Friday the 13th

Though not generally a superstitious type of girl, I find this day particularly discomfiting. Perhaps because I have worked myself into a panic imagining all those jason-masked, hatchet wielding demonstrators at the RNC wreaking havoc and gifting the election to Bush as he thanks them and smirks...

It's a lazy Friday due to much drinking last night by the minions of Massive Corporation of Unrequited Bull Shit, I am told that there were bucket shots of tequila and much vomiting. You can tell by their uniform greyness in their uniform banker blue button downs and their uniform casual day khakis. I excused myself from the debauchery, I never enjoy hanging out with the binge drinking minions of the Massive Corporation. I have had plenty time to work myself into a bundle of frayed nerves concocting various End of Days scenarios...

Fuck it, I am going to spend the rest of the afternoon getting caught up on salacious celebrity gossip, or troll my mind for word associations, like this one, that grabbed me as I was sauntering to the loo. World Wide Web = Wild Kingdom = Marlin Perkins = white hair = Mutual of Omaha = indian headress = Mutual of Omaha ad jingle lodged in brain for next 72 hours. Swell, thanks brain.

The Greek Frenchman and Ma belle Michelle and I had hot pot on Clement last night, $12.99 all the meat you could possibly eat. A delicious meal on a frigid August evening. We were discussing the upcoming RNC and I was voicing my fears that things could very quickly spiral out of control. I think a massive show of solidarity is great, in theory. There will be 36,000 police and perhaps 300,000 demonstrators. People on both sides agitated, defensive, itching for a fight. All it takes is one loose cannon with a rock in his hand -- the GF thinks I am being overwraught and he is quite possibly correct, perhaps part of me wants to know what would happen, perhaps part of me wants to spill into the streets with a rock in my hand and smash things, be provoked and enraged enough to sidestep the white lines of reason and good citizenry to claw out the eyes of my nation while humming the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, we don't need no water let the motherfucker burn.

But being a good and reasonable little Democrat, I am inclined to think it is never a good idea to spit in the face of bureaucracy, bureaucracy is a great and globular monster it will swallow my end for it's own means. As Nixon did in '68.

But let us adjourn from the Department of Potential Catastrophe and pay a quick visit to the Department of Chance Encounters.

Last Friday as I was walking along Haight Street contemplating my navel and my dinner options a strange thing happened. A figure appeared from a mirage, a lanky silhouette in a watch cap that was so startlingly familiar that nearly had to stoop to retrieve my jaw from the sidewalk, and I believe that we saw one another at the exact same moment and experienced the very same disbelief. I felt as though we were hesitantly edging toward each other, feelers twitching, it is, no it isn't, it is, yes, yes it is - holy shit (is my hair OK?) I distinctly remember wondering if my hair was OK while simultaneously thinking that I was behaving like a sixteen year old dork, which is in context, as the fleshed out mirage now standing before me was first love BC - and his long time girlfriend.

Slightly incredulous greetings were exchanged along with numbers and it was agreed that we should meet for a drink.

He rang on Monday, while I was gallantly fending off the hangover monster from my wastrel weekend and it was decided that we would meet that evening.

I rushed home and fretted over my wardrobe and wondered at that and further wondered at the sudden flickers of the butterflies in my belly, so I sat myself down and had a chat with Self. Self, I said, you are being a silly, silly girl, put the butterflies to bed and get in a cab or you will be late. And yet, the butterflies were restive, they always were when he's around.

We met at Public (he deemed yuppy) (yuppy?) (more like fauxsters and lipstick lesbians) decided we were better suited for dive bars, and went to the Expansion.

And there he is, next to me, liquid in my memories, languid on the bar stool. We talk easily, politics the new currency of conversation, where I wish I was and am not, his work, his travels. It's the same voice that rocked my world when he called me up to ask me out in highschool, it's a man's voice but seventeen years have filled it out. His eyes are the same cerrulean. Gone is the long hair, now it's short and his blond is three shades louder than mine. Still that sexy punk rock boy who made me weak in the knees, waking up ghosts in graveyards with a carnal howl. It is decided that we shall go to Zeitgiest, which is never really a good idea, given that cocktails are served in pint glasses.

As we are walking a catch his scent on the breeze and it catches my breath. Deep in the cool green of the Yuba river, scratching for Fool's Gold, my heart, my heart, the boy smells of summer, smells of a garret room in Paris, where the lobby is pink and the floor is sloped.

Fueled on liquor and electricity we embarked on a conversation that we should have had twelve years ago, but maybe one that needed to wait until we were to able to say the right things the right way, and while we were talking the bar emptied and time swirled and it was past the magic hour and time to go before the real trouble started.

I don't know what it is exactly, something chemical? For years throughout my twenties between relationships or not, we would collide in cars, he was my own personal meteor shower, all light and heat. And there on the sidewalk and in the back seat of the cab, making out like the ferocious teenagers we once were, knowing that an invisible line had to be toed and how absolutely wrong it would be to push it further... (but, oh how delicious! to think, to dream!)

But I'll be damned if kissing him in the back of that cab wasn't the sweetest thing...