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.

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.