14 August 2001

Love is like a sweepstakes mailer.  Everyone wants to believe they can win the grand prize, even though even the most worthless sap knows this is complete bullshit.

He arrived at my door like the promise of ten million dollars:  John the Truck Driver.  Tall and broad, with a strong face that spent hours staring out of a windshield at places in America I’d rather not think about.  He was the perfect combination:  nice to look at, and frequently out of town. 

And John the Truck Driver was as butch as the day is long.  So butch he could wear flannel shirts anytime he chose, which was something I was convinced only lesbians could do.  And he could fix cars, something else I was convinced only lesbians could do.  (I know some straight men claim to have this ability, but when you really need your car fixed, count on the chick in the flannel shirt with greasy nails.  Guaranteed, every time.)

And so, there he was, John the Truck Driver.  We met via a friend. (“You’ll really like this one!”)  Two phone calls and a Friday night later, he stands at my door, while downstairs on the street his Ford pickup, the size of a motorhome, blocks traffic in both directions.  “Ah, it’ll be all right,” he says with a smile.  “It’ll take ‘em awhile to find a tow truck big enough to move it.”  Never in my life did I believe I would be able to look into second story apartments while riding in the passenger seat.  I have a firm rule about dating men who drive SUVs.  I spent several minutes deciding if this vehicle was an exception. 

We went to the East Bay.  Not because the cuisine was better, because we had heard of some fabulous new place to eat, nor due to the fact I was so poor I could barely afford to change the cat litter.  No, we went because it was the closest place John the Truck Driver could park.

We ate.  John talked.  And talked.  And talked.  And talked.  When I was listening this is what I heard:

“..what I really want is something like a traditional marriage.  I want someone to stay at home while I’m on the road.  Someone I can call and I know they’ll be there.  Someone who’ll cook for me when I’m home, but someone who isn’t like one of those queens.  I want a man, a man who knows the meaning of marriage.  I want a commitment.  I don’t want some nelly queen who will be running around with other fags while I’m out on the road providing a living.  No, I want a real steady relationship...”

And when I wasn’t listening, I was looking over John the Truck Driver’s should at the two men dining in the next booth.  I tried not to look too bored with the monologue on gay marriage and the stay-at-home existence John the Truck Driver promised his potential mate.

“...and I don’t want to spend my days in the ‘gay community’ either....What the hell are you looking at?” John the Truck Driver whirled around in his seat to see what was behind him.  Like deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck, the two men at the table froze as he stared at them.

John the Truck Driver stood up, grabbed the collar of the man nearest him and pulled him over to our table.  With a single motion of his arm, he tossed the man into the seat across from me.

“If the two of you would rather have dinner together, then be my guest!”  He turned and glared at me.  “Some men would be happy to have the opportunity to meet someone like me and have the decency not to be eye fucking the person at the next table!”

And then he left. 

Sometimes ordinary junk mail can look like sweepstakes mailers.  And then again, most sweepstakes mailers are just ordinary junk mail.

15 August 2001

Fuck positive thinking.

People who spew positive thinking don’t live in my neighborhood.  They don’t wake up, open a window and guess the day’s weather by the volume of piss odor rising from the street five floors below.  They don’t maneuver to avoid piles of trash and little mounds of feces on the way to the bus.  They don’t hear “Need a date, honey?” from the women standing on the corners.  And they probably don’t fall asleep at night to the serenade of drugs dealers whistling to potential clients.

Sometimes I tell my friends that it’s hard to be liberal when you live in this place.

Just blocks from the Disney-esque Union Square, the picture-esque cable car lines, and the hordes of tourists buying as much Gap, Macy’s and Virgin merchandise as their 737s can carry back to Minnesota, is a cesspool of human decay that even the police avoid Every now and then you see tourists wander through, looking lost.  Their faces say:  Are we still in San Francisco?

When I first moved to this neighborhood, I tried to think positively.  I’ll learn the names of the hookers, I thought.  I’ll say hello to them on the way to the gym.  My friends will be amazed that I know the hookers.  How liberal is that?

That fantasy ended when I was arrested for soliciting.  Apparently answering:  “Hey honey, need a date?” with “Sure, baby, what’s your name?” is evidence enough for the vice unit to swoop in and scoop you off the street.  Never mind that in your entire life the thought of sex with a woman makes you slightly nauseous, you sir were soliciting that undercover police woman.

Positive think your way out of a $200 fine.

Next time I walk down the street:  “Hey honey, need a date?”  I say nothing.  “Hey you fucking freak, I’m talking to you!  What, you some kind of fag?” 

Spray paint is illegal for minors, so kids in this neighborhood use shoe shine bottles filled with paint.  Little kids – the kind that should be riding trikes and playing with GI Joe – travel in packs, baggy pants filled with paint.  See an empty wall?  Mark it.  See a marked wall?  Mark it.  Someone have something to say?  Threaten them with a razor blade.

One morning, as I am returning from the gym, there is a dead body in a pool of blood on the sidewalk across from my building.  The police have arrived and yellow tape circles the area.  There’s no need to hurry, the body is just cooling.  So the police stand around and have coffee.  The body lays directly in front of the tiny street level apartment the police use for prostitution stings. 

Two blocks away, the Kozmo.com sign hangs outside their empty warehouse.  With the exception of the increased number of Mercedes and Jaguars parking in alleys with the working girls, this was the closest the ten year dot com boom came to this neighborhood. 

I love San Francisco.  Despite it’s cracked streets, career-criminal politicians, failing water and sewer systems, it is still the best city I’ve ever lived in.  But, I hate this neighborhood.  It’s the nasty scar you try and hide from the world with a turtleneck sweater.  It’s the one part of your being you never tell your lover about because you know they’ll leave you. 

I watch clumps of teenagers loitering on the street below and plot my escape.
 

29 August 2001

Do you ever think something is going to be fun, an adventure, and then just as you start it, realize that you were terribly, horribly wrong?  And have you ever continued onward, even after you realized you were terribly, terribly wrong?  And, have you then realized that you have gone on with it so long that there is no turning back and you will have to see it to it’s completion?

I look at the clock above the ticket counter and realize I have reached the point of no return.  I’m at the point where going back is no longer an option and I have to see this through.  Even though I may die of tuberculosis before it is over.

Leo is asleep, leaning against me with his head on my shoulder and cushioned only by a folded sweatshirt.  It’s 1 AM.  I’m tired, my eyes want to close, but I dare not fall asleep.  One of us has to stay awake.  I’d watch the little black-and-white television attached to the armrest of my chair, but I have no more quarters and I dread what would be on at this time of night.

In my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time, or at least a reasonable idea, I suppose.  A reasonable idea if I was entirely and completely insane.  If I drank heavily or took drugs I might have an excuse.  Maybe if I had a split personality or manic depression, those might be excuses.  I have no excuse.  It was a terrible idea.  And now I have no choice but to see it through.

Leo moves a bit in his sleep and I turn my head to touch his hair with my nose.  At least I’m not alone in this. 

Fluorescent light is the light of poor people.  Government offices, walk in medical clinics, cheap studios in run down buildings, crappy bars with cigarette-pocked pool tables all are lit with this most-artificial-of-all light.  And bus stations.  

Yes, bus stations.  Dreary, tile floored, drop ceiling, smoke stained rooms filled with fluorescent light bouncing off of plastic seats, vending machine glass and metal locker doors.  It saturates the skin of the people sleeping in piles and clumps and turns them green.  It shutters and flickers and reverberates like car alarms and jackhammers and people screaming in a visual soundscape.   

And I sit here, unable, unwilling to close my eyes to it.  I’m exhausted.  I’d like to sleep but I cannot.  Not here, not in this place of overflowing ashtrays and flickering fluorescent tubes where someone might see me sleeping and decide to walk away with my baggage, my wallet or just stick a knife in the back of my head for no good reason other than I was just there.

Maybe I’m a bit paranoid.  Maybe I’m talking like a madman.  Maybe the people here aren’t dangerous, they’re just poor and haven’t washed in several days.  But, you ride a bus for two days and see how you feel.  You spend two days eating from vending machines and diners coated with more grease than a diesel engine and see what your brain begins to do.  You sit in a hard plastic chair with a television bolted to the armrest with a heavy-duty metal plate over the coin slot to protect it from the violence in the room and see what you begin to think about.  There is a reason the vending machines have iron grills over their glass fronts, that the lockers have doors that are missing and the clerk sits behind bullet proof glass.  There are reasons for all of these things, and those reasons become the many reasons I stay awake.  

I stay awake and wait for the clock on the wall to reach 6 AM.  I stay awake and wait for the clerk to point to one of the doors on the far wall that are marked by number like you would put on a mailbox.  I stay awake and wait for him to say “Gate number 4” or Gate number 5”, as if pointing us to a waiting aircraft.  I stay awake and wait, as if on the top of a building in Hanoi, waiting for the helicopter to come and lift me away and as long as I keep staring at the sky I will know when it is coming.

Leo shifts again.  He is smiling in his sleep.  I envy his sleep. 

I can almost hear the helicopter blades.  It’s in the distance, but I know it’s coming.  I was never in Hanoi, I wasn’t even born then.  But I’ve seen the films on television.  I can imagine.  It must feel like this.

Beyond the doors with the mailbox numbers I see the shining buses in rows outside, little pools of grease underneath them.  Some other kind of light, similar to fluorescent but not the same, reflects on the buses and the oil.  I bet it stinks out there, the buses with their leaking oil and their septic tanks overflowing.

The clock says 1:05 AM, and no one else here is moving.  Clumps and lumps of people in the chairs, sleeping.  I am the only one awake.  I am the only one wondering how I came to be here, knowing I made the decision to be here, and understanding how horribly wrong a decision it was.
 
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