San Francisco

In San Francisco the weather is gray and moist. Krista's apartment is stuffy and we open a round window. It's not the frame but the actual glass that is round. "Be careful, " she says, as it's opened. "My landlord says these are really expensive." The window faces the street. The apartment is on a hill. "We are across from a rehab place, not like drugs, but like injuries, and it can be noisy all night with ambulances and trucks backing up." She sleeps with ear plugs.

For a late dinner we head to a ramen place. We walk mostly down hill. The restaurant is tiny and the four of us sit at a small table with barely enough room for our bowls. Cities are like this. Tight and cramped, things built on top of other things. Dirty, chaotic, they feel like they are on the edge, teetering on the brink of non-existance, they are so wild and out of control. Yet they work, there is an order, even with everyone and everything pushed together tight. I am struck by the amount of homeless people. They lean in doorways muttering to themselves and scratching their crotches, or they are walking towards you on an angled path dressed in layers and not really seeing you. I already knew this but had to relearn it: never look at a bum's exposed feet or ankles. The swollen skin with open sores will make you wretch. There is also a woman standing outside a fast food chinese restaurant shoveling food in her mouth off a paper plate. Her face is covered in meth sores.

We walk a lot, up and down hills, to the donut shop around the corner where an Asian women in a visor cooks donuts and watches TV all day. She tells us what is fresh and we order that, apple fritters or old fashioneds with maple glaze. We walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. The day is clear and you can see city and then turn and see out across the Pacific. The beginning of the walk is crowded and we dodge in and out of families with strollers and couples stopping for photographs. As we get closer to the midway point the crowds thin and there are just a few other walkers. The noisy rush of the cars is relentless, like the constant crash of a waterfall, the wheels on the road, the wind make it so you nearly have to yell to be heard. Or you have to walk close, arms linked, like you are telling each other secrets. Krista and I only walk halfway and turn to go back. I don't know what we talk about or if we talk. When we get back I say I have to go to the bathroom again. She is surprised and I feel old. In line there are two french women in front of me and they are joking and laughing with each other in a language I don't understand. I am jealous of their friendship and joviality. I imagine that if they were speaking in english I would join in with something funny about how the bathroom smell. Krista and I wait down by the water for the boys to get back. We sit on a rock wall and she explains to me what a diva cup is.

The next day we will drive over the bridge but it will be so socked in with fog that I won't be able to see the top of the red cables as I peer up through the windshield.

During the entire trip I have been uncomfortable in my skin, wishing I could wear a disguise, a fat suit and a muu muu with a hat and sun glasses. Anything that would make me feel different than how I feel, anything to take me out of myself--not like drinking can, and I do drink but even it isn't the same as it used to be, my hearts not in it-- something that makes me feel new, something that makes me feel like I am a city, cramped all my insides pushed together, teetering over non-existance.