September 30: Goodbye

I'm guessing we got something at Berkeley Bowl in the morning. Actually I know we did. Then we walked over to a cafe and sat outside at a small table. We didn't say too much. Susan got high on some caffeine. We ate fruit. I smoked a cigarette. Mostly we stared into each other's eyes and I tried to feel emotions. How surreal. I met Susan when I was a senior in high school, although I didn't know it then. I met her again at this very house in Larkspur in the summer of 2008, although again I didn't really connect the dots. She showed up at the apartment Colleen and I had, at a party, and tooled everyone pretending to be more drunk than she was. Then I randomly ran into her at NDK. Tiny bits and pieces, coincidences and teases.

I didn't really know Susan until one day when we went to the aquarium in Denver, and she took me on a tour of the city, where she had been living, and walking. She dressed up as my "magical faerie guide," a title she gave herself with a hint of irony I can't quite put my finger on. I can't say we talked all that much, but we didn't really need to. I can't say I knew a whole lot about her, but I didn't need to. We were on our first adventure - a sort of state that comes with its own vocabulary and peculiarities, that, with Susan, always evolves into a story of our own immediate creation. At night we sat in her loft in a ghetto part of Denver where a huge speaker played Christian radio just outside her window on the roof all day and night. "Who are you?" I thought. I was hooked on this person: "Susan."

Why do I feel this way about you? When I'm with you. There's this feeling that I cannot explain in words or by touch, but only by the barest act of looking directly at you. And every time I do I see something that I have never seen in anyone else.

Susan is a wanderer in my life. She comes and goes as she pleases. For a week I wandered into hers... like stumbling into a beautiful impressionist painting by the sea. We had our longest adventure yet; I wanted to tell the story to all of you who read this, but now I think only Susan and I can read it, and it has no words. I sat at the small table looking at her with the utmost gratitude for this feeling that I can't describe. For this intensity. It's silly but I cried a single tear while I looked at her, sad to see our time together disappear. I said something that in hindsight I find very cheesy but I found appropriate for the experience I had had with her.

We walked to the BART station and I bought my ticket to the airport where I would leave Susan and my vacation behind. I gave Susan a hug and we said goodbye. I feel like now some circle, maybe one among many between us, that started that day when she said "cheers" in Denver, became complete the day I left San Francisco... and I am hoping for many more to come.

Lesbian Unicorn and Magical Faerie Guide, from Denver to San Francisco: The End

September 29: Conflict

I don't think I'm doing a very good job of this. Or at least, it's not really living up to my expectations.

In fact, I don't think I can do this.

On the 29th we went over to the waterfront near Berkeley, next to a place called the landfill, and sat around for awhile. I started to consider the idea of why I feel jealousy, and decided it's probably rooted in my insecurity and some sort of inferiority complex that I have had since before I was even in second grade. Then we went to Berkeley Bowl; the only particular highlight of which I remember was a very long hug before we went in, as we had had a rather emotional conversation immediately preceding. Then we went back to the downtown area and had a food coma in the grass beneath some palm trees. I had a couple of beers and Susan had some caffeine. Susan almost never talks, except when she's high on caffeine, at which point she starts talking a lot, which I find really cute. We had another emotional conversation. Then we walked down to fisherman's wharf, where I ate at In n' Out Burger, we saw a guy dressed up as a dog who had two dogs wearing hats and sunglasses, and some dudes asked me if I wanted to smoke some weed with them. But we were in a hurry to get back to the floor we were sleeping on to not keep up our host.

As I mentioned, we had a couple of "emotional conversations," aka "fights?" or maybe "conflicts." One interesting thing that occurred therein was that Susan said that my getting kind of angry made her excited. I don't want to put words in her mouth but I presume excited that something was happening. I can see how ordinary conversation would get boring if you're used to only having intense emotional ones.

I also became tempted by two ideas: Hiding, which in the end I think I will still dismiss, and relatedly an idea that goes kind of like "if everyone is just going to do what they want and that has nothing to do with how I think or feel, then what's the point of expressing things that are going to cause some sort of conflict with this person?" But I think that essentially boils down to this: "If I can't change someone by saying something, I may as well not say anything at all," and I think in the end that that is absurd. I have to believe that the point of all conversation is not to change other people. And in practice I would say that communication, even that which causes conflict (which I believe one CAN find enjoyable in any case) is better than its lack.

Oh yes, and earlier I said that I would explain "the tension." When it comes down to it this is basically the feeling that I, and I believe Susan also, feel when I am not in tune with what she is feeling. Like, if I am mulling or brooding over a problem, or if I am confused, or just generally not expressing myself, then Susan picks up on that feeling, but for her it feels like... feeling uncomfortable for some reason and not knowing why she can't feel okay around me, and then that in turn feeds back on itself and I feel uncomfortable because I start perceiving her feeling uncomfortable. At least, that's what I think it is right now. Obviously I can never know what she's feeling at any given moment. But certainly one of our conflicts was resolved in large part just from me telling her that I was feeling some kind of problem or discomfort, and that made her feel better because she knew that she wasn't feeling weird for no reason, and that in turn made me feel a little better because we were coming to some kind of mutual understanding.

Overall this day with all its conflicts and emotional ups and downs was one of the best.

September 28: Getting Authentic

So Marta woke us up with a funny song and we folded up the futon and cleaned everything up. This was the first time in a long time that I felt pretty rested. It was pretty hot day outside, and Susan and I were getting a little tired of carrying out bags everywhere all the time.

First order of business was food, and unfortunately the only place that was pretty close was a Whole Foods. We went in there and started picking up the daily fruits and vegetables, and then Susan saw how long the lunch-time line was and we aborted the plan temporarily. We headed over to the movie theater, as we were still really close to downtown and Susan wanted to use the internet. We relaxed there for some time, which was fine by me as I wanted my feet to not hurt for as long as possible. Eventually I offered to go get stuff from Whole Foods while she watched our stuff so we wouldn't have to carry it. She said she was just about to suggest that she go do that, but I said I wanted to go. So I went and acquired our food and came back to the theater, where we ate for awhile.

The plan for the day was to walk over and see China Town (San Francisco has the biggest China Town in the United States), then over to some other places and eventually back to Baker Beach where there would be people fire-spinning. So we went to China Town. I liked China Town a lot; I actually felt in some ways more comfortable there where I couldn't understand what everyone was saying than I did in the rest of San Francisco. There were people playing Mah Jong, stores with chickens hanging in the windows, and people shouting in Chinese everywhere. It was kind of funny to see some people selling Japanese stuff as Chinese. The food looked pretty delicious; I wish I had had money to eat stuff there but I did not.

Like I said, it was very hot that day, so I decided I wanted a double-chocolate-chip-frappuccino from Starbucks. We went in and I ordered and sat down. They mistakenly made a big green tea that no one was claiming, Susan informed me. She eventually went and took it and left. Smooth. I got my drink and went out to meet her. We walked over to Union Square with our drinks and sat down on some steps. Union Square is pretty cool; there are big billboards and lots of tall buildings all around. There's a big pillar or something in the center that was dedicated by Teddy Roosevelt, which was pretty cool too. After a little while Susan asked me "Do you want to play a game?"
"The most intense game?" I replied, smiling a little knowingly. She smiled back and responded in the affirmative. The day before when I had checked out the Authentic World website before going to meet what I thought would be them but was in fact just Susan, I had read about "the most intense game" on their front page. We talked about it a bit. She explained the rules to me - they were different coming from her than on the website, but I believe they were essentially the same principles - do what you want, don't do what you don't want, no hiding (how you feel), and no shaming (people for feeling something). She wanted to know why I wanted to play the game with her. She thought I would want to out of curiosity for the way she lives. That's certainly a part of it; I am curious. But I felt strongly that that missed the point. I wasn't there in San Francisco out of mere curiosity. I was there to spend time with someone I loved, whatever that entailed. I didn't want to play this game with her because I was dispassionately curious about her lifestyle; I wanted to do it because I am fascinated by Susan's "way of being," and I want to learn about how she has gotten to such points as I had never previously imagined. I wanted to be closer to her, which is something that seemed pretty intrinsic to this method of communication. She seemed to think that that would not necessarily be the case. Earlier on this trip I had told her that I found her very difficult to read and that I wished she would express herself more, which is something she doesn't want, and is therefore unwilling, to do. She believed that my idea of being closer to her is her expressing her emotions to me more often. Well, I guess that's one part of it. It's also the reverse. It's also honesty and being in some mutual understanding and lots of other things. Anyways I would say that through the game I did end up closer to her, and I am surprised that she was hesitant to allow that to be a good reason for me to do it with her.

Overall, I didn't really know what to expect, but I was nervous and excited to find out. Especially nervous. I had misgivings about the fact that I didn't really know how to play this game, and although the rules seemed simple I doubted that I really grasped them. I would just have to rely on her experience and example. We were talking about the whole expressiveness thing, and she said she was interested in finding out why I like people to express their emotions to me, but she didn't know if she could "create the space (or depth?) to make that conversation." I could only really guess what that meant. I thought about it and it was in fact an interesting question that no one had ever asked me before. In fact it had become so "obvious" to me that that would be desirable that I never really stopped to think it might not be totally common. I told her that I probably want people to be expressive toward me because I am very insecure, and all the time when I am with other people, even my friends, even with people who have specifically told me they want to be with me, like Susan was at that very moment, in the back of my mind I constantly worry that they are really just humoring me and that they wish they could be somewhere else, or be doing something else. I can't believe or understand why people would want to be around me. Susan said that that made her very sad - that that was actually the strongest emotion she had felt the entire time I had been there since she was happy when we first met.

We talked a lot about emotions - about how we are emotionally repressive people. About our parents and the things in our lives that have really wounded us. About what we should be living for - what's really important - and how our society seems backwards and inhibitory with respect to taking care of yourself and feeling your emotions and allowing other people to feel things with you. I actually managed to cry a little, and so did she, which is rare for both of us. It felt good. We decided to pretty much skip the rest of our touring for the day, and talked and spent time sitting around together instead.

We went over and sat at a modern art thingy we had been at a couple of times before. I started to become kind of depressed for some reason. In retrospect I wasn't playing the game all that well. But I was trying. We walked back toward the BART to go to Berkeley, where we were couch surfing that night. Amusingly, our host was the 3rd person living in a 2 bedroom apartment, so he also was sleeping on the living room floor with us. I didn't feel so tense around Susan for awhile. In Berkeley we stopped at a Thai restaurant; our initial plan had been Berkeley Bowl, of course, but it was closed by the time we got there. The restaurant was good. Then we went and found the apartment we were staying at.

Our host was a really nice guy, an architecture graduate student. On the wall next to us was a "wall of scribbles," where people drew cute cartoons and stuff on a big piece of paper hung on the wall. On the wall opposite us was a design our host had made, which was pretty cool. He had a couple of extra sleeping bags for us, and a pillow, which was awesome. We drank some tea and went to bed in the middle of the living room floor (but positioned so he could get to his bike and leave in the morning). It wasn't the most comfortable arrangement ever, but it was better than some I had had on this trip.

September 27th: Recharge

As expected the construction woke me up early in the morning. But at least I slept on a bed for a night. I took a shower, which was a nice change. Susan and I had the free breakfast that came with the bed separately. Interestingly enough sitting across from me were a Chinese lady and, get this, a Zainichi Japanese-born Korean. They started talking to each other, and I was kind of tempted to talk to them, but for some reason I wasn't really feeling it. Susan and I had some tea downstairs in the kitchen area and discussed our plans for the day, then we had to quickly check out of our rooms (hand in our keys and such). Technically I don't think we were allowed to be there after that, but our goal was to stay there as long as possible using their amenities and whatnot. We ate free food, and then went and laid in the grass by the battery for most of the morning and early afternoon. Susan talked to her parents for awhile in the patio area and I went and sat on a bench and smoked and danced a little. Then Susan made some lunch with bell peppers, some delicious mango salsa of some sort, koos koos, and broccoli, which was all wrappable in a tortilla. Not bad for a homeless lunch. It was quite delicious. I guess I was feeling a little disconnected from her by this time.

The eventual plan was that Susan was going to go to Authentic World, which I am not allowed to go to, during which I would hang out in downtown, and then I would go meet her nearby. I was kind of excited to meet her friends from Authentic World because I had gathered that she holds them in high regard. Initially it seemed as though she was very excited about that as well, and then I noticed her speech about it diminishing in excitement over time, which made me feel insecure and as though I had somehow not met her expectations. I have no idea what the reality of her feelings on it were. But anyway I do remember that after the resting, and probably some tea drinking and perhaps lunch eating, we were sitting out in front of the hostel overlooking the park. I asked her if she wanted some alone time and she said yes. There are other details to all this - she was going to meet me later or go to the airport in the intervening time... it doesn't really matter as it didn't materialize. What is important is that she said yes, and I was happy to feel knowing what she wanted. She drew me a map of how to get to the mall if I wanted to go there, or the theater where there was free wi-fi (both in downtown, she let me take her laptop), and I was happy to give her alone time by leaving.

It was good to be away from her a bit too - it was something I also had been wanting since "the tension" began, although I couldn't ever come to the point where I wanted to be alone more than I wanted to be with Susan. I walked for about an hour to get over to downtown, and went to the theater so I could use the internet. It was interesting to be back at the theater, as on the first day I arrived that is where we went, although I didn't know that at the time. I felt now like I had an understanding of the layout of the city. A bit of an understanding about the city in general. It was nice to just sit around and use the internet for awhile and do whatever I wanted. Eventually the time rolled around that I thought I should walk over to the area where Susan was doing AW so I could meet her at the decided time of 10:00. I guess I was a little nervous probably - I didn't know what to expect. I looked at there website one last time before I left. My plan was to find a place to eat on the way - it seemed like there were a ton of places on the way over that I had wanted to eat at, but actually on the way over to the AW area there weren't many, if any, that interested me. I also did a little sight-seeing around downtown. I sat on a bench between the streets that the map said enclosed the building where they were meeting and listened to music and smoked a cigarette. A ton of people kept walking out and in to the building I was sitting outside, and eventually when I stopped listening to music I found they were speaking to each other in a manner I thought consistent with how AW people probably interacted - talking openly about their emotions I guess. I wasn't sure if maybe I had unintentionally sat right outside of their meeting, though it turned out that these sorts of groups are just sort of popular in that area. I had been there a little while and I was really hungry but I didn't know what to do because I was expecting to have to meet Susan, so I took out my LSAT stuff and started looking into the truth tables for exclusive or, conditionals, and inclusive or trying to find some equivalents that I knew existed.

About an hour after I thought we were meeting Susan called and said we were going to meet at a pizza place that I had walked past and was right next to where I was. I went over there and got a pizza and briefly met one of the AW people, although he left fairly quickly so there was basically no meeting at all. Other than "T" at the co-op, in fact, I only met one other person from AW and that was Marta, who I was about to meet at the pizza place and whose living space we were going to sleep in that night. When I got there Susan immediately picked up on my being grumpy. I would say she notices before I do usually. It basically manifests in me talking really shortly and overly logically, in a way that I perceive to not LITERALLY be disagreeable, but which actually comes off as mean and callous and overly logically-minded. It's not something I really analyzed much until Susan called me out on it, and I don't really like it about myself. Anyway while we were waiting for Marta we had a discussion about how I felt about Susan losing track of time and how my tendency to swallow things of this nature makes her feel bad. In actuality I think I was just taking out my frustration with a situation that I didn't want to change and which I was fairly content with on Susan for no real reason.

We got our pizza and Marta came and we chatted for a bit. Their method of speaking is rife with jargon and is fairly atypical compared to standard conversational English. It makes the situation seem more cultish than I think is really warranted by the nature of what they're saying. I didn't have a problem with it personally but that was an observation of mine. Marta is very nice, and very open, which I would guess is a characteristic of most AW people. I guess I felt, and still feel kind of disappointed that I didn't ever meet any of Susan's other friends. I don't know if that's because Susan didn't want me to or whether it was just circumstantially not possible or what. The possibility of the former makes me feel sad, but I don't really know and it doesn't really matter now. There was another sort-of-opportunity where I could have gone with Susan to meet Decker, the guy who started this whole business, but Susan didn't want to do that because she feels she has to sort out her feelings with him and she doesn't want to do that with me around, and everything about that makes me feel a maelstrom of emotions that I work quickly, unconsciously, and efficiently to repress. But I liked Marta well enough. She has OCD in a couple of noticeable ways, which doesn't really bother me. When we drove over to her place we had to check the locks a bunch of times so she could be okay with it and whatnot. Just that kind of stuff. Marta lives in an office space that she's not allowed to live in, where she also runs her massage business. It was a neat little hippie-den with a futon Susan and I slept on. I frequently wanted to be cuddly with Susan and touch her, because that's just how I am I guess, but she wasn't really feeling that usually (except for warmth on homeless night), understandably, so by this point I was pretty much over the idea.

Marta asked what our plans for the next day were and I said to sleep as long as possible. She took that to heart and to my surprise I woke up around 11:30 or 11:45 to the sound of Marta singing us a silly wake-up song.

September 26 The Longest Walk

We were allowed to use the amenities at the hostel since we had rented a bed for the night, but we couldn't check into our room until 2 or 3. On this day and the next day I decided to take opportunities to leave Susan alone as much as possible. There was a large common kitchen room, which had two kitchens, and cubbies and refrigerators to store things. On any food you kept there you had to put a label with your name and the date of your check-out written on it. Anything that was there after checkout dates became free food for anyone who was there. This hostel was indeed very nice, and was larger than any I had seen in Japan. We were actually in one of the smaller rooms, a 10 person co-ed room. There were rooms with at least 20 if not more people in them. The showers had shampoo and soap dispensers like hotels in Japan, which I was relieved to find. There was a theater room where they played movies throughout the week, although not on the day we were staying there. The front counter girl was really nice, as were the rest of the staff. You had to keep your receipt or key on you at all times to show them for security reasons, although it was only really enforced at night.

That morning while Susan was making some breakfast for herself I decided to go out and find some food for myself. It was a combination of wanting to get away from Susan (for her sake more than mine... maybe to represent a bit that I didn't feel like I needed her to be around me all the time also) and wanting to go out and explore by myself and get food that Susan may not have been interested in. I asked her where the Safeway was, and she drew me a cute map with the hostel, some palm trees in the park outside, the marina, and the Safeway; it wasn't really incorrect but I ended up interpreting it in the wrong way and just walking back up into the marina district and getting lost. I found an organic food market and bought an apple and a bunch of cliff bars that were on sale (good move, actually). I ended up finding a trendy Indian restaurant, and Indian had been something I was craving, so I decided to check it out. It was like Indian food that was made by white people who were imitating Indian food, which was in a way disappointing, but it was still tasty and I was hungry. I discovered upon leaving that I had spilled it on my one pink, light colored shirt, which embarrassed me unreasonably. I guess leaving and trying to get back is where I actually became lost, and it took me quite awhile to get back to the hostel, which may have been a good thing given that I wanted to leave Susan alone anyway.

I met her back behind the hostel at the battery where we had slept surreptitiously the night before. I think this is the order of things... we spent to daytime periods around this hostel and I am having trouble not mixing them up. Oh well. Anyway I believe this is the day where we spent most of the day laying around in the area near the battery. I was very, very tired. Exhausted in fact. I don't think I had really had a good night of sleep in quite some time by this point in San Francisco. We spent a lot of time not doing anything around the hostel. My legs were starting to manifest their injuries because of all the walking we did. While we were walking the night before I was worried because I started to feel the ligament pain in my knee again, and my feet hurt a lot. This day I didn't feel too bad. Good thing, because this was Golden Gate Park day. This would end up being one of the most trying and strenuous days of my vacation, although also one of the most rewarding and beautiful.

You could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the park in which our hostel stood, and today is the day Susan wanted to take me on that tour. Starting in the late afternoon/early evening we started our walk toward the bridge. It's so large that it's hard to gauge how long it really takes to get over that - it loomed ever larger over the course of some indeterminate amount of time. Susan and I finally started talking about things that are actually of some importance to her. About what makes us happy, about our core beliefs in life. For an example, I remember one thing that Susan told me that is very different from how I think, but which I will probably not forget for a long time, if ever: "I'm not so interested in what objective reality is, but in what I can brainwash myself into believing that makes me happy." Susan is very intelligent, she could easily do as well in academics as me if she so chose. She is also perhaps much wiser than me. Or at least, she is very wise, and I am very impressed by the degree to which she exhibits both of those traits, so never take anything I quote from her to be held foolishly. The tension that had existed intensely in the morning faded as we began to talk about deeper things. I felt like I was with Susan again. Near the bridge I took the picture you see at the top of this post.

We held hands as we walked up toward the Presidio, where the real wealthy of San Francisco live, where there are lots of trees and big houses. We walked from there to the sand stairs down to Baker Beach, where we sat and danced across the edge of the tide. We could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the other side, lit up at night. As we walked back toward the path toward the city we met some foreigners shouting "Marco," who were actually looking for their son name Marco rather than playing the game (I'm glad I didn't shout Polo...), who asked us what they should do - call the police. I ate a cliff bar as we reached the pavement and we began the most excruciating walk of my life. My feet were in a lot of pain, in particular my left heel which had a blister that caused me terrible pain when we started walking after a pause and gradually faded into the general pain of my lower body as we continued. We walked in silence from there all the way back to the hostel, which took over an hour at a brisk pace. It even started to hurt Susan's feet, and she is much more accustomed to walking than me, so I know it was a rather grueling journey. I bought a growler when we were approaching the area of our hostel and drank it on a bench outside our hostel while Susan went inside to do whatever. I sat and drank the San Francisco beer and smoked cigarettes and called my mom for a short time before my phone ran out of batteries. Afterward I went in and passed out for the night, noting with dismay the note on our door that said that the following morning construction on the road outside our hostel would begin, loudly, at 7 or 8 in the morning. I passed out on the bunk above Susan.

September 25 (True Homelessness)

On the 25th we woke up on top of the van, collected our things, and climbed down to the area behind the co-op with the chickens and the shed. Susan went and took a shower, and I ended up not taking a shower because it was inconvenient. I went into the co-op and asked the peeps if there was a market somewhere within walking distance, and they got excited and told me about Berkeley Bowl. They decided to send us to little Berkeley Bowl, not big Berkeley Bowl. Also, someone came home with the weekly groceries while we were there and it was awesome - just a huge pile of delicious fruits and vegetables. I guess later on they were going to some kind of reunion for a co-op they had previously lived at, where over 150 people live! Wow.

Anyways Susan and I trekked over to Berkeley Bowl, a nice looking but unassuming grocery store. But its automatic doors were like the gates of heaven - Berkeley Bowl is the best grocery store ever. You can get organic produce there for less than half of what you can get it for anywhere else I've ever seen, and its abundance is amazing. The deli was pro, and their products all seemed to be of the highest quality. As Susan and I were eating our enormous banquet outside (total cost for both of us: Maybe $10 or $12, and enough food for the whole day), I considered taking Susan up on her offer to live in a room at that co-op with her just so we could eat at Berkeley Bowl for a month or two. Actually right now I wish I could have taken her up on that offer very much. She had told me about it the day before actually, and it wasn't really financially a good idea for me, but I was made happy by the offer. I wish I were there right now... A little. A lot? I'm very confused about my feelings for Susan and for my life here in Colorado.

I think this is the day that I started to really notice "the tension." I didn't really understand what it was at first. In fact, I would say that going in to the whole adventure I didn't REALLY understand Susan, or what I was doing there, or what I was feeling. Susan and I are very close, but it's not because we have a lot of discussions and agree about stuff. We've never really been that chatty. But for some reason I have always felt very close to her, and I did not understand why. During this particular trip we talked to each other very rarely, and due to my lack of understanding, this started to make me insecure. I started to feel some sort of tension that I attributed to being around her too much for too long - like maybe she was getting sick of me or whatever other insecurity I could conjure up in my mind. I would later find that when I began to have this feeling of tension around her she was either having it simultaneously or would pick up on it almost immediately, and my guess is that she was feeling it around this time as well. I don't know how but she is incredibly in tune with what I am feeling and she seems to pick up on every little nuance of it somehow. So at any rate, in the back of my mind there was a weird tension building up on this day that I did not understand and made me insecure, but I later would understand, and you also will come to understand once I make it a few more days through this blog.

After Berkeley Bowl we walked over to the BART and rode to the downtown area, then walked over to Mission St. (the Mission). This is where Hispanic people outnumber whites and you can get a unique bit of culture in San Francisco. Today we didn't have anywhere to stay at night yet, so I kind of planned on giving myself my belated birthday gift - a hotel or motel room. The first motel I checked was $168 for a single night. Susan said she knew of a cheap place over near the marina, where there wasn't as much stuff around, so we postponed until then. Susan also said motel rooms in San Fran. are disgusting and full of bugs, and that you probably can't keep your stuff in them because it will get stolen. Interesting.

First thing we decided to do around the Mission was to go to a tea bar to see if we could find information about places to stay for cheap. They had $5 all day tea at a small bar where maybe 4-6 people could sit and chat with each other and the "bartender," who was maybe a late 20s hippie who had been to India and was interesting and fun to talk to. She was talking to some other people about cleaning as catharsis, and I piped in that sometimes I like washing dishes because it's relaxing. She said I could wash her dishes any time, and I was like "if you let me sleep on your couch I'll clean your whole house!" Somehow it came to Susan being like "we're actually pretty serious," and then the bartender was like "...I'm being pretty serious too..." and that was about when Susan and I made a plan with our eyes - Susan was going to bring it up later and seal the deal. A ways in I offered her some fruit from Berkeley Bowl, and we all just sat there drinking tea and eating delicious strawberries and mini-grapes and talking. It was really enjoyable and I was actually getting kinda hopped up on all the tea I was drinking. Then a couple of guys who had also done a lot of traveling in Thailand and India came, and we hung out with them for awhile. A glance, then Susan brings up the staying proposition. We exchange numbers. It seemed like success, although as it turns out we would never use it, because she wasn't available that night when we would end up needing it.

So then we walked over to Mission St. There was more cool graffiti on the walls (I don't think I mentioned it but big graffiti murals are somewhat common in San Fran, and they're pretty cool). We checked out an art gallery, walked past a ton of discount grocery and random crap stores, Mexican restaurants, and saw a big band of drummers, a guitarist or two, and a singer doing some cool traditional(?) songs. You can't get Mexican food in Japan, so I was eager to try some here where it was more authentic than probably anywhere else I have ever been. We got some at a small place and walked over to a famous park whose name I don't remember to meet her good friend Jake.

At the park they were setting up for the weekly movie at the park - an inflatable screen on which they were going to project The Big Labowski. Susan and I (dunno about Jake) weren't too interested in the movie, so we sat more away from everything. The location turned out to be fortuitous because there was an invisible, really gross muddy pit kind of near us where we could watch people react in horror as they tried to cross it on their way toward the movie. So we had some fun doing watching that for awhile; the park was pretty cool - people were all just drinking and smoking weed out in the open. Sometimes people would notice that we were just sitting there watching them walk through the mud and react with amusement rather than anger. At first I thought I might not like Jake that much, as he seemed rather... flamboyant? Not gay mind you... I don't know. I'm sure there were lots of factors contributing to my negativity at that point. But then we bonded over how we know you need REM sleep or else you'll go crazy and kill the crew from Beverley Crusher of Star Trek TNG, and it was smooth sailing from there. Later Susan said she was worried I wouldn't like him until that happened, which made me laugh. I guess people in California are pretty sure weed is going to be made legal soon - the 3 biggest contributors to some politicians campaign are the people who won the bid for the huge marijuana grow houses that will feed the industry. It's going to be a big change. I was also struck, not just from Jake although I certainly got it a lot from him, with how paranoid people are in California about the environment destroying mankind. And just environmentalism in general there is much bigger. That's fine I guess. It seemed a little alarmist, but then again they could be right.

After awhile Jake left, it was dark, and Susan and I climbed up to the top of the park (it is on a hill). We looked out over the park and Susan said something to the effect of "it's pretty awesome right?" and I looked down at the huge park full of people watching a movie and I was like "yeah." Then I looked slightly up and saw the entire Marina district lit up - the capital, the bridge, the cool circular building I never asked the name of - and thought that was one of the most beautiful skylines I had ever seen. I got the feeling this was one of those things Susan had quietly planned to with with me that I so enjoy - like the first day she took me on a tour of Denver. She pointed all the landmarks out to me, and we started walking. She started telling me earnestly that the places we had been thus far were places she hadn't really spent that much time in, but that this is where she walked her circles and lived her life in San Francisco, making stories in her head and watching the people of this beautiful, wealthy city by the sea. She was speaking almost as though she were writing to me - eloquent and powerful, to me at least. I wanted to respond in kind but I couldn't find the words. I felt like she was talking to me on some level that I couldn't reach at the time.

We walked by the Safeway where all the people who are too drunk hang out and smoke cigarettes, the trendy club with the fire inside, the marina, with the masts of hundreds of ships contrasted darkly against the ocean. We hid our bags and sat in a tree together looking at that circular building - lit up gold and reflecting in the pool around it. Up and down and across the steep hills of beautiful houses and popular businesses, the street lights cascade like a yellow waterfall down into the sea. I saw her husband's house, where she had lived. We didn't speak much, except when Susan would tell me about the various dynamics and highlights of the area. I don't think I will try very hard to describe that night... it's ours. I probably learned more about Susan than I ever have in the past. Or at least I learned things that helped me put the pieces of her I had in my head together.

Eventually we looked for that cheap motel. All the motels on the street were not that cheap (although we didn't make it all the way to the one she was thinking of, which she had learned about from a pimp who told her that's where he stays for cheap), and they didn't have vacancies. We tried a hostel as well but it was full. Fuck. We're homeless tonight. This was rather ironic because earlier Jake had asked if we had spent a night walking the streets yet, and we said no, because we liked sleeping. Well, tonight's the night.

We walked back behind the hostel to some famous battery where there are a couple of picnic benches, and laid in the shadows of some trees, huddled together for warmth. I quickly started to freeze. When people would walk by I was worried - would they try to steal my stuff? Would they be police kicking us out of the park? I couldn't see them. Eventually we couldn't take the cold anymore and started walking again. We stayed by that pretty building again, sitting next to each other locking arms trying to stay warms with our black hoods up. Some valley girls having some party came and started blathering about how romantic it was, and referred to us as "the love couple," and asked if they could take our picture. We didn't say anything.

It was interesting being destitute and homeless in such an affluent area. I think it left kind of a bad taste in my mouth for some reason. It's washed away since then but I was a little bitter. We did some laps at the safeway to keep warm. Spent some time in the bleachers of an empty baseball park. Eventually we went to an IHOP and ate as slowly as possible. Lots of walking. After IHOP we went back to the baseball park and tried to get some rest, as it was only an hour or two from sunrise. I didn't sleep that well. Susan did some laps up and down the stairs to keep warm. In the morning she said she was tired of playing host and that she would probably stay at Jake's, which I understood kind of. She thought it wasn't a good combination that I have a tendency to put others before myself all the time, and she tends to care basically about herself. She asked me if I had any limits on that, and I explained my limits and why I do it, particularly in her case.

I didn't want to be on the streets and I never want to again, but I'm glad it happened. Certainly I got some insight I would not have had otherwise. Susan asked me what my plan was. I said I would probably try to enact my birthday plan in a more reasonable way, like, when places had vacancies and such. She said she didn't understand why I wanted that and that hostels are nice, so I said I would just take her advice and go to a hostel. She took me to the hostel that had been full the previous night, and to my surprise said she was going to rent a bed also. At some point, maybe before, maybe after this, she told me essentially that playing host was alright but she had to think about herself and her need for alone time. She never did really end up leaving me for any significant period while I was there, as she seemed close to doing that morning.

My Birthday

My birthday felt mostly like an ordinary day and I didn't think of it that much. I slept on Andrei's wood floor, which was a little difficult, so I was still a bit tired in the morning; I found it difficult to get up. Susan and I went over to a market pretty close to Andrei's place, where she loaded up on her usual diet - fruit and grains and some vegetables. I got some fruit, which was novel and very delicious smelling after being in Japan where you cannot easily get fruit. However, I opted to go over to a Subway close by for the rest of my food because $5 footlongs are a really good deal and comprise 2 meals for me.

We ate at the Subway, where I had my second encounter with our "unsolicited advice" problem. Now that I think of it the day before Susan and I had had what was to me a very weird altercation in which she was telling me about potential school plans, and I interpreted her to be judging them based on price. We were discussing various credit/payment schemes, and I tried to tell her that she might be able to go to a lot of places inexpensively if she chose ones that did 12+ as all the same price and then just took extra credits every semester to graduate early. I didn't realize while it was happening but sure enough Susan was suddenly very upset-seeming and annoyed that I had that. I guess I have never had someone react in such an intensely negative way to me trying to be helpful and it was very confusing. So at the time I just dropped it and Susan said she gets perhaps overly affected by people giving her unsolicited advice. I took note of this but I don't think I really understood the situation very well.

Anyways back at Subway I was thinking about how vegans, which I thought was Susan at the time but is in fact not, and I was like "you should really consider eating fish sometimes because it seems really healthy and likely to make you live longer" or something like that. Then I caught myself and said I realized that it was unsolicited advice and possibly apologized. She was silent for awhile. Then she ostracized me for various unhealthy things that I do and eat in the "you should consider not _____" form, which hurt my feelings. I don't think I ate anything other than fruits, vegetables, and stuff from markets around her ever again after that. I felt really upset about how she had handled that whole situation, as I felt that I was trying to express a positive suggestion that would be helpful with good intentions, and she responded by telling me that I shouldn't do anything I was doing at the time. I can recognize that it was probably irrelevant and stupid of me to make that suggestion in the first place. I guess having just watched Collin eat meat for a month influenced my thinking more than I realized. But I was really upset by her reaction and although I kept trying to get it out of my head and pass it off as just an unimportant incident, I couldn't. We walked silently to UC Berkeley and sat around there for awhile. Susan never talks unless it's absolutely necessary or she's high on caffeine, and I couldn't think of anything to say because I was trying to figure out how I felt about what happened and push it aside.

Eventually after Susan fell asleep under a tree at UC and I wandered around for awhile we were able to communicate again. We had some fun over at a huge It's Your Move style game store like so many couples I had watched come through my store on Pearl St. a year before. I am a lesbian unicorn, apparently.

We go and sit at a cafe where I do an LSAT practice thing and she goes and talks to her mom about unsolicited advice outside. When I'm done I reward myself with some thai iced tea. Susan comes back and brings up having talked about unsolicited advice with her mom, who also is not a fan. I don't want to talk about it. At first I think maybe it's all passed by now and start to enter the conversation, but then very quickly become conflict avoidant and try to shut down the conversation. I really don't want to talk about it because I feel like I don't understand where she's coming from and I would rather just totally avoid it ever coming up again. But it's too irresistible. So we talk about it some and she starts crying a little and I start tearing up, although I was unable to cry, and I felt kind of bad about the whole situation and realized how emotional of a subject this whole point is for her. She says it's good that we're crying together as a bonding experience. Things are kind of defused I guess. Actually I think it's over at this point but it will come back to rear its head again in the future. Chelsea calls Susan and they talk for awhile. I realize that I must not have my birthday on facebook.

I wasn't feeling too great about my birthday around this time. All I had really managed to do was do poorly on a practice test and make Susan cry, and then shortly after this clean at the house of some people I didn't know and feel like a random extra.

At this point I believe we walked over to the co-op where some friends Susan met at Burning Man, as well as at least one or two other Authentic World names, lived. The house is pretty large seeming; I didn't ever explore it really but I think like 15 people live there? Most of the people I met were gay guys who were pretty fun to talk to/be around. Or maybe they weren't? It doesn't really matter and I don't care at all what the orientation of the people I met was, but I am trying to be descriptive because this may be the only way I can remember anything about this in the future. There were chickens wandering around and one of the first people I met was Mike, a black dude wearing a bandanna with feathers coming down on either side of his head. Isn't this a unique place? Parked next to the house is Bass Bed, an art car that some of the people there helped build. It's a huge white van with a pink interior and a wooden frame with beds constructed around and on top. There are subwoofers beneath the mattresses on top of the bed. The idea is that you lay on top of it and play loud music and vibrate. So anyways Susan was here because she wanted to help clean out stuff that had been left at the house for burning man. I helped out as well because it feels weird to sit around while people are working around you. People at the house were really nice. It was kind of hard being "some guy." I met one of the Authentic World council members there - "T." He looked like a buff shirtless hippy (who shaves and has hygiene) with baggy pants that kind of reminded me of Aladdin's but more colorful. He and Susan shared a long hug and I felt jealousy. Stupidly, uncontrollably jealous. There are a lot of reasons why being jealous in this situation was stupid, not the least of which being that Susan is a lesbian, all of which I was aware of, but I still felt it and it was difficult to deal with. Anyways T is very nice and seems like a good guy.

After the cleaning T asked us if we wanted to go to a party they were having at some lake near there - they were taking Bass Bed. Why not? Now I have a birthday party. Strange how things work out when you're homeless and don't plan anything more than a day or two ahead, if that. So we pile into cars, and Susan, Mike and I into the back of Bass Bed (whose top speed is like 35 and you have to take on the flattest roads possible). We didn't really get there until it was almost dusk, and we didn't have lights, but we deployed the bed by a field. There were a fair number of us by the end, probably around a dozen or more. They played mostly dubstep and we danced and chatted and such. The moon was full and extremely bright, possibly a harvest moon. We had some light toys, including a sweet light-up hula-hoop. These girls of a family that was there that day, ranging from young to maybe a little older than me, all came over and tried out the hula-hoop and we clapped for them and that was all really cute and fun. I gave away a lot of Japanese cigarettes that night. While I was sitting on a curb a ways off by a trash can smoking a cigarette Susan came and sat next to me and actually seemed to want to talk some. It made me feel valuable and happy. I pointed out some constellations to her, or tried to but I don't know that many. After that I went over and talked to a Cuban guy named Joelle who had been away from home for over a decade in Italy, Mexico, and now America. He had a water bottle full of vodka, of which I partook while we talked for quite some time about traveling and feelings and such. After I did that for awhile I went and joined Susan on the bass bed for awhile, which was cold but nice. Eventually things were kind of winding down and we were a bit past curfew, so we decided to call it a night and pack things up. This was convenient because right when we finished packing a lot of the stuff up the cops rolled up. And 2 people had lost the keys to the vehicles. So someone was like "oh your headlights are actually really useful" and we told the dude we were looking for our keys, which thankfully we found before he decided to give us curfew tickets.

Back at the co-op we sat around at a table and drank tea and a couple of guys made fried tempei which was amazing. Then Susan and I got blankets and pillows and slept on top of Bass Bed outside. It was a little cold but not that bad. I noticed when I woke up once at night that everything seemed to be covered in water, which kind of freaked me out. But I didn't wake up soaked. Maybe damp? Who knows.

So that was my most unique birthday ever.