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June 21, 2008Don’t kick anybody.And don’t throw your shoes at anybody.NO SIR, YES SIR!My shoes? I ask, when I keep beeping going through security at City Hall. I’m wearing a sterling silver rattle dangling from a mother-of-pearl teething ring I made into a necklace, so I take that off and keep beeping. I start taking my rings off, and the guard says, no need, it’s probably your shoes. My shoes? I say incredulously. How can shoes make a metal detector go off? I’m not concealing knives in them for God’s sake. Just don’t kick anybody or throw your shoes at anybody, he tells me, straight-faced. Is this guy for real? But whatever, I go on through. I have some time to kill before the Symphony across the street and stop at Mirkarimi’s art party. COME TO THINK OF IT,Ross might be a good guy to kick. I’m wearing my wedding/funeral shoes. (As James Joyce put it, “married and dead.” Two for the price of one.) Or, with good aim, this basic black pump with 2″ heel could put a good dent in his forehead, like Vivien Leigh laid on Lee Marvin in “Ship of Fools,” a scene that reminds me of the time I killed a scorpion with a boot on the side of a mountain in Mexico. Think fast, Ross! ANYONE WITH AN EGO ENORMOUSI as Ross’s has got to be part obnoxious jerk, yes? Maybe I’ll just kick him on general principle. But he makes a narrow escape taking off with Jake McGoldrick. So I’m “leaving the district,” Ross observed. I was looking forward to being in Chris Daly’s D6, but I am a 1/2 block away from it in D8 and stuck with the killer of Halloween in the Castro, Bevan Dufty. Bevan Dufty representing me? I don’t think so. Chris, you’re just going to have to adopt me. Lower Haight activist and Ross’s aide Vallie Brown likes my black sheath dress and embroidered bolero jacket. I’m on my way to the Symphony, I explain, and she hopes I’m going somewhere after as well because I look great (a shame to waste it, I guess). Yes, I have plans for after the Symphony. They are to walk down Van Ness and take the F trolley home. I could stop at Safeway, but it raises my blood pressure. It took me a lifetime to find a bottle of water in there the other day. INSTEAD, I DO SOMETHING I HAVE NOT DONEsince I used to walk home from North Berkeley BART. I cross Market Street and take off those deadly dangerous weapons, my shoes. You’ve got to watch where you step, but I love walking barefoot on city streets. As different from shoes as walking is from driving. A friend prefers a stick-shift to an automatic as “more of a driving experience.” Well this is more of a walking experience. There’s another kind of life down there you’re usually oblivious to. Changes in texture, temperature; it’s a friendlier way of relating to what you’re walking on. And if God wanted people to wear shoes, he would have invented Manolo Blahnik. (Apparently, he wanted people to wear really fabulous shoes.) VALLIE’S RIGHT, THOUGH.It is a shame to waste it. On this rare night of true summer balminess, I should have a man on my arm. Reminds me of something a Portland (male) friend said after I headed south. “I hope they’re man enough for you down there.” Should I quote myself again? Let’s say it together: If I’m too much for you, you’re not enough for me. Man enough…there was one guy who was…but his hobby of impregnating other women came between us. IT’S ONLY 1:11.Should I go out on the strip? There are several around here. 16th Street, Church Street, Valencia Street, Castro Street, Mission Street, Market Street, take your pick. I’m steps away from any and all of them. Go out in your party dress, girl, and see what happens. Instead I go up on the roof with my laptop, hitch my narrow skirt up to my hips and sit on a towel on the gravel, with the late great Oscar Peterson flying me to the moon. I can obliterate City Hall and the Bay Bridge with my thumb. There’s a broken wine glass out here, suggesting past…wine-drinking. I have never reacquired my taste for wine since I, well, never you mind. But there should be a man up here with me because the moon is full and so am I—“plena mujer” as Pablo Neruda wrote it and Todd Brown painted it. Full woman. Full of myself. Full of it. ONE HALF THE SKYis clear, but in the other the moon plays hide and seek with a bank of mottled clouds….is there anything more wonderful than a full moon over a San Francisco rooftop? Yes, sharing it with a man you love. Why did I just flash on having sex with K. in the back of a Volkswagen on N.W. Johnson Street? I could get my sleeping bag out and spend the night up here. But I’d rather cuddle with the kiddles. THE CATS IN THEIR LITTLE FUR COATS(sequel to “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses”) hate the heat and so do I. It has collected in my third floor garret just like in Philadelphia. But you’ve got to have hot days for buttery smooth nights like this. I feel sheltered by the sky, wrapped in its arms. I will take its magnificence to bed with me. I hope it doesn’t snore.
------------------------------------------------------------ “The Visitor"
I should have a man in my arms. copyright Alexandra Jones 2008 |
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