A few nights ago, I got a little misty when a cab driver waited for me to get inside safely before driving away. This morning, I felt an inexplicable sense of relief at having an elevator entirely to myself. I think it’s time to spend a weekend somewhere that has trees.
11:27 a.m.
Tag: single girl in the city
Ladies night excerpts:
Lady 1: So he said he wasn’t gonna date her anymore because she wasn’t a good lay. So I said, “I’m curious, what’s a bad lay from a guy’s viewpoint?” And he goes (spreads legs, adopts blank look).
Lady 2: So it’s not that she wasn’t a good lay, it’s just that “lay” was her only trick.
Lady 3: The Dissected Frog.
Lady 1: Did you guys hear that Mr. Rogers isn’t doing shows anymore?
Lady 2: Yeah. That sucks.
Lady 3: I have a signed picture of Mr. Rogers.
Lady 1: No way.
Lady 3: Mmm hmm. My dad met him once.
Lady 4: Wouldn’t it be rad to get Mr. Rogers to sign your panties or something?
Lady 5: I wonder if he’d do it.
(Pensive silence.)
Lady 1: He’s kind of boastful. We’re going around introducing ourselves, and he’s saying the exact same thing to every person. I heard it like 30 times. That’s OK if you’ve known someone a couple years, you expect to hear their stories again. But I barely know him. When you’ve known a person a few years you know all their stories, and when they meet someone new you can kind of settle into doing your own thing while they talk. But this guy I just met, and I’m hearing the same thing over and over and over. Then, I started getting sarcastic about it, like filling in responses for him, and he didn’t get it.
All: Ohhh nooooo.
11 a.m.
Tuesday night at Naps is Karaoke night. The hot dogs on the back table may be gray, but they’re free. There’s also a wholesale-sized tub of relish if that’s your gig. When we got there, about five regulars lined the bar, and a fellow named Brian was singing a drunken-scat version of “If You Think I’m Sexy.”
“If you beh-dee SEXY
ahn you me-dee BODY
Wee-bby beeh-doo body KNOW.”
Meanwhile, frustrated barflies screamed the actual lyrics and made instructive gestures at Brian, who smiled vaguely, raised his arms above his head, and gyrated. Did I mention free hot dogs? Awesome.
11:18 a.m.
I thought he was only interested in friendship. Then he said, “I like your shoes. Are those new?”
A few days later he said, “Those pants look good on you. Those are my second favorite , after the black ones.”
My theory is that, unless I’m wearing red leather trousers with flames up the legs and/or buttless chaps, a straight man who has favorite pants is up to something fishy. A man who has a runner-up favorite pair of pants and comments on my shoes…maybe I’m wrong about the straight thing.
2:06 p.m.
Ladies night conversation turns to travel:
-Wait, I missed the story. What’s the story?
-She’s wondering whether to go out with the guy again. She slept with him for the first time and it was pretty bad.
-How bad?
-He didn’t visit the Netherlands.
-Wouldn’t go South?
-Nope. I don’t get it. It’s so much warmer down there.
3:43 p.m.
Why I like Molly: Molly and I rode the Fulton 5 home from Bay to Breakers. We sat next to two young men, one was missing a front tooth, the other had moved past intoxicated into catatonic stupor. Our toothless friend (let’s call him Uncle Jebb) introduced himself, and tried to draw us into conversation while we ignored him.
(Uncle Jebb begins touching Molly’s back for no apparent reason.)
Molly: …What are you doing?
Jebb: You had some fuzzy things on you. I was getting them off.
Molly: Hmmm. (Continuing conversation with me) blahblahblah.
Comatose Carl: Mmfmmffph.
Jebb: No dude, we’re almost there. If you’ve gotta hurl, hurl out the window.
CC: MMfffmfmMMPH!
Jebb: Dude, you’re not getting off.
Me: Jesus, if he has to hurl, let him out.
(Uncle Jebb and I have a brief verbal exchange, edited for length.)
Me: Molly, do you want to move, so he doesn’t boot on you?
Molly: I work with kids all week, I’ve had much nastier things on me than a little puke. I can shower.
Me: OK
(Jebb begins touching Molly’s back again.)
Molly: OK. You need to stop touching me now.
Jebb: OK.
Molly: Thank you.
3:27 p.m.
From Magnificent Melting Object:
“Rasbliutto means ‘the feeling you feel for someone you once loved’ in Russian.”3:11 p.m.
I did the Geary Street pub crawl for St. Patrick’s Day. My friend and I were standing in a sea of drunken green men, and I mentioned that I wanted to get rid of my gum. An earnest looking young man held his hand out below my mouth. I pulled my eyebrows together, but he just nodded and pushed his palm closer to my chin. So I gave a “your idea, buddy” shrug and spit my gum into his hand. He dropped it and pushed on through the crowd. He dropped it on my shoe.
9:42 a.m.
I buy some daffodils on my way to work. As I’m walking, I realize that I’m carrying flowers and a book of poetry as I trot along the Streets of San Francisco. Suddenly, I’m the over-the-top “sensitive girl” and my life is a bad undergraduate play.
1:26 p.m.
EMAIL MOMENT!
Subject: Cynicism kicks in.
Excerpt:
“I swear I used to think
everyone kinda had a similar life to mine, but anymore I’m
sure
they have a lot less fun, eat a lot more bran, have
a
lot more low quality sex, and mail each other
inspirational cards that they actually read.”12:04 p.m.
This guy fights with his girlfriend. A lot. So much that he has a rather lengthy page devoted to the subject, “Things my girlfriend and I have argued about.” A sampling:
- I eat two-fingered Kit-Kats like I’d eat any other chocolate bars of that size, i.e., without
feeling the need to snap them into two individual fingers first. Margret accused me of doing
this, ‘deliberately to annoy her’.- She pours water into the back of my monitor every time she
waters a plant, which she refuses to have moved to another, less overtly stupid, location.- Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on – let me make sure you’ve got
the inflection here: Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. She says she does, but
years of bitter experience have proven that what she actually wants is to sit by me while I
narrate the entire bleeding film to her. “Who’s she?”, “Why did he get shot?”, “I thought
that one was on their side?”, “Is that a bomb” – “JUST WATCH IT! IN THE NAME OF
GOD, JUST WATCH IT”!- She wants to paint the living room yellow. I have not the words.
- Margret thinks I’m vain because… I use a mirror when I shave. During this argument in the
bathroom – our fourth most popular location for arguments, it will delight and charm you to
learn – Margret proved that shaving with a mirror could only be seen as outrageous
narcissism by saying “None of the other men I’ve been with” (my, but it’s all I can do to
stop myself hugging her when she begins sentences like that) “None of the other men I’ve
been with used a mirror to shave.”
“Ha! Difficult to check up on that, isn’t it? As all the other men you’ve been with can now
only communicate by blinking their eyes!” I said. Much later. When Margret had left the
house.(Thanks, Kevin.)
8:41 a.m.
Spent Saturday night on the Haight. Mad Dog in the Fog had an “Irish band from outer space,” and Molotov’s was dank, but Nickies featured a relatively sober girl mesmerized by her own reflection. I say sober because she managed to balance on one of the benches that circled the room, and she perched there dancing with the mirror. She would grind seductively and cast furtive, flirtatious glances at…. herself. Huh. Then someone threw up on my friend’s pants and we had to leave.
8:46 p.m.
Ha! This is undoubtedly my favorite photo taken of me in my Halloween costume. You’ve gotta try pretty hard to look creepy in a girl scout uniform.
4:56 p.m.
I always have a pen in my mouth. This one tastes like detergent. Apparently, someone decided to clean my office supplies while I was at lunch.
3:19 p.m.
This guy lives in the suburbs, and every Christmas he puts up wood cutouts of reindeer having sex. The neighbors aren’t amused, but I am.
12:23 p.m.
A friend sent me an email forward about the election that I actually found interesting:
A Zimbabwe politician was quoted as saying that children should study
the US election event closely because it shows that election fraud is
not only a third world phenomena. To illustrate the point, he made the
following comments.10 a.m.
Mighty Girl 