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.