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.