pride

I have a lot more to say about the weekend but I will only say this for now: San Francisco is wild. Many people, at least the pretty hippie yuppie homo young ones, act like there are no rules. Tits, open containers, hash pipes, pot brownies, nipple rings, flags indicating desire to be fisted, Native American fetishistic fashion - all satisfying the three New York plain view prongs. I'm new to California law but I am guessing there's no plain view exception? Did I say tits? I took some photos, and will redact and share the pertinent bits later.

I was of course not responsible for any of the above. I kept almost all of my skin covered because San Francisco, in addition to being wild, is very cold. And I did not partake in any illegal anything, because here's another thing I've learned about California contracts and "crimes" law: just considering buying illegal drugs is adequate consideration, and the bargained-for loss is a conviction for an attempt to conspire to solicit drugs – merging into the crime of NOT BEING A LAWYER ANYMORE. No thank you! I nibbled quietly upon my avocado sandwich and got high off life instead.

I am somewhat high on life, or at least finally comfortable enough with who I am, what I don't know, what my brain is capable of doing, and what I have chosen to do with my time that I didn't drop my pants and run away screaming when S.L., a person I knew in a former life as the somewhat ditzy twelve year-old (what gender-appropriate twelve-year old is not somewhat ditzy?) boy-crazy setter on the "A" Volleyball team reintroduced herself to me fifteen years later in Dolores Park as the girlfriend of a tall butch "Melissa." I did not lose my composure and instead spread a beguiling smile on the lower half of my face and asked, "How did you end up becoming a gay math teacher?" S.L. is now a perfectly nice and adjusted-seeming person, just like me, and we had a nice conversation and may one day meet up for coffee. We became Facebook friends. And voila, just like that, we're 30*! (* Several of you insist on correcting me when I proclaim that I am 30. Shutthefuckup. "I'm 30!" doesn't literally mean I am 30, assholes! "30" represents the zeitgeist, not the calendar year.)

I kept serendipitously running into people I knew - lovely Jay Way from college in the bagel line at the Dolores Park Cafe, who strengthened my belief that ABC girls are the cunningest and secretest minds of my generation, my favorite high school goth intellectual friend turned high school math teacher L.V., a Hays and Outlaw predecessor in interest from NYU Law, someone from my rugby team, my ex-rival from the Stanford CoHo (she was glassy-eyed and drugged-looking on Saturday, but she never would have remembered me anyway), someone who vaguely looked like a "Marisol" I knew years ago.

I did not stay with Handle or Puck last night because they were busy testing out tents for their next-day trip to Tokyo (this year's G8 site), and anyway, of course, someone's drama, not mine, turned the weekend from a party party into a consolation party so I did not stay in the city overnight. I'd by then had my three Stellas and needed no more, so I was happy to wait for the midnight Caltrain on L.V.'s couch in the Noe Valley and admire L.V.'s interesting collection of Namibian baskets and hold N.K.'s hand and snotty head and iPhone as she cried about her insane bitch** of a 6' tall ex-girlfriend. (**My terms, not hers.) The drama involved the 6' tall ex-girlfriend's 6'4" tall ex-ex-girlfriend, a 230-pound bruiser and former WNBA player and current corporate lawyer who crushed my hand with her handshake and told me to call her simply "Red." I am not making this up. Red and 6' had other former Stanford varsity athletes, many of whom were ex-girlfriends to each other, join them and together they formed a Stonehenge of tall lesboes that I avoided all day, since I dislike tall people. N.K. and I are also ex-girlfriends, and she dated another one of my ex-girlfriends, so within six degrees of separation everyone in the Mission yesterday had broken my heart. Sometimes it sucks to be gay (violence, social and legal death etc.) but it makes the world smaller and parts of it warmer, and that's something to be genuinely proud of.

I held N.K.'s hairspray and occasionally her hand on the train ride down to the warm, calm Peninsula from the wild, cold city and then my dad picked us up at the station like we were sixteen again. I drove her the remaining ten miles to her brand new subdivision in Santa Clara - it looked like the developments outside Shanghai - and drove alone up 101 the fifteen minutes home with Movin' 99.7 turned way up playing "Another Night" and the windows rolled way down blowing air at 55 mph into my face.

My life is in suspension, readers. Bar review has turned me into a tight rope (boring, straight, very high strung) and then Stephanie wrings me out like a dishrag when she tells me she's no longer interested in moving to Chicago. I am having Mimi's problem with the radio. I don't let on because my blog persona is sunny and I still haven't found a way to be sad and sunny at the same time. There are ups and then there are way way downs, but I had a few moments yesterday when I was standing in the grass with all those crazy people that knew me or didn't know me and loved me or didn't love me where I just felt all right. I ate a burrito, and it was delicious. It was a nice feeling.