San Francisco Extremes

The night heat is heavy and brutal. The beer cold. I pull a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet and toss it on the bar. Market street is heaving with people. In the sky, lightning zips up clouds, but no rain is falling. The air is burning, ash covering cars. I think of the firefighters north of here. What they would give for a rest and a cold beer.

I cross the street and enter a narrow back alley, trash-filled, a rat-infested eyesore in which a homeless woman is crouched, leaving her stench. The half-nude old girl leaves her steaming pile in the gutter and, aware of me, moves to a shuttered doorway to piss. She looks at me with the eyes of a wild cat. Her piss runs from between her legs into the street. It’s hard to contemplate writing a poem looking at the CVS shopping cart that holds everything she has torn and tattered except bread.

My night has felt five years long. Later today, I leave California to be in the Midwest, meet up with Jenny and be closer to my grandchildren. Not to return anytime soon. How can two innocents change my life so?

I have no idea of the time. My iPhone is dead. I’ve never worn a watch in my life. It’s hard to find a bar open, so I guess it has turned 2:00 a.m. There was a police siren a few moments ago. Otherwise, the city is quiet. I didn’t book a hotel room, figuring I’d sleep in the car if I got tired.

Tumbling down Market Street

I feel sadness in my sighing

wanting to stay at home

but it’s love that keeps me flying

Turning onto Drumm Street, music can be heard coming from inside the Regency Hotel. The door attendant smiles. I ask if the bar is open. Only for the wedding party, he tells me. Okay, I replied. I’ll just have to go up to my room. He kindly opens the door. The music is loud. People are happy, intoxicatedly so. There’s a live group playing in the lounge, a Van Morrison number.

The singer is killing the song, his voice is that of a tortured swan, its neck knotted. The band is made up of five, and I’m assuming they are Berkeley students. The look they’ve adopted is that of musicians who have lived a year of horror, pent-up anger, you know, the Johnny Rotten look.

I find my way to the bar, having smiled and said hello to everyone as if it had been an age. The bartender is wearing a poorly tied bowtie, a sparkling vest, and asks what drink I’d like. I’m aware I have no room number. Then, while stood there, another bartender reminds a woman farther down that it is a free bar.

I immediately ask, do you have a Macallan 22? He responds without hesitation. 12 and 18 only.

I stand at the bar with my drink, the 18, of course, and smile at my unwitting female savior. This shindig looks like it will run the night through. So many of the women must have started the evening looking quite elegant but have since let their hair down.

I am wandering alone like a phantom in a city I know well. So strange my heart should be full of loneliness, but I think and dream great things; my eyes and face are calm. I’m hiding among people who believe me to be in some way connected to the wedding couple, whom I’ve yet to clap eyes on.

I’m watching people dance

but they really have no grace

and though there really is no reason

I’ve been looking for your face

Oh no, the Johnny Rotten look alike is singing ‘The Windmills of Your Mind.’ It’s not a joke. What’s next? He’s going to change sex right in front of my eyes. Shit, I’ll miss San Francisco. A drunk woman is crying as she sings along. Like a snowball down a mountain / Or a carnival balloon / Like a carousel that’s turning / Running rings around the moon, she sings, tears falling like flecks in a snow globe, slow and pristine. I smile at her with sad eyes. She smiles back.

Would you like another, sir? Why not, I’m thinking. I haven’t been rumbled yet, and not likely to be that I can see. The sad woman keeps singing. She has her eyes closed. The music has really got to her; Johnny Rotten could score tonight, I feel. Why did summer go so quickly? / Was it something that you said? / Lovers walk along a shore / And leave their footprints in the sand.

I could form an opinion about the woman crying to the words. In her late fifties, born of money, divorced, singing a song at a wedding reception that reminds her of something. How awful is the outward manifestation of empty, broken dreams, with a companion broken heart to mend?

Damn you, Mary Isobel. I love you still.

I heard the music before the lyrics were written, composed by Michel Legrand. After the English lyrics were introduced, Dusty sang it on Top of the Pops courtesy of the Bergman’s.

Not a mile from the hotel, a woman had crouched in the street for a crap. I don’t know who’s wedding it is, but the food looks delicious. I pull out my notepad and jot a few notes down. The man stood next to me, with a full dark beard, wearing cufflinks, his jacket lost or left somewhere. He says, Are you a with the San Francisco Chronicle? I see you making notes, looking around in a journalistic manner.

The guy is a wanker. It’s almost 4.a.m., and he’s still drinking beer.

No, I’m writing a love letter to my wife. You know how it is. Weddings and all.

I’m Laurent; my wife is over there, he says, pointing to a woman moving quickly around the dance floor holding a camera. That’s Lauren, our business is photography. He hands me a card. Helena & Laurent. Clearly a genius for titles.

I slam down a perfect whiskey and walk over to the buffet table, filling two large plates with food, and place them on the bar next to the photographer. Just watch these for me, will you? I’ll just be a minute.

I head to the restroom and take a roll of toilet paper off the hanger.

Thanks, I appreciate that. I say. Excuse me while I look for my wife. I pick up the two plates of food and head out past the door attendant, who gives a quizzical, but humorous look.

No one cares or notices. Later, maybe, when two ‘Dalton’ plates are detected missing by the rental company.

Less than a quarter mile away, a woman is hiding somewhere. She has wild green eyes and is hungrier than a hyena.

Maybe she’ll allow me to eat with her.