I wore the silver raincoat I picked up at a street market in London, thinking that any self-respecting London raincoat would keep me dry. Wrong. I was soaked by the time I arrived at my bus stop at the bottom of the hill, and my jeans stayed damp all day long.

Rain here is softer, and wind is sweeter, than what I’m accustomed to. Grey weather doesn’t ride on an undercurrent of sinister winter. It comes and goes, and burns off with the sunshine, leaving only puddles and mussed leaves. You needn’t worry about the weather here, because the weather sure as hell doesn’t worry about anything, and it’s too lazy to be malicious.

Northern California cold isn’t the biting kind that I know, which gnaws its way into your ear canals and through your head before turning your eyeballs to dust. Northern California cold is insidious. It creeps under doorways and fills the room, so that even when you’re curled up in bed under a pile of blankets, your teeth keep chattering and your feet refuse to thaw. This cold doesn’t come with anything so tangibly satisfying as snow or ice. NoCal denizens dress in multiple layers to accommodate the passive aggressive mood swings of the Bay.

All I know about living in Northern California, I learned from Richard Brautigan. Maybe he’s not the most trustworthy source. He has a voice that leads me to believe he survived on the moss that grows under bridges, and honed his humor by talking to shadows and lost souls.

From Revenge of the Lawn, “The Gathering of a Californian”:

“Like most Californians, I come from someplace else and was gathered to the purpose of California like a metal-eating flower gathers the sunshine, the rain, and then to the freeway beckons its petals and lets the cars drive in, millions of cars into but a single flower, the scent choked with congestion and room for millions more.

… It’s strange that California likes to get her people from every place else and leave what we knew behind and here to California we are gathered as if energy itself, the shadow of that metal-eating flower, had summoned us away from other lives and now to do the California until the very end like the Taj Mahal in the shape of a parking meter.”

This is where gypsies and vagabonds settle because they’ve given up on finding a sense of home. Here, they can do whatever they want without attracting untoward attention. On a grand scale, I feel a lack of solidarity here, with everyone so intent on following his or her own path that connections fall by the wayside.

Personally, I don’t want to leave my past forever. I’ve had a lovely life with just a few dark chapters, and overall, I like the whole story. I don’t know if I’ll be here forever, but I can’t think of a better place for me right now than this pretty place.

San Francisco is a tiny patchwork full of paradox. Seedy and wealthy blocks coexist side by side, with no transitions in between. It’s like jumping directly from hot water into cold, and back to hot again. The buses must be made of Pyrex to avoid shattering from one city block to the next.

The Bay Area hosts more lunatics per capita than any other place I’ve been. This is partly because of Reagan’s decision to close down the halfway houses in the Tenderloin district way back when, leaving hundreds of mentally ill people to wander the streets, but I also think that, on its own, San Francisco is a place where lunacy can breed in peace.

The crazies yell. I never know what they’re saying. To aid in translation, some of them carry written signs, but most of them just yell. I wonder if anyone understands them.

Months back, my roommate and I were walking through the Castro Street Fair when a young man jumped in front of us, darted his eyes from me to Zoe and back to me again, and unleashed a monologue channeled directly from Captain Beefheart:

“HANDS straight up and down like SIX O’CLOCK and side to side like Noah’s ark, you got me? It’s like I been waitin’ it’s like it’s like it’s like TIME, you got me? You got me? You got me?”

His eyes darted between Zoe and me again until we conceded that, no, we did not “get” him. Not remotely. We continued walking through the street fair booths and the beautiful drag Geisha street performers until Zoe stopped short and said, “Holy shit, I think I know that guy!”

Turns out that our Cap’n B was a former friend of our roommate Chuck’s. They skated together until the poor kid got involved in drugs and finally lost his mind. Some cockle of his brain must’ve recognized Zoe from his more lucid days, but from what we could see, he was gone. He jumped in front of us from out of nowhere, and wilted back into the crowd just as covertly.

Recently on my way to work, I passed a young lupine Korean man with long black hair, who was sitting on the sidewalk, listening to music through his headphones, and howling. His eyes were closed and his legs were crossed. He was covered in grime and shag. His face was drawn into his pursed lips, which opened into an “O” and directed his melancholy hoots, “Ah-WOOOO-WOOO-WOOO-WOOOOOOOOO,” to the streetlights above him. It gave his whole chiseled face a pointy, snout-like quality.

My school is located in one of the less savory parts of town, where the “hotels” house all manor of unmentionable activities, and “massage parlors” provide therapeutic relief to lonely businessmen who can count on a Happy Ending being automatically included in the bill.

I don’t feel frightened when I’m walking down the street. It’s not a neighborhood that strikes me as particularly dangerous; on the other hand, I get the feeling that I could get my hands on absolutely anything I wanted, no matter how illegal, if I were to ask the right person. The overall attitude is so relaxed and friendly that it’s hard to say whether anyone is doing anything unseemly.

A couple of weeks ago, I passed a woman in a wheelchair who I swear to God was administering a hand-job to the man standing in front of her. They were making pleasant conversation, laughing and chatting while she fiddled frantically with his fly.

People will tell you anything if you listen long enough.

One day at the bus stop, a woman came out of one of the “hotels” to wait with me for the #14. She spoke in a French accent, and told me all about her shithead boyfriend who couldn’t get an erection without the aid of drugs, who openly cheated on her, who refused to meet with her at his apartment and opted instead to shack up in the “hotel.” But, she was a slave to his good looks.

“He has fair skin and blue eyes. I love fair skin and blue eyes,” she said, looking straight at fair-skinned, blue-eyed me. “But, on a guy, I mean,” she continued. “I am not a gay.”

Periodically, she interspersed her diatribe with, “What would you do?” I didn’t feel it was my place to tell an imbalanced stranger with a crappy sense of boundaries that if a guy treated me like that, I wouldn’t stick around long enough to warrant the hotel’s hourly rate.

There are a number of low-rent drag bars down the street from my school. Previously, I had a very narrow idea of what constitutes a drag queen. I was ignorant in thinking they were all fabulous creatures with sparkling fashion sense and cosmetic abilities that made me look like a hobbit by comparison.

I now know that there are just as many, if not more, low-maintenance ugly dudes who like to dress up in women’s clothing. And, good for them. But seeing them on a daily basis is so jarring to my initial conception that I can’t help but wonder if they feel displaced. Maybe I’m projecting.

They remind me of mutant birds, giant pigeons with ugly man-heads perched on huge, neckless teardrop bodies, with arms instead of wings, and high heels anchoring their chicken legs. I remember one in particular, a fat, balding blonde man in a miniskirt and stilettos, who hadn’t bothered to shave before applying his lipstick and mascara.

I have to applaud the guts it takes to so blatantly straddle the line between two worlds. I don’t know, but it seems like it would be a lonely existence, to be in the thick of things waiting for a city bus, knowing that passers-by are passing judgments the way I just did.

On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the streets were lousy with shoppers. It’s awful to be downtown on sale days. No matter what city you’re in, on sale days it becomes a place that will never be your own.

I was walking to my bus, as usual, to head home after work. I waded through the throngs with their bags from Macy’s and Saks and Victoria’s Secret, and I came to an intersection.

A woman who looked a few years younger than me was pacing a wide circle in the middle of the street. She was twirling her pitch-black ponytail and mumbling to herself, and her legs were covered by either dirt or bruises. The otherwise oblivious tourists provided wide berth for her. As I passed, I noticed that aside from her vacant eyes, she was quiet pretty.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Tomorrow - 02.18.06

Bad Movies, Good Holidays, and Humu-humu-nuku-nuku-apua'a - 02.05.06

HO! - 01.12.06

Spike the egg nog! Unless you don't like egg nog, in which case just drink the brandy. - 12.24.05

Say Hello! - 12.14.05

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