that's awasum

Snake Sake
04.15.06 + 2:07 p.m.

I am totally in love with my neighborhood, which is short walk from the beach and a shorter walk from Golden Gate Park. It's quiet, and feels more like a village than a part of the city. Around the corner from my house are dozens of mediocre restaurants and cafes, a couple of laundromats and producerias, harmless grafitti such as a the word “BOOBS” spray-painted under a crude drawing of what looks like a “W” with nipples, and two bus lines that run downtown all day and all night.

Aside from the fact that I was laid off from my job last week, I am loving life.

Oh, yeah ... I got fired. It’s okay, the job was causing me more stress and misery than it was worth, and they offered me a reference and a “departure bonus” (otherwise known as a “We’re replacing you through no fault of your own, but only because we need someone who is available 5 days a week, i.e. not a student, and even though we’ve been discussing the possibility amongst ourselves for weeks we’re only giving you 4 days notice, but man you look pissed and really hold your ground when we give you the news, and guess we were dicks so here’s some money, righteous lady” bonus.

I have enough money in the bank to hold me over until I find something better, and I have so many school assignments due in the next few weeks that I’m rather welcoming the forced sabbatical. Besides, now I can write about the nerd-laden convention I attended a couple of weeks ago, and not worry about someone from work finding the entry and firing me.

During the aforementioned convention, a picture was taken of me gulping swigs of sake out of a giant moonshine jar with a dead snake, coiled up like a mutant gape- mouthed tequila worm, at the bottom. It was just as gross as it sounds -- grosser, actually, because the sake was turning brown and flotsamy from the efforts it apparently takes to preserve a dead viper. But when a bearded man in a cowboy hat approaches you in a hotel bar and says, “Want some sake from Okinawa? Yes, that’s a real snake at the bottom ... Deadly poisonous!”, do you turn him down?

You do?

Wow. We have nothing in common. Kiss me!

Oh, how I wish I had that picture. But it was taken by someone else, and the camera was later lost. Too bad. I wanted to post it. I’M ALREADY FIRED! INCRIMINATE ME!

It makes sense somehow that I have a new home, and now I need a new job. That seems to be the pattern my life follows: things get demolished because reasons beyond my control, and I have to start all over. I’m actually pretty calm about it, and I’m feeling so wonderfully cliche right now I could just choke myself.

Picture it:

I’m sitting by the window of a little dark-wood cafe where I just finished a latte. Black and white photos of Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich are staring at me from falsely-lashed 2D eyes. There is a mannequin posed by the bathroom, with trendy sunglasses and an floppy hat, but I’m ignoring her because mannequins freak me out. Interspersed with the pictures of dead Hollywood Grand Damnes are oil landscapes painted with acid-trip hues.

That song “San Francisco” (the one in which wearing flowers in your hair is repeatedly suggested) was ringing through the sound system, but I felt it was atmostpheric overkill so I put on my headphones to listen to Joni Mitchell instead. Because, holy crap, I now live in a world in which Joni Mitchell can dilute atmospheric overkill. I can listen to Joni Mitchell, with her breathy voice and forced meter and free-lovin’ associations, and she provides perfect soundtrack, however predictible. It’s a little creepy, the extent to which I feel like an anti-heroine in an overzealous feminist college film. But why question it? Throw me a peasant skirt!

I tease, Joni. You know I love you.

My new house is surrounded by ordinary places with mythically presumptuous names, like OCEAN BEACH and GREAT HIGHWAY. As you may or may not know, San Francisco likes to call herself THE CITY. Not like, "the city closest to you if you happen to be in Northern California and want to go somewhere famous," or "the city as opposed to other not-quite-city outlying areas," but "THE CITY beside which all other cities pale, and any other urban area who dare call itself a city better step, bitch."

When I was 19, I did some volunteer work in Appalachia. The folks in the mining town where we stayed belonged to a tiny, white ,steepled Baptist church called THE CHURCH OF GOD. The unspoken implication is that, if you're not going to the Church of God, you're obviously going to the wrong church.

Maybe I should stop seeing my life as being high-lariously ironic, but I can’t seem to help it. I don’t mean to sound negative. On a recent sunny day, I went for a long walk to the ocean, and then back through the park. The beach was populated by watercolorists, kite-fliers, puppies, surfers, and VW buses. The sand was dark as coal and sparkled erratically, like a city sidewalk when you catch it in the right combination of sun and shadow, and it was fine enough to get stuck in my fingerprints. I think this is the California life I was hoping for, and I can’t quite believe it.

Anyway. I’m meeting my former housemate Zoe for gossip and seaside wandering this afternoon, and this evening I’m going to see a friend in a drag show. Tomorrow’s Easter, so maybe I’ll emerge from a tomb while chomping on a chocolate bunny or something. Then I’ll hide some technicolor eggs in the holes in my hands and sides, because no one ever thinks to look there. God, what a fucking twisted celebration.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Outer Richmond House - 07.04.06

My Sister's Wedding - 06.27.06

Meltdown? Who knows? - 05.09.06

You probably won't be surprised to learn there are flies circling me. - 04.23.06

Oh, I'm just kidding. - 04.17.06

BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.
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words ฉ luvabeans, 2003 - 2004