in my big bed
I felt more alone that week than any. Sometimes I'd feel a body lying next to me like an amputee feels a phantom limb. All I did was think about...all the decades of people I had known. The more I thought, the more I felt like crying. Life seemed so sweet and so sad, and so hard to let go of in the end. But hey, man, every day is a brand new deal, right? Just keep on working and something's bound to turn up.
- American Splendor
- American Splendor
b-rated fruit
wineking: I was just thinking how awesome it would be if I could buy a ripe peach in the cafeteria
wineking: we have grapes, and sometimes cherries
wineking: but those don't count as fruit
jess: dude, look at the size of my grape
jess: that is like an apple
wineking: well, we don't get those grapes
jess: has everyone seen my grape yet?
wineking: that's clearly a Grape
jess: i'm going to walk down the hallway showing it to everyone
jess: cept my boss, who will just think i need more work to do
wineking: this is making me hungry
wineking: I'm going to get lunch, while your show your grape around
wineking: we have grapes, and sometimes cherries
wineking: but those don't count as fruit
jess: dude, look at the size of my grape
jess: that is like an apple
wineking: well, we don't get those grapes
jess: has everyone seen my grape yet?
wineking: that's clearly a Grape
jess: i'm going to walk down the hallway showing it to everyone
jess: cept my boss, who will just think i need more work to do
wineking: this is making me hungry
wineking: I'm going to get lunch, while your show your grape around
toto we're not in tuesday anymore
"My day has been surreal," I said to dmk26 over our greasy dinner at TGIF. He had just come back from his late night hockey game, and as usual was still eating healthier than me, despite the fact that I hadn't even played a game that day. Granted, I had all plans to play until I discovered that my playoff game was actually at 5:40 and not 4:20, which meant I'd never get out in time to make it to my boss' boss' housewarming BBQ in Burlingame. Instead, I went to hockey clinic, skated around, and felt miserable about my horrible wrist shots that still weren't any better after two and a half years of playing.
"Life is surreal," he responded, poking his mashed potatoes.
I had awoken Saturday at 8 a.m. to a faint rapping at my front door. I looked over at my clock, sat up abruptly, and pulled my earplugs out. The rapping was actually a thunderous pounding, and I realized it was my contractor and his crew waiting impatiently outside to continue work on my bathroom renovation. I threw a robe on over my flimsy tank top and shorts and dashed out to open the door. Luckily, the four of them were still there, looking annoyed.
"Sorry, I had earplugs in," I said, quickly fumbling with the screen door. They stormed in with their tools and materials and drop cloths and immediately started hammering and sawing away at the bathroom. That's when the guy heading up the group told me that he and his partner had an emergency to attend to, and that they'd leave Pedro and another guy who didn't speak English at my house to complete the work. Apparently his brother's daughter got into a car accident, and they had to head to Oregon.
"Here's some cash to buy the guys lunch," my contractor said to me. "Also, they need a ride to El Camino when they're done," he said. "I won't be here after 2:30," I told him. "Oh," he said, "well they can walk to the light rail; it's not far from here, right?" I nodded, remembering how I walked both to and from the train station carrying heavy luggage, enroute to San Jose International and then back home again. It wasn't fun, and it was a good thirty minute walk. If I had to cut granite all day long, the last thing I think I'd want to do is walk for half an hour to the train station. I didn't know what else to do, though, since I had to leave long before they'd be finished.
I sat around after he left, wondering how I was going to change my clothes, since all four inside doors were off their hinges while they installed new ones. I ended up huddled in the corner of my office, changing underneath my robe while Pedro was using the tablesaw on the patio and his partner was cutting things up in the bathroom. I drove to the barn after that, still wondering how Pedro and the other guy were going to walk to the train station, let alone to El Camino, which was much farther. I spent half an hour riding and then another half an hour giving a lesson to a seemingly mute English girl who didn't even look like she was having that much fun. Of course, the minute the lesson ended and I borrowed someone's pony to ride out on the trail with her, she inundated me with information about their cramped riding arena back in England and the Welsh ponies and crosses that threw all the kids and how she was very interested in taking western riding lessons, which she couldn't do back home, and how her parents were divorced and her dad lived in Redwood City and they had a hard time finding a place to take riding lessons in northern California. In fact, I don't think the kid paused for a breath during the entire ten minute trail ride.
"I have to go," I said to her when we got back, and slid off the very short pony I was riding. I think my feet were a whole 12" from the ground. She happily untacked her horse and took him to the wash rack. I sped out of the parking lot and back home, practicing how I would ask the contractors whether they wanted burritos or quesadillas in Spanish, and what kind of meat they wanted. "Chicken," one of the guys said when I got home. Annoyed that I had spent ten minutes coming up with "¿Quieres un burrito o quesadilla con carne asada o pollo?" only to have the guy say "chicken," I drove to La Bamba to pick up their lunch.
They were still sawing and hammering when I left for hockey and my boss' boss' housewarming and BBQ, and still sawing and hammering when I came back from hockey clinic sans a playoff game and the high heels that I had forgotten to pack with my party outfit. My contractor called from Oregon or wherever he was and told me that Pedro wouldn't be done with the work today. I arrived home to find them packing things up in the trailer. I walked into the house and told Pedro the bathroom looked really nice. He pointed at it and tried to make some comment, then flustered said, "Mi inglés es muy malo." "It's ok," I said, "mi español es muy malo." If I could barely ask him what he wanted for lunch, I knew there was no way I'd figure out how to say "The granite on the vanity looks lovely" in Spanish. The best I could do was give him and his partner a ride to the bus stop.
"Where are you from?" he said to me very clearly in the car. I was too surprised to answer him in a complete sentence. "San Mateo," I said, feeling like I should have made up some exotic origin, or at least formed a complete sentence in Spanish since he spent so much time coming up with the question in English. We drove in silence the rest of the way to El Camino, where I dropped them off at a corner bus stop then rushed home to get ready for the BBQ. An hour later I was in an upscale suburb of Burlingame, walking gingerly around in 4" heels in my boss' boss' $2 million home. Actually, I'm not sure exactly how much she paid for that house, but it's a good guestimate if you are aware of bay area real estate.
Alas, the food was again gone by the time I arrived at the party. This is the second time this month I've arrived at a BBQ after hockey only to have nothing to eat but bread and fruit. It wasn't long before my boss' boss' husband's cousin, a mechE PhD student at Berkeley, started hitting me up with his sailing stories and woodworking projects. I agreed to give him my card in case I ever wanted to go sailing with him on the San Francisco bay. I don't really know how good of an idea it is to go out with your boss' boss' husband's cousin, but it's only sailing, right?
By the time I got home to Mountain View to meet dmk26 for dinner, it was 10:30 p.m. and I still hadn't changed my shoes. I accompanied him to TGIF in 4" heels and huge flowery pants and sat and ate french fries while I explained to him how it was possible I went to a BBQ where there was no food, and twice in one month at that.
"Well at least it isn't Tuesday," he said.
No, it wasn't Tuesday. Four days ago I was stuck at work late only to walk out of the building and discover a rave in the middle of campus. Dmk26 had been calling repeatedly wondering where the hell I had gone after I had agreed to have dinner with him. I called him several hours late, explaining that not only did I have to work late, but I exited the office to find a beer garden where there used to a courtyard, a giant prop stein and giant pretzels, an arcade with Dance Dance Revolution and various racing games, huge multi-colored dance club lights hoisted up onto the tops of buildings, two projectors showing a huge fly-through of cities using Google Earth, hor'doeuvres, desserts, and a full brass band.
Fuming, I picked dmk26 up at my house. If anything, he should have been the one pissed since he had been waiting for me for hours, but apparently he was so amused by my insistence that there "really was a rave at work" that he simply watched as I gestured neurotically while simultaneously managing to drive us to the pizza place. To prove it was true, I held him hostage in my car while we waited for our pizza, and took him to the office where he saw that yes, there really was a rave (and very bad karaoke, which I believe is the last thing he remembered).
To top Tuesday off, we were sitting in my living room later, eating pizza and drinking red wine at 11:30 at night, when someone started pounding aggressively on my front door. We looked at each other in confusion before I put my glass down and went to open the door. A woman dressed as a cop came storming into my house. "Hello I'm ______ from animal control and I'm here to investigate the neglect case." "Excuse me?" I said, trying to swallow a piece of half chewed pizza. I was pink from the wine and couldn't imagine what in blazes this woman was talking about.
"Are you the dog owner?" "Uh, yeah," I said. "You wanna see her?" I pointed to the patio. She marched to the screen door and I opened it for her. The puppy lay lounging, Julius Caesar style on her $50 dog bed from L.L. Bean, gazing leisurely up at us. The woman peered around the patio and then stepped back inside. "Uh, this isn't a neglect case," she said. I just raised an eyebrow at her. If I die and am reincarnated, I am either coming back as my dog or as my favorite Sharks fan's horse, Penny.
"I'm here because various neighbors have called and told me you keep the dog in a very small cage with no food or water and you're gone all day." I wasn't sure whether I should laugh or, well, laugh. "That dog was at work with me for five hours today," I said. "And I know which neighbor this is. This is the one who doesn't like the puppy's whining so she makes up stories about how I care for it." "Well," the officer said, "I'll have to tell her there's no neglect here, but just so you know she said she was planning to go to the HOA meeting to complain about this."
She eventually left, and I sat back down to my wine and pizza. "You were amazingly coherent," dmk26 said when I returned to the couch. "Yeah, didn't go crazy or anything," I said. This is really good for me. If you don't already know, I've discovered that therapy doesn't involve couches and cigars and men with white beards and notebooks. It does, however, involve old Jewish ladies who don't hear so well and their toy poodles who sit on your lap while you talk about your family. I am already less crazy than I was before, even though the white poodle only has one ear from a raccoon encounter and often wants me to pet it.
Now it's Sunday, and nothing surreal has happened today, but tomorrow is Monday and that's a whole new chapter.
"Life is surreal," he responded, poking his mashed potatoes.
I had awoken Saturday at 8 a.m. to a faint rapping at my front door. I looked over at my clock, sat up abruptly, and pulled my earplugs out. The rapping was actually a thunderous pounding, and I realized it was my contractor and his crew waiting impatiently outside to continue work on my bathroom renovation. I threw a robe on over my flimsy tank top and shorts and dashed out to open the door. Luckily, the four of them were still there, looking annoyed.
"Sorry, I had earplugs in," I said, quickly fumbling with the screen door. They stormed in with their tools and materials and drop cloths and immediately started hammering and sawing away at the bathroom. That's when the guy heading up the group told me that he and his partner had an emergency to attend to, and that they'd leave Pedro and another guy who didn't speak English at my house to complete the work. Apparently his brother's daughter got into a car accident, and they had to head to Oregon.
"Here's some cash to buy the guys lunch," my contractor said to me. "Also, they need a ride to El Camino when they're done," he said. "I won't be here after 2:30," I told him. "Oh," he said, "well they can walk to the light rail; it's not far from here, right?" I nodded, remembering how I walked both to and from the train station carrying heavy luggage, enroute to San Jose International and then back home again. It wasn't fun, and it was a good thirty minute walk. If I had to cut granite all day long, the last thing I think I'd want to do is walk for half an hour to the train station. I didn't know what else to do, though, since I had to leave long before they'd be finished.
I sat around after he left, wondering how I was going to change my clothes, since all four inside doors were off their hinges while they installed new ones. I ended up huddled in the corner of my office, changing underneath my robe while Pedro was using the tablesaw on the patio and his partner was cutting things up in the bathroom. I drove to the barn after that, still wondering how Pedro and the other guy were going to walk to the train station, let alone to El Camino, which was much farther. I spent half an hour riding and then another half an hour giving a lesson to a seemingly mute English girl who didn't even look like she was having that much fun. Of course, the minute the lesson ended and I borrowed someone's pony to ride out on the trail with her, she inundated me with information about their cramped riding arena back in England and the Welsh ponies and crosses that threw all the kids and how she was very interested in taking western riding lessons, which she couldn't do back home, and how her parents were divorced and her dad lived in Redwood City and they had a hard time finding a place to take riding lessons in northern California. In fact, I don't think the kid paused for a breath during the entire ten minute trail ride.
"I have to go," I said to her when we got back, and slid off the very short pony I was riding. I think my feet were a whole 12" from the ground. She happily untacked her horse and took him to the wash rack. I sped out of the parking lot and back home, practicing how I would ask the contractors whether they wanted burritos or quesadillas in Spanish, and what kind of meat they wanted. "Chicken," one of the guys said when I got home. Annoyed that I had spent ten minutes coming up with "¿Quieres un burrito o quesadilla con carne asada o pollo?" only to have the guy say "chicken," I drove to La Bamba to pick up their lunch.
They were still sawing and hammering when I left for hockey and my boss' boss' housewarming and BBQ, and still sawing and hammering when I came back from hockey clinic sans a playoff game and the high heels that I had forgotten to pack with my party outfit. My contractor called from Oregon or wherever he was and told me that Pedro wouldn't be done with the work today. I arrived home to find them packing things up in the trailer. I walked into the house and told Pedro the bathroom looked really nice. He pointed at it and tried to make some comment, then flustered said, "Mi inglés es muy malo." "It's ok," I said, "mi español es muy malo." If I could barely ask him what he wanted for lunch, I knew there was no way I'd figure out how to say "The granite on the vanity looks lovely" in Spanish. The best I could do was give him and his partner a ride to the bus stop.
"Where are you from?" he said to me very clearly in the car. I was too surprised to answer him in a complete sentence. "San Mateo," I said, feeling like I should have made up some exotic origin, or at least formed a complete sentence in Spanish since he spent so much time coming up with the question in English. We drove in silence the rest of the way to El Camino, where I dropped them off at a corner bus stop then rushed home to get ready for the BBQ. An hour later I was in an upscale suburb of Burlingame, walking gingerly around in 4" heels in my boss' boss' $2 million home. Actually, I'm not sure exactly how much she paid for that house, but it's a good guestimate if you are aware of bay area real estate.
Alas, the food was again gone by the time I arrived at the party. This is the second time this month I've arrived at a BBQ after hockey only to have nothing to eat but bread and fruit. It wasn't long before my boss' boss' husband's cousin, a mechE PhD student at Berkeley, started hitting me up with his sailing stories and woodworking projects. I agreed to give him my card in case I ever wanted to go sailing with him on the San Francisco bay. I don't really know how good of an idea it is to go out with your boss' boss' husband's cousin, but it's only sailing, right?
By the time I got home to Mountain View to meet dmk26 for dinner, it was 10:30 p.m. and I still hadn't changed my shoes. I accompanied him to TGIF in 4" heels and huge flowery pants and sat and ate french fries while I explained to him how it was possible I went to a BBQ where there was no food, and twice in one month at that.
"Well at least it isn't Tuesday," he said.
No, it wasn't Tuesday. Four days ago I was stuck at work late only to walk out of the building and discover a rave in the middle of campus. Dmk26 had been calling repeatedly wondering where the hell I had gone after I had agreed to have dinner with him. I called him several hours late, explaining that not only did I have to work late, but I exited the office to find a beer garden where there used to a courtyard, a giant prop stein and giant pretzels, an arcade with Dance Dance Revolution and various racing games, huge multi-colored dance club lights hoisted up onto the tops of buildings, two projectors showing a huge fly-through of cities using Google Earth, hor'doeuvres, desserts, and a full brass band.
Fuming, I picked dmk26 up at my house. If anything, he should have been the one pissed since he had been waiting for me for hours, but apparently he was so amused by my insistence that there "really was a rave at work" that he simply watched as I gestured neurotically while simultaneously managing to drive us to the pizza place. To prove it was true, I held him hostage in my car while we waited for our pizza, and took him to the office where he saw that yes, there really was a rave (and very bad karaoke, which I believe is the last thing he remembered).
To top Tuesday off, we were sitting in my living room later, eating pizza and drinking red wine at 11:30 at night, when someone started pounding aggressively on my front door. We looked at each other in confusion before I put my glass down and went to open the door. A woman dressed as a cop came storming into my house. "Hello I'm ______ from animal control and I'm here to investigate the neglect case." "Excuse me?" I said, trying to swallow a piece of half chewed pizza. I was pink from the wine and couldn't imagine what in blazes this woman was talking about.
"Are you the dog owner?" "Uh, yeah," I said. "You wanna see her?" I pointed to the patio. She marched to the screen door and I opened it for her. The puppy lay lounging, Julius Caesar style on her $50 dog bed from L.L. Bean, gazing leisurely up at us. The woman peered around the patio and then stepped back inside. "Uh, this isn't a neglect case," she said. I just raised an eyebrow at her. If I die and am reincarnated, I am either coming back as my dog or as my favorite Sharks fan's horse, Penny.
"I'm here because various neighbors have called and told me you keep the dog in a very small cage with no food or water and you're gone all day." I wasn't sure whether I should laugh or, well, laugh. "That dog was at work with me for five hours today," I said. "And I know which neighbor this is. This is the one who doesn't like the puppy's whining so she makes up stories about how I care for it." "Well," the officer said, "I'll have to tell her there's no neglect here, but just so you know she said she was planning to go to the HOA meeting to complain about this."
She eventually left, and I sat back down to my wine and pizza. "You were amazingly coherent," dmk26 said when I returned to the couch. "Yeah, didn't go crazy or anything," I said. This is really good for me. If you don't already know, I've discovered that therapy doesn't involve couches and cigars and men with white beards and notebooks. It does, however, involve old Jewish ladies who don't hear so well and their toy poodles who sit on your lap while you talk about your family. I am already less crazy than I was before, even though the white poodle only has one ear from a raccoon encounter and often wants me to pet it.
Now it's Sunday, and nothing surreal has happened today, but tomorrow is Monday and that's a whole new chapter.
seeing
Bear said to me, if you want to learn photography, you should try taking at least one picture everyday. So of course, ever ready to one-up anything anyone says, I took two pictures today. I am well aware that more isn't always better, but when you have two good opportunities in one day, you don't sit around waiting for something better to come along.Photography isn't about equipment, Bear said, it's about seeing. It's not surprising, because most of art is about seeing. Writing is about seeing. The best writers are the most observant ones, the ones who peer with an introspective eye to see beauty, disaster, humor, and tragedy in everything from a garden snail to a city skyscraper to a girlfriend's blue eyeshadow. In this vein, writing and photography are the same -- can I see this moment in time the way no one else has seen it before? Can I express how this slice of life lives in my memory long after the reality of it has faded?
My memory, interestingly, is like a photograph with a private perspective. In it I have this angle from which only I perceived an event or person, and from which I draw my stories. If a photograph tells a story, it does so because someone took the time to craft the telling of it. Just like you can't say anything new in a business memo, you can't usually capture anything that anyone else hasn't already seen while shooting away on the precipice marked "vista point" on the map. You have to develop your own way of seeing that isn't found on maps and in form letters.
I often wrongly think that I am oblivious to my surroundings, simply because people are constantly pointing out things that I didn't see. I've discovered that this is in fact the opposite; I don't see the things they see because I am observing something else. This manifests itself only when I write about the event later from a vantage point that, while no one else shared at the time, everyone realized after the retelling of it. Just like in a photograph that shows a landscape or setting or expression that you never thought occurred, a single sentence can describe an observation that no one else made, even though they too were there, on that beach, in that room, with that person. I hope in my writing, people are able to see my photographs.
guess the injury
I spent Sunday gimping around my house after getting kicked, run over, headbutted, and bitten by a series of unruly horses and fillies at Saturday's show. Why do I do this to myself again? Oh that's right, because I love the romance that is horses, especially the part where I get kicked in the leg while wearing my best khaki pants.
I have this bad habit of photographing morbidity, and as such I've amassed a small collection of injury photos, all incurred by yours truly. Now you too have the once in a blogtime chance to guess what happened to me.
I have this bad habit of photographing morbidity, and as such I've amassed a small collection of injury photos, all incurred by yours truly. Now you too have the once in a blogtime chance to guess what happened to me.
night out with bear
Always true to his word, Bear took me to a strip club last night to drown out my sorrows. Adventuring with Bear is always a surreal experience, and it usually starts out at some little known Thai, Vietnamese, or Hawaiian mini-chain with excellent food and questionable service. As such, if you're on a tight budget and ever have the chance to stop at Thai Original BBQ in South San Francisco, I would recommend it. Don't expect candles and piano players, but do expect to be full.
We stopped by a kung fu academy somewhere in the depths of the city after dinner to pick up some more boys. The granite steps of the building led into a workout room complete with a raised boxing ring, weight machines, and a large rubber matted surface with kick bags. Everywhere there was intricate gold and white wall and crown molding, granite, and windows soaring to the ceilings. "There's a vault door?" I said to Bear. "Yeah," he said, "this place was converted from a bank to a kickboxing school." Inside the vault the staff had set up a changing/locker room for the clientele. It reminded me of the 1920s style converted schoolrooms in Pittsburgh that now sold as luxury condominiums, complete with the original blackboards running the length of the living room walls.
We headed back to the cars after gathering all the attendees and drove through neighborhood after neighborhood of sometimes glitzy and sometimes depressed nightclubs, bars, and strip joints. "That place is a ghetto," Bear pointed out as we cruised downhill through a yellow light. "Oh, that's ghetto too, and that, that's ghetto." I looked over at him briefly. "But this place we're going, this is a gentleman's club." I didn't suspect I'd actually meet any gentlemen, but the crowd I was with was cordial enough so I didn't care.
Somewhere on Howard Street, Bear had free passes to what his friends dubbed an upscale club. I'm not sure what I envisioned would be going on inside, but it wasn't anything that extraordinary. I ended up the only individual in our group of six guys and one woman watching the show. "Wow, she's very athletic," I said to Bear, who looked briefly over at what I was pointing out then started telling me a story about a bar fight he'd been in. "Great, now you made me look over there, and she's gonna come over here," he said. I continued staring. She should consider Zumanity, I thought to myself as the girl hung upside down from a vertical pole then slid down it spinning with her legs outstretched. "That was totally amazing," I said to the air, as the guys downed shots while I peered around their raised glasses.
The music and decor could only be called cheesy. While it was clear someone had spent a lot of time and money thinking about the setup, it didn't mean any taste was involved. Aside from the bubble fountain and badly placed fog machine that kept obscuring the dancers, there was a huge piece of red neon wall art depicting the Golden Gate Bridge, along with a flickering burned out section. The dancers, on the other hand, varied in taste, and it was clear they picked out their own outfits and "themes." The unifying element appeared to be the little metal lunchbox purses they all carried and the sky high 6" platform shoes with the clear sole and heel. Since most guys I meet claim to be 5'10" and are really all 5'7", I can't imagine that a little 5'2" Asian girl who weighs about a dollar five with clothes on and wearing 6" shoes is going to contribute to a short man's already shaky self-esteem. But what do I know. Maybe it would only matter if they were trying to date these women, which they're not.
At least, I think they're not. One of the dancers came down from the stage in her frilly black and magenta outfit and sat with our group, looking at her cell phone with two of the guys. It became clear to me that far from being some random half naked girl, she had some past history with at least one person in the group. I wonder if guys dating strippers is like girls dating sports stars. I assume one does it for the public attention and not the stimulating intellectual conversation. I did wonder what all those ladies were saying to the suited and tied men near the front of the stage, but it's unlikely it was as academic as I imagined. As everyone in my group became more and more incoherent, I perused the ladies and wondered why they were here, what they did for a living outside of this joint, what they hoped to accomplish with this money. What did I hope to accomplish? I wasn't sure, but I wasn't dancing naked either.
Bear knew the waitress who supplied our table with endless glasses of liquor. She was an exotic little Asian girl wearing a cute half tux with a bikini bottom and cuffs. "She makes a ton working here," Bear said, "and all she has to do is serve drinks." "I just came back from a shoot in Hawaii," she said, "under the waterfalls. I might go to Miami next week!" She was beaming -- a full row of perfect white teeth flashed in the dark. I hadn't shot in forever. I guess it was something I did to pass the time last year, and I had since fallen out of it after not being sure what to do with the pictures other than say "Yeah, once I looked like this."
I left around midnight, before the real ruckus started and before I was too tired to make the long trek back to the burbs and mundania. If I ever wondered for a split second what it was like to a stripper, I decided that it was much too cold to be working naked in San Francisco, and now my curiosity is forever satisfied.
We stopped by a kung fu academy somewhere in the depths of the city after dinner to pick up some more boys. The granite steps of the building led into a workout room complete with a raised boxing ring, weight machines, and a large rubber matted surface with kick bags. Everywhere there was intricate gold and white wall and crown molding, granite, and windows soaring to the ceilings. "There's a vault door?" I said to Bear. "Yeah," he said, "this place was converted from a bank to a kickboxing school." Inside the vault the staff had set up a changing/locker room for the clientele. It reminded me of the 1920s style converted schoolrooms in Pittsburgh that now sold as luxury condominiums, complete with the original blackboards running the length of the living room walls.
We headed back to the cars after gathering all the attendees and drove through neighborhood after neighborhood of sometimes glitzy and sometimes depressed nightclubs, bars, and strip joints. "That place is a ghetto," Bear pointed out as we cruised downhill through a yellow light. "Oh, that's ghetto too, and that, that's ghetto." I looked over at him briefly. "But this place we're going, this is a gentleman's club." I didn't suspect I'd actually meet any gentlemen, but the crowd I was with was cordial enough so I didn't care.
Somewhere on Howard Street, Bear had free passes to what his friends dubbed an upscale club. I'm not sure what I envisioned would be going on inside, but it wasn't anything that extraordinary. I ended up the only individual in our group of six guys and one woman watching the show. "Wow, she's very athletic," I said to Bear, who looked briefly over at what I was pointing out then started telling me a story about a bar fight he'd been in. "Great, now you made me look over there, and she's gonna come over here," he said. I continued staring. She should consider Zumanity, I thought to myself as the girl hung upside down from a vertical pole then slid down it spinning with her legs outstretched. "That was totally amazing," I said to the air, as the guys downed shots while I peered around their raised glasses.
The music and decor could only be called cheesy. While it was clear someone had spent a lot of time and money thinking about the setup, it didn't mean any taste was involved. Aside from the bubble fountain and badly placed fog machine that kept obscuring the dancers, there was a huge piece of red neon wall art depicting the Golden Gate Bridge, along with a flickering burned out section. The dancers, on the other hand, varied in taste, and it was clear they picked out their own outfits and "themes." The unifying element appeared to be the little metal lunchbox purses they all carried and the sky high 6" platform shoes with the clear sole and heel. Since most guys I meet claim to be 5'10" and are really all 5'7", I can't imagine that a little 5'2" Asian girl who weighs about a dollar five with clothes on and wearing 6" shoes is going to contribute to a short man's already shaky self-esteem. But what do I know. Maybe it would only matter if they were trying to date these women, which they're not.
At least, I think they're not. One of the dancers came down from the stage in her frilly black and magenta outfit and sat with our group, looking at her cell phone with two of the guys. It became clear to me that far from being some random half naked girl, she had some past history with at least one person in the group. I wonder if guys dating strippers is like girls dating sports stars. I assume one does it for the public attention and not the stimulating intellectual conversation. I did wonder what all those ladies were saying to the suited and tied men near the front of the stage, but it's unlikely it was as academic as I imagined. As everyone in my group became more and more incoherent, I perused the ladies and wondered why they were here, what they did for a living outside of this joint, what they hoped to accomplish with this money. What did I hope to accomplish? I wasn't sure, but I wasn't dancing naked either.
Bear knew the waitress who supplied our table with endless glasses of liquor. She was an exotic little Asian girl wearing a cute half tux with a bikini bottom and cuffs. "She makes a ton working here," Bear said, "and all she has to do is serve drinks." "I just came back from a shoot in Hawaii," she said, "under the waterfalls. I might go to Miami next week!" She was beaming -- a full row of perfect white teeth flashed in the dark. I hadn't shot in forever. I guess it was something I did to pass the time last year, and I had since fallen out of it after not being sure what to do with the pictures other than say "Yeah, once I looked like this."
I left around midnight, before the real ruckus started and before I was too tired to make the long trek back to the burbs and mundania. If I ever wondered for a split second what it was like to a stripper, I decided that it was much too cold to be working naked in San Francisco, and now my curiosity is forever satisfied.
