Fresh off a plane and a good night's rest I finally made my way into San Francisco proper; left on Broadway climbing into Chinatown I glance to the left and like magic the first landmark I see is City Lights Bookstore and I could not be more elated. I felt as if my initiation, my introduction to San Francisco, its acceptance of me was complete.
But there is another story more perfectly encompassing the whole of my experience there:
Quixote y Sancho
This is a self-portrait taken in Golden Gate Park; a picture of my head and heart. My heart is the taller more willful man burning to tilt the windmills of this world, raging against the mediocrity of this life. And my head... for all its pessimism, all its knowing-better it colludes in all my hearts foolish, optimistic desire for love and happiness. Indeed just moments before this portrait was taken my heart, in spite of my head, had been broken at the Tea Gardens by a Korean girl.
I had emerged from the shaded hiking path off Fulton Street into the beauty of a setting sun; quickly surveying what the park offered in the superficial way all tourists are condemned to see their destinations of interest by the duress of time. The trees were giant, the buildings austere and everywhere was a bustling distracting mass of human activity when out of the morass she caught my eye with her immense beauty stayed by a subdued sense of style (mostly middle gray) and understated radiance.
Contemplating the entrance fee of the Tea Gardens I turned to leave, saw her and smiled. She paused and replied in kind and my heart leapt. I desperately wanted to talk to her and used my roommate's curiosity about whether or not the trees we were standing under were cherry blossoms as an excuse. Telling him to hold on while I asked someone (she had forgone the fee as well) timing her perfectly in my peripheral vision I turned and asked idly, "Sumimasen, Nihon-jin desu ka?" She only seemed trouble for a moment before she replied in far superior Japanese, "Iie, Konkoku-jin desu." I froze. Here was my perfect-in to strike up a conversation and I don't know what I was expecting. I had asked a question and she was sure to respond in some way even if it had been just to blow me off.
That's the humorous juvenile tragedy of my adulthood, that even in my late twenties I can still be struck dumb by the prospect of conversing with a beautiful woman like some prepubescent teen too terrified for the attempt at his first awkward kiss. All I wanted was to talk to her, to share a little bit of this life in conversation, to find out how she spoke Japanese so well. She had learned in school no doubt, but what had that been like for her? What was it like to be a beautiful foreigner touring Golden Gate Park alone? Could I have been witty and winning, could I have made her laugh? I lost the opportunity to find out when in my silence she faded away into the mass flowing into the Botanical Gardens, lost to me forever.
I wondered if I could live like this; amidst this. Was this a livable city? Could I tolerate all the unpalatable coffee everywhere save for
Cafe Trieste and that lame old stand-by, Starbucks? Could I live in a place that tolerates so obvious an evil as Pier 39? Which is everything ugly and wrong about American tourism: theme restaurants, extremely overpriced souvenirs like the pop-art postcards of Che. All authenticity, anything unique about a new place sacrificed on a dual altar to the Gods of convenience and familiarity.
The city was filled with such beautiful women, so many more than I was expecting...like when biking the Golden Gate I kicked it up to the 14 tooth gear and bombed the downhill into Sausalito at incredible speed; running into a New Zealand-er named Amelia in the country doing a work study in the hospitality industry. Sitting outside the bay side coffee shop, sharing a laugh with me (read: at me) when I choked on the glass bottle of beer I had bought and shotgunned worrying I was running out of time. Or the pretty little German girl visiting from Singapore who I met on the ferry back with her endearing accent and eyes begging me to save her from the family vacation she was on while subconsciously she thought of her and I. Could I stand this grinding daily monotony , the destruction of my heart at the hands of their beauty?
In the end I decided that I did want this life. I wanted to be worn down by the constant heartache of so many gorgeous women. I wanted to be weathered by the sun and spray, I wanted to spit in the (Pacific) Ocean and have a sandwich on the shore. I wanted this life always, for San Francisco to be my perpetual heartbreak. But, it wouldn't last. Because my mind knew that there will be no American Dream for me, not even an American life anywhere in this country. No matter how much I rage at the margins of it, no matter how often I charge at it my heart armed with a make-shift lance this country will never take me seriously or let me in. Still the collusive incorrigible optimism creeps in; knowing my life is a descending ladder of disappointment and every time I smash my fucking face on the next rung down (evey time my heart is wounded again) my mind thinks happily, "Finally, I've hit rock bottom."
