Non descpript thursdays in the mission...

16 Jan 2007

You know, its not that I ever want to sound grotesque or obscene. I just want to write my little stories, tell you about my little adventures and have a jolly old time. Not too much to ask for. Its not like I could've planned my night out in the mission. I don't make these things up, unless noted I don't even elaborate. I just report. Cold hard objective style.

It was around 11 at night and I just closed the bar where I work. My co-worker Eric (not my roomie) and I were going to hit up some bars in the mission and get swerved. All seemed in order. He had a car and we stopped down in Hayes valley to pick up a friend of his. Somehow or another Eric didn't get the name of the bar right and we stopped at the wrong place. I know I'm in San Francisco, I know it's the heart of gay culture but I just don't think about these things. So I walk into the club, walk passed the 6'4 Irish bouncer who was dressed as Donna Reid and into...a tranny bar. The music stopped. The crowd inside grew silent.
Stared at us.
The people on stage doing some cabaret thing stopped.
Everyone stopped and stared, and stared and stared.
Being sober, I didn't quite know what to make of the situation.
Do I start belting out Madonna classics?
Do I vogue?
Do I order a blue cosmo and bitch about the new goldfrapp cd?
As one the crowd smiles at me, bats their eyelids.
Beehives, polka dot dresses and high high heels are all a titter in
antica - pation.
I back the fuck up out of the bar, careful to not let them see me sweat.
Like woman and sharks - the gays can smell fear.
Slowly, slowly, slow-ly we back into my coworkers car.
He's fumbling with the keys. Their following us outside like coked out zombies from some sick wax museum of ktichy '70s era housewives.
Safe in the car we lock the doors and blast metallica, we don't say anything - we don't make eye contact.
Up the block we find Eric's friend - I offer to buy a round of shots, but its only beer and wine so we leave. Pussies.
On the way to the mission I call my friend tattoo Lisa from Santa Fe. We meet her outside of a bar called the phone booth. She's sitting on the stairs drinking a mini bottle of Jameson.
Offers us a sip and we pull out our flasks filled to the brim with a wicked Irish lullaby.
Safely seated and on the road again we head off into the boozy night of San Francisco.
We hit a place called Bruno's - hot chick bartenders and dudes in loosened ties slumming it. The place is a mess of young lawyers, deflated egos and the pulsating madness of 20 something rage. Bodies slamming grinding against each other in the inferno like bumper cars. Screaming train wrecks of people hollering against the wails of the Dj's top twenty - the glare of the strobe lights pulsates rhythmically to my heart beat.
Somehow our party spills into the street, cars whizz by like piss on an electric fence. People are hollering, shouting and spilling out their guts to which ever pavement will listen. Our uniform is couture, our dress is rebellious rich youth - diesel jeans and chuck taylors - we are crimes against conformity. I'm pushed into Beauty Bar, pushed past people getting manicures by incredible hip two toned hair women with superbly decorated fingernails and into the sweaty mash on the dance floor. Beers in hand and fernet on my lips - lovers or strangers grinding next to me, shouting things in different languages happy to be alive, to be there and bare witness on a nondescript thursday in January.
Then its last call and the cold of the street again, my eyes watery and the world hazy. People are passing out, stumblers swinging on the sidewalk like chandeliers and even though its time for bed something screams out more more more. I need to get back to north beach. Need to get home to my baby, need to take a piss.
Scandalously I scamper in the night - uncork my champagne and let it fly on a doorway. A 100 proof stream trickles away from me. There's light and a door opens and for a second I imagine that I've died. I aim my stream towards the light. I've died, and God's a Pakistani and he's very mad at me. I'm pissing in the doorway of his store- his store that's still open. That's still serving people. That I'm pissing in. They're watching me and laughing, pointing holding their sides so their guts don't fall out.
Slowly I back up.
Slow-ly button my pants.
Slow-ly back towards the street.
Am I sensing a theme for the night?
Then its a taqueria and chaos, the late night car salesman desperate to seal a deal with chicks obliterated on one to many mai tai's. They're revved up with redbull, faces red and veins bulging in thier necks. The drunks look like they've been chocked half to death libido's in overdrive - ready to explode like the deathstar in a moments notice.
I back out of the bar and wipe the lust of my brow.
Back out in the street and its hugs and slaps on the back and "Logan where were you?"
There's bottles to finish and breathless sighs and smiles and whirlwind of does and don't and half remembered finishes.
Fernet, Chartuese and Jamesone singing through my blue label liver. Couldn't hop a cab cause I didn't have cash, couldn't take a bus cause I didn't have balls and couldn't bum a ride because my friends couldn't stand. Eaten alive by the dreams of another night, stung by a drinking bee and thirsty for more I stood savagely in the street like Daedelus over the sea.

Stinking drunk and missing friends,
but patient.

now you know I'm here.