My friend David is a slumlord.

“Do you think everyone has a twin?” David says looking up from the newspaper.

“Huh?” I reply, not quite comprehending this sudden interruption of my daydream.

“Do you think everyone has a twin?”  He repeated.  “I read somewhere that everyone has a twin.”

“You mean someone who looks just like you?”  I say, still somewhat annoyed by his intrusion between myself and the boy from the massage ad in the part of the paper I was reading.  “Like those talk shows with celebrity look-alike contests?”

“Yeah,” said David.  “Like that.  Do you suppose there is someone out there who looks enough like me that people might think he IS me?”

“I suppose so,” I say, not really paying attention and hoping my day dream can return. 

David will tell you he is “an owner of three affordable living communities.”  I think some of his Log-Cabin friends pretend to buy that one, mostly because they don’t want anyone peaking behind the cliches they use to hide their own garbage.

I’ve driven by David’s buildings, but I’ve never been in, usually because my shots weren’t up to date. China went in once.

“It was fucking unbelievable,” she said as she wiped her oily hands on a rag and leaning back against her workbench.  “The fucking rats were so big that the fourth floor drug dealer’s pit bull was afraid of them!  I mean, shit, that fucking place had no fucking lights in the fucking hallway – just empty sockets where the goddamn bulbs used to be!  And mother fucking Jesus, that place stank!  Piss, shit, and whatever fucking else humans and fucking animals can fucking excrete!  Jesus!.” 

I sometime fantasize China was a homecoming queen. 

You can ask, but David won’t ever take you to his buildings.  “They’re not tourist spots,” he says.

“Reality tours are big now, David,” I say.  “People pay thousands to go to Bosnia and those little war-torn African nations that change their names every time a new strong man takes over.  You could make some extra money here.”

For a moment I think he ponders this possibility before he rolls his eyes and gives me a look.

I once asked David why he doesn’t fix his buildings up, make them respectable.  “Hey,” he said, “I provide a valuable resource for these people.  If those people want something better, then they can just work a little harder, make a little more money and move elsewhere. “

Of course, like all good landlords, David doesn’t work at all, and hasn’t in seven years.  Thanks to an unfortunate work-related incident that somehow involved being stuck in an elevator with two obese lesbians for twelve hours and a really good lawyer, David ended up with enough money to buy three tenements and leave his administrative assistant position.  David doesn’t talk about this period of his life very much and gives you a look should you dare mention it out loud.

“I wonder if I could run an ad to find my twin,” David says. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said, finely giving up hope of returning to my fantasy.

“I’m just saying I think it would be a good idea to find my twin,” he said.

“What,” I snapped.  “So that you can have someone else go live in your buildings when the court finds you guilty of being a slumlord and orders YOU to live there?”

He grins with a big evil Log-Cabin grin.

8 November 2000

I told my friend China she is a cliché.

“No one is going to believe me when I write about you,” I said.  “A lesbian motorcycle mechanic named China who thinks fuck is a noun, a verb, an adjective and an adverb.  It’s a cliché that’s been done, and done and done.”

“Fuck you,” she says, without looking up from under the nearly perfect, but ancient Honda she is working on.  It probably belongs to one of the dot com kids.

“Maybe you should consider seeing a therapist about this rage thing you have going on,” I reply, attempting to look casually at a Snap-On calendar on the shop wall.

She drops the wrench, stands up and stares at me.  “Maybe you should fucking see your therapist about why you feel the goddamn fucking need to fucking comment about my fucking rage, motherfucker.  And while you’re fucking there, why don’t you fucking tell him about that fucking infantile fantasy you have about fucking converting me into a goddamn worthless fucking prom queen.”

She smiles and bends back down to pick up the wrench.

“Not a FUCKING prom queen, it’s a FUCKING home coming queen – the girl that gets to ride out on the field with the quarter back,” I said.  Although, in my high school, the home coming queen and the prom queen were, indeed, the same girl.  I suspected this may have been one of the twelve universal truth:  the most popular girl is always the most popular girl.

“Yeah, what fucking ever,” China says.  “Take it to your therapist.  And hand me that nine sixteenths wrench.”

“Have you ever fucked a home coming queen?” I say. 

She looks up at me without lifting her head. 

“No, but I’m fucking certain you queens fucked during homecoming,” she said.

I watch as she tightens something and then swears when it breaks.

“Besides, motherfucker, you should be fucking happy you have such fucking interesting friends like me to write about in the fucking goddamn first place.”

9 November 2000

“Look at all these tourists.”

Jerry and I sat in Union Square and watched them stream by.  You could tell the tourists from the locals – the tourists were wearing tennis shoes. There were a few locals without any shoes at all, but it wouldn’t be long before the police came and moved them away.

“You know, I think Disney owns this part of San Francisco,” Jerry said.  “They’ve secretly remodeled it into an imitation San Francisco right here in the middle of San Francisco.”

“Hmmm…” I say.  I think I may have a crush on Jerry. 

“Outside of Union Square, what do you smell when you stand on almost any street corner in this city?” Jerry asks, watching a blond midwestern teenage boy walking by with his parents. 

“Sewer?” 

“That’s right, you smell the sewer,” Jerry replied, still watching the teenage boy.  “But not here.”

I think he might be right.  About Disney owning Union Square, that is. 

I wish Jerry wasn’t dating my best friend, because I’d sure like to sleep with Jerry.  I lean a little closer and hope he doesn’t get upset.

14 November 2000

When ranches become too expensive, communes move into two bedroom flats.

China is in love with Mia.  China and Mia live with Marcia, Darcy, Megan and Rita, although Rita used to be named Cheryl, until she discovered a great-grandmother was Latin, but that is another tale.

China, Mia, Marcia, Darcy, Megan and Rita all live together in a two bedroom flat in the Tenderloin.  Or at least that is what the lease says.  I’m told the parlor has been converted into a third bedroom, but I’m not allowed in to see it. 

And no other man can either. 

China was living in the Haight, renting the one of the most fabulous apartments I have ever seen.  A corner unit with a turret, it poked out over the street six floors up. In the evenings, we would sit, listen to jazz, and smoke joints, watching the smoke curl out the windows over the street made famous in the Summer of Love.

Then China said:  “I’m fucking in love.”

I don’t understand lesbians.  One day they’re single.  The next, they are in love.  With gay men, it takes at least two dates.  And I understand from straight people that, unless one partner has serious abandonment issues, it takes much longer to even get laid.

Suddenly, China moves from Fabulous Haight Place to Tenderloin Commune.  Number one commune rule:  No males allowed.  No human males.  No feline males.  No canine males.  No hamster males.  I think even the cockroaches have to be female or they get turned away at the door of the roach motel.

When the refrigerator failed, they refused entrance to the men delivering the new unit.  No males allowed.  The landlord was stuck deciding whether or not to hire female movers or deal with screaming lesbians drinking sour milk.  (“If they are real lesbians, can’t they just fix it?” the exasperated landlord asked me one day when I waited downstairs for China.  She overheard him and used it as an excuse to withhold a month’s rent. )

Aside from the occasional screaming fights (“That fucking, goddamn bitch Rita thinks her mother fucking shit doesn’t stink,” China repeated on numerous occasions), the jealous rages and the passive-aggressive silent-treatment sessions, life in the commune was blissful.  Or at least the rent was low enough that no one wanted to move out.

“We’re going to have a fucking baby,” China said over a Kawasaki with a clogged carburetor.  The line was delivered with some enthusiasm, so it was difficult to determine if this was a blessed event or a cursed one.

“We?” I asked.

“Fucking Darcy, that fat bitch.  Couldn’t tell she was fucking pregnant until all the goddamn weight gain showed up right in the middle.”  China made a motion to her abdomen.  “Turns out she was fucking fucking her old fucking boyfriend.  Jesus.”

I wasn’t quite sure whether Darcy was in love with Marcia, Megan or Rita, so I dared not ask how her significant other took the news.

“Where do you want to fucking eat lunch?”  China said.  And the conversation was over.

Then three months later a son was born.

And all hell broke loose…..

15 November 2000

Saddam was wrong.  The Mother of All Wars is Darcy.

I wasn’t there, although from a mile a way, I think I heard the sirens. 

“You can’t fucking believe it,” China said, sucking in her cigarette and blowing out a dagger of smoke.  “You just can’t fucking believe it!  Not one hour, not one mother fucking hour of sleep all fucking night long!”

“First, they fucking call me at work!  ‘It’s a boy!  It’s a boy! It’s a boy!’  Fucking all right already!  I got it, it’s a fucking boy!  What’s the deal.  Then I get it….it’s a fucking boy!”

She looks at me and points with the cigarette.

“You know, when I met Mia, I fucking fell in love with that bitch.  Loved every fucking piece of her.  She asked me to move in, I thought, fucking yeah, I’ll move in.  I fucking loved the idea of being with her, fucking all night fucking long.”

I almost asked if she meant fucking all night long, or that the night was fucking long, but I wasn’t sure this was the time.

“All night long, these bitches go at it,” she says.  “’What the fuck was she thinking having a fucking kid?’ ‘What the fuck was she thinking fucking a MAN?!’ ‘Fucking bitch, fuck off!’ ‘Well, it fucking can’t stay here!’ ‘You better fucking start looking for a new fucking place to stay, ‘cause it’s her fucking child and she’s fucking keeping it.’ ‘I’m fucking leaving.’ ‘Go right the fuck ahead!’.”

“So now, we’ve got two dykes fucking saying the baby is coming and staying.  We’ve got two fucking dykes saying the fucking baby can’t come and fucking stay.  We’ve got two more mother fucking dykes, of which I am one, that fucking don’t give a motherfucking rats ass about all this anti-male bullshit, especially when it’s fucking too fucking young to know that the fuck it’s fuckstick is for!  And maybe, maybe fucking most important, is we have a fucking total of six fucking dykes without enough fucking money to afford to live anywhere else in this crazy fucking city and no fucking nursery for this child.”

And she slammed her cigarette into the ashtray.

“Well, you can’t fucking move in here,” I said.

“Fuck,” she said.