home sitting and writing, and my butt is damn well going to be cushioned. This couch is ugly but it is more comfortable than it is ugly. Someone donated it to the campaign and the Baptist Center was about to pick it up at the end, but I had spent so much comfortable time on it that I took it and gave the Center my own more stylish but less accommodating showroom model. Only thing was that it had no feet, and couch feet are not so common to come by. So when I saw another abandoned couch on my street corner with no cushions, I thought, well if it has no cushions it might as well have no feet, so I pried them off with a plumber’s wrench and absconded with them. As people passed down Page in the dark of night I felt like I was removing the tires from someone’s car and they were too flummoxed to challenge me. My “backup” dining room table–not the huge solid teak one I have to abandon—(of course I had two dining room tables, using one of them, made by the Scottish Workers Collaborative, for my computer stuff) is straddled between my living and bedrooms, idling between the French doors until pressed into service. I refuse to serve a sit-down dinner in a kitchen. I’d rather serve it in a bedroom. FRIDAY, the 13th. BILL!Less than a week into my new home I have my first from-out-of-town visitor, the one, the only Bill S., who flew down from Seattle to surprise a friend, Tim, at his birthday party, and did so exquisitely, having called him earlier this afternoon to wish him a good time, claiming to be shopping downtown Seattle with his friend Max, as we were actually strolling home from Mission Dolores. Bill and I have known each other for 25+ years from when he and I both lived in Portland. I meet him and his wheeled suitcase coming from BART on 15th St. I lead him to my lofty loft and he is the first to love my apartment. Perfect space for a writer. It does have the feel of an artist’s garret, looking out on the rooftops of San FranSassy! but I did NOT succeed in creating an emptier space than my flat. Only a fraction of the stuff I had spread out over seven rooms has made it into the space I now occupy, but still anyone who comes in here is going to bark their ankles and hips and elbows crashing into my close-quartered furniture groupings. Every door bangs into something. The max. occupancy here is ideally me and the cats. Anyone taller or wider than myself will find himself squeezing through the few paths of travel in the joint. BILL AND Iare discussing what to do with the day over breakfast at Chow on Church St. I have in mind to take him to the Pirate Supply Store in the Mission, but it’s called something else and I can’t remember where I saw it. We discuss, in appropriately serious tones, our feelings of withdrawal from American Idol, which I enjoy and I don’t care who knows it. Bill wants to do some shopping in the Castro but is afraid we’ll run into Tim, who frequents the ‘hood. I take on the task of scanning the streets for him. I get myself dizzy doing a 360° periscope scan. He’s got his sunglasses on and he wants to find a hat he can pull down if we spot Tim. I am enjoying this harmless shopping where I am not the buyer. Going to a men’s store with a man suits me fine. I relax knowing I needn’t hunt for treasure. BILL NEEDS A NEW WATCHand engages a salesman who gives a lengthy, detailed pitch, but none of the watches are right; he’s “not feelin’ it.” Then he falls in love with a particular t-shirt but they don’t have his size. He tries to find one he likes as well, but is not feelin’ it either. “I tried to make it work,” says Bill to the salesman as we head out the door, and I add, “but he’s not feelin’ it.” On the street we discuss what someone called Carrie Underwood’s “massacre” of George Michaels’ song “Praying for Time” on Idol Gives Back. I myself found it to be a perfect performance and downloaded the video from I Tunes. His own performance on a later show was lackluster, I thought. He was sick, Bill tells me, and that his latest album is “amazing.” Elsewhere we find a white Adidas bill cap with the number 44 on it. Bill is 45 and my idea is, just as kids proudly announce the age they have accumulated so far with, “I’m six-and-a-half, but I’ll be seven, Bill can wear it to say “I am 45, but I was 44. He likes the cap too. He goes off to buy his partner Dave a t-shirt with bicyclists on it (Dave’s an Iron Man tri-athlete.) THEN I BECOME THE SHOPPER.I find a rust-colored fabric and white mesh bill cap with a bullhead stitched on it (I’m a Taurus) and take a fancy to it, even though it has been dirtied and frayed to look used. Aside from the bull, the cap is so unlike me it’s growing on me. First of all, I saw enough bill caps in Oregon to last a lifetime (usually worn backwards). And it’s been altered to make it look like someone wore it while working under a car, a place I’ve never been and never will be—as incongruous a concept as Fats Waller with a diamond bracelet (“I never had a diamond bracelet in my life, what would I want it for?”). It’s the only new thing I ever bought distressed to look old. Bill doesn’t like the dirty, greasy element, but says. “Well, if you like it…” And I do. I am inordinately fond of the ridiculous thing. We continue to scan for Tim walking up Castro, and aren’t sure where we want to go. We head for a little rest and sunbath in Dolores Park. Bill loves the view of the city and of the spandex-clad boys around us. I had awakened at 6:00 a.m. that morning, and got up to try on potential party dresses. I tell Bill I might go glam for the occasion. He says it’s not really a dress-up kind of party and tells me, in fact, I’ll probably be the only woman there. “Oh well, then I’ve got to represent for the girls!” I haven’t seen some of these people in years and want to inspire a “You look fabulous response. But I decide I’d rather be casual and comfortable and wear what I’m wearing, my black Jack Kerouac t-shirt and black workout leggings. I HAVE A VERY PLEASANT EXPERIENCEwalking down the hill with Bill, wearing this shirt. In leaving the park I walk ahead of him and tell him to read the quote on the back of the shirt, which I reveal to him is my favorite line in all of literature. So later when a motorist honks his horn in appreciation of the shirt, I give him the thumbs up and yell at him, “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shining car at night?” A very satisfying transaction. Sadly, Bill does not have a favorite line. No biggie, but surely in everyone’s life some passages have inspired us or subtly changed something about our thinking. But not everyone pays attention to and is as captivated with words as I. I read H.D. Thoreau when I was a kid and he had called salt “that grossest of groceries.” Whenever it comes up, my sister and I say, “Would you pass the salt, that grossest of groceries?” Words cling to me. After some iced tea and lunch at Samovar, I take Bill to Mission Dolores, where he’s never been. I tell him the story that it’s really named Misión San Francisco de Asís, but came to be known as Mission Dolores because of the nearby “creek of sorrows,” Arroyo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores. “Look at this diorama,” he says, a model for the 1939 World’s Fair, that depicts the mission around 1791, and wonders what happened to the creek. “They paved paradise,” I tell him and he adds, “and put up a city.” And that’s how it happened. We take the self-guided tour and he loves the Basilica. I comment that it’s not overdone like some cathedrals in Europe where you can spend all day looking at just the carvings on the pews and leave exhausted. We admire the wonderfully intricate and beautiful mosaics throughout. “WHAT WOULD YOU DO,”I let out a snort of laughter, “If Michael George came bursting out from behind that curtain?” “George Michael.” “Did I say Michael George? ‘Praying for Time’ would be an appropriate song. Uh, is it disrespectful to laugh in a church?” I decide it’s at least unseemly and gag myself. I tell Bill he has a surprise waiting for him in the cemetery—an experience he would never expect in the middle of a city. We move along the paths reading the stones and admiring the landscaping, and as we approach the thatched yurt Bill asks, “Is that the surprise?” Yes, I tell him—go in. I walk away to let him have his moment, and he’s in there quite a while. After some time, he emerges and says it drew him in to stay there. I go in with him and am a little disappointed that we can hear traffic, but there’s definitely a vibrational vortex of energy happening here. It does have a enveloping feel to it, like you’ve been accepted into the fold. Back oustide on a bench, we watch others approach the yurt. I urge them, a family of three, to go in. Can’t tell if they felt the magic. As they move off I wonder where they were from and suggest, “We’re the Harnells of Cincinnati.” Bill wants to take a nap and I tell him to take it in the yurt, using his shirt for a pillow. Bill declines to lie shirtless sleeping in the dirt and will take it at my place, instead. I move off to examine the touching fireman’s memorial and Bill urges other hesitant visitors to enter the yurt. There is no explanation in the Mission’s guide literature about the significance of the yurt. Someone thinks it must be a representation of Indian dwellings of the time. I wonder if it’s original, as are some of the supporting redwood logs of the Mission, lashed with rawhide. “WOULDN’T IT BE TRIPPY?”I say in leaving, “if we met up with those people again and they said, ‘We’re the Harnells of Cincinnati?’” We head home. After Bill’s nap we go to the bank and wine shop and we pass a store with a sign in the window, “Stop starting, and grab the moment.” I punch Bill in the arm. “Hey, Bill, stop starting, and grab the moment. And if you encounter something tonight you have second thoughts about, stop starting and grab it!” Just then a guy in a t-shirt with skull and crossbones on it walks toward us and I say excitedly, “Hey, did you get that shirt at the Pirate Store?” “No, I think I got it at Target.” “‘cause there’s a really cool pirate supply store around here and I was going to ask you where it is.” He’d never heard of it. Back at the ranch, we get ready for the party. I’LL BE THE ONLY WOMAN THERE.That suits me just fine. As we know, I love, love, love men and love being surrounded by them. One time an attractive architect intern came to work in my office for the summer. I thanked him in parting for the welcome blast of testosterone he brought to the office for a few months. Well I am about to be blasted like a fuckin’ blast furnace with the stuff. Bill’s a father now and I know his druggie Deadhead days are over, but I still have to show him the massive baggie of shrooms I’ve been harboring since Halloween, just for the wow factor. Now he’s taking a shower and while examining the goods I impulsively pop one into my mouth and wash it down with Blackberry Pomegranate Crystal Geyser, my refreshing drink of choice. After masticating this cud, I pick out another specimen and pop that one. IT’S JUST A COINCIDENCE,as I read an exclusive preview for Bill of the beginning of this column, that as I utter the words “down with your breeches,” he is pulling his up, after his shower. Bill sees me studying the baggie and, putting his shoes on, asks “Have you been eating those?” I look sheepish. How many, he wants to know. Popping yet another into my mouth I say, “Three.” “Well don’t do any more.” I agree not to, but then exclaim, “Hey, you’re not my mother!” As I begin to try to behave to please him, I am of course becoming goofy and redundant. “I’m wearing my Taurus cap to the party,” I announce in a complete reversal of the glamour gambit, but when I see the look on Bill’s face I quickly counter with “No I’m not.” I speculate the identical scene has happened millions of times between couples of whatever constitution throughout time and space. “What a shame,” I reflect, I will not be able to remember all the witticisms I will utter tonight.” He explains he wasn’t chastising me about doing the shrooms, he just doesn’t want us to be on completely different wavelengths all night. I can respect that, I tell him, but by then it’s too late. Whoever told me shrooms lose their potency over time and you know who you are, well, not this baggie, dude. BILL IS FEELING PRESSED FOR TIMEand is in whirlwind mode. Friends are about to call from their car that they are here to pick us up. Bill probably won’t be returning to my apartment this trip, and he has yet to sign the guestbook I decided I’m keeping for this apartment, which I insist upon. I keep bugging him about it as he readies his luggage. “You’re leaving these books behind,” I warn, handing him the stack of children’s books for his daughter Gabriella from her Auntie Alexandra. There’s always one more thing that needs doing. But Bill needs to simmer. down. now. He says he is accustomed to rushing like a madman because his partner Dave is always making them late. When his phone rings, I just take the guestbook with us. In his hurry, we forget the wine and I run back up to get it as they idle by the curb. We all talk about a trip to Harbin Hot Springs we took years before. What I mostly remember about it, was that I was too fat. WITH ALL THE RUSHING,we get to the party just as the guest of honor is standing on the steps outside the front door. Bill ducks down in the back seat till he enters, then we run from the car, and Tim comes back out of the house and we quickly turn back and crouch behind the car in the next-door neighbor’s driveway. There are a couple more false starts, and we keep running back behind the car, until the owner appears to check us out, and Bill explains, we’re just hiding behind your car for a few minutes—it’s for a surprise. I move towards the house, thinking there’s no reason I can’t go in—but I would never have been there without Bill so I could wreck the surprise as well. A couple of the guys detain Tim in the house so he won’t answer the door, and then Bill struts in. From the door I catch Tim’s mouth dropping. The surprise is a glorious success. I can either fly across the universe or tamp myself down and not exploit my shroom high, and I choose the latter. It just isn’t seemly to arrive at this party in Bill’s company stoned on shrooms. So for once in my life, I exert some control over myself and force myself to focus. I have some moments of confusion after I enter the fray, asking one guy, “Did I just drive here in a car with you?” (Yes, I had.) But I willfully bring myself back down to earth, as I tell Bill later that night. “That was masterful of you,” he comments. “Is this a good time to sign the book?” “Not yet,” he tells me. I DIDN’T DRINKone drop of the demon stuff, not on top of shrooms, and stuck with water all night. Good choice. It happens that the party is one of the most pleasant social encounters of my life—not just a good party, a good life experience. There must have been 20 guys there. Good people. Good energy. Restorative of faith in goodness. A good time was had by me. By all. At one point I had my head turned (literally and figuratively), talking to a friend, and in front of me someone was extending his hand and saying, “I’m Joseph.” When I turned and saw his beautiful Brazilian face smiling at me, all that came out was “Wow!” (“I’m Alexandra,” I added.) The host of the party, the gracious and dignified David, an HBO executive, has the tastiest and most tasteful house I’ve seen, in the Excelsior, one I could move right into without making a change—a real showplace in which he manages to display a lot of interesting art and also maintain an air of spaciousness, a feat I’ve not been able to master. As my mind is cluttered, so are my surroundings. It had been my greatest fear that in search of affordable housing, I would end up “somewhere in the Excelsior,” far from all my hangouts. But if this is what you get for your money, maybe it’d be worth it. “I’m circulating,” said Bill, plopping himself into a chair next to me. “My blood is circulating;” I respond, “that’s all the circulating I’ll be doing tonight.” Finally, he agrees to sign my guestbook. “I’ll read it when I get home,” I tell him. EVERYONE THERE WAS CIVIL,well-behaved, charming, witty. I take a shine to a handsome Amtrak exec. That he works with trains adds another layer of fascination to him. David has laid out a fabulous catered spread and I get one of the best fortune cookie fortunes of all time.
After birthday cake, I ask David how close I am to Mission, to take the bus back. The Brazilian and his two friends are leaving soon and offer me a ride. Allrighty then! There’s a screening coming up at FrameLine festival of a short called “When I Knew,” about the moment one knows one is gay, and the guys tell some priceless stories, one involving Jerry (of Tom and) the mouse, and another a pornographic periodical called The Pearl, leading the reader to be more excited by prose than by pictures. The first time I was ever sexually intrigued by a man, I tell them, was in one of the Bond movies with the youthful Sean Connery around the From Russia with Love, Goldfinger era. 1963-4. I would have been 8 or 9. He had a line of hair traveling down his stomach and below his bathing shorts, and I wanted to know what it led to. I’d never seen a penis, I had no idea what was under there. But I wanted to find out. People were going home and so did we. MOVING MISCELLANYI do a little unpacking and run across my NERT (Neighborhood Emergency Response Team) paperwork and on the page soliciting volunteers for future classes, I wrote, “I’m available to be a victim.” No comment. Whenever I look through papers, or clear out a drawer, or a box, every time I’m looking for something else, every time I move, I run across this yellow post-it note that has followed me around through the years and tonight is no exception: “Using another as a means of satisfaction and security is not love. Love is never security; love is a state in which there is no desire to be secure; it is a state of vulnerability.” – Krishnamurti Now that I’ve immortalized it on the web, I can throw the damn thing away. I’m constantly finding artifacts from former lives inexplicably in my environment. It’s a very “ADD” thing. In my kitchen drawer I found a scrap of paper that said “If you’re a boy you must moon the girls; if you’re a girl you must moon the boys.” The paper was a “truth or dare” sort of game where messages or instructions were inserted in balloons, which were then blown up and broken by the players. You had to do whatever the paper in your balloon said. It was a remnant of my Portland housewarming party, in 1989. How, why, 19 years later, it was in my 2008 kitchen drawer in another city, I don’t know. On the floor of my writing studio in my flat was, inexplicably, an old New York subway token. And today on the floor of my new bedroom, there it is again, the same token. It’s best not to question too closely these mysteries of life. “NEVER A LANDLORD NOR A TENANT BE,”has been my motto, having been both. Just own your own home and mind your own business. But oddly that’s exactly what I am right now—TICs in San Francisco are called “Tenants in Common” because you and your partners all own equal shares of the building and you’re all renting from each other—simultaneously co-owner and cotenant. Property ownership is not necessarily all it’s cracked up to be as the American dream. There are burdens and responsibilities, bills and maintenanc, taxs and forclosures, and you have to carefully weigh every decision you make in your life while tied to a property. You can’t just throw a few things in a bag and call it good. I’m over owning. I try again to place where I was when I saw the Pirate Store. I’m going to be making maps of the streets and their special features because when I see something interesting I can never remember where I saw it, and with no sense of direction, simply having been there does not help. I’m constantly asking people on the street, “Is 16th St. this way or that way?” If no one’s around I find out I’m going the wrong way by getting close enough to see the 17th St. street sign and having to turn back. In my lifetime, I have walked many a mile out of my way trying to find where I’m going. If I’m going somewhere new, I give myself an extra half hour to get there for being lost. Nevertheless, if I have to meet someone in Guadalajara, I can get myself there. It’s easier to get to another city or country than to, for instance, the Pirate Store. Then I remember. The guestbook. “Friday, June 13th, 2008 – a day in a year of our life on planet earth. A day to be remembered – breakfast at Chow, going undercover in the Castro, spying Lycra at Dolores Park and late spring iced tea. Loved Dolores Mission and being reborn in the womb of the yurt. A nap in your new fabulous apartment and a birthday celebration. Will we remember…? I think yes!” But just in case not, I wrote this column. SATURDAY, the 14th. I’M ON VACATION!I don’t know who lives below me, but he’s got a chronic cough, reminding me of Chicken John associate Dr. Hal’s admonition: “It isn’t the cough that carries you off, it’s the coffin they carry you off in.” Funny how a cough or sneeze can sound like a man or a woman, how you can sometimes hear someone’s voice in one. My landlord—I might as well call him Evan—shows up with his two daughters and his cleaning staff to do some pick-up work. He informs me the Pirate Store is somewhere between 19th and 20th on Valencia. That’s right, I had been coming from Ritual Roasters at 23rd when I stumbled upon it, the 826 Valencia Building. It’s a magical San Francisco thing, actually a writer’s workshop put together by Dave Eggers, and, incidentally, a pirate supply store. After they leave, I hope against hope that the kids didn’t see the magnet Jon Crow sent me on my fridge, of a restaurant called Fuckers, with the caption, “I’ll have the fuckin’ cheeseburger with the fuckin’ fries and some fuckin’ coffee.” Luckily I had not yet posted his greeting card, which reads on the cover, “Fuck Off, You Fucking Fucker,” signed, “Fuck you later! – Jon.” I’m taking the weekend off from “the flat” and the boxes. Touring the ‘hood for essentials. THE SEARCH FOR A NEW WRITING HANGcontinues. I’ll know it when I find it. Already have rejected Ritual Roasters. Not close enough, not cozy enough, no couch. Muddy Waters at 17th and Valencia ain’t gonna be it either. Convenient, but not feelin’ it. Overall: Free Internet with purchase, decent latte, nice counter staff, muffins rather too crumbly, hard, vinyl-covered wood chairs, dreary office swivel chairs at the dedicated computer seating, no armchairs or couches, middle-of-the-road easy listening ethnic music, “to go” cup used for “for here” coffee (a no-no), lesbian across from me doing her best to catch my eye; I mind my own business and do not relent. Overall score: Not enough atmosphere, seating uncomfortable, C minus. (I’m a tough customer.) The search for the perfect black skirt continues at Community Thrift Shop. I’ll know it when I find it. There are a couple contenders that come close but won’t fit. I do score some everyday cotton/lycra black pants for five bucks. THE MISSION LOOKThe ladies are stylin’ here. A platinum blonde in a strapless black and white ruched dress bicycles down Valencia. Jeans and heels. Bare shoulders, bare backs. Latina glamour girls. The Lower Haight style of dress is largely ethnic or hippie, street person, individualist, attempts at individualist, generic, or just plain slob. Of many people I would say, “Your clothes are wearing you.” That is, the clothes speak louder than the people wearing them. And they’re saying, “Look at me.” Once a couple of guys in crisp business suits came into the Café for lunch and I almost asked them what they were doing in the Lower Haight. Didn’t they belong in Hayes Valley? Of course, anywhere you go you see the nondescript or generic style, which I classify as “undistinguished,” where if you looked in someone’s closet, you wouldn’t be able to tell whose clothes they are. Jeans and t-shirts. Off-the-rack Casual Corner or Gap. I’m a pretty conservative dresser, I’m still wearing my Monday-through-Friday clothes, but I think you could tell they’re mine, for my eagle eye for the second-hand buy has spotted some very cool finds in thrift shops, into which I am magnetically drawn whenever I pass one. I just picked up a pair of shit-kicking Steve Madden red patent heels for $10.25 at Out of the Closet at Church and Duboce. Not typically like me, I’m a flats kind of gal. But for that once-in-a-while shit-kicking occasion, perfect. And how about those phenomenal leather Spanish booties I found at the Haight Good Will, which someone commented on at the Milk statue unveiling, affording me the opportunity to launch into my thrift shop score routine: I GOT THESE BOOTS FOR EIGHT FORTY-NINE AT THE HAIGHT STREET GOOD WILL. EIGHT FORTY-NINE! SOMA activist Jim Meko looked at me amusedly, as he has always had more important things to do than to be excited about a cheap pair of used shoes. But what shoes!
EIGHT FORTY-NINE. The author crosses her heart. I told Jim, you see, that is the joy of them. I would take no pleasure in buying or wearing the shoes had I paid my estimated retail price of $300 for them. Anybody can pay the big bucks for quality, but I wouldn’t consider buying them new. Ironically, that would cheapen them. I make it to the Pirate Store, at 826 Valencia. Loads of great stuff to examine, which I hadn’t had time for the first go-round, but it’s too crowded to enjoy it. At Paxton’s Garden, next door, home to a stuffed fox, a cow’s eyeball in a jar of solution and such items, I run out of steam at the water feature in the back, and drag myself home. Must check out for a time. SATURDAY NIGHT, THE ZONE.I decide to make up for my aborted high by repeating the dose and working on this column. It’s what they call 11:11 p.m. (Hey Kalish—did you ever find my book?) but I am in the Zone, plain and simple. It’s not Saturday night, nor any night, it just is. What is, is. Ah, the is-ness of it all!
Same scenario with cat. This place is indeed dominated by the living room seating arrangement, which as Bill commented is oversize for this space. He says to go leaner and cleaner. Point taken, but it’s what I have right now and I’m fine and dandy with it. Lying back on this ugly grassroots-campaign-quality couch, my head is comfy on the Michelin Man-like stuffed arm, and feet are happy on the other arm. As usual I have my electric flower bouquets and orange-colored mood lighting going and write by the light of my computer screen. I have to keep purging. I have crammed this place as full, proportionately, as my other museum and am still overstocked. My beloved Hoffman upright piano I gave to the Page Street Center, a social service arm of the Baptist Church. It’s a good home. Craig’s List got rid of some stuff. Thrift shops got the rejects from three garage sales. Friends can take what they like. I still have a ways to go but I feel a ton lighter and brighter. Getting rid of that flat might be the best move I ever made. It’s all been the best move. My entire life, with its pendulum swinging, leading up to this moment, is the best thing I’ve ever done. SUNDAY, the 15th.Bill and Tim and another Tim from the party, and Terry (who must have absorbed my mushroom high and mumbled incoherently all night about “collapsible bags” he designed) and I go to Stern Grove to hear Betty Lynette (first called “Babette” by Tim #1, who’d seen her at the Independent on Divisadero). Her hour+ set is great, she’s a powerhouse, 46 years in the biz. Bill and Tim #2 go down to the stage and I would like to, but don’t want to navigate the tremendous, awkward slope we are sitting on, most choice spots being taken. I have to dig my rear into the dirt to gain a purchase.I tell Tim #1 that that is so lame of me, to not go somewhere I want to go because it’s too much trouble to get there. Like John Hersey’s Too Far to Walk. I show him the clever wooden small, medium and large Humpty Dumpties I’m giving Gabriella. They’re very cool, but a child should have them. I also gave her the alphabet-shaped animal magnets from my fridge. Like Humpty, we could all take a great fall down this slope, and by the time Booker T. comes on, whom I could do without, I am ready to skedaddle. I have given myself a wedgie shifting around for more comfortable perches. I find the music undistinguished. I await Tchaikovsky’s 4th on the 29th. We leave early. I return home and take a delicious nap. Recalling the desperation with which I wished, while at work, that I could just jump into bed and sleep, I allow myself to do so whenever I need to. I don’t plan naps, they overtake me. ADD, even controlled with Strattera, can be an exhausting disorder and I need to check out now and then. Many sufferers need down time every day, myself included. I’m coming down with something and am too tired to write, so I watch The Next Food Network Star, because celebrity chef Bobby Flay is one of the beautiful men I admire. Don’t get me started on Gordon Ramsey. Of course someone that hot works in Hell’s Kitchen. MONDAY, the 16th.I call ATandT to ask what the hell is the delay with getting my DSL set up. It was supposed to be installed Wednesday the 11th, and it is now Monday the 16th. They had told me there might be a problem with my inside lines and I didn’t hear from them again. It turns out they simply lost my transfer order and I was still active at my old address. Now I can’t get it till Thursday the 19th, and I am glad. It has been wonderful to be free of the web; I think I could live like this, with the surfeit of information lifted from my life, though there are plenty of things I can’t do without it, like post this column in the middle of the night. Instead I must go to a coffe shop, and on my way to Tazzo del Amore at 16th and Dehon, I pop into Joseph Schmidt’s to say hi, neighbor to my friend, Mary. They’ve got a sign in the window, “Mint Leaves! Mint Leaves! Mint Leaves! We have ‘em! “so I go up to the counter and say “Mint Leaves! Mint Leaves! Mint Leaves! I want ‘em!” Mary gives me a sample, and they are mint chocolates in the shape of leaves with green sprinkles on them. I’m going next door for coffee, I tell her, but she suggests I go to H Café (of all names) at 17th and Sanchez instead. More interesting, funkier, more like Café International. OK, this qualifies to be my hang. I knew it when I found it. Tazza del Amore has leather stuffed armchairs in front of a fireplace, but there is an upscale primness to the place, attractive but more suited to high tea than everyday use. H Cafe has a ratty old couch it won’t hurt to put my stocking feet on, free internet with purchase, and the right combo of casual grittiness and friendly respectability. Art work by school children is on the walls. After work Mary comes by to see my place, which she loves, and which reminds her of my old place—same era of detailing, bay windows, picture molding, built-in hutch. She brings lilies and truffles (not Mint Leaves?). We have dinner at Il Cantuccio on 16th because I’m not wild about Mexican food and I want to scope out alternative food options. We talk about good things happening in our lives and are happy for each other. TUESDAY, the 17th, H CafeI am there now, reviewing this lengthy opus over my almond tea. Plenty lengthy enough. Vanity Fair reports there are 13,000,000 blogs floating around out there. Thanks for reading mine. It can’t be helped, I must be done. Peace, my friends, discover the moon, be amazed at what happens, grab the moment, stay true to you, and you will always be in fashion.
If you need your shit kicked, call the author.
That’s St. Francis to the left of the author. ------------------------------------------------------------ Be yourself and stay in style
What more could I possibly say? copyright Alexandra Jones 2008 |
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