I forgot to wear flowers in my hair for the gentle people

November 23, 2005 - 1:48 a.m.

A couple of Thursdays ago I got a phone call from my boyfriend at 9:00 am and he said, “Do you want to go to San Francisco this weekend?”

Me, with my head up my ass, wholly unprepared for the talk-talk: “Uhh…” I was sitting at my desk, one hand in my mouth getting chewed on, the other hand holding a snotty tissue, my eyes glazed over and staring at something on the internet.

“Can you get Monday and Tuesday off? I was just thinking that we could go to San Francisco for the weekend, to get away, and there’s a flight that’s wide open and we would leave Saturday morning early and come back on Tuesday do you think you can get the days off if not it’s no big deal we can do it another time or even another place it doesn’t have to be San Francisco, if you don’t want to go there I mean we don’t have to go if you can’t get the days off it’s no big deal.”

It was like he almost talked himself out of it in that one sentence.

“Uh, no! I mean yeah! Yeah I want to go!”

T-Minus: 46 hours to gain permission and prepare for weekend in San Fran, minus 22 hours of job time, 16 hours of sleep time, that leaves me with 8 total hours to run errands, shave legs, get cash, pluck eyebrows, prepare/charge digital camera, apply fake tan, wash clothes, pack, check weekend weather, exorcise my fear of fags and bridges, daydream about seafood and finish eating my hand. And then I had to make a birthday gift for my mama. Pshew!

Lord knows I love a challenge.

And then my pop got hit by a car.

I was sitting at work when I got “the call” that my dad was in the emergency room. Some guy hit him while he was out riding his bike on a country road. Hit him and broke his femur and hip in three places and he flew over the handle bars, landing on the same hip and sliding sideways down the road. Then the guy drove away and left the old man in the street. An elderly man! He’s old enough to get 10% off chili at Wendy’s, people!

Luckily the next car that came by saw him as he crab-walked off the road. A few people stopped and helped, which is lucky because the man is so skinny he could have froze to death in a matter of hours.

Everyone had their cell phones turned off in the ER so I had no idea what the prognosis was. Loss of head? Loss of marbles? Christopher Reeve Syndrome?

*guilt*

*worry*

I’m supposed to leave on this trip in a matter of hours. I’m stuck at work. My dad might be headless.

After fretting for hours, I finally got a call from my mama who told me that the doctors cannot set his bones until his flesh wounds heal due to risk of infection. Result: he will be lying in bed with broken bones and a morphine drip for a week. I got his blessing to go on my trip and with the insistence of my mom and sister, I reluctantly went. Albeit with a big neon sign floating above my head that read BAD DAUGHTER.

Everything went smoothly, we got a hotel near Union Square and set off to find a tour of the city. You may scoff at the guided tour because you don’t like old people, or maybe you just don’t like to learn. But I must tell you, that if you want an extremely thorough and relatively entertaining look at your vacation city, you must go find one of those coach buses full of fogeys. Then when you climb on you can feel all smug and superior for still being young and so on.

The pilot thought it would be the best idea to take a city tour as soon as we got there, and then we would know which areas we would want to re-explore later. There was some confusion as to which tour group and bus we belonged to but eventually we were on our way…swiftly heading out of the city and up the mountain roads. Next stop – The Redwood Forest! We were on the wrong bus, of course – the Muir Woods Tour. Oops. No problem though, as I was thrilled to visit the redwoods, and I mean th-th-th-thrilled.

So we spent the day in the woods with the fogeys, then to Sausalito, which was a bit of a waste of time as it seemed to be little more than a suburb with rich folks and yachts.

We honestly scoured the whole city from morning to night, and we saw every single neighborhood, even the financial district, and took all the public transportation, including the Cable car, the F Train, the bus, and the BART!! And cabs. What a fucking WONDER of a city, so efficient, with a means of transport always steps away, taking you exactly where you want to go, directly, without major transfers or rigmarole.

Coit Tower, Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, Twin Peaks, The Presidio, Castro, Chinatown, Japantown, Haight-Ashbury, Marina, Victorian homes, Ghirardelli, City Hall - we saw all of these things.

I ate delectable clam chowder and shed tears into my sourdough bread soup bowl. And I have hated clam chowder my whole life. And sushi and swordfish, yum! And we watched the sea lions playing by the piers for hours and I *heart* them! Bark Bark Bark! Big stupid fatties, all rolling around and wrastlin’ with one another.

It was nothing like I expected and everything I DIDN’T expect.

More than I expected:

Drug addicts. Meaning: Not just street people or panhandlers, but I have never seen so many people who are CLEARLY tweaked out, losing their shit, hallucinating, with physical symptoms such as sweating, twitching and fucked up eyes. I know metal illness and I know homelessness and this it was NOT.

Wheelchairs. Like everywhere. I cannot explain, but like 10% of their population is paraplegic.

Less than I expected:

Gay folks. I thought it would be like 2 out 3 people are gay. Instead, it seemed just a little more gay than where I live, though there was a disproportionate amount of men with MUSTACHES – Why hasn’t anyone told them what’s up?

Hippies. None, not even Neo-Hippies, Dave Matthews fans, Phisheads whatever. See ‘drug addicts’ above.

Didn’t expect that at all:

How much I would love that city. I mean yeah, everyone says good things about San Francisco, as they do about NYC, Seattle, Austin and so on, and most likely anyone would like San Fran that visited there, but I…fell in love with it. It was so much more than I ever imagined it could be.

It felt like a small town, the air is clean, the streets are clean, vegetables come with every meal you order, people are happy and active outdoors, and people are NICE. There isn’t a traffic congestion problem and the city provides cheap and free parking lots. They do things with crepes and bubble tea that I could never have dreamed.

And I never thought I could understand the outrageous cost of housing there. But now I do. I would pay any amount to live there, because the city is phenomenal. I would rather live in an apartment in San Francisco than a mansion in Chicago. It would totally be worth it.

It just felt like the right place for me, and no other city ever has. It made me sad, because I don’t see any plausible way that I could live there anytime soon.

And lastly, much praise goes to my boyfriend, who is so cool to take his lady on a weekend trip to San Francisco. You can’t beat that, truly you can’t. At least not within the continental U.S. Bravo, Baby! You never cease to thrill me, like happier than a pig in shit, darling. I’d give up first class and ride in coach with you any day. *smooch*

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The Fast, Days 1-6
January 28, 2007