ah, dang

san fran.

where to begin

sunday.
i got off the plane sunday. katie scooped me up at the port and we came home for a brief moment. we went out to this spot Elixir. i kept thinking that erica and i had gone there on our trip thru cali in may, but we might have just seen it down the road. its on 16th and guerrero and this cool chick with a huge fro works there. the bartender's name was Ben and katie was insta in love. on the way there we had seen some dudes cross the street and i had said to katie that i thought bearded homie was cute. low and behold, i go smoke a cig and a taxi pulls up with said homie (and company) and they roll up to elixir. we make eye contact across the bar a couple of times as he's dipping his finger first in his drink and next in a candle, catching his finger on fire for a moment and waving it around (we call this showing off) then blowing it out. (he was totally trying to impress me). he's totally my type. short (maybe 5'7) brown hair, beard, grey amer apar shirt. so eventually he comes over to our side of the bar and sits down next to me. after a few minutes he gets up and goes behind the bar and starts fixing himself a drink. its at this point that katie and i realize that he's a bartender there. now katie and i are both falling in love with this bar. so homie comes back and sits down next to me again and this time i make a move. "so, what you work here or something?" he tells me yes, obviously and after only a brief amount of small talk the convo leads me to asking him his age. it went from there something like this:
me: "how old are you?"
him: "how old are YOU?"
me: "i asked you first"
him: "what's your sign?"
me: "what?!"
him: "what's your sign?"
me: "tell me how old are you are first"
him: "27"
me: "gemini"
him: "we can't date."
me: "excuse me??"
him: "i mean, i wasn't implying that we were going to date before all this but, well, my last two gfs were geminis so..."
me: "ew, what's your sign?"
him: "picies"
me: "23"
him: "you're a baby"
the conversation died shortly afterwords, but i was still intrigued.
$40 tab. and then we went home and to bed.

monday.
katie wakes up early to go to work, i attempt to form words like "have a good day" but instead like snore/talk nothing. my alarm goes off at 9, 9:30, 10, 10:30... finally, feeling hungover AND excited (confusing emotionally/physically to be so opposite) i get out of bed around 11. I shower and dress and then call Frank Garvey of Omnicircus. He tells me to come by as soon as i can so i look up the bus and head to the circus. im feeling very confident and excited and happy and great and ive had a little coffee so i got a little kick in my step and i get there and all my dreams are shattered into a million pieces. the place is a shit hole. no windows, packed full of metal sculptures and robots and dirt and ew and bleh. Frank's an asshole and over the course of the two hours i spent there he told me i was full of shit, a loser and had no social skills. i had to sing, tell everyone about myself in a presentation, answer group questions, listen to 12 minutes of uninterrupted cukoo music alone in a dark office full of CRAP and take all the bullshit blasphemy he was spitting to me about what a genious he is, greatest composer of 20th century, next beethoven, compared his music to the mona lisa, blablabla. then he forced me to buy a 2 disc cd for $20 and the moment i left the theatre tears poured down my face.
i took the bus back to the castro and (unable to get into katies place) sat at bagdhad cafe for three hours venting on the phone, chugging coffee, and not eating my fucking $10 blt on fucking WHITE bread (kill me). after the venting was over and i cooled down a bit i went back to katies locked gate and waited outside of it until a neighbor let me into the courtyard. i sat on the stoop until emily got there and we decided it was time for a drink.
we went down to this spot called Qbar (its a gay bar, pretty sure q means queer) and got two-for-one drinks. feeling a little tipsy after the second drink we headed over to a pizza place across the way and got some slices to go. we came back to katie's and stuart/stewart (?) let us in. we ate pizza and smoked a couple of bowls and did a tarot reading. the reading was crazy. emily picked the first four cards and then i picked the last one. the one i picked represented my past and omg was it cukoo town. #7 the cart. spirit and shape, victory and triumph, propriety. it was gemini and had the date of gem starting on may 22 (bday) which only occasionally is the cusp (usually 21). it said shit like, lots of excitement for awesome shit followed by defeat, failure, let down... whatev hokity pokity it tripped my balls and made me believe and i decided failure was in the past.
katie came home from her opera class and we all chilled a bit and ate some foodies (the blt from before) and then emily had to get going so she could catch the train back to walnut creek.
sleep.

tuesday.
i wake up. excited about my interview with amit (ah-mit) a little nauseous (kind of my new thing). i shower. i get cute (team dress). i head out to Ritual Coffee Roasters on Valencia and like 21st. I get there and scan around the room. i dont see him. i grab an iced coffee and a seat at the bar. moments later this adorable brown boy with black facial hair and a white hoodie walks in the shop. i know instantly this is amit. then my phone blows up, text from amit, "hey, are you here? i dont know what you look like. im wearing a white hoodie." and i text back, "i c u. im at the bar." we make eye contact, smiles, lets grab a table. short sweet intros and a couple q's here n there. mostly i can just tell we enjoy each others company, we both young and hip and genuinely nice peeps. after like 15 mins he's like, "we cant possibly get to know each other well enough in fifteen minutes, why dont you come in and work for me for a week and we'll see how it goes." money bags.
so im walking on sunshine and then emily tells me she'll pick me up at the bart and i can work for her dad for $10/hr helping him move and paint and spackle in berkley. literal money.
after 7 hours of walking up n down stairs carrying boxes of crap, hanging out with smelly kids from down the hall enlisted as heavy-movers, and eating burritos i made out with $50 cash and a ride back to the bart station. not bad seeing as emily and i took hella breaks and i got a sweet ass burrito. bart home. well, not quite.
see the bart stop closest to home happens to be on 16th & mission. two blocks away from home. the block between: guerrero & 16th, aka: Elixir. i couldnt help myself. so i went in and ordered a drink. homie wasnt there and some blond chick was tending. of course (bc of my new tarot good fortune kick) it was trivia night. katie got there as fast as she could. we were team meat. low n behold moments into round one he appears. barbacking. hot. after a couple of sideways glances he finally comes over and asks me,
him: "did i meet you on sunday?"
me: "yeah, you're a picies."
him: "oh yeah."
some minor chit chat betwixt trivia questions and somehow i get him to fix me a drink (free, duh). delicious, duh. one free drink leads to two, leads to half-off, leads to ive had about four drinks now and katie's going home. i stay. homie gets off and sits down at the bar next to me buying dranks and chatting a bit. we laugh about how drunk he was on sunday and how he's kind of embarrassed about the gemini thing. "i mean, we can still date, its cool." (or something close enough to that to make that what i "remember" him saying). i close my tab and the dude asks the rerun my card. i make sure hes voided the last one and then (bc im a lush, AND bc its my trademark move) i totally order another drink after closing my tab. tender hooks me up with yet another freebie (to apologize about the card rerunning). come to learn that homie's name is John. he likes my name and says it a lot when we speak to each other. i find out that he lives on the same street as me and i have to hold myself back from asking him to walk me home. ok, ok, i swear, this is my LAST drink (im at 7 now). num nums, feeling shaky awesome. bar is closing down and i am getting myself outta there. some farewells to my new friends and a high five from John (i live for these simple pleasures).
so im walking home and my phone has been dying all night but somehow has enough in it to receive a call from dakota telling me to come meet up with her only three blocks away. i had to. so i head over to where she's at somewhere on market and octavia st and running down the street screaming at me is baby kota. we go to this bar that is totally shut down yet somehow full of like 15 of dakotas friends. instantly she hands me a shot of tequila. we catch up. some hot tino hands me a shot of whiskey. cigs. omg. and i get a ride home where i eat the rest of my burrito and snore all over katie.

wednesday.
first day at photojojo. got there early. my first day of work revolved around this bicycle that yahoo made that has a solar panel on the back that powers this camera on the front. so when the bike is moving, the camera takes a pic every 60 secs. so i got to make a sign for the bike that tells folks on the street to shake its handlebars and pose for the red light. the camera then sends all the pics to flickr. then i took the bike out on the town and did a photo shoot with it so that we can create a poster about the bike. real fun stuff. lovin on erybody who works there.
after work i come home and katie and i go to the farmers market and buy yum yums. come home and eat. smoke a teeny tiny bowl we found. and hang with her roomies til beddy time.

thursday.
got up. showered. sat on the window sill and watched the cars go by. got ready. bussed to papyrus stationary shop where dakota works. filled out an application and on my way back to the bus stop got a call from her boss tellin gme about my interview tomorrow at 3 at the embarcadero location. money.
so i miss my bus and get another one to photojojo where amit has hella things for me to do today. first i go buy a wedding card for amit's friends. then i fill out this rebate form and take it, a book, the card, and a box of plates 7 blocks to the post office. sweaaaaaaaaaty. then i walked back to the office where i picked up a box of 10 books and a sign that needs laminating and get on the bus to Joby. at Joby i give the box of books and a blow pop (blow pops accompany any delivery) to joel who thanks me graciously for the lolli. back on the bus to another bus to the copy shop for laminating. i get back to the office about 5 and its time to take off.
on my way home i do what has now officially become a routine of walking by elixir and i peer inside seeing not John. moments later im home and katie calls me telling me shes walking by elixir and john's sitting at the bar. mf. we eat sandwiches and katie goes to opera class. i watch stella on netflix watch instantly, surf okc, fb, cl and now this.
my life is awesome right now. keep it up.