OK…here’s how this rant started at 3PM:

Good weekend. The weather’s nice, I got laid, the roommate got laid, the boys are semi-naked and the tearooms are hopping in Central park (oops…wrong city), a friend in Georgia is emailing me some decent grits, the Tories lost control of Parliament, I saw a good movie with friends, and “Married With Children” finally ends tonight after an interminably long run on Fox. What more could I ask?

OK…things might be better if said roommate would get off the phone so I could go eat, but this is a minor thing…

By the time I got home from “happy hour” Sunday evening, this is how my mood had changed:

If San Francisco is such a fucking fabulous queer “mecca”, and is the “greatest place in the world to be gay”, why is it that so many of us feel such a need to perpetually anesthetize ourselves in order to enjoy it? Or would that be “to tolerate it”?

Kinda makes you wonder why I bother going out, doesn’t it? I think last night just presented me with one “drunken idiot” too many (with two of them being idiotic drunken ex-“boyfriends”, for lack of a better term). A few too many glassy eyes. Way too much reefer aroma. I’m even learning to ignore the tweakers. Again I ask, if it’s so wonderful, why does everyone have to get trashed and act like such complete slugs to deal with it?

And it’s not just the bars I’m talking about. Sometimes it seems like half the city is damn near catatonic for the bulk of the day. Everyone’s stoned here. Does this not suggest some slight problems with the reality of the city, causing people to try and esacpe it?

All this — combined with my current homophobic state of mind — has convinced me it’s time to take a little break from the neighborhood watering holes. And maybe from San Francisco. And DEFINITELY from the little ordered and segregated and self-destructive world of SF queerdom.

To clarify, I’m not speaking from an “I don’t drink” soapbox. In fact, the scariest thing about the whole evening was how much I actually DID drink as a reaction. OK, maybe even scarier was the desire I felt to throw and/or break things. This sensation, alas, subsided before I could drag myself to the Castro, where it might have been more productive.

Lest this start sounding like an “origins of punk”piece from 1976 or a Queer nation pamphlet from 1990 or an AA brochure, I’ll move on now…

As for Friday night’s sexcapades, all I’ll say is that when this boy (who looked a little too much like a club kid for comfort on first glance) put in the AC/DC CD first thing, I knew everything was gonna be OK.

And as to the Sunday night fiasco, don’t look for me to be drinking on Folsom Street for a while. Time to find a new hobby.

Strange weekend. Added flesh and blood to two more text-based friends, looked at art, drank a little, saw an old friend, tidied up the resume a bit, and went into a severe two-day funk from which I’m just now emerging.

Martin and David are two people I’ve been corresponding with for quite a while…one of them from Portland and one from San Francisco. Meeting both of them in one week was a good thing. I’ve decided that people who get to know each other via e-mail have a certain intelligence and sanity which is very refreshing. Neither of these meetings was of a sexual nature (although both scored well on the oh so superficial “appearance test”). It’s really nice, though, meeting someone face to face for the first time and feeling as if you already know them.

Friday: Dinner at Memphis Minnie’s, which is without question my new favorite scarfing ground in the city. Good and low-key. We celebrated my roommate’s return to the world of the semi-unemployed (by his choice). Realizing that jobs don’t have to suck is becoming a tradition on our street.

Out for a beer later on, solo. No one around. Was everyone in the city worried that the very mild “wet fog” would be a hairdo-deflater?

Saturday: Pinky and the Brain. Animaniacs. Met Sarah (speaking of text-based friendships come to life) and Martin for the new “Icons” exhibit at SFMOMA. Yer host at an art museum…imagine that… Actually, it was pretty interesting, although I remain unconvinced that lipsticks and a bar of soap from the Gap are really art. All in all, though, it was a good show.

Went to a brew pub in North Beach afterward for beers (them) and traditional Southern iced tea (me, feeling caffeine-deficient). Somehow the funk hit right around this point. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was the caffeine or lack thereof.

Rotten night. Sat around the house. Read. Whined. Listened to depressing music. Moaned. Pondered going on. Passed. Went to bed hoping to sleep it off.

Sunday: Sleeping it off didn’t work, so I went to Oakland for the afternoon. I’m not entirely sure how the two are related, but Oakland always seems vaguely comforting. Bought newspapers (SF and Seattle). Flipped off a hippie in a microbus who didn’t know how to drive (or was too stoned to do so). Realized the funk wasn’t going away. Came home.

Off to the beer bust at My Place. Ran into someone who used to (a) be a really close friend and co-worker and (b) have a life. Neither is the case now, thanks to a little problem with speed. From $40,000 a year to homeless in six months. So much for harmless recreational drug use. Gave him a ride to the sofa he’s currently “surfing”.

At the beer bust. Light oral sex in the back area proved uninspiring. Ran into a recent “affair” who I’d also seen last week. Last Sunday, we had a really long and good talk and some “bonding”. I hadn’t really expected (or particularly wanted) a reconciliation. I also hadn’t expected that he’d leave with someone else while I was in the bathroom. Maybe it is possible for even a jaded slut like myself to occasionally get my feelings hurt. This week, we didn’t really even talk to each other. Probably better that way.

Missed the Simpsons. Decided to try and sleep off the funk one more time.

Went to sleep pondering the job that I don’t have (and probably am not qualified for), the romance that I don’t have in my life (I’m not referring to the one just mentioned), and the fact that things looked much more promising to me six months ago.

Monday: Resumes via e-mail. Finished moving the site to the new machine. Feeling a little better about life. The Christmas episode of the Andy Griffith Show was on this morning.

About jobs: I quit because I wanted to. I have not missed working at Kinko’s for one single minute since I left. I’ve had a pretty interesting time during my first long-term period of unemployment since 1985. I’ll get another job soon. It’s just time to get aggressive.

And on romance: I decided on my own several months ago that my most likely prospect of late was not “the one”. Our agendas were too dissimilar. Never really knew if he’d nominated himself for that position anyway. We’re still friends. And as always, I don’t want a realtionship; I want someone to have a relationship with.

Ultimately, I had responsibility for all the decisions I’m now reflecting on, and I’m now assuming responsibility for convincing myself I was right. Of course, any help is always appreciated…an email opportunity is a terrible thing to waste.

Pardon the downer. I plan to be cynically amusing again very soon.

 

Lots of sleep followed by Saturday morning cartoons, and I was off. This was the uneventful part of the trip, where I covered more familiar territory. I did see beautiful downtown San Luis Obispo as well as a really cool original A&W Drive-In in Paso Robles.

As luck would have it, traffic jams on every freeway slowed my approach to San Francisco and (once again) dampened my enthusiasm about the return. All in all, though, a great trip. Perspective will follow soon in the inevitable postmortem.

Thanks for coming along!

The trip home led me on the most convoluted route so far (on purpose, of course…). The original plan was to drive south to Kingman, Arizona and cross the desert on old Route 66, but this proved to be too much of a drive. I settled for hitting the “mother road” back at Barstow by way of Zzyzx Road and I-15. From there, I headed south through Victorville and across Cajon Pass to San Bernadino (site of the very first McDonald’s).

  

Route 66 runs across Foothill Boulevard, Alosta Avenue, and Huntington Drive as it winds its way through the “Inland Empire” toward Los Angeles. Unfortunately, a lot of what was once there has been replaced by strip mall nightmares, especially around Fontana and Cucamonga. There are still sights to be seen, however, including one of the original Wigwam Village Motels in Rialto.

In Rancho Cucamonga, a small sign caught my eye, directing me to the Route 66 Visitors Center (7965 Vineyard Avenue, off Foothill Blvd.), a museum and gift shop devoted to the road. Great place, and I spent a good half hour there poking around and talking to the “greeter”.

  

The next stop was LeRoy’s Restaurant in Monrovia. It’s been there since Route 66 was still the main highway, and still does a brisk local business. friendly, homey kind of place, with a counter (where I sat) and yet more waitresses who called me “honey” without fearing I might sue them for sexual harassment.

 

The drive through the north section of Los Angeles was daunting, but the scenery was good. It’s hard to trace a few original portions of the route, due to freeway construction. The alignment I followed was Mission Drive to Cesar Chavez Blvd. to Sunset Blvd. to Santa Monica Blvd. At this point, I left Route 66 for old Highway 101 (Ventura Blvd.) headed north. Eventually, I had to hit the freeway at the early end of rush hour. I was making better time on the surface road…

Before long, I was in the thrift store mecca of Ventura, also the headquarters site for Kinko’s. I’d spent time there before and didn’t feel the need to give it more than a half hour of my time.

Next stop was Santa Barbara, where I’d originally planned to stop for the night. I can’t adequately describe how much I hated this town. The place is nauseatingly cutesy and precious and white. There were no malls, except for a downtown which very much resembles one. The whole town was completely sanitized and reminiscent of Marin County. Nothing could have made me spend a night here.

Thus I continued on to San Luis Obispo, home of the Hearst Castle, the Madonna Inn, and Cal Poly. Definitely a little higher on the reality scale than Santa Barbara, although this was a most obvious college town. Since it was almost 10PM, and I’d been driving since 7AM, a stop was in order.

A beer or two was also in order, so I headed to the local queer bar, Breeze’s (11560 Los Osos Valley Road). Nice place, fairly generic music, and a couple of cute boys. I didn’t meet my first obsession. If anyone knows him, tell him to get in touch. I’m guessing age 25 or so, medium height and build, goatee, curly dark hair, and he won a T-shirt for knowing that ABC denied a lesbian cruise line the opportunity to advertise on “Ellen”. He drives a red car. I crave him.

I did, however, meet an off-duty DJ and fellow Mac supremacist named Glenn. He seemed a good person to pass last call with while sitting outside. I sat outside a lot; a city ordinance prohibits smoking inside bars in San Luis Obispo. I could never live there…