Finding Myself in... San Francisco: Part II

Culture shock and whiplash: two great words to describe the feeling I've had jumping from the towering world of NYC, to the vast sprawling hills of LA, down to the quaint coastal villages of Mexico, and back up to the eclectic streets of San Francisco. I’m not complaining - the journey has been marvelous and eye opening to say the least - but my skin is definitely screaming in protest. The cold, humid winds whipping off the coast of San Francisco are a big adjustment from the gentle, warm ocean winds that circled around me in Mexico. I wake up in the mornings with my skin red and tight from the abrasion it fights while travelling on my bicycle the day before. My skincare routine is changing as quickly as my plans, and I wonder if that process will catch up to my mind sometime soon. How am I to know that these expeditions I embark on won't unwind some vital path of synapses I rely on and rewire me to an even more messy version of the person I am now? I suppose that's a risk I have to be willing to take. 

A month in SF put me in places that I wasn’t expecting; both physical and mentally. I have heard only the rumbling rumours of SF’s beauty and otherworldly-ness. Mostly what I hear is about the $$$. So I was greatly surprised by how it captured some of the best parts of each of my favorite cities; the cluster of NYC, neighborhoods and people standing on each others shoulders to make room for the endless possibilities of adventure; the coastal beauty of LA and California, reaching it’s gnarled fingers and craggily knuckles up and out into the refreshing blue of the ocean; the laid back atmosphere of Seattle spreading into the quaint blocks of coffee shops and family dinner spots. All of these magical qualities nestled between dozens of parks that stun with their coastal California beauty. (Even until the last day, my breath was stolen away when I would turn a corner and see a grove of redwoods towering above me to the left, and a line of palms tracing down the middle of the street to my right). The only thing that cast my joy down into a slumber beneath my quilted blankets, was the endless whistling winds that, daily, carried in the cold fog. 

My trusted travel companion (other than my decades old backpack covered in Frankenstein stitches and rainbow colored patches) is my Brompton bicycle. I was eager to have it with me in SF, battling the up and down of the treacherous streets, careening into new neighborhoods at break-neck speeds, folding it up and sticking it under the table at a nearby cafe to write for a few hours. But what I wasn’t expecting was the wind. Not only did I have to spend the majority of my time out of the saddle of my bike, pumping my thighs to their limits to get up-hill, but added to that weight were the gales I had to lean against and fight to not be blown sideways by. After the second week, I couldn’t help but see how perfectly it painted the picture of my struggle to learn new things about myself, and structure something new after following the same patterns for 31 years. I know life is an up-hill climb, but no one mentioned the ruthless wind that threatened to blow you back down and leave your skin raw. Nevertheless, I managed. I sought out the sunlight in the pockets of neighborhoods in which it hid. I carried layers with me and piled them on when forced to sit outside to sip on hot tea and loosen my stiff fingers to scribble in my journal. When I was lucky, and woke up early enough, I could grab a coveted seat in the cafe down the street and spend a few hours in the slightly warmer interior as I hunched over my keyboard and woke up my mind with the sugars of countless cookies and quick breads. But what I was soon to discover was that the warmth I was looking for came not from the short stints of sun exposure, nor the accumulated heat under my blankets after a night's rest, yet rather the warmth from another's body next to mine. For the first time in quite a while, I was lonely and in need of someone else.

I have always felt alone - this is nothing new to me, after being passed around as a child from one family member to another, weekend after weekend - but rarely do I feel lonely. SF finally made me feel lonely. Yes, the obvious is there, that I am and have been alone for some months now, but I have always felt alone, that is a feeling somewhat removed from being lonely; at least for me. Yet in SF, watching the couples walk hand-in-hand, seeing gay men meeting for dates, and being mistaken for someone’s blind date, I found that I had finally come around to missing the company of another lover. This very well may have been compounded by my ex’s recent admission of his love for his new boyfriend. (I’m not sure how people can throw the word “love” around so easily. Perhaps some have more love in their hearts to give. And maybe sometimes they appropriate it too freely, mistaking the love they feel as a different emotion altogether. That can create a whole lot of mess for the people involved. Perhaps this is why I hold on to my love for others so tightly, not eager to give it up so easily). After nearly 8 months of separation from my ex-husband, I had gotten to a point where I no longer craved his company. I was growing, how about that! And then came the cool nights alone in SF. Suddenly I was back to wanting someone’s hand in mine, and there I was in one of the densest gay-populations of the world. The possibilities surrounded me, but I felt like a lost puppy-dog, looking for a pack of grizzled alphas to take me in, yet they only snarled and raised their hackles when I approached. Clearly I was off my game.

So as I came to the last few days of my SF journey, I also felt I came to the end of my gay journey. Intellectually, I know this isn’t true. I am a gay man and that journey will be continuous through the rest of my life. Yet there was something happening there, some chapter that was ending, some opportunity going away. What I want to take from it, and learn, is that taking a journey simply means you try. It is that you followed a different path for a while, and strayed from anything else previously considered normal. We can never know what we will find upon these sojourns, yet we will hope and have expectations, but as long as we can breathe in at the end and feel that new bit of air circling in our lungs, then a journey has been had. Having said that, let’s get to the meat of it: I felt jipped. Where were the threesomes, and cruising, and sauna buddies? Shit, where was anything close to enjoyable sex? I have been sexually active for 14 years, so is this it? Have I reached my sexual peak? Or perhaps I am not far enough along in life for a sexual renaissance? That sounds exhausting, to have to wait, but like most “good” things in life, I suppose they are worth waiting for.

I wonder what I will remember about this stay in SF. If in a near or far time I will be able to recall sitting in Cafe Blue Danube writing short stories, or if I will recall at what point, late in my trip, I found the Royal Ground Coffee house just across the street from my apartment. I hope I’ll be able to remember the moments of awe, where I stood on the cliff’s edge overlooking the ocean and watched the sunset as the cold air whipped around me, numbing my skin. Or the grandeur of the Palace of Fine Arts that towered in that random open space within the residential neighborhood of the Marina District. For sure I know that which will stick in my mind forever is the struggle of the hills and lashings of the wind on my daily bikings. And any time an Eminem song comes on, I will think of Feno, one of my temporary roommates, and recall his face as he stood in the kitchen and repeated himself three to four times about cleaning the kitchen -  as I carefully eyed his mess of coffee grounds that spilled across the counter every morning - just as he repeated that same Eminem song 30 to 40 times in the month I was there. But maybe what I will hold onto the most is that feeling of being a solo-traveler, alone on the roads, and finding loneliness in a city full of people. It was a reminder of the feelings I had in NYC, forever surrounded by people, but without any people that I actually wanted to be surrounded by. 

From all of these journeys, what I hope to take away is the sense that I have become a different person. That I have taken the hardened clay that was my soul and attached newer, softer bits that I could then mold into something bigger and better than what was before. Perhaps the shapes I make are not precisely the ones I wanted, or expected, but they are still new. I am renewed. And I continue to add on these new pieces of me, until I am only a vague representation of my past, and a promise of a bigger future.