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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