Question:
"Why is it colloquially called a 'fast lane', and not a 'set-my-cruise-control-to-5-miles-over-the-speed-limit-at-the-tail-end-of-morning-rush-so-as-to-effectively-block-all-the-people-who-are-running-late-and-would-love-to-be-doing-85-right-now lane?"
Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
A 1 minute conversation with my mother...
Mom: "What's up?"
Me: "Hey mom- I'm working on editing application essays that are due tomorrow for one of my students, and I'm basically behind in like every aspect of my life right now."
(pause)
Mom: "Is this new for you?"
Me: "I'll talk to you later mom."
Me: "Hey mom- I'm working on editing application essays that are due tomorrow for one of my students, and I'm basically behind in like every aspect of my life right now."
(pause)
Mom: "Is this new for you?"
Me: "I'll talk to you later mom."
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The Fisher King
I sometimes tell my students about "Gus's Threefold Path to Happiness". I always preface it by saying that there is more than one path to happiness, and you should always run screaming from anyone who claims there's only one path, because that person has an agenda, and whatever it is, it probably isn't in your best interest. Mine is just one possible path- I can't remember if I've written about it before, so here it is:
1) Learn to love people.
Not all of them individually- there are a LOT of assholes out there. But people in their messy aggregate. Because doing so keeps you optimistic, and makes your heart strong. Otherwise, you end up cynical and unhappy, and that's a terrible way to live.
2) Learn to love learning.
Because doing so keeps your mind strong, and because if you do, then you can never be bored, because there will always be something else out there to learn about.
3) Learn to love baseball.
Because it's a metaphor for life. Here are just a few of many ways in which this is true: you start at home, and you spend pretty much most of the game trying to get back home in one way or another. Like life, most of baseball is fairly routine, but if you learn to appreciate its subtleties, even the routine stuff is interesting in its way, and the routine bits are punctuated by moments of the greatest joy, and moments of the most crushing sadness and disappointment. Baseball, like life, is a curious mix of individual performance and performance of the others that individual relies on. And finally, as with life, you know precisely when baseball starts, but you have no idea when it is going to end. Sure, there's a statistical average length of a baseball game, and most games are going to be around that long, but sometimes games go into extra innings, and last a lot longer than you thought.
And sometimes, a game you were really excited to see gets rained out before it even really gets a chance to begin.
This is a story about one of those rainouts.
MK, who is one of the most amazing people I know, got married almost 2 years ago in NYC to Carrie, who is also amazing. Keiko and I went to the wedding and had a blast, as expected, since those two are always a riot. A couple months after the dinner party in CA where Ed almost killed himself, they discovered that they were pregnant with twins. Natural ones- no fertility treatments involved. From the beginning, it seemed like a tough pregnancy, but MK & Carrie fought through it with their typical wry senses of humor.
This summer, they found out they had Twin-to-twin Transfusion Syndrome. TTTS occurs when one twin is essentially starving the other by taking the lion's share of the nutrients in utero. This situation does not typically end well for one or both of the twins, but MK & Carrie went to Philadelphia to get a cutting edge surgeon to do an operation to try and save both twins.
And miraculously, it worked. Both twins made it through.
Thus, Fisher and Truman were eagerly anticipated. The plan was to keep them in until the 3rd trimester, and then get them out of there and into incubators. The surgery would serve to make it possible for them to live long enough to make it to the 3rd trimester.
And on October 15th, Fisher and Truman were born. Obviously, they were super primi babies, but they made it into the incubators, and we were all thrilled for MK & Carrie. They had many funny stories about it all, which MK blogged about. I will include the link to that blog at the end of this post. It's worth reading.
So began the wait to see how they would do in the incubators, and after a month, it seemed like they were doing well enough that talk began to shift to a discussion of when they would finally be able to come home from the hospital.
Then, on Monday, Fisher was diagnosed with necrotizing endocolitis (hoepfully I'm spelling that right). Basically, bacteria was eating his intestines. It was pretty serious, and no Tuesday they did a major operation to try and save him. As a result of his diagnosis, they also checked Truman, and he had a similar issue, but not nearly as advanced. In fact, it was caught early enough that he could simply go on antibiotics and not have to do an operation.
Fisher made it through the operation on Tuesday, but was looking at needing at least another one. And on Wednesday, in his mother's arms, surrounded by family, he died, barely more than a month old. But in so doing, he may well have saved his brother's life.
It is moments like these that can cause a person to wonder: what is the point of it all? Is it that there's no point at all, as many an atheist would claim? Or is it "God works in mysterious ways yada yada yada insert cliched judeo-christian nonsense here"? Or is it that somewhere out there, there is a vast reservoir of consciousness, which you can call God or whatever you want, and from that reservoir bits of consciousness come to earth and are born, in order to accomplish some task?
I don't pretend to have answers to such questions, but I do know that Fisher saved his brother's life, and in doing so, accomplished more of significance in his one month of life than many people will in their entire existences. I wish I had gotten to meet him- I assumed that eventually I would. His passing serves to remind us all that the most important thing of all is spending time with those we care about, because it is not given us to know how much time they or we have left. It's altogether too easy to forget that little lesson in the daily routine of life.
And so, Fisher, I bid you Godspeed, on whatever journey awaits you on the other side. I will look forward to meeting you there someday.
MK's Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Blog:
http://twintotwintransfusion.blogspot.com/
1) Learn to love people.
Not all of them individually- there are a LOT of assholes out there. But people in their messy aggregate. Because doing so keeps you optimistic, and makes your heart strong. Otherwise, you end up cynical and unhappy, and that's a terrible way to live.
2) Learn to love learning.
Because doing so keeps your mind strong, and because if you do, then you can never be bored, because there will always be something else out there to learn about.
3) Learn to love baseball.
Because it's a metaphor for life. Here are just a few of many ways in which this is true: you start at home, and you spend pretty much most of the game trying to get back home in one way or another. Like life, most of baseball is fairly routine, but if you learn to appreciate its subtleties, even the routine stuff is interesting in its way, and the routine bits are punctuated by moments of the greatest joy, and moments of the most crushing sadness and disappointment. Baseball, like life, is a curious mix of individual performance and performance of the others that individual relies on. And finally, as with life, you know precisely when baseball starts, but you have no idea when it is going to end. Sure, there's a statistical average length of a baseball game, and most games are going to be around that long, but sometimes games go into extra innings, and last a lot longer than you thought.
And sometimes, a game you were really excited to see gets rained out before it even really gets a chance to begin.
This is a story about one of those rainouts.
MK, who is one of the most amazing people I know, got married almost 2 years ago in NYC to Carrie, who is also amazing. Keiko and I went to the wedding and had a blast, as expected, since those two are always a riot. A couple months after the dinner party in CA where Ed almost killed himself, they discovered that they were pregnant with twins. Natural ones- no fertility treatments involved. From the beginning, it seemed like a tough pregnancy, but MK & Carrie fought through it with their typical wry senses of humor.
This summer, they found out they had Twin-to-twin Transfusion Syndrome. TTTS occurs when one twin is essentially starving the other by taking the lion's share of the nutrients in utero. This situation does not typically end well for one or both of the twins, but MK & Carrie went to Philadelphia to get a cutting edge surgeon to do an operation to try and save both twins.
And miraculously, it worked. Both twins made it through.
Thus, Fisher and Truman were eagerly anticipated. The plan was to keep them in until the 3rd trimester, and then get them out of there and into incubators. The surgery would serve to make it possible for them to live long enough to make it to the 3rd trimester.
And on October 15th, Fisher and Truman were born. Obviously, they were super primi babies, but they made it into the incubators, and we were all thrilled for MK & Carrie. They had many funny stories about it all, which MK blogged about. I will include the link to that blog at the end of this post. It's worth reading.
So began the wait to see how they would do in the incubators, and after a month, it seemed like they were doing well enough that talk began to shift to a discussion of when they would finally be able to come home from the hospital.
Then, on Monday, Fisher was diagnosed with necrotizing endocolitis (hoepfully I'm spelling that right). Basically, bacteria was eating his intestines. It was pretty serious, and no Tuesday they did a major operation to try and save him. As a result of his diagnosis, they also checked Truman, and he had a similar issue, but not nearly as advanced. In fact, it was caught early enough that he could simply go on antibiotics and not have to do an operation.
Fisher made it through the operation on Tuesday, but was looking at needing at least another one. And on Wednesday, in his mother's arms, surrounded by family, he died, barely more than a month old. But in so doing, he may well have saved his brother's life.
It is moments like these that can cause a person to wonder: what is the point of it all? Is it that there's no point at all, as many an atheist would claim? Or is it "God works in mysterious ways yada yada yada insert cliched judeo-christian nonsense here"? Or is it that somewhere out there, there is a vast reservoir of consciousness, which you can call God or whatever you want, and from that reservoir bits of consciousness come to earth and are born, in order to accomplish some task?
I don't pretend to have answers to such questions, but I do know that Fisher saved his brother's life, and in doing so, accomplished more of significance in his one month of life than many people will in their entire existences. I wish I had gotten to meet him- I assumed that eventually I would. His passing serves to remind us all that the most important thing of all is spending time with those we care about, because it is not given us to know how much time they or we have left. It's altogether too easy to forget that little lesson in the daily routine of life.
And so, Fisher, I bid you Godspeed, on whatever journey awaits you on the other side. I will look forward to meeting you there someday.
MK's Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Blog:
http://twintotwintransfusion.blogspot.com/
Friday, November 13, 2009
Hey, thanks for coming out!
Jeffrey was in town this past weekend...
I hadn't had a chance to see him since Keiko and I visited from NYC the summer I left. He's busy running his coffee shop in Richmond, which I highly recommend (Crossroads Coffee Shop). We'd been plotting a trip out to CA for him for a while, and finally we managed to engineer it.
Now, Jeffrey is one of my last single friends, so I had an aggressive plan of going out worked out. Thursday night we met up for dinner with my student Tim, and his wife and a couple of friends at an awesome place in Chinatown called R&G lounge. We ate and drank until pretty late, to the point where the only other people left in the place were the wait staff, who were having their own dinner by that point at the table across from ours. We put away several bottles of wine, and fortunately it was a long walk back to the car.
Friday I had to work a little, but then I came home and we plotted out a pub crawl in the Mission district of SF, which is supposed to be one of the up-and-coming-but-still-gritty areas of the city. We drove up to Daly City and then took the BART in the rest of the way, figuring that the BART wait/ride on the way back would be good sobering-up time.
Once in the Mission, we headed up Mission ave and started hitting pubs. The first place, we went to was a real neighborhood dive kind of place, and we had a couple drinks there that were decent, but nothing special. From there, we went to a much fancier place on the next block that looked like it would be a nice date place. Very nice atmosphere, etc. The crowd was a little older. The drinks, however, were still nothing special, just more expensive.
From there, we ended up in a super-crowded place with early 20-somethings. That place had fun energy, and the drinks were the best to that point. We nearly came to blows with some people over seats, which were very hard to come by, but then ended up talking to them for a while. The food looked very good.
From there, we wound up in a place called the Beauty Bar, which is the only place whose name I can remember anymore, although I think Jeffrey has notes written somewhere in his phone. The Beauty Bar had a nice, if small, dance floor and had good music. Also, the Jack and Coke I had was *strong*. At this point, I probably should have started to slow it down a little, but I didn't. Plus, I'd had different drinks in every place, so I had a lot of different kinds of alcohol swimming around in there, plus hadn't really eaten. Not smart.
Anyway, we enjoyed the Beauty Bar- it was a very good time, although I must say that it's not clear where the beauty is, because it wasn't in the decor or in the clientele. But we enjoyed the place anyway.
From there, we went to another place whose name I don't remember, before reaching 16th street, at which point I wanted to head over to the parallel street and work our way back down to the 24th street BART station. At that point we would have made a full circle.
On our way along 16th street, we passed an unmarked door which clearly had the sounds of a club emanating from behind it. Now, being who I am, I couldn't let an unmarked door go unexplored, and that's when I'm sober. By this point, I was fairly drunk, and NO WAY were we going to pass that up. I grabbed Jeffrey and said "WE'RE GOING IN HERE!"
I threw open the door and we stepped in. And everyone sort of stopped and looked at us.
One of the things you learn as you study ecology is that over time, populations in an area will fragment, and the different sub populations will evolve to take advantage of different tiny niches. Thus, as frogs move into an area, there will initially be just the one population, but then a million years later, you'll have 12 different related species of frogs, each of which has adapted itself to one specific niche in the area. The same thing happens with consumer products- for instance, someone invents shampoo, but then 100 years later, you have shampoo for blonds, shampoo for brunettes, shampoo for people with dry hair, shampoo for people with oily hair, etc. A million different types of shampoo, each for some niche in the market.
The same thing happens with human cultures, I think. For instance, take gay culture. In a city like, for instance, Richmond, VA, where the culture is extremely conservative, there are probably at most a couple gay bars, and pretty much anyone who's gay has to go to those few places. And keep it fairly on the DL, since the broader culture is still not very accepting of homosexuality. In other words, gay culture in a place like Richmond is not very well evolved.
Contrast that with a place like SF, which is more or less the global capital of gaydom. In SF, what you find is that gay clubs are all over the place, and as such have evolved into specialties. Like, for instance, this place we'd just walked into, which was clearly a hispanic gay bar.
Everyone looked at us. We looked at them. For a moment, it seemed like even the music had stopped, like you see on TV shows and in the movies. In that moment, I thought, "Oh well, we can't just walk out now."
So we stepped boldly in. And everyone went back to what they were doing.
We bellied up to the bar, where the bartender looked fairly amused to see us. Jeffrey was the only white person in the bar. I figure since I look Hispanic, they gave him a pass, and probably assumed we were, you know, together. I decided I needed a strong drink here, so I order a shot of Patron.
Also not a good decision, since I really needed to be slowing down the pace and the drink strength. But whatever, I had my shot. Immediately, I Mexican dude came over and started chatting me up. His English was limited, but we had a nice conversation for a while, until his friend dragged him away to go play pool. Honestly, I was a bit relieved.
Then a lesbian Chicana came up and we started talking. She explained right up front that she really liked girls, so we hit it off well since we have that in common. We talked for about 15 minutes, and then she went off and I turned to Jeffrey.
Me: "Wow, this is wild. Wasn't expecting this to be a gay bar."
Jeffrey: "Yeah, me neither. By the way, you know I'm gay, right?"
(pause)
Me: "Uh, what?"
Jeffrey: "Yeah, I've been slowly coming out to my friends over the last year or so. That's why i was bummed that I couldn't come out for the dinner party earlier this year. But, I figure there's never going to be a more appropriate time to come out than right now, so there you go. I'm gay."
(pause)
(I grab the last of my Patron and down it.)
Me: "Well, good on ya' for being who you are. Guess that explains why we're still alive in here- I look Hispanic and you're gay. We fit right in."
To be honest, it wasn't really all that surprising. Nacole had called that years ago. But I figured it's Jeffrey's right to be who he is, or to pretend to be whoever he wants, so I never asked or said anything about it, figuring if he had anything to say about it to me he eventually would. I just never would have guessed it would be in a gay Hispanic bar in SF.
(Joel on the phone the next day- "so wait, you were in the gay capital of the world, in a part of the city known for its gay bars, and you went into a bar with an unmarked door? What did you THINK was going to happen??" Me: "Why don't you shut up?")
So we had a nice conversation about what it's like to be gay in Richmond, how it had been coming out to people, etc. Then we finally left and headed to the next place, which was around the corner and which was refreshingly hetero (well, refreshingly for me, anyway). I only remember this place very dimly, and I remember ordering a Bay Breeze on the grounds that I should really stop drinking anyway. I don't remember actually drinking it, but I'm pretty sure I did.
From there, we went back down 16th st, because we were both completely wasted by this point, and we hadn't eaten so we were starving. Right across from the Hispanic gay bar was a taco place, so we went in there and I had an awesome chicken quesadilla while trying to remain seated in my chair, which seemed to be really unstable for some reason. After putting away the quesadilla, we decided that maybe we'd better call it a night, and went down the street to the BART station.
Amazingly, we didn't have to wait long for the BART, which doesn't run so often that late at night, and we got on needing only about 5 stops to get back to Daly City. However, the BART is not real gentle, and after rocking back and forth for a couple stops, we hit the Balboa Park station and I said to Jeffrey "We're getting off here."
Which we did. I collapsed in a heap on the platform, grateful that the platform was moving a lot less than the train had been. Unfortunately, it did not seem to be perfectly still, which is what I *really* needed at that point, and within moments I realized that puking was imminent. I hated the thought of puking all over the platform, so I started crawling for the edge so I could lean over and puke on the tracks. However, on the way there (the 4 feet along the ground that I had to crawl to get to the platform edge), I saw lights in the distance in the tunnel, and in a last brief moment of clear thinking, decided that maybe in my condition, being anywhere near the platform edge was maybe not such a good idea. So, I puked up my guts right there, a couple feet from the platform edge. But it was in clear view, so hopefully no one stepped in it. I feel real bad about that.
Stomach emptied, we got on the next train and made it the last couple of stops. Jeffrey drove us back, with me giving directions in what I guess was coherent enough fashion to get us there. Once home, I said thank you for a most interesting evening, and then went into my bathroom to spend some quality time driving the porcelain bus. And then I went to bed.
Thank god I didn't have to work on Saturday.
Saturday I'd planned another night out, but instead all we did was eat and eventually go see a movie. Neither one of us had the energy for anything else. That afternoon I checked my cell phone, because I learned after the night of Plaid's bachelor party that it's a good idea to check your phone the next day and see what you texted the night before. There were some eyebrow-raising texts from that night, and if I'd known about textsfromlastnight.com back then (thanks JJM for introducing me to that) I definitely would have had some things to submit.
Checking the phone Saturday, it looked pretty quiet, except there appeared to be a call from Alix that apparently I'd taken, but couldn't remember at all. I called her to see...
Me: "Uh, um, did we *talk* last night?"
Alix: "You're a very cheerful drunk, you know that?"
Me: "Uh, what did we talk about?"
Alix: "Why? Are you worried you said something you shouldn't have?"
Me: "What? Uh, no, I.."
Alix: "Ohmygod, you totally think I'm an idiot, and you're worried you finally actually said that to me!"
Me: "Ohmygod, can you stop being so goddamned insecure for 30 seconds and JUST TELL ME what the hell we talked about????"
Alix: "I actually called for some boy advice, which turned out to be very entertaining for me. And you totally think I'm an idiot."
Me: "As soon as my head stops hurting, I am going to kill you."
So we had a very mellow Saturday, which turned out to be exactly what we needed to recover. Here's the sunset:
Sunday I had to work a little in the morning, and then it was time to go to Max's 3rd birthday party. Jeffrey, being a mellow sort, was game to go, largely because I promised another pub crawl afterward. "Just remember there's going to be beer afterward," I said. So we headed over to the "My Gym" for a raucous afternoon of birthday celebration.
I don't know about you, but birthdays today seem to be a much larger production than they ever were when I was a kid. BTW, there's a part of me that can't believe that I write/say things like "Things are so different from the way they were when I was a kid." When did I become someone who says things like that?
Anyway, I don't remember having parties very often, and if I did, a couple people came over for some cake. And that was it.
Nowadays, birthday parties require hiring professional help, like the My Gym, or the Princess Ariel impersonator that Em had at her last birthday party. And there are lots of Activities, and birthday rides on the sled while all the kids sing happy birthday. And a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls. A zip-line! I want a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls for my 38th birthday, goddammit. But it was fun to see Max having such a good time. Jeffrey weathered it all well, and I got to catch up with some of Laura's family, which was nice.
After the party, which included our getting to take home 2 extra-large pizzas that turned out to be extra (they ended up feeding me for an entire week), Jeffrey and I headed up to the city for our second pub crawl, this time in North Beach.
This time, we decided to be a lot smarter about our pub crawling. For instance, we decided to hold the pacing to one place per hour, and no more than 2 drinks per place. Plus, we decided to allow for eating and drinking water along the way. As a consequence, I remember a lot more about the places we went, and I remember some of the conversations I had with people at the various bars we hit. They were all reasonably nice neighborhood bars; by the time we got through 5 of them, it was already getting close to midnight, and we had to drive back, and the rest of the places were on Broadway in the red light district, so we opted to save that stretch for another day. Best decision ever, especially considering I actually had to be at work in the morning.
Thus, the next morning I went to work- sadly, I had to work a lot of the day, but in the evening we went to Little Sheep Hot Pot, which is the best hotpot ever. And we got to play pool for a couple of hours too. Then I had to take Jeffrey to the airport, to bid him farewell. It was a great trip, and it was fun to be out and about- since virtually all my local friends are married with children, it's rare that I end up going out like that. And it was a good reminder that I am not 22 anymore, and I actually do need to manage how I drink if I want to be able to function in the slightest the next day.
But eh, I've always been a hardway learner. It's just how I'm wired...
I hadn't had a chance to see him since Keiko and I visited from NYC the summer I left. He's busy running his coffee shop in Richmond, which I highly recommend (Crossroads Coffee Shop). We'd been plotting a trip out to CA for him for a while, and finally we managed to engineer it.
Now, Jeffrey is one of my last single friends, so I had an aggressive plan of going out worked out. Thursday night we met up for dinner with my student Tim, and his wife and a couple of friends at an awesome place in Chinatown called R&G lounge. We ate and drank until pretty late, to the point where the only other people left in the place were the wait staff, who were having their own dinner by that point at the table across from ours. We put away several bottles of wine, and fortunately it was a long walk back to the car.
Friday I had to work a little, but then I came home and we plotted out a pub crawl in the Mission district of SF, which is supposed to be one of the up-and-coming-but-still-gritty areas of the city. We drove up to Daly City and then took the BART in the rest of the way, figuring that the BART wait/ride on the way back would be good sobering-up time.
Once in the Mission, we headed up Mission ave and started hitting pubs. The first place, we went to was a real neighborhood dive kind of place, and we had a couple drinks there that were decent, but nothing special. From there, we went to a much fancier place on the next block that looked like it would be a nice date place. Very nice atmosphere, etc. The crowd was a little older. The drinks, however, were still nothing special, just more expensive.
From there, we ended up in a super-crowded place with early 20-somethings. That place had fun energy, and the drinks were the best to that point. We nearly came to blows with some people over seats, which were very hard to come by, but then ended up talking to them for a while. The food looked very good.
From there, we wound up in a place called the Beauty Bar, which is the only place whose name I can remember anymore, although I think Jeffrey has notes written somewhere in his phone. The Beauty Bar had a nice, if small, dance floor and had good music. Also, the Jack and Coke I had was *strong*. At this point, I probably should have started to slow it down a little, but I didn't. Plus, I'd had different drinks in every place, so I had a lot of different kinds of alcohol swimming around in there, plus hadn't really eaten. Not smart.
Anyway, we enjoyed the Beauty Bar- it was a very good time, although I must say that it's not clear where the beauty is, because it wasn't in the decor or in the clientele. But we enjoyed the place anyway.
From there, we went to another place whose name I don't remember, before reaching 16th street, at which point I wanted to head over to the parallel street and work our way back down to the 24th street BART station. At that point we would have made a full circle.
On our way along 16th street, we passed an unmarked door which clearly had the sounds of a club emanating from behind it. Now, being who I am, I couldn't let an unmarked door go unexplored, and that's when I'm sober. By this point, I was fairly drunk, and NO WAY were we going to pass that up. I grabbed Jeffrey and said "WE'RE GOING IN HERE!"
I threw open the door and we stepped in. And everyone sort of stopped and looked at us.
One of the things you learn as you study ecology is that over time, populations in an area will fragment, and the different sub populations will evolve to take advantage of different tiny niches. Thus, as frogs move into an area, there will initially be just the one population, but then a million years later, you'll have 12 different related species of frogs, each of which has adapted itself to one specific niche in the area. The same thing happens with consumer products- for instance, someone invents shampoo, but then 100 years later, you have shampoo for blonds, shampoo for brunettes, shampoo for people with dry hair, shampoo for people with oily hair, etc. A million different types of shampoo, each for some niche in the market.
The same thing happens with human cultures, I think. For instance, take gay culture. In a city like, for instance, Richmond, VA, where the culture is extremely conservative, there are probably at most a couple gay bars, and pretty much anyone who's gay has to go to those few places. And keep it fairly on the DL, since the broader culture is still not very accepting of homosexuality. In other words, gay culture in a place like Richmond is not very well evolved.
Contrast that with a place like SF, which is more or less the global capital of gaydom. In SF, what you find is that gay clubs are all over the place, and as such have evolved into specialties. Like, for instance, this place we'd just walked into, which was clearly a hispanic gay bar.
Everyone looked at us. We looked at them. For a moment, it seemed like even the music had stopped, like you see on TV shows and in the movies. In that moment, I thought, "Oh well, we can't just walk out now."
So we stepped boldly in. And everyone went back to what they were doing.
We bellied up to the bar, where the bartender looked fairly amused to see us. Jeffrey was the only white person in the bar. I figure since I look Hispanic, they gave him a pass, and probably assumed we were, you know, together. I decided I needed a strong drink here, so I order a shot of Patron.
Also not a good decision, since I really needed to be slowing down the pace and the drink strength. But whatever, I had my shot. Immediately, I Mexican dude came over and started chatting me up. His English was limited, but we had a nice conversation for a while, until his friend dragged him away to go play pool. Honestly, I was a bit relieved.
Then a lesbian Chicana came up and we started talking. She explained right up front that she really liked girls, so we hit it off well since we have that in common. We talked for about 15 minutes, and then she went off and I turned to Jeffrey.
Me: "Wow, this is wild. Wasn't expecting this to be a gay bar."
Jeffrey: "Yeah, me neither. By the way, you know I'm gay, right?"
(pause)
Me: "Uh, what?"
Jeffrey: "Yeah, I've been slowly coming out to my friends over the last year or so. That's why i was bummed that I couldn't come out for the dinner party earlier this year. But, I figure there's never going to be a more appropriate time to come out than right now, so there you go. I'm gay."
(pause)
(I grab the last of my Patron and down it.)
Me: "Well, good on ya' for being who you are. Guess that explains why we're still alive in here- I look Hispanic and you're gay. We fit right in."
To be honest, it wasn't really all that surprising. Nacole had called that years ago. But I figured it's Jeffrey's right to be who he is, or to pretend to be whoever he wants, so I never asked or said anything about it, figuring if he had anything to say about it to me he eventually would. I just never would have guessed it would be in a gay Hispanic bar in SF.
(Joel on the phone the next day- "so wait, you were in the gay capital of the world, in a part of the city known for its gay bars, and you went into a bar with an unmarked door? What did you THINK was going to happen??" Me: "Why don't you shut up?")
So we had a nice conversation about what it's like to be gay in Richmond, how it had been coming out to people, etc. Then we finally left and headed to the next place, which was around the corner and which was refreshingly hetero (well, refreshingly for me, anyway). I only remember this place very dimly, and I remember ordering a Bay Breeze on the grounds that I should really stop drinking anyway. I don't remember actually drinking it, but I'm pretty sure I did.
From there, we went back down 16th st, because we were both completely wasted by this point, and we hadn't eaten so we were starving. Right across from the Hispanic gay bar was a taco place, so we went in there and I had an awesome chicken quesadilla while trying to remain seated in my chair, which seemed to be really unstable for some reason. After putting away the quesadilla, we decided that maybe we'd better call it a night, and went down the street to the BART station.
Amazingly, we didn't have to wait long for the BART, which doesn't run so often that late at night, and we got on needing only about 5 stops to get back to Daly City. However, the BART is not real gentle, and after rocking back and forth for a couple stops, we hit the Balboa Park station and I said to Jeffrey "We're getting off here."
Which we did. I collapsed in a heap on the platform, grateful that the platform was moving a lot less than the train had been. Unfortunately, it did not seem to be perfectly still, which is what I *really* needed at that point, and within moments I realized that puking was imminent. I hated the thought of puking all over the platform, so I started crawling for the edge so I could lean over and puke on the tracks. However, on the way there (the 4 feet along the ground that I had to crawl to get to the platform edge), I saw lights in the distance in the tunnel, and in a last brief moment of clear thinking, decided that maybe in my condition, being anywhere near the platform edge was maybe not such a good idea. So, I puked up my guts right there, a couple feet from the platform edge. But it was in clear view, so hopefully no one stepped in it. I feel real bad about that.
Stomach emptied, we got on the next train and made it the last couple of stops. Jeffrey drove us back, with me giving directions in what I guess was coherent enough fashion to get us there. Once home, I said thank you for a most interesting evening, and then went into my bathroom to spend some quality time driving the porcelain bus. And then I went to bed.
Thank god I didn't have to work on Saturday.
Saturday I'd planned another night out, but instead all we did was eat and eventually go see a movie. Neither one of us had the energy for anything else. That afternoon I checked my cell phone, because I learned after the night of Plaid's bachelor party that it's a good idea to check your phone the next day and see what you texted the night before. There were some eyebrow-raising texts from that night, and if I'd known about textsfromlastnight.com back then (thanks JJM for introducing me to that) I definitely would have had some things to submit.
Checking the phone Saturday, it looked pretty quiet, except there appeared to be a call from Alix that apparently I'd taken, but couldn't remember at all. I called her to see...
Me: "Uh, um, did we *talk* last night?"
Alix: "You're a very cheerful drunk, you know that?"
Me: "Uh, what did we talk about?"
Alix: "Why? Are you worried you said something you shouldn't have?"
Me: "What? Uh, no, I.."
Alix: "Ohmygod, you totally think I'm an idiot, and you're worried you finally actually said that to me!"
Me: "Ohmygod, can you stop being so goddamned insecure for 30 seconds and JUST TELL ME what the hell we talked about????"
Alix: "I actually called for some boy advice, which turned out to be very entertaining for me. And you totally think I'm an idiot."
Me: "As soon as my head stops hurting, I am going to kill you."
So we had a very mellow Saturday, which turned out to be exactly what we needed to recover. Here's the sunset:
Sunday I had to work a little in the morning, and then it was time to go to Max's 3rd birthday party. Jeffrey, being a mellow sort, was game to go, largely because I promised another pub crawl afterward. "Just remember there's going to be beer afterward," I said. So we headed over to the "My Gym" for a raucous afternoon of birthday celebration.
I don't know about you, but birthdays today seem to be a much larger production than they ever were when I was a kid. BTW, there's a part of me that can't believe that I write/say things like "Things are so different from the way they were when I was a kid." When did I become someone who says things like that?
Anyway, I don't remember having parties very often, and if I did, a couple people came over for some cake. And that was it.
Nowadays, birthday parties require hiring professional help, like the My Gym, or the Princess Ariel impersonator that Em had at her last birthday party. And there are lots of Activities, and birthday rides on the sled while all the kids sing happy birthday. And a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls. A zip-line! I want a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls for my 38th birthday, goddammit. But it was fun to see Max having such a good time. Jeffrey weathered it all well, and I got to catch up with some of Laura's family, which was nice.
After the party, which included our getting to take home 2 extra-large pizzas that turned out to be extra (they ended up feeding me for an entire week), Jeffrey and I headed up to the city for our second pub crawl, this time in North Beach.
This time, we decided to be a lot smarter about our pub crawling. For instance, we decided to hold the pacing to one place per hour, and no more than 2 drinks per place. Plus, we decided to allow for eating and drinking water along the way. As a consequence, I remember a lot more about the places we went, and I remember some of the conversations I had with people at the various bars we hit. They were all reasonably nice neighborhood bars; by the time we got through 5 of them, it was already getting close to midnight, and we had to drive back, and the rest of the places were on Broadway in the red light district, so we opted to save that stretch for another day. Best decision ever, especially considering I actually had to be at work in the morning.
Thus, the next morning I went to work- sadly, I had to work a lot of the day, but in the evening we went to Little Sheep Hot Pot, which is the best hotpot ever. And we got to play pool for a couple of hours too. Then I had to take Jeffrey to the airport, to bid him farewell. It was a great trip, and it was fun to be out and about- since virtually all my local friends are married with children, it's rare that I end up going out like that. And it was a good reminder that I am not 22 anymore, and I actually do need to manage how I drink if I want to be able to function in the slightest the next day.
But eh, I've always been a hardway learner. It's just how I'm wired...
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