“We want to do the trolley.”
My friend from college is visiting with his company on business.
“And the Painted Ladies, you know that place where they filmed Full House.”
Ugh, yes I do know.
“And the Golden Gate Bridge.”
Oh sweet jesus.
I just thought we were going to grab a cup of coffee and catch up on the past few years that we haven’t seen each other.
And how the fuck did he turn 40? Or for that matter, how am I 42?
I also don’t remember him being taller than me, but that could be because the guy I am dating is shorter than I am and I am automatically thinking that all men are shorter than me.
My friend is also losing his hair.
Mortality.
I gave him a little grief about the hair, I had to poke some fun, but I get it, he’s got a 13 month old baby boy, I’m sure the hair loss happened shortly after realizing that he wasn’t going to get any sleep for the first 8 months of his child’s life.
He always hollers “hola” at me because of my name and despite many years of persuading him that I do not, in fact, speak spanish, despite my spanish sounding name, the “hola” has continued.
It is like my family calling me Bubba.
Which is not a bad nickname when I acknowledge it, and I may have inadvertently gotten a new nickname from my boyfriend.
“Hey lip gloss,” he said to me the other night as I re-applied some lip balm.
“I just brushed my teeth,” I warded him off, “I need to re-up.”
Poor man.
He got more than he bargained for with this sparkle pony.
I joke that I am not going to prank him by mowing off an eyebrow while he sleeps or shaving some silly design on the side of his head; no, I’ll just dump loose glitter on his motorcycle jacket.
Or spray him down with aerosol adhesive and then dump loose glitter on him.
I have red, purple, and sky blue.
I bought them years ago for Burning Man and then never used them.
But he’s right, I do have a fondness for the lip gloss.
I like my mouth to feel a certain way and I hate dry lips.
I digress.
I basically played tourist today.
I took my friend and his boss on a little sightseeing of San Francisco.
I didn’t mind, although, truth be told, I was surprised at the number of things we crammed into a short amount of time.
They picked me up around 2:45 p.m. and dropped me off just before 6 p.m. having to give themselves enough time to get the rental car back to the airport and pick up another person from SFO for the rest of the business trip.
In that time we drove Great Highway, went up to Lands End, parked, walked around Seal Rock, Lands End, and took photographs of the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we hopped back into the car and I navigate us to the NOPA neighborhood so that we could do a quick spin around Alamo Square Park and see the Painted Ladies.
Which actually looked really lovely in the late afternoon light.
Plus the scaffolding that has been up on one of the girls finally has been pulled down.
I’m not always the biggest fan of the Painted Ladies, I think there are far prettier houses, but the view is gorgeous and my friend and his co-hort got to snap some photographs.
Before heading to the cable car.
At least I know my cable car lines.
I did not direct us to either the downtown turn around on Powell or the one at the end of Fisherman’s Wharf.
Nope.
We hopped on the California Van Ness line at California and Polk Street.
I pointed out things like a good host guide–“there’s the Masonic Temple, in case you wanted to see any Mason’s,” I chuckled when we passed the venue.
“On the left side of the car is Grace Cathedral, there’s Huntington Square Park, here’s the Fairmont Hotel with the Tonga Room, and on the other side is the Top of The Mark, where Vertigo was filmed.”
I told them about how the cable cars run and the difference between a cable car and a trolley.
I got to see some San Francisco I don’t normally see.
Then we hopped off at the end of the line in the Financial District and walked over to the Ferry Building.
They joked about hipsters and gluten-free diets and hippies and vegan donuts and I used the bathroom.
We grabbed a Boccalone sampler of salted pig parts and walked back to the Financial District and for the first time in so long I can’t remember when this actually happened, we went to a bar and watched the end of the Dallas Detroit Game.
My friend was determined to find a place to watch the last few minutes, and his compatriot seemed just as eager, I think they were on the spread (what does that mean anyway?).
So, that’s how it happened to be that at 4:30 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon I find myself in the hotel bar of the Hyatt Regency downtown sipping a Pellegrino and sending texts to my boyfriend who is away on business in Santa Clara while my friend drinks a pint and watches the football game.
I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.
Twice in one weekend I find myself in social settings with bars.
I’m not interested in drinking, if anything it really grosses me out, the smell of it especially, I find myself more and more sensitive to it, but I did not like that I had ended up in a bar on my day off.
I was glad to see my friend.
But I was ready to go home.
We took an Uber from the hotel bar to the rental car after the game finished and I thought, my life, it really is so different from the everyday hustle bustle of the rest of the world.
Not just because I live and work in San Francisco, but also because I practice an actively spiritual way of life that does not include drinking.
I have been reminded at New Years and again today, how the rest of the world works and plays, oh, yeah, this is what “normal” people do.
I have to say.
Thanks, but no thanks.
I don’t mind playing tourist once in a while.
But that’s not a part of town I need to revisit again.
Literally and figuratively.
That being said, it was a gift to see my friend, it is nice to see people from Madison, from UW, from that part of my life.
If only to smash home how radically different a person I have become.
“Your place looks entirely Carmen,” my friend said as he used the bathroom and I gave him the “grand tour” of my in-law.
Although not exactly the person I was when I went to school back at UW Madison, I am apparently not too different either.
Just a bit more clear-eyed.
And present.
And now back to my regular programming.
My “normal.”
Living my own little slice of San Francisco.
Away, way, way, down by the sea.
In my little bungalow that looks like me.
Auntiebubba 