I walk up Castro Street these days for just one of three reasons:
1.
To return or rent a DVD. (That's between Market and 18th...in fact,
Superstar Satellite Video is where Valley Pride once stood! I'm SO glad
that rotten meat stink is gone, along with the screwed-up jerkwad who
hanged out there all day. Now, no more smell, no more lunatic, and it's
a clean, friendly place with a great multicultural mix of (underpaid/no health insurance) queer sales guys. Another wish of mine come true; yay!)
2.
To purchase whole wheat flour and/or a quart box of "Soy Slender
Cappucino Soy Milk". (That's between 18th and 19th...the health food
store on the corner, with the gorilla mural. They are STILL so
expensive, I only shop for those two items.)
3. Nostalgia. To remember friends long gone...my own private Ghost World.
So
earlier today, I walked up Castro Street for reasons 1 and 2. On the
way to 2, I notice a familiar button in a display of buttons at "Brand
X Antiques" store.
It was a collection of memorabilia buttons from gay (and other) events...and lo and behold...one of those buttons is mine!
It is my Gay Islam button that says "Allah is good, Allah is gay". (The one just left of center, w/sky blue background.)
So
it can't be more than a few years old...but perhaps more recent. How
funny. I'll take a pic of it tomorrow. Maybe I'll pretend I don't know
about that button, and ask the owner if he knows its history. I wonder
if he'll make up some grandiose tale in an attempt to make a sale. What
price does he want for it? Does it still have my pink thumbprint and
gay-bible URL on the back?
After all my fantasizing that some
day my Faggot Bible would appear as if by magic, in bookstores across
the world...and I'd be walking up Castro to see them in all the shop
windows!
Well, that single little button is like a bit of a SQUIRT of that fantasy, eh? I think it's incredible: this "persistance of moi"!
Like
bread crumbs left by my Guardian Angel, for me to follow. I'm a pioneer
of a New Reality. Thus I'm carving it out, and it takes shape.
I walk sometimes to the donut shop on Mission and 9th, across from Potter Hotel.
Why do I go there now, my newest hangout? Two reasons:
1.
It's a street corner that is likely to bring in the intelligent rogue
types I like so much...at the crossroads of various nomadic wanderers,
mostly skanks and cranks, but sometimes that rare gem, that diamond in
the rough whom I seek but know not when the next one is due. More
likely, a friend from the past, such as The Witt.
Or even, a whole new network of a bunch of neat guys...ones that will
REMAIN friends and live close by if not under the same (van) roof.
2.
I fantasize that you've returned to SF and also the Potter. So I'm
waiting for you to step out after work, to meet me here for coffee and
shoot the bull. We joke and exchange many stories from our recent past,
since you left 2306. Later, we stroll along South of Market and into
South Beach.
So
I have a medium coffee and two french donuts (one w/maple frosting, the
other vanilla or chocolate; I love the eggy flavor and its crinkly
crust w/cool, spongy interior). And I either pretend you're showing up,
or Witt, or some cute guy I've never seen before, but am so glad to now
meet!
I leave the donut shop and continue my stroll down
Folsom, then up Fourth, where I enter the Sony Metreon, walk through
that, then into Yerba Buena Park. At the top of this park are long,
connected benches and a panorama view of the surrounding high rises,
and of course the starry sky. (Since night comes much sooner these
days, it's often dark for some, or all, of my city hikes.)
Sometimes I stay in the Metreon,
to enjoy a Starbucks vente non-fat hot chocolate w/whipped cream, while
reading the S.F. Chronicle at one of those tables by the escalators.
Why
the Metreon? Why did I choose that as one of my new hangouts, besides
just to get out of the Castro? Well, I started visiting the Metreon two
years ago, then stopped for some months, then resumed. Originally, I
went there with the 2600 hackers group.
That was about four years ago. They turned out to be dysfunctional
libertarian idiots...so I live out my dream of being a hacker, and
hanging out w/other hackers at the Metreon, and another area: the Embarcadero.
That
was (still is) where 2600 folks meet the first Friday of each
month...and used to go to the Metreon for a while, later in the
evening.
So I go there myself, with an entourage of all my imaginary hacker friends.
I also take on other fantasies in other areas of the city. Am I nuts? Am I caught in the past, in my own Ghost World?
I
don't think so, my friend. I believe I'm a reality hacker...a pioneer
of the mind. And I am carving out a new reality by living my fantasies
in some meditative ways.
Eventually, they will manifest. My button in that antique store window is but an angel's kiss, a promise of my Faggot Bible vision.
P.S.:
To a certain neighbor who recently accused me of being lost in my own
fantasy world: I am NOT lost in my fantasies...I know my way around
quite well, thank you!
(Note: this is the telling of a vision I had several weeks ago, that I now nickname "The Tsunami Boogie".)
The
"Big One" finally strikes San Francisco...I and many others survive
totally unscathed. But these "many others" are MOSTLY evil themselves,
and would just as soon slaughter me, as have me for a neighbor. And
now, the tsunami has arrived, about to engulf ALL of us who are not
able to make it to high ground quick enough.
So there I am,
wading as best I could uphill, through a dense puddle of molasses,
right there on Market Street between Noe & Castro, and facing the
twin peaks. While all these "others" are racing up the hills, already
at least several blocks ahead of me. Do any of them give a damn about
me? Do any care to stop a moment to pull me out of this molasses, so I
could run like the wind, too? NOPE!
So there I am, slogging,
slogging slowly along, while everyone else is way ahead of me by now, I
can barely see them bigger than ants...and the great wall of the
tsunami is right overhead, just behind me, feels like I could touch it!
(I crane my neck and bend back sharply, in order to even SEE the
crest.) And then it all comes tumbling down...
when suddenly a
magic bubble of protection pops up to spare my happy soul: it surrounds
me. Complete with little table (w/teapot and teacup) and rocking chair,
whereby I could sit back in leisure to enjoy the spectacle of that
tidal wave bearing down on all those perfect idiots who STILL think
they're out of harm's path. And some of their last thoughts echo my way
in the Bubbling Ether Of Knowing, that is also The Tidal Wave Of
Judgment:
A brief chuckle over how I "missed the boat" so to speak (as some of them looked back for the last time).
--fin
ADDENDUM: Add to that little table, a fat doobie and matches...if you please!
