ANOTHER SUITCASE IN ANOTHER HALL

sans purses, packed for maximum efficiency. the white of my blaq backpack looks grubby even in the worst light. it hasn't been to the shower in a while. and it would feel like too much of an imposition to use his body wash on my bag. but by the end of it, the smell of every man jack in the bathroom that fights for attention with the smell of the bedroom on the other side of the hall will be my smell, too. (i won't impose myself on the more expensive shampoo.) my plain, grey travel sweatshirt (which i've become convinced is the mark of fine style this fall) smells like the combination of that dolce & gabbana (the one that reminds me of the dkny i wore in tokyo) and of jo malone orange blossoms, which i've alternated rubbing under the arms and around the collar of the shirt before each of my arrivals and departures. it must be really grubby too, but that doesn't much show away from the pilling that's happening where my backpack rubs it just above my ass. when, on monday morning, two nights after arriving, i first open my notebook to note some things about the weekend, the first thing i write is about the man at madrone on divisadero who was the only person really listening to the tired old new folk duo on the stag, but doing it dressed in my same fall styleway. his beard was shorter, his glasses blacker and his sweatshirt baggier, but he definitely could have passed. we'd gone to the bar to wait for our regular mezzanine table at nopa to open up. we needed hamburgers, and we could wait at madrone, but we weren't going to wait until the late night menu went on offer at zuny. then i write about how i'm wondering why that guy at the bar made my first note, ahead of our drive across the golden gate to marin at four on sunday morning or our ride along the east bay trail later that day...or even our date at the restaurant that night. or ahead of the mugging that we'd avoided on our way to breakfast that morning by just scowling and walking through those three guys in ski masks on hyde street between geary and bush. what fear or displaced priority was it that had me noting that other, almost insignificant man first? on satruday night, i'd happily danced with his friend in her living room at her husband's birthday party; and as he'd said at the donut shop after we'd driven back to the city from the bridge, we must have struck the city as quite the figure in tandem that whole night long (or had, that night, in common parlance, looked undeniably good in pants). all of this true. and after finally visiting city lights and finding the door of the center for the art of translation forestallingly closed (i left the building by the stairway and never signed out at reception), i had some time to think. hard knox. on 3rd. but that's not actually true. i brought him coffee and cookies from piccino first. (they were out of the flower-less orange cake.) then i went to happy hour lunch. time to think. but that's not actually true. i wrote some postcards, too, so my reflection might not have been as deeply probing as it should have been. or at least not inwardly. but after we'd taken the muni away from the only place to be in san francisco (according to travel + leisure) and back to where we'd started (and left off the first time); after our parisian goodbye against the rails; and after the second train ride between the city and the airport that i'd had to pay for as a result of my leaving my clipper card in the wallet i'd left in portland, my airline had the grace to delay my flight and extend me some time. which i used to do a bit of work. and to eat, because the airline had given me a food voucher. to distract myself, like the french guy next to me on the plane from lax who only took his attention away from the video playlist on his phone for heavy breathing, frantic forehead tapping and happily delivered reassurances from me as we'd landed at sfo. (i think he'd thought we were headed into the bay.) get back to work. come back to san francisco? fly, for the moment (and perhaps symbolically), back to portland. it was too late for the train by the time we arrived, so i had the airline write me another voucher for ground transportation. the taxi ride would be at least fifty dollars, i said, and the somewhat welcome delay had nonetheless not been my fault. as it turned out, it was $44.50 for the nearly seventeen miles, plus the one single i had for a tip, which i gave to the rose city driver with my apologies and in exchange for his reassurance that the airline would make sure he got paid. i needed to do the same. had i thought ahead to check the status of my flight before i'd gotten onto the train, i might have been able to stay in the city for another dinner. but there weren't vouchers for that. the time would have been borrowed as it was. it's no big deal, i told the driver, you really can just let me off here. i can find the rest of the way to bed on my own.

MEAN HOS, part 2

in the morning, at breakfast, we talked about the night before, and the story circled back around to storytelling. "a mermaid," the flamenco guitarist from istanbul had said, "is just a woman with one leg, and we have lots of those in turkey." and that's what i told them. my life -- her words not mine -- had been so interesting. but the thing was, we told her, it's just putting yourself into the situations in which you find yourself talking about mermaids in certain company, and the interesting makes itself from there -- and especially in the telling, as had been the case with the story of the night before. if we hadn't been talking about the ironic nuance of the most successful walk of shame outfits (the better the night before, the worse -- which is to say better -- the next morning), my morning's outfit might not have been as poignant. he'd dressed me in the fruit of the dogpatch so that i would have something clean for the walk back to the hotel where my bags were staying. then he'd joked that i would look homeless walking with my clothes under my arm in his neighborhood. i couldn't, as they say, have cared less...it's just that i liked his alternative more. so i walked the northeast corner of the tenderloin over geary and down o'farrell, waited in front of the mirrors between the lobby elevators and then greeted the ladies dressed as a certain kind of san franciscan, carrying my clothes in a custom commemorative bag, both sides decorated so that i had always to be showing one to the street: written large in black sharpie, "slut" and "whore," "folsom 2012." and i wore that walk large.

walking north from union square, i couldn't shut up about how i'd apparently never seen san francisco in at least half of a half dozen visits. not much of a story, but i saw tippi hedren run across union square before forcing the ladies to pose in front of the zara store so that i would have something from san francisco to send to the woman who wouldn't be getting the second mug that i didn't steal from ritual. then, although the crowd on stockton street never broke we came out of it, and just in time to see one of the ladies' mothers performing one of her hits in disguise and a tulip skirt. but at where we turned onto columbus, we were already too far into north beach to see city lights. and we didn't stop moving until we saw the piles of crabs under the one big one at the wharf. tomorrow, all the mens from all the cities would get a chance to fuck them off of each other in the street, but for time being it was just fuck it and on to the quarter machines. and i saw alcatraz, but not the bridge. apparently, i'd never been to san francisco, but i didn't mind that we didn't have time for anything else before getting ready to go to san jose to see the photographer, because our next destination would have been valencia, which in all of the times that i'd apparently never seen san francisco was the place that i'd never left. diuretics for lunch.

back at the hotel, back in a taxi, and in line for the train to san jose with the wigs and the rest of wardrobe. sped to the photographer's studio from the station in san jose. makeup, corset tying, boot lacing, ab crunching; then another pose, another outfit, our signature playlist luckily still on her phone. mean hos. canes, umbrellas, garters, all fours. praise be to editing software.

it's legal to drink on caltrain, he'd told us, and he left us at the station with a bottle of asti after he'd sped us back in time to just make the last train. our car didn't have a luggage rack, so wardrobe was crammed in the floor space between the ladies' seats and the ones in front of them. what would be made to sound more interesting with each subsequent retelling was slouched, sweaty, sore and hungry, chatting about beach squats in sausalito with the man who came through for tickets. she hadn't had time to pull her mask before we'd needed to pack back up and get to the train. i hadn't had the benefit, and could only hope for benevolent editing. the other assistant hadn't been forced in front of the lens. this vampire makeup...she flicked her fingers open at her face, so i popped the asti and poured us a toast to alexander skarsgård. at twenty-three of twenty-four stations, we probably looked like a bunch of real silly girls, but at the one, as we cackled out toast, we were people who could have been in our story. lipstick on a too big red plastic cup. a mean ho is just a person who's willing to take a taxi to the station to lace up and get in front of the camera, and on the last train back to san francisco the night before the fair, those were the only kind of people that a mean ho wanted to know.