SF Blog

Sober Alice in Wonderland

2006-07-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

There is nothing sober about Alice in Wonderland. It would apparently follow that all parties themed according to this particular story would be anything but sober and mind-altering substances of all sorts would flow freely. This was not the case at the party I attended last Friday, which was very consciously sober. One attendee attired like some sort of dealer had pockets full of herbal blends--mugwort and such. These were to be smoked by people who wanted dreams. Another party-goer costumed as the rabbit mentioned that the blend was good for quitting or beginning smoking. There was plenty of cake, and also tea. Lemonade was the prefered beverage.A few mad-hatters were present, as well as an Alice, who had apparently outgrown her dress, a Cheshire Cat, and an off-duty dominatrix. Many of the revelers were quiet introverted types, or maybe that was just me. I didn't talk to half the people in attendence and the party was small to begin with. The kitchen, and the front stairs were the prefered places of congregation, the latter because of smoking habits and prime view of boxing matches between girls. A brief dance party occured in a bedroom. Only about four people danced at one time. It was difficult to keep the dancing up when all but one other left the room. Everyone ate fruit salad and cake. Some people hid in a bedroom doing crafts. I wandered silently from room-to-room in the small apartment. Everytime a few words escaped my mouth, they were embarrassingly self-referential. I stayed for hours anyway.

Tags:

alice+wonderland

alice

sober

wonderland

party

Is Your Humor Gay?

2006-07-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

The wind had picked up in North Beach despite it having been an unusually hot day for San Francisco. My friends and I were gathered around a small wire table in the patio of an Indian restaurant/sports bar. Having worn out our previous conversations, we had fallen silent when these two Irish guys strolled up. The one who was packing a fresh pack of cigarettes said, "Can we join you gals, or would we be strifing you if we did?"
"I don't know if I'd call it strife," I-- commented.
My other friend and I remained silent. They stayed at our table offering us cigarettes then immediately launching into that most mundane of questions,
"What do you do with yourselves?"
None of us really wanted to answer the question. Our jobs do very little to explain the intricacies of our personalities or interestes. After I revealed something of my job to the guy who claimed he was an actor, he launched into some drunken rant about corporate media and advertising in which he said almost nothing at all.

He asked us where we all were from, then his friend belatedly introduced himself to me, turning a hand shake into a hand kiss, into the beginnings of a hand-bite.
"Nice to meet you, but just so you know, I am not a fan of licking and biting." We all just stared at the drunk Irishman who seemed to think that his bufoonery was hilarious.

The conversation quickly transitioned to the subject of humor."I wish I could make you laugh," he said, calling me by the name of a girl in x-men because of something to do with my hair. "I don't get American girls. You're so defensive."
"Well, I don't have typical American humor."
"What is typical American humor?" someone commented. It may have been a friend.
"I don't know."
"What is your humor, then?" the guy persisted. And after a brief moment's pause, he continued, "Is it gay?"
Everyone at the table was silently laughing. I gave him a sidelong glance, my face bearing some expression he would never read, and said something to the effect of "Maybe." What I really meant to say was "Yes." When he used the term, it did not quite mean 'bad' as it often is used to mean in American slang. He meant 'queer' in the old-fashioned sense of the term. But both queer and gay being synonymous, his question made sense on two levels. Only one was apparent to him.

When the mostly one-sided conversation dwindled, he turned to his friend and said, "Give me money." He needed to maintain his state of inebriation. His friend was reticent to provide the cash, so they began to wrestle, inches from us and our table. I made some half-hearted comment like, "If you are going to wrestle, can you go over there?" pointing to a more distant spot on the patio. Just then a third friend arrived with a bottle of wine and a slough of glasses.
"I have drinks."
The wrestling instantly stopped.
We left shortly afterwards.

A Rat Between The Walls

2006-07-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

I met this man on Saturday night. He came over to my apartment because he was a friend of the boyfriend of a friend of my roommate. I found him instantly obnoxious. He made me feel out of place in my own home. There are not too many seats in my living room. It only really accomodates 3 comfortably. There happened to be five people squashed into the small room. Most of us had to sit on the floor. This man in his early forties wearing a tight, faded gray t-shirt and khakis was sitting on my couch talking about his pet rats and all the reasons why San Francisco bothers him. He had only been in town for a day or two, and this is already how he was thinking. He had just sold his house to take a somewhat transitory union organizing job. He would be living in six states throughout the year. When he sold his house, the real estate agent told him that it would be impossible to sell the house to anyone if they saw his two pet rats. He must dispense of them in some way. But, as he was fond of the creatures he refused. Instead, every time he showed the home to any prospective buyers, the real estate agent would arrive ten minutes early, pick up the rats, and drive around with them in her truck for the duration of the client's visit. Every conversation continued in a similar vein. He was a talker. I tried to chime in, to prove that I am not a kid, but all I could think about was how he must see the place: The books on the shelf are a mess. My roommates large laptop is setting precariously on top of the disheveled books, and one shelf is a mess of electrical cords and modems, half of which are not even currently in use. My place is some fashion of bachelorette pad, but I may as well be a bachelor for how it appears. And I didn't even make any contributions to the decor. But I like my apartment. I would just rather that it wasn't populated by these loud-mouthed men who can only talk about rats.

Tags:

pet+rats

apartment

SanFrancisco

Art and the Sole Straight Bar in The Castro

2006-07-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

The inside of the bar was hazy with smoke. This is an uncommon occurance in San Francisco where smoking is banned in bars. Somehow, there must be a loophole in the law, because this particular bar is not only the sole straight bar in the Castro, but also a haven for those who need to sip potent concoctions and inhale smoke simultaneously.

We walked up to the bar and ordered cups of syrupy poison. The drinks would aid us in conversing with the artists who were piling into the room fresh from the opening of their exhibition in the southernmost reaches of The Mission. Though no one struck me as particularly interesting, conversations wore on, and I found each one of them amusing. My friend was trying to find a guy to buy her beer.
"Can you point out a guy who you think might buy me a beer?" she said to the man standing next to her. He enthusiastically took up the call and exercised some beer chivalry.
"I'll buy you a beer."
I introduced myself to an artist who was a friend of a friend of a friend.
My introduction was bland, something to the effect of, "I haven't met you yet." It wasn't a good way to begin any sort of attempt at flirtation. An MFA student herself, she insisted that grad school is the greatest. She encouraged me to return to school, a strange discussion for someone obviously intoxicated in some way. Then she said,
"Everyone's doing coke, in case you're interested."
"No thanks." That was the end of that conversation.
I wasn't doing a very good job at flirting. I did espouse an interest in her art, and her graduate program, but somehow failed to ask about the details of her most recent artistic endeavor: painting the bathrooms of galleries. Later, I heard that it was backed by a theory, but I forgot for the time being that this is usually the case with academically trained artists and that it would be a good idea to ask about the underpinnings of her endeavor.
As usual, the evening disappated with various departures, often without even a shred of goodbyes.

Tags:

flirtation

exhibition

Serious!

2006-07-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that poetry is very serious. Yes, those readers of poems at those oft-reviled gatherings known as open mics are a bunch of serious, introverted creatures full of many words that only manage to escape during infrequent bouts of soliloquy in front of audiences filled with tortured-poet-types. On top of lacking senses of humor, poets are self-centered, solipsistic weirdos who like to hear the ring of our own voices.

I happen to be one of these people. I must be careful who I uncloset myself to, because poets are socially dangerous. We can ruin any party. My neighbor hates poets. She thinks they are frivolous. She doesn't know that she lives across the hall from one.

The fact that I mask my lack of social life by going to underground literary happenings is a tell-tale sign that I will have very little to say when it comes to chit-chatting and mingling with sophisticated young urbanites who attend dinner parties. But as long as the poets stick together, the outside world will be safe from the threat of atrophied conversation. We create and inhabit our own little islands. They are physically located inside cafes and bookstores and libraries, but they are highly portable islands. We are poets wherever we go. So the threat never really diminishes.

Last night I attended one of these highly dangerous gatherings of poetic persons. It was a very small gathering. Only two such feared writers brought their work out into the light filtering into the bookstore through a large square window above the shelves. I was one of the two readers of verse. We all sat in folding chairs wearing our most serious expressions and sipping coffee or red wine out of small, disposeable cups. Because of course, we were poets. Then we stood up against a backdrop of bookcases and soliloquized.

After reading, we pronounced our serious gathering to a close, with much seriousness.

Tags:

Poetry

Poetry&Writing

poet

serious

open+mic

spoken+word

bookstore

Dykes on Bikes Go Dancing

2006-06-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

Reposted from Tightrope:
We were a herd of girls on bikes stringing through the streets of San Francisco. Riding under the elevated highway supported by fat green pillars that stretches its concrete fingers from Market Street, through SOMA, and out of the city, we made our way toward Haight Street, a blur of skirts and boots and black fabric punctuated by the pulsating red lights that were affixed to our backs. We could have been invincible but for the traffic that zipped along Market Street, the cars humming inches from our bodies. Safety in numbers was an illusion that made sense on this almost warm summer night. The day had been unusually hot and the breeze off the Pacific hadn’t yet kicked in. It was June, and we were ready to dance. After weaving down the bike path by Safeway and up Fillmore, we arrived in the Lower Haight. The whole pack of us girls pulled up across from the club on our bicycles and scattered to affix them to parking meters with heavy locks.

We must have stood out on the street for awhile deliberating and watching the locals mill around tweaking, drunk, or in search of lost cats; because when we entered the club, some classically San Francisco dyke involved in planning the party approached our group and asked, “Were you the bike girls?” I shed my layers of black, my protection from the San Francisco night, and sat down on a tall bench in the corner that was upholstered in black vinyl. My feet dangled comically from my perch, and looking around at my fellow bike girls who had hoisted themselves onto the bench, I noted that theirs did as well. After a minute, we moved to the back of the club, where a few people had already begun to take to the dance floor.

We danced like the bike girls that we were, each in our own style, unconscious of anything but the music and the movement that emanated from our body like a dense fluid. We shifted our motion depending on the rhythms that DJs pushed through the sound system. We circled our hips to the sounds of salsa and reggetone. We felt the hard bass of hip hop, and the light sway of pop. The sound governed our bodies and our dances were our armor against the world of the night.

Then the Hawaiians discovered us. To them, we were mysterious San Franciscans. To them, we were girly-girls with roughed up edges and colored hair contorted into new and alluring shapes on top of our heads. We were a part of the local flavor, and just happened to be shy enough to appear easy targets. A girl in a baseball cap and jeans, with long brown hair reaching to her waist approached me and asked me to dance. She looked like she had just stepped out of a suburban mall. And she was drunk, gyrating her hips to the beat of the music and holding her beer away from her body with one hand and somehow managing not to slosh the beverage onto me who had quickly become her embarrassed dance partner. My friends were watching me from the sidelines as I instantly lost my coordination and my sense of rhythm with this girl. I am not adept in the art of partner-dancing, especially when it involves the sort of contact that she was expecting. First, she used her protruding belly to knock against my person. When that didn’t seem to be succeeding, she turned around and attempted the same motion with her ass. There was obviously a disconnect so she asked me if I was uncomfortable and wanted to stop. I don’t believe I gave her a definitive answer, so she stopped for a moment, marched up to my friend, and lead her across the room where she passed her off to another member of her posse. Maybe we are both good at hiding our social awkwardness behind masks of cool. We are mystery girls rather than shy girls, because we have elevated our quiet demeanors into an art form. But as soon as another drags one of us onto the dance floor at least half of the mystery fades and we are like awkward teenagers dancing too far from our partners, missing the other person’s beat altogether. At some point we fled our dance partners and congregated in the small patio outside to discuss our adolescent inclinations that lead us onto the patio in the first place.

My dance partner found me soon after I returned to the dance floor. She was a bit more drunk and pulled me to her with on hand dangerously grasping the back of my neck. I pulled the hand away and she wondered why she had overstepped some unvoiced personal boundary. I was quick, this time to slip away.

The third member of team Hawaii seemed to be more of a go-between. She was assessing the situation, and learning more about San Francisco that way, talking to all the girls her friends picked out of the crowd and asking them questions. She asked me why I had difficulty finding her friend attractive. My vague response was that I have a weakness for punkier types. Mall-rats just don’t do it for me. So she asked me if I thought the bar-tender was cute, then tried to give me inebriated tips on how to pick her up. Her advice might only seem rational when emboldened by some potent elixir that I wasn’t partaking of on this particular evening.

Toward the end of the night, the mall-rat who had taken a liking to me earlier was careening around the room like she might topple over at any minute, top-heavy from too much beer. I was dancing with my back to the crowd in a small circle of friends. And the night was obviously winding down. People had paired off and were obliviously clutching each other and crowding out those less drunk, and not fortunate enough to have found another body to cling to. My Hawaiian approached me, teetering just slightly when she walked. As she passed, her teeth found my shoulder. This only took a moment, but time slowed down. She was either too drunk or not vicious enough for her teeth to really meet my skin so that they stuck. Her mouth merely grazed my flesh as she passed, and I made sure that I gave her a firm glare to let her know that biting is not a socially acceptable activity even when you are drunk, especially when you don’t even know the other person.

The lights came on a few minutes later, right as she had found a few others who were drunk enough to appreciate her style of dancing. We gathered up our jackets and headed outside to our bikes. As we unlocked them from the parking meters to which they were hitched a few boys were drunkenly leering at the short skirts sported by a few members of our party. “Dykes on bikes,” they yelled as we began to roll away. “Dykes on bikes!” they yelled again, then a bit quieter, one of them said “I especially like dykes on bikes when they are wearing skirts.” As we coasted down the gently sloping street, they thought they should count us rolling by. “Three dykes on bikes,” they said as a few of us took off. “Two dykes on bikes,” they chorused as the remaining two members of our party glided by on silent wheels with red safety lights flashing at their backs.

Extra Excellent RADAR

2006-06-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

The following is reposted from Tightrope:

As Michelle Tea notified us in her official email announcing this month's RADAR reading at the SF Public Library, it was definitely "extra excellent." I wrote a little snippet about Dorothy Allison's performance, but every performer really deserves some applause. Michelle Tea closed the evening by saying that it was the only RADAR reading to ever receive a standing ovation, which was certainly well-deserved. The featured readers/performers at last night's event, Imani Henry, Nalo Hopkinson, Kate Bornstein, and Dorothy Allison all gave engaving performances.

Since I was not one of those people in the audience with a gigantic digital camera snapping photos during the event, I had to do a bit of research to locate a flickr photo-set of the event. It only took a few seconds to locate these photos by a flickr user called allaboutgeorge. They not only document the readers, but also Michelle Tea on her mad dashes about the room to provide delectable cookies to those audience members bold enough to ask questions during the Q&A session.

Read more about the event on Tighrope.

Tags: RADAR,Queer Arts Festival, Reading, Dorothy Allison, Imani Henry, Nalo Hopkinson, Kate Bornstein, glbt, Michelle Tea, San Francisco, Library, sfpl, queer, Writers

Coco Rosie

2006-06-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

One member of the band came on stage with a full feathered headdress and a white mask. I had expected a dramatic entrance. This particular duo could't get away with less. The other band-member strutted across the stage and picked up her mic. When she turned to face the audience, it was obvious that she was sporting a moustache. While the masked faux Cherokee princess wailed with an operatic vibrato, the moustached hipster crooned with the voice of a young child and a very old lady fused into one. Two cocky Frenchmen provided the backup--beat-boxing and eerie vocal accompaniment.

Really, the crowd obscured my view of the stage, so I mainly had to surmise what was occuring. The Cherokee princess removed her mask and began jumping around on the stage. She looked too old for this kind of behavior. The moustached sister remained calm on one side. I wanted an aerial view, but I was hemmed in by the crowd, and an escape to the balcony at the Great American Music Hall seemed nearly impossible. People were elbowing me from all sides. The boy behind me was drinking this beer that he kept on getting entangled in the hood of my sweatshirt. It didn't help that he was constantly commenting on the surroundings in a very loud voice to his friend. Considering that the music was on the quiet side, his commentary seemed excessively loud, and about innane subjects like when he would begin watching the World Cup the following day. Even if I couldn't see the stage, I could watch the video that was projected above the stage-- of the band-members strolling through trains in headdresses and running through border towns in masks.

Boys on Friday Night

2006-06-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

Mission kids. We move to San Francisco from all across the country, hailing from small insignificant places in search of something bigger, something more exciting. And all we want to do is party. Well, this is the perspective of some bitter long-time San Franciscans who have a lot better to do than go out after work on a Friday evening for a beer. Hey, we have a lot better to do as well. Because, yes, we are artists, those downwardly mobile dirty hipster bohemian types who write poetry and engage in conceptual art, or the creation of theoretical works of creativity that no one can understand. The rest of us have normal jobs, probably as web designers--or something else flexible or freelance. I don't know where I exactly fall into all of this. What I do know is that I found myself sipping a margarita out of a pint glass last Friday with a few co-workers who I never actually talk to. Of course, I have exchanged a few words with one or two of them, but I couldn't call them friends. We are sitting in this patio filled with picnic tables overflowing with hipsters and their bicycles. Everyone is drinking beer. The place is absolutely packed. I suppose it could be deemed interesting in terms of a Friday evening activity. After a bit, people began to filter off in other directions, heading toward new destinations to continue their evenings. I remain in this crowded patio. This guy approaches my co-worker and I and in a over-dramatic display of false shyness, asks us if he could buy us some drinks. Our conversation, or merely our presense, is the currency in this exchange-- Beer for conversation, beer traded for proximity, with the hope of a little something more. The exchange went on for too long--down the street and into the next bar: some pseudo-punk haunt where hipster kids bounced to bad 80s tunes encased in cigarette smoke in the back room. I played along with the activities of the evening. I had nowhere to be. I am young, and this sometimes necessitates risky behavior. The boy was convinced he had me for the night. He was convinced even in spite of this brief exchange:

He surveyed the crowd with approval, then leaned over to me through the haze of smoke and yelled over the din of some New Wave madness, "What kind of guys do you like?"
"I like girls."
He was good at masking the disappointment, mostly because it is difficult for any man to take this comment seriously. Mostly, it is a dangerous thing to admit in their presence because it immediately conjures up images of threesomes and tacky porn flicks.
"Who do you think is hot in this room?"
I looked around the room. Everyone looked tacky in their faux hipster apparel and badly dyed hair. A gaggle of girls sat at the other end of the room giggling to one another. It was obvious that he found them all attractive in his somewhat inebriated state. His friend was trying to ply them with conversation. They didn't look too impressed. He probably wanted to ditch me for one of them as well, because they looked easy. I suppose that I had looked the same way earlier--some innocent new to the ways of The Mission and nightlife in general. They had assumed that I was just barely old enough to be granted entry into the place in which I was standing. The music was loud and everyone was dancing, so we rose too to writhe to the beats. But it was getting late. I wanted to go home. We all finally managed to exit. And the boy refused to speak to me. He was throwing a silent tantrum--the kind that small boys throw. He wanted a girl to go home with him. And I was not that girl. So as he sulked under a street sign, I headed off in the other direction, towards home.

Club Games

2006-06-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

The club was filled with really normal people who thought they were really hip. They weren't hipsters, but they weren't your average 9-5 yuppies either. The partiers were party people all grown up who still party more than they should, but less than they were able to when they were younger. Everyone had been partying all day, a result of San Francisco's celebration of Carnival and the holiday weekend.

The Russian was drunk, sitting with her boyfriend on a long bench that was pushed up against one wall providing an excellent view of the dancers. She was bored of the party feeding its heavy bass into her ears, attempting to stimulate her senses that were already dulled from alcohol and the general sensory overload from the club's atmosphere. Her boyfriend wanted a new form of entertainment, and he wanted her to provide it for him. They began watching the dancers noticing who had rhythm, who did not, who danced in couples and who danced in groups. They both noticed a loose knot of girls, virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd except that their style of dancing was a bit more excessive, a bit louder than the rest.

The Russian and her boyfriend had a brief, inebriated tête-à-tête. They communicated with drunken telepathy, a form of communication that is only possible when normal mental barriers are broken down by alcohol in the blood. She rose, slowly, making sure of her footing, waiting a moment until the room righted itself in her eyes.

The girl with pink hair was dancing, absorbed in the club in that way only those who are familiar with that sort of atmosphere can be. She was also taking in the energy of those around her, feeling the music and keeping an eye out for someone who would draw her in--or who she could draw towards the electric beacon of her hair and absorb into the magnetic field of her dance.

It only took a moment for the Russian to adhere to the beat of the other girl's dance. Once she approached the candy flame-headed dancer, she was hooked. She knew what she was asking for just as much as her boyfriend, who watched from the bench, a spectator in the raucous sport of clubbing. Neither of them seemed to mind being observed, like a pair of strange birds from the sidelines.

After a few moments, they found themselves on the bench. The Russian had no idea what she was getting herself into, because she was drunk, and because she hadn't really anticipated that she would be drawn to someone who would want to take a step closer to her than the dance could offer. The girl with the colored hair leaned in to her ear and whispered something inaudible. It was the act, not the words, that counted. From there, her lips migrated toward the neck and the words became kisses. For a moment, they were lost in the sound, and the proximity of each other's skin, and the alcohol rising from each other's breath. But the moment faded and allowed thought to occur. The Russian's boyfriend was still watching the game. And she hadn't expected this much to occur within a span of five minutes.
"I have to go," she said, and rose from the bench, heading for some temporary sanctuary.

Two Femmes Walk Into a Bar

2006-05-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

My friend has been reading Valencia. I remember how the world portrayed in the story sucked me in for a few days when I first picked up the book. I couldn't imagine that this world existed, or had existed in the past in a place that was somewhat familiar to me. For my friend, the place was even more familiar, familiar to the point that the book is named for her street. The story revealed this sort of underworld, this subculture that exists in San Francisco, along-side but somewhat also parallel to the goings on of most people around town. After reading Valencia, my friend decided that she needed to go to a Dyke Bar. When she met up with her friends at some regular bar a few blocks from her house, she found it boring. The most exciting aspect of the evening was meeting the man who has a pole in his house--the kind intended for pole dancing. After a brief series of hellos, she exited into the cool almost-summer San Francisco night trudging past the shiny black car from which men's voices cooed for her attention, and into the depths of this divey bar sparsely populated with grungy girls with short, choppy haircuts, and torn and sagging jeans. There was this moment after entering when the scene seemed like it lacked a stupid joke, like there should be some omniscient narrator telling the story. It would be at this point when the narrator would say, "So two femmes walked into a bar..." and everyone would tune the voice of the story-teller out completely because the world doesn't need another stupid joke. It is obvious when someone acts like a newcomer in a place--just a little too enthusiastic, a little too curious to take in the scene. These are the people who others wait to walk in the door. They are the easiest to take advantage of. So, two femmes walked into this dark mangy bar filled with pale mangy girls, well I am not sure you can call a straight/bi girl a femme, but anyway, they walked out not too long later with no additions to their party.

The Unofficial Writing Group

2006-05-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

Writing groups are exclusive. Or at least, this is what I believe. Admittance usually requires an application, or special status as a published author. I belong to a recently formed unofficial writing group that didn't require any of these things. We are either un-published, self-published, or very sparsely published. Last night was the second meeting of this particular writing group. We clustered around wobbly tables in the patio area of a Mission District cafe and wrote about hiding, disguise, and saints. We try to work from prompts, if we all seem propelled to follow one of the ideas that we toss around. This particular evening, we crafted stories with cold hands that fought the blue of cold that sitting outside on a San Francisco evening seems to induce. Our tall glasses of coffee, chai, and hot chocolate were only warm for a minute. They only served to warm our hands briefly. But the beginnings a few stories were forged. There was some contemplation, some introspection, and some wielding of pens. Our unofficial writing group is not that serious, but this is what makes it filled with potential. Watch out San Francisco, some fresh stories may be on their way.

Slam Poetry in lieu of other Friday night activity

2006-05-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

We were seated on these tall, handmade wooden benches that looked like they were going to collapse under the weight of two small individuals. The two by fours that served as the legs were angled in a way that signified imminent collapse. This is not to mention the fact that the benches were significantly taller than the average chair which made them a highly awkward perch for a short person. We were both short. The benches were constructed in a way that made it impossible not to slouch.

The poetry reading was scheduled to begin at 8PM, and because it was a Friday night, the audience was rather sparse. I suppose there are better things to do on Friday nights, but I always seem to find myself at a reading. We arrived on time, found seats on one of the precarious benches, and began to chat. I imagined that what we were having could be called conversation, but I worry that it may have been mostly monologue waged by myself about nothing in particular. Well, the topic was ostensibly poetry which is a significant turn-off to most people. After talking for quite awhile, I realized that there were no signs of the reading beginning. I began to wonder if it was the correct event and if we had arrived a whole hour early. Too embarrassed to ask, I crept over to the table holding fliers for various events. I found the flier for the event in question sitting at one corner of the table, and confirmed that it was supposed to start at 8 and that it was the event we had intended to attend.

After a long conversation about English grammar and Japanese classes, a folk singer finally approached the microphone at the front of the small art space.

The second "reader" was creepy. His face was this mask of leathery skin with fine lines running over its surface. The fact that he was wearing eye liner was obvious in a relatively subtle way, and it didn't match the remainder of his persona: stone-washed jeans, white rumpled shirt, maybe a pair of old white tennis shoes or perhaps even cowboy boots. He looked like someone who would live on flat ground in a beige colored place that is probably rather dusty. He didn't look like the eyeliner type. The poem he recited was filled with rhymes, closing every line so very obviously.

Fortunately, soon afterwards, the slam poets took the stage. They had polished their lyrics as much as their voices and the words flowed from their throats like small magical incantations, pleas that the world may one day learn to appreciate difference, and the fierce pangs of ferocious love.

We were two shy girls watching these poets who used words like prophets, unabashedly wielding their voices like tools of peaceful revolution. I didn't know the person sitting next to me well enough to perceive how she found the performance, but after exiting onto the street where a city rat would scurry across our path as we walked I think we both found something to inspire the poetic tendencies crouched within our own minds.

Film

2006-05-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

I feel cultured, showing up at an actual film screening. It doesn't matter that it is a documentary that probably only saw a couple of film festivals and church-group showings. The security guard at the new headquarters of LucasFilm motions me undergrounnd, into the parking garage. When I arrive in the bowels of this building, a second or third security guard directs me to a parking spot, then instructs me to follow the dots on the floor to building B. I have a box full of magazines and a bag containing other supplies: pens, subscription forms, a bunch of cds. I already carried the box all over the city. I regretfully pull it out of my car. At the top of the elevator, another security guard motions me toward the theater. Two women sitting at a table point to the area where I will be setting up my display. I am couched at a table between The Breast Cancer Fund and Amnesty International. All the sponsors have already arrived. And those attending the screening are quickly filing into the theater. Only a few people pause to glance through my magazines.

The inside of the theater is new, full of plentiful, comfortable seats. And the screen is wonderfully large, not like the screens at the multiplexes that seem to diminish in size every year. After a few speeches made by representatives of the non-profit organizations sponsoring the event and an introduction by the writer/director, the film begins. The sound in the theater is magnificent, and makes even this low-budget film seem richly textured. The size improves everything: big screen, big sound. The film is simple, the execution of an idea hatched one night in a moment of optimism. The filmmaker spoke with Nobel laureates about the state of the world today. Despite the dire subject, the film was strikingly optimistic. The message that was carried through the whole film was about action. When an idea is executed, good things can happen. Maybe they won't change the world, but they could pave the way. One Nobel Laureate simply said that you have to get off your ass and do something. At the end of the film, I felt like going out into the world with a camera as well.

Nobelity

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The Magazine Connection

2006-05-17T16:36:00.000-07:00

I was at work flagging advertisements in Outside Traveler magazine, which is only interesting because it makes it possible to take the time to read a few articles. I decided to take my time and experience a vicarious, yet dissociated version of traveling through this particular periodical. I wasn't really reading the articles. Mostly, I was perusing them and gazing longingly at the images of far away places and posh getaways. Then I came upon this section about wine country. I grew up in the town of Sonoma, and always like to hear what the travel writers have to say about my home town. Reading these pieces that describe my hometown as an exotic destination is always an experience. The third, and last, article about wine country happened to be about Walla Walla, my college town. I had to read this one. As I turned to the second page of the piece, that painted the town as this destination for hip urbanites tired of the bustle of the city, I noticed that the two girls in the photograph accompanying the piece were in my class in college. At the end of the article, a friend of mine was mentioned. The mention was rather vague, but it was obviously her. I sent her an email to say I read the piece, and after the larger part of a year of silence between us, received a response. I never thought a magazine article would enable me to find those I was convinced I had lost. I hope I begin reading about my friends in print more often in the future.

All Sorts of Literary Phenomena

2006-05-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, I have encountered various literary extravaganza, some of which were unexpectedly fabulous, and others that contained exactly what I expected.

1. K'vetch was the sunday before last. It was lacking a certain energy that sometimes fills the occasion. A few regulars showed up and read their usual sorts of pieces. I can't remember much of the work, as nothing was particularly original. A few more well-known writers who are apparently above reading at an open mic, though they might stoop to the level of attending one, sulked around, taking frequent cigarette breaks.

2. A week ago, I went to a LitPac reading benefiting progressive politics. I am not accustomed to paying to go to a reading, at least not more than a suggested donation in the lower single digits. This reading was expensive. But it was worth it. I was exposed to the literary delights of surrealist writer Aimee Bender, the evocative descriptions of Pam Huston, and the erotic hilarity of Steve Almond who read excerpts from How to Love a Republican.

3. The very next evening, I attended RADAR at the San Francisco Public Library, a monthy reading hosted by Michelle Tea. It too was full of unexpected delights. Ariel Gore read from her fantastical heretical (this term is relative) work about a traveling Catholic themed side show. Devora Major read weighty political poetry about love and tragedy. A few students from a local arts high school read their work, some of which was surprisingly well crafted. Most of all, they were full of an energy that is more common in the very young, than those who have lived a bit longer.

4. Like K'vetch, Queer Open Mic at the 3 Dollar Bill Cafe also lacked energy last week. A few new faces happened upon the event and performed songs, played harmonicas, and recited rambling poetry.

5. I happened upon the release party for Instant City #3 last Saturday. The usual writers who haunt The Mission were in attendance, reading stories in their characteristic styles.

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Pussy!

2006-05-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

It was growing dark, and though it was a week day, the bars were beginning to pick up business. It was that time of night. A boisterious variety of gay males were clustered outside bar entryways smoking and chatting with friends in their crisp button down shirts and jeans that they probably ironed that morning. I was on my way home after parking my car far up the hill from my apartment (about a mile, in fact)and the bar crowd was in my way. Girls just weren't on their radar, especially quick-paced, wind-cold girls trying to make it home as fast as possible. They were obstacles in the way of my destination, and I was determining how to weave through the bodies without slowing down. I crossed a street and came to a cluster of men on the corner. A few of their friends had just crossed over to the otherside in search of burritos, and they called out to them just as I approached their cluster.
"Pussy!" the friends on the bar side yelled just as I sidled past.
They saw me just as they announced to the world that they found their friends to be a particular fashion of wimps, and a look of sheepishness passed over each one of their faces.
I continued walking, without turning back. But I figured that a scathing look may have behooved their particular choice of vocabulary.

Inarticulation in the Face of Fame and Beauty

2006-04-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

I seem to have a knack for saying the wrong thing, especially when trying to speak to someone who is a little bit famous and a writer. I have a problem telling people that I saw them walking down the street or that I am having a bit of trouble getting through their novel, because it is a bit heavy. Or else I just feign disinterest, when really, I am supremely interested.

Last night I experienced an unfortunate introduction. Maybe if it would have happened earlier, when the room was less crowded, it would have gone more smoothly. If I would have been able to hear the attempt at the conversation I found myself in the midst of, maybe I would have been suave and known exactly what to say. But it is never the case. I am coming to realize that I am very socially awkward, to the point that some people I meet think I hate them, mostly because I just don't say anything at all.

I am not a conversation starter, so when my friend suddenly said, "This is my friend" and introduced me to the famous-in-certain-circles writer, all I could utter was a delayed "hi." I had seen her earlier, walking towards me down the street when I had to go back to my house for my wallet, and knew exactly who was approaching. I couldn't manage to get introduced any earlier. By the time I found myself standing face to face with this person, I had anticipated the meeting for too long. Strangely enough, it never even crossed my mind that a conversation might occur. I had no ammunition when it finally did.
"She bought your book," my friend yelled over the escalating din of the bar where a band was now setting up in the aftermath of the poets.
"Yes. I read it," was all I could seem to manage.
"What parts did you like?" she suddenly asked. And I had no response. There was no beautiful way to describe how I liked the fierce bits of her stories when she spoke her mind. Standing in front of this beatiful woman who writes wild and gritty poetry, I was floored. I don't like to think I am prone to speechlessness, because I am often quiet.
The words that I was least expecting came out of my mouth. I couldn't anticipate them, or dam them up before they emerged into the dimly lit room.
"I like the parts where you yell at people."
I don't think that was a comment that she was expecting either, and she had nothing to say, but maybe an "Ok" and an odd uncomfortable chuckle. She was feeling my discomfort, but she tried to bring the conversation back to a potentially more articulate subject. As a writer, I don't like to be known for inarticulation, but it happens sometimes.
"I will sign my book for you sometime." This was a safe subject, or so she thought.
"It's already signed, to someone else." The words fell out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying.
"Oh no, maybe I shouldn't have told you that." I try to take back my words before they hit her like a brand. If people have been selling their signed copies of her books to used bookstores around San Francisco maybe she shouldn't know. I suddenly remember that no one's birth name was written into the book. It was a nickname. This is even worse, because it is more intimate. It suddenly crosses my mind that someone else's bad energy toward this writer might be infused in my copy of her book. It probably belonged to a bitter ex-someone. She signed it to Farmer Boy in a broad, scrawling script that overtakes the whole page. Then she kissed the volume. Her fushia lipstick is emblazoned on the page for the life of the book. I own her kiss, but it wasn't intended for me. I bought it second hand.
"Who signed it?" She wants to know who rejected her words.
"I can't remember." It is a perpetual problem. I seem to be growing senile before my time and never can remember the details of any story I begin. "A specific name wasn't written in the book. It was more of a nick name." (I went right to my bookshelf upon arriving home to discover who exactly sold the book.)
"I want to see this book," she responded, now truly curious.

I will always be the awkward girl with the second-hand signed book to her, if she ever remembers me. I hope she won't remember what I said about liking the bits of her book where she yells at people. I want to be remembered as someone a who is little more in control of my own words. But after all, I was making an attempt to converse with this (at least locally) famous writer with a striking countenance who has the nerve to speak her mind, and write about her most intimate encounters with the world. This alone, is beautiful.

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Teenage Concert

2006-04-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

Everyone in the band was about 18. They were having a great time pretending to be rock stars. Well, I guess they are rock stars, but they are only 18 and from some small town way up there in Northern California.The audience members were about the same age as the band. And they all thought they were uber hip. These girls with shag haircuts clung onto their equally shaggy haired boyfriends hiding behind greasy mops of bangs and black-rimmed glasses. They were all really into the music, or just the experience of being there. It gave them the vicarious sensation of being rock stars.

The band members were really into themselves. The bassist writhed around in some sort of caucauphonous musical estacy. He was probably on drugs, but he looked so clean, like he might be a Christian country-boy rocker getting high off of the noise like it is the voice of God. It was only cute because he was so young, just a kid.

I looked around at the audience, and knew that I looked just like all of them. I fit in. But I wanted to be above it all--to be someone a little more interesting, a little more unique than trendy.

The next two bands were terrible. One was just boring. The band members weren't trying to be rock stars at all. Maybe they didn't need to, because they already were, or they didn't want to be in the first place. The third band was pompous and their music was terrible. The lead singer writhed around with his guitar and made comments to his bandmates like "Stop messing with my stuff," when the bassist ostensibly caused a moment of noisy feedback between songs.

After two hours of bad music, Eisley finally took the stage. The audience stepped forward, filling all the small spaces between the people.

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To Break a Pinata with a Bone

2006-04-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

He held the pinata over his head, dangling from the end of the coat rack on a piece of fishing line like colorful bait. Everyone took a turn pummeling the rainbow-colored papier mache donkey with a hollow plastic thigh bone, some remnant of a halloween costume that had made its way into the living room to serve its purpose as an important party utensil. We were all post-millenial stone-age kids in adult bodies beating this poor toy with a petroleum-derived bone. The birthday girl blind-folded and spun every participant in circles to make them sufficiently disoriented. Some people missed the pinata by feet. Others wailed on the cardboard, but failed to make a mark. The bone was just too weak. When my turn arrived, I grasped the bone. As I was being turned in circles, I tried to keep track of my direction. I thought I was pretty right-on. And I assumed my attack pose and everyone squealed. Someone pulled me in a different direction. I struck the donkey, but the bone only grazed its surface. The string broke before anyone cracked the donkey's body. K. made sure to egg everyone on sufficiently. "Come on wimp!" she yelled. "Get that bad donkey. Bad donkey!" The whole scene disturbed her and she made a joke about calling PETA and gay bashing. We pummeled this rainbow donkey pinata with our plastic bone until the coat rack broke into pieces. Then we started using the bone like a bat, playing living-room pinata baseball. Finally, it cracked and yellow caramels, rose tattoos, and rainbow pencils spilled out of the body of the toy.

Just Take Her Home

2006-04-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

I think she just wanted me around for safety. Not that I could be of much help if danger walked our way. But it is always nice to know that you are not alone on the streets. I knew she had ulterior motives that didn't involve me, but for some reason, it didn't register. I only began to comprehend the situation once we were on our way to some horrible club in the Castro where everyone would be sweaty and drunk and dancing. I would rather have been in bed, but it was Friday night, and I was looking for adventure. The excursion at hand was not particularly adventure filled. We left one overcrowded bar packed with hundreds of drinking girls and headed to another bar full of hundreds of drinking boys.
Once at the club, we lost the people she came to find. It almost drove her to sulking that the object of her affection was proving to be allusive. The whole bar was filled with the powerful scent of vodka and other dangerous distillations. The unisex bathroom was wet, dirty, and filled with drunk men itching to have sex in the toilet stall. I never thought I would find myself at the front of the line. But then the aging butch dyke in a suit standing in line in front of me left in disgust with an exasperated "Never mind!" After she found her friends, we headed towards the dance floor. I wasn't in the mood. A swarthy, overweight man stood behind me with some expectation, but I didn't let him know that I even noticed he was there. She started dancing with the girl she was chasing that night. Or maybe the girl was chasing her. At least that is how I believed it began. I was immediately left out, and I knew it was time to head home, but I didn't have enough money for a taxi and I was trying to evaluate the danger of walking.
A bit later, I wished I had headed home at the first signs of affection between the two girls. They were reaching toward kisses on the dance floor, neck tucked into neck. It foreshadowed what was to follow.
The bar was closing. People were being ushered from the smoking room and toward the main entry. After regrouping with my small party, we stood for a moment near the top of the stairs. The other two began kissing, right there, in front of me. I didn't know if I should look away, or walk away. The act struck me as incredibly rude. Why didn't she just take the girl home hours before, because it was obviously what they both wanted. I waited a moment, hoping they would come up for air. It took longer than I had hoped, but finally they pulled away from one another for a minute.
"I'm going home," I said, and walked out the door.

Writing Erotica

2006-04-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

It was an assignment. I couldn't take it less seriously because it was given by a friend rather than a teacher. We were supposed to be writing erotica in expectation of a reading themed around this particular seamy genre that will take place tonight. "I can't write something like that," I whined. "Just try," she intoned as if it wasn't really that hard to put fantasies on paper--ink meeting paper rather than skin meeting skin. It was hard. My excuse followed the lines of something like, "I am too repressed." But I don't think that is what I really meant. I meant: it is difficult to write about something infrequently imagined, pushed to the corner of the mind for years, something unknown, unimaginable, wrong.

The room was completely silent, and the few lamps positioned carefully in the corners of the room shed very little light. Basements are like that. And the music had been turned off at some point before we started to write. Once our pens met the pages of our notebooks, we didn't really say much, except when a flea jumped onto the hem of my white jacket. She was horrified at the prospect that her room might in fact contain insects when all of the animals were upstairs squawking in the living room.

I really didn't think I could write anything that might fit into the assigned genre. But once I began, the air in the room shifted. I saw only the page. And the words came out one by one, my scrawling letters piling up quickly upon the pages. Something happened and I was trapped in the past, all of the would haves stacking themselves up against eachother, forming a heavy ediface of mis-stepped fumblings toward another than only brought us further apart.

When I finished, I felt like I had cast a spell. I held this power, these words in front of me, and I read them. The words were heavy and electric. They were the spell and the result and the magic all rolled into one.

Last night, I wrote erotica.

At The Intersection of Hard and Luck

2006-04-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

It’s hour three into this mess and the shrooms still
haven’t kicked in. 5 raw. Wait an hour. 5 more on
the half shell. Wait an hour and nothing. Cook the
rest up in tea and knock it back. Lemme back up. It
was Friday, so that meant cultivation. Carmencita and
I had this perfect little spot. Bombed out basement
at the intersection of Hard and Luck. Not one to blow
up my own spot – but it’s somewhere white people
shouldn’t be in a certain part of Oaktown. Open
breakout at the bottom of a city lightpole and that
was all the power I needed. Ran makeshift cable down
to the operation. It’s a basement and already dank.
All we needed was a lil heat and the spores. Been
working this lil caper for months and finally got the
golden tops to grow.

So you can see why I was less than amused when at hour
four I was still sober if not a little groggy - and oh
wait what’s that now? Finally. That old familiar
feeling. Like my brainstem just went zero G and my
heart is somewhere in my chucks.

Carmencita was no where to be found. Just as well.
Last time she cut off all my hair and let me wander
away…

Identity and Literature

2006-04-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

I was the first person to enter the room aside from the woman, who organized the panel discussion of queer latina writers, and my friend who entered the room just a few steps ahead of me. But she was one of the panelists. She was supposed to be early, or at least on time. No one in this city, or any other city, seems to arrive at anything on time unless that thing is work. I am notorious for arriving everywhere five minutes early. Even people who don't even know me have remarked on this tendency. This time, I was at least fifteen minutes early. I really tried to be on time, or maybe even a little late, but even the art store couldn't distract me for long enough. So I entered the almost empty room and found a seat in the third row, right by the isle, where no one could block my view of the readers. I took my seat and watched the people begin to arrive. I didn't want to feel like some outsider voyeur of a culture richer in heritage than my own. I know that no other people's tribulations are to be taken lightly and that I can't hope to understand a culture that is not mine, but sometimes I just need to be somewhere to put myself and my position in this world into perspective. And I live in California. I should be able to understand my neighbors and know where my friends are coming from.

After a few minutes, more people were beginning to arrive. Two skinny white girls with short scruffy hair entered the room shyly holding each other's hands. They had no idea what was going on, but they decided to stick around. People were cutting into the cheese and munching on the apple slices on the table at the back of the room. And someone was trying to open a bottle of wine with a swiss army knife. I wasn't watching very closely, but it seemed as if about five people joined in the attempt to open the bottle. I think they were passing it around. Someone said "Your're a butch, give it a try" and gave it to some other woman who was standing in the huddle of bottle openers. She failed, like the other women who tried before her. "Now let the femmes try," the wine bottle opening party organizing suggested. After everyone had failed, and the femme had broken the cork off in the neck of the bottle, someone set it back on the table, unopened.

The reading started a half hour late, but by that time, the room was growing more populated. All of the writers began with introductions. Everyone had a well-endowed resume of accomplishments--histories of activism and filmmaking, publishing contracts, journalism degrees... And their work was fascinating, beautiful, tortured, complex, and well-honed. The audience had plenty of sigh-material and they used it amply. They were all women and unafraid to express their emotional reaction to the pieces that the four panelists read. After the reading which included poetry, personal essays, and fiction, both serious and humorous, the audience tried to ask questions. Most people didn't have much to say. We weren't all journalists. After chatting for a few minutes about writing and literary niches after the formal session was over, I extricated myself from the room and headed home wishing I could find a smaller niche to wedge myself into.