newest entry
contact
quien es nico?
a links page
Antes:
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
I also do stuff over at livejournal:
the insufficient blog
otro lugares:
absorbacon
abstractnixon
aiyah
amateur gourmet
amazing adventures of bill
appetites
archerr
bill and kent
blockade boy
center of gravitas
cheap blue guitar
chocolate and zucchini
comics 212
designer blog
dogpoet
edwin
how to learn swedish
hungry tiger
i make things
i was just really very hungry
insequence
island of misfit toys
lady, that's my skull
mysterysteps
news from me
old grey poet
once upon a tart
postmodernbarney
precocious curmudgeon
pretty, fizzy, paradise
roar of comics
something old, nothing new
stop touching my food
strange maps
super underwear perverts
there are some who call me tim
tinman
tmb
ultrasparky
diaryland
diaryland profile
ringsurf gay diary
previous next random list join
Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.
monday03/01/2004
San Francisco on my mind
I spent a couple of days in San Francisco this weekend. I�d love to say that it was to marry John, but no, he stayed home for this trip. I was actually there being a good brother. My sister had a job interview, and the company courting her offered to fly her and a guest up, so I went along as moral support and to abuse the chance at a quick get away. I�ve only been to San Francisco a few times and like my previous visits, this one was brief, flying in Friday afternoon and leaving Saturday morning, so in all, it felt as if we spent more time in airports dealing with security and coming and going than we did anywhere else.
My first trip to the city was one of convenience. Some friends were getting together to spend a long weekend in one of the other bay cities, and logistically San Francisco was the easiest place for us all to meet. I was there for an hour or two before it was time to leave, heading off to the South Bay, or East Bay, or wherever the heck it was that Carlos and Beth lived back then.
The second visit was when John, a friend of ours, and I went up for Pride weekend. We presumably did not have a normal time. At least I hope it�s not normal to have drunk women hurriedly weaving through crowded bars crash into you and start yelling at you, calling you a faggot for not buying her a replacement beer for the one she spilled over your clothes.
I spent that night smelling like cheap beer, which meant that I probably fit right in with the rest of the crowd plowing in and out of bars and plowing into the streets. The fumes of alcohol and other various substances of questionable legality filled the air that night as we watched people climbing up on top of bus shelters to expose themselves to the masses and to have fumbling sex with each other to thunderous cheering and applause.
The evening started out much less rowdy, with our showing up for an hour or so at a party given by friends of a friend. The hosts/friends of a friend lived in an expensive, and apparently unusually large place in the middle of the Castro. Tourists in various stages of undress roamed the jammed streets below, while on the second floor of their home, a collection of well dressed, well employed, white men sipped wine, ate canap�s, and made plans for bar hopping. Several of them stared at me as if I were speaking gibberish when I mentioned that I wanted to watch the Dyke march. They were more polite, merely sitting quietly when one half of the host couple decided to trash, thrash, and bash the city.
He hated San Francisco with a passion and made sure everyone there knew that he wanted to move back to Los Angeles, a rather unusual opinion, or at least unusual in my experience. When the subject of Northern California vs. Southern California comes up in conversation, many people tend to prefer it up north, some folks perhaps too aggressively so, again, at least in my experience. There has been more than one occasion where I have had to deal with people not merely insisting, but demanding that I agree with them that Los Angeles is a horrible, smog filled, congested, cultural wasteland filled with vapid idiots and that San Francisco is the best city on the planet.
I don�t know about it being the best, but it is pleasant and even with my short, abrupt, and disjointed visits, It's easy to see it's charms. If I could ever manage to spend more than a couple of days there, it�s possible that I could eventually grasp the soul of the place and figure out why the natives love it so fiercely.
While as short as my previous trips, this last visit was less, um, extreme. We got in Friday afternoon, and after dropping my sister off for her interview, I had myself a late lunch in the Castro. I didn�t realize it at first, but I found myself not so subtly staring at an older, handsome gray haired man. I turned away because I saw that I was making him uncomfortable. I turned away because even if my ogling had not put him off, it was not my intention to go around the city cruising strangers no matter how attractive. I turned away because I wasn�t going to do anything other than look.
I sat there eating my sandwich, purposely not looking in his direction, and noticed for the first time that everyone else in the restaurant was white. The streets were white as well, filled with skinny, young white boys holding hands, faces pink, flushed with first love; large white bears, meeting, greeting, and generally holding court in front of various bars and restaurants; and confused looking white tourists standing on street corners turning their maps wrong way round trying to get a sense of direction. I figured that everyone of color was off at work; too busy earning a living to be hanging around the neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon.
When I walked into a clothing store idly wondering if John could use revealing, gimmicky �gay� clothes with his photography, I was irrationally happy to see a 40ish Latino guy intently flipping through a selection of Papi underwear, a 30ish Asian man looking at very short shorts with his white boyfriend, and two young, queeny acting Filipino guys, bickering over which flimsy, nearly transparent shirt was the most flattering. I browsed for a few minutes, and decided that at these prices, John�s clients could bring their own fetishist clothing to their photo session. I also decided that the white washing of the Castro was just a figment of my imagination brought on by a tired mind and left the store and the neighborhood, heading up to the Presidio area, to spend some time walking in the cool air before I had to meet my sister and the prospective employers for dinner.
After dinner, and a night at a not very impressive hotel on Bush that the corporates had set up for us (the complimentary toothbrush and toothpaste cost $5.50), we had breakfast at a farmers market at the Embarcadero, munching on good food and people watching, before making our way back towards the airport for more fun with metal detectors, a plane filled with giggling college girls, and a short flight back home.
OK, that�s enough of this. Assuming I get my ass in gear, there should be another entry up here soon about War Music (an OK play) and Latter Days (an OK movie). After that, who knows, maybe I�ll finally get around to writing that idiotic yaoi manga entry I�ve been threatening to post. Speaking of which, Travis, you may want to check out Kill Me, Kiss Me, a quirky Korean Manga that TokyoPop is putting out with cross-dressing identical cousin protagonists. When confronted over his wearing a dress and passing for a girl, the boy half of the cousins twirls �round and goes �Whee! wearing a dress is fun!�
More later,
nico
<<Illness or sex::::5 marriages>>