WATCHING THE RAIN IN GALICIA

06/10/12 UA3542 depart CMH 6:40 a.m. arrive ORD 7:06 a.m. UA477 depart ORD 9:26 a.m. arrive PDX 11:41 a.m.

09/10/12 depart portland greyhound station 12:05 p.m. arrive grants pass 5:20 p.m. old ford pickup to fort freedomland (via the kerby mart) via the oregon redwood highway (number 199).

13/10/12 depart grants pass greyhound station 9:00 a.m. arrive portland 2:20 p.m.

17/10/12 DELTA9100 depart PDX 11:30 a.m. arrive LAX 1:52 p.m. culver city bus to santa monica/sunset blvd metro rapid to silver lake.

20/10/12 red line metro to union station flyaway bus to DELTA4678 depart LAX 1:59 p.m. arrive SFO 3:20 p.m. to BART to civic center.

22/10/12 DELTA9051 depart SFO 8:35 p.m. arrive PDX 10:13 p.m. (two hour delay)...rose city taxi to terwilliger and taylors ferry.

24/10/12 amtrak cascades depart portland union station 12:45 p.m. arrive seattle king street station 4:30 p.m king county bus 255 to kirkland transit center.

25/10/12 king county 245 to 255 to amtrak bus depart seattle king street station 10:45 a.m. arrive vancouver pacific central 2:15 p.m.

28/10/12 amtrak bus depart vancouver pacific central 9:00 a.m. arrive seattle king street station 12:45 p.m. amtrak cascades depart seattle king street station 2:20 p.m. arrive portland union station 5:50 p.m.

29/10/12 UA321 depart PDX 12:19 p.m. arrive IAH 6:15 p.m. UA4341 depart IAH 7:20 p.m. arrive CMH 10:54 p.m. (no delay despite the efforts of the edge of superstorm sandy).

and on october twenty-sixth, after at least three prior visits, i finally succeeded in being talked to by a staff member at solder and sons at main and cordova on vancouver's downtown east side. nonetheless, having already eschewed a book purchase that day, i considered it unfair to consider buying the copy of granta number 10 that was on the fiction shelves of the small store. travel writing. and "in this issue," just as it had started coming down outside, márquez's essay "watching the rain in galicia." but because of more immediate commitments, i only gave myself a moment to smile at the thought of shedding a tear at the title.

on the thirty-first (which was as early as was possible for me), under the sway of the urgent tone of that article in the next morning's article globe and mail, i voted. way to go ohio. or, i guess, we'll see. then i went to the library. i had a book overdue. but the main branch also had a copy of a book that included that essay.

"i don't know where the shame of being a tourist comes from," márquez writes. ...and i don't know how i feel about that statement. but it was better, perhaps, that i hadn't read the essay in that issue of granta, because even more than the author's observations on the galician rain -- and on the wind, "that sows the lunatic seed which makes so many galicians delightfully different" -- i appreciated the poem by lorca that this other collection had included as an inset on one of the pages. "it rains in santiago, my sweet love. white camellia of the air, shadowy shines the sun/it rains in santiago in the dark night. grasses of silver and of sleep cover the empty moon/see the rain in the street, lament of stone and crystal. see in the vanishing wind shadow and ash of your sea/shadow and ash of your sea, santiago, far from the sun. water of ancient morning trembles in my heart." and in those words by the poet from the vega of granada, my own (unknown) far away lament for the delightful galician lunatic i had met in andalusia. and then for everyone i had met there. and then for everyone i had more recently left. my morriña for all of the places i was already missing, and that which was even deeper, maybe, for all the ones that i hadn't yet been able to see.     

 

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.

SI TÚ ME DICES VEN LO DEJO TODO...PERO DIME VEN

in the early hours of monday morning i dragged myself through the lobby of the hotel to the elevators; and with my face in my phone i missed the man who was sitting next to that other guest in the not so spanish revival armchairs to my left. he had caught wind of her being in the city from down the coast and had come to the hotel to tell her that if she said the word he would drop everything. upstairs, i dropped my phone on the nightstand and fell asleep; and when i woke up my head hurt.

the ladies had remembered to bring ibuprofen, but it was their offer of breakfast and their encouragement over my french toast that got me through the later hours of the morning. yes, i answered readily and sincerely and reminiscently. i'd had a good time. it was worth it, and the headache was enough without adding to it pangs of conscience. but it had all still given way to a morning adventure in depression soundtracked with groans by allie brosh. that sunday feeling. that san francisco feeling. and at noon, the ladies left me in a cab for the airport to spend the rest of my time and that feeling correctly alone.

i thought i should make the most of it, but cindy sherman at the moma was too much. i walked to the mission. i went to taqueria cancún. but i turned right from 19th street to go south down valencia and keep myself from being tempted by the ersatz nostalgia in the mugs at ritual. i wrote my postcards at a different café. a pile of flummery on a dozen pictures of the bay bridge, because i still hadn't seen the golden gate. and i handed it all to a postman walking on duboce between valencia and market. then i found my way around the confusion around the mint, across divisadero and over to haight. the postcards at the booksmith were nicer than the ones i'd bought downtown, but six times as expensive. so i bought just the one for myself, a drawing of a map of folsom and harrison streets between 5th and 8th -- the periphery of the fair and the site of the techie bear picnic.

then it all stopped, before all of it came on again all too quickly. i came out of the book store, looked up and had my breath caught. i'd come, again, and unexpectedly, back to the lighthouse, this time a mexican restaurant. and i took a picture of el faro de san francisco, but it wasn't enough just to send it to the trianera in prague. several weeks earlier, the woman who wouldn't be getting a stolen mug from ritual had sent me a picture of the lighthouse at cabo vilán along with the story of a story. in the story, a middle aged man had, as a child, known an old man who collected photographs of lighthouses. once upon a time, the old man had fixed them. and whenever he finished a fix he took a picture, and on each picture he wrote the adjective which he thought best described each structure. along with the picture and the story of that story (summarized for me from a certain book by albert espinosa), the woman included her explanation of the arrogance of the lighthouse at cabo vilán. so with everything else that i remembered about those other lighthouses that i'd seen, i took a moment and made a decision. exactly because it was crammed in amongst the other shops on haight and didn't have the striking advantage of standing alone, el faro de san francisco was lonely.

i walked, past buena vista park, past alamo square, back toward downtown. and i met him just past six at civic center plaza. we ate ramen, which he had suggested and i had told him i would love. because, i told him, as it had turned out, i wasn't going to get to eat it next month in japan. earlier, he had asked me if there was anything specific i wanted to do or see in san francisco before leaving that night and i'd said no. at the library bar, he asked me why i hadn't said the bridge if i hadn't seen it. and how could i not have seen it? it had, i told him, crossed my mind, but on foot or on public transportation with the three hours we had to spend together i'd thought it imprudent. on the way to his apartment, i told him the story of how i'd told the ladies about my san franciscan walk of shame. even having been its real life hero, he said, he found it hard to believe the retold story itself. and i told him that when i told the story of that night, he would, in fact, have found his zipcar membership card where he looked for it in his wallet in the mood the bar. in that final hour, which, on the twenty-fourth of september 2012, was the first full hour of darkness, we would have driven together to the golden gate.

i could always come back, he said. i could use his apartment as home base. but i would have to promise to pet the cat, and maybe sing to her. i couldn't think of a way to blithely explain the weird claustrophobic loneliness that i always felt when i came to san francisco. or, at the very least, that i always felt when i was leaving. so i promised to sing. "one night only" followed by soft, anguished fandangos, starting with the one that inspired the title for that espinosa book (although that part i didn't share). and back at civic center plaza i ended my open microrelationship with my weekend boyfriend.

on the train to the airport, where all the planes were taking droves of de-harnessed homos away back to all parts, it wasn't better or worse, but it was surely there. for better or for worse. and i would find the city the same again the next time, happily indifferent. and i would sing it to that cat. ay. paquito... si tú me dices ven lo dejo todo. pero dime ven.

THAT'S WHY THESE LADIES LIKE IT CAMP

i would like to dispel a myth, namely the apparently widely held conception amongst the believers in the liberated homosexualities of the new century that everyone at the folsom street fair is doing it up and down the sidewalk (and not "fucking," because that can't be widely enough construed). i would like here to correct this misconception because i had also been operating under the spell of the myth and have been obliged to explain on multiple occasions in the days since last sunday's fair how that crab and all of the antibiotic resistant gonorrhea ended up getting spread if in fact folsom was not a great big public bacchanal -- although the truth is also that i might just have missed it.

i was there, of course, to star, but in a supporting role, and in the morning i was needed as support. a prescription called in from across the country, and i was off down market to pick it up. i dallied. i was one beer under, the song was good, and i didn't think that the hour until the prescription was ready was up. so i went searching for ghosts at the edge of the financial district. but no luck, no ghosts: the salad place on sansome street was closed. i was, however, almost unnerved when i turned around and came up against the flatiron building, not the green one near the transamerica pyramid, but still a reminder of the literal edifice of the publishing industry that i had left unvisited in new york. but i also still had a prescription to pick up, and panty hose to buy, which weren't for sale at the pop-up cvs where the script had been sent. so i crossed market and bought the hose and the watermelon gum that i needed at a walgreens. i forgot, however, to get a paper, so i stopped at a starbucks on the way back to the hotel. i tried to cut the line by just leaving cash at the register, but that wasn't happening in the smiling confusion of san francisco, so i waited, only then to see the stacks of courtesy papers in the lobby of the hotel.

i elbowed my second beer out of its wine glass and onto the floor as i was lacing a corset. numbers three and four went quickly down on the street, although at the street fair i don't think i remember seeing a single person going down. but as the tallest member of the entourage i was responsible for guidance. still, it wasn't like i wasn't looking. although maybe i wasn't. we located, we walked, they had photos taken, and i applied sunscreen to chests. we walked all the way down and out, refreshed ourselves and made one of our meetings. the other ones were back at the fair. so we walked back up, but by the time the other meetings had been made it was nearly evening, and i was given permission to leave. my eyes had been open, but i had hardly seen a thing. the fallout, maybe, of my obligations to my supporting role. on my way out, i did catch the end of a performance that involved some kinky boots and whipping (and at the very end an unmistakably tender hug), but nowhere had i found a place where i could have safely learned to sound before i arrived at the party on 8th street at the edge of the fair.

and the party was over. so the ones who were left and i went somewhere else. but the techie bear house picnic wasn't much fun either. of all the things to eat, they were going to eat fish. i didn't join them, however, as i was occupied in conversation on a couch. to be sure, though, i never felt the slightest inclination to scan the qr code that was above the passageway to the dining room on a wall at ninety degrees to the one decorated with a pink cow head and a giant painting of a brown my little pony (the current generation) plowing a purple one up the ass (the perspective, of course, from behind). i was occupied in conversation. and to be sure, it's easy to talk about privilege when you're sitting on that couch.

i continued that conversation later, back at truck, after the techie bear picnic had finished and the hosts had left to gayly gad about somewhere else. i'd left them a present. folsom was nearly desterted at ten thirty, but the bars were full of gym bunnies flirting in four hundred dollar once a year harnesses. folsom is nice, she said, don't get her wrong, but it doesn't feel as inclusive as it should, nor as representative, the same with pride; and i told her that i thought i agreed. it hadn't even been the bacchanal. but it was nice, i said, to meet a woman like her at a bar like truck. i was happy for both, and we shared a hug that was full of unmistakable tenderness. it was already several hours into the dance party at the public works, and the thirty dollar cover wasn't going down for the later i showed up. so since no one i knew and had gotten in touch with via text seemed to be there, i decided to stay where i was. plus, the crowd at truck had acknowledged that i was looking good in those latex hot pants. i didn't care that i had to make the explanation of my battered wife beater to almost everyone individually. the fallout of supporting the entourage, but simple damage control.

and there, at truck, i smiled at the face of my own peculiar fetish pride as the boys and the old radical fairies felt my ass: one of the performers took the stage naked with her dick and her balls tucked expertly between her legs and behind her as she sauntered around collecting dollar bills in her every available crevice to the ecstatic inquietude of tori amos singing "leather." (previously, the guy dressed as a green bubble anemone had done his butoh freak out while gradually popping his costume and then having cartons of sugar poured over him in the bar shower, but a friend wouldn't believe me later when i told him.) we talked after the show, the naked leather performer and i, then we danced with her cohort, then i followed them at one thirty to last call. it's possible that the bacchanal was still to be had at the after party, but i declined the invitations. i must have been on beer twelve.

back across market and through the tenderloin. she couldn't have seen my bloody feet because i hadn't taken off my shoes to see them yet myself, but she was all sympathy. "it's cute...but baby, you look cold." i was close enough to home, though, i told her, i didn't need any crack. i'd been smelling that shit all day in the street. "child please." she rolled her eyes with her head, off in the other direction. unmistakably tender.

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.

HELLO WEST COAST!...AGAIN; or, THERE...AND BACK...(AGAIN)

it wasn't the same, but i knew going into it that the weekend wouldn't be the same if it turned out to be (the same, that is). and from the very beginning: i'd only ever arrived in the city by car, and i'd only ever ridden bart from the airport once before, long before, when the car was dead in berkeley and we'd had to ride the train out to the airport because we'd made a promise to her mother that we'd ask after her wallet at one of the airport hotels. so even that first ride was something new, and even if only because this time i wasn't making the trip at night and could see -- and could see that i was back on the west coast. i didn't, however, opt for the entirely unprecedented experience of stepping off for whatever adventure i might not find in south san francisco or in daly city, and i left them behind with almost nothing more than the terse regard i'd given them for the reminder that they'd given me of where i was. but i'd been reminded of something else as well, because the reminder of where i was -- or, more correctly, of where i was approaching -- had caught me off guard with an early suggestion of the diffuse melancholy with which i'm always left by (or that i seem to always feel when i'm leaving) san francisco. not a feeling of loss, exactly, but a certain feeling of losing out; and this weekend wasn't, it seemed, going to be different in that respect, although it wasn't going to be the same.

and it had already started out differently, and not only because i'd flown in or because i'd ridden bart from the airport to the city, but because i got off the train at the same stop that i always had whenever i'd ridden from downtown or the east bay, and the difference wasn't that i walked up the stairs to 16th and mission alone, but that the people i wasn't with in that moment weren't the same. then i walked up mission to taqueria cancún, the same place i had always stopped before walking over to ritual on valencia, and the people who weren't with me there again weren't either the ones who were my sense of losing out since the last time. i definitely needed a burrito.

and then i can't say that i needed another coffee, but i had one, because how else was i going to be able to steal another mug from ritual? the one i'd gotten the last time had made it to spain from portland and then to portugal from spain, but it stayed, chipped, with a friend in montenegro because it was already all of the weight of its journey and had, as i realized only in the moment that i hefted it and decided not to add more contraband to another border crossing, gone as far as its story needed it to go. so it stayed as the beginning of someone else's, and then, in the story that i had been telling, i flew across the country to steal myself another one. it turned out in the meantime, however, that i was going to need two (which is another different story), and i'll say here that the difficulty i foresaw in getting back to ritual in that same particular weekend for the second was what kept me from taking the first. all or nothing. in the moment, though, i might have admitted that i just hadn't positioned myself appropriately to be successful without raising suspicion (especially with the cupping going on), and i was going to need to execute a perfectly clean operation if i wanted to make sure that i could pull of another one later. as i took a photograph of the mug i'd been given for my coffee in order to send to the friend to whom i had gifted the one i remembered having taken the last time with much less deliberation (although, admittedly, aided also by a now absent accomplice), i regretted not having the foresight just to pay for a pair and lie about their origin. insult to injury that i'd ended up simply paying for a featured coffee that i didn't consider to be very good.

to taqueria cancún and to ritual, but not to dolores park, not even alone, because this weekend was going to be different, and the park would be full of ghosts, smartly accessorized underemployment enviable repartee, especially on a sunny friday afternoon, a foggy picture of the fag, the lesbians, the trans man and the pansexual beauty queen. but this weekend's photo shoot was at a different location, and besides, the park was still on the meh list, at least until sunday. i did, however, brave truck. i'd had a coffee after all, and anyway the bar was in the opposite direction of the park on a more straightforwardly sentimental path toward the hotel, the foggy picture of an after party and a too late first date. one of the ladies had texted to say that they were on their way there, and i wasn't half done with my beer when i got a second message to say that they had arrived. so i said goodbye to the bartender, who hadn't worked at the bar long enough for my ever to have met him before, and to the only other two o'clock customer (or friend of whomever), having at least had the time to be told what was going to be happening at the bar for the rest of the weekend. then it was quickly down past the banners on folsom (because i'd taken an extra moment to finish my drink), a zag onto 10th and another onto market before recognizing the civic center for the very first time in however many visits and crossing into the tenderloin, on the back end of which i found the ladies and dropped my bags where they would be staying in that second floor room at the intersection of taylor and o'farrell.

and i don't think that i was very successfully communicative of the extent to which that certain sense of losing out, that melancholy, had absolutely -- and already -- diffused to solidly permeate the three hours i'd spent without them. of course, they hadn't been there, with me at that after party or in the picture at the park, and that might have been the real barrier to my conveying the strangeness of knowing that...i didn't know, actually, but what i can tell you i know now is that i was sweaty and i smelled and i was all of a sudden self-conscious. apparently, that certain sense of whatever i was finding difficult to articulate was randomly conducive to excitability, and that, apparently, was confusing. i needed to shower. then the picture gets foggy.

maybe it was only because the two of us had been recounting the part of the christmas saga that we'd shared in madrid, but when our long way back from unbelievably bland mexican and from the coffee place next to the corset place on linden being closed took me back through the civic center with the ladies in the dark, city hall was unmistakably spanish. the one who could see it agreed. we hadn't noticed or remarked on cool super discount at the southeast corner of taylor and eddy streets when we'd passed it earlier because she (the one who had agreed) had been telling us about how when she'd gone down to pick up her wig that stefan had been on the phone and on top of that busy with everything else and just hadn't been having it but had helped her with what grace you could imagine he could have mustered nonetheless. and on that earlier walk down taylor we'd agreed that that interaction should be a portent. then just before that, although i'd feared that the rest of my first attempt at this story had just left them confused while i showered, the other one had told me that my account of finding the leather pride flag flying over the mission armory had had the verve of a patriot's description of his love for his country. so i supposed that here, in some sense, and nonetheless concurrent with that lingering sense of losing out, i had a sense of home, however diffuse and melancholic.

i was, however, still afraid of being called out as the poseur as i followed the ladies around to the events. i was on solicited hire, yes, but unquestionably inexperienced. eagerness was, well, to be taken aside. luckily though, it got me company back to truck that night and then later the party invitation that i'd been hoping to elicit all day. for a glass of whiskey with him and his cat. luckily too, he had experience (and tea), and he told me that most everyone at the street fair would be posing, so i would fit right in if i wanted to, although it wouldn't matter to him either way because he wasn't going. (it would turn out that he had other plans.) was it that, then? on what, exactly, was i already afraid of having lost out? i didn't know -- exactly -- and hence the general nature of the problem...although he didn't ask. he'd lost out once in italy, but had he been to lisbon? that city had always reminded me of here. no, he said, he hadn't been, but he was definitely interested. and with that, it began again, that feeling that, later, the memory forgetting that in the moment it was somewhere else, levels stupid accusations of infatuation. but in fact no, just more of the same, only going forward with the stories, happily alone in the arms of the city, although like new and, like always, this time different.