Yes, the banner is back. And yes, it’ll stay there until every one of you has visited my creation, dammit…

It was a fun little April Fool’s gag yesterday, I thought. A little more subtle than last year’s rainbow-encrusted Planet SOMA Circuit Party, at least. Thanks to Jamie for actually planting the idea in my head as we really WERE driving on Snake Road and talking about ghost stories.

It’s hot as hell in San Francisco and I don’t deal with that well. It hit 82 yesterday, which is hotter than it usually gets her in the summer, gosh dern it. Damned inland winds; this hot air should stay in Fresno where they seem to appreciate it.

Did the quarterly purge of my email inbox a couple of days back; it’s now been pruned to a quite manageable 31 pending messages, many of which I intend to answer tonight. I always feel a little guilty when I do these purges, because it reminds me of how many people I haven’t answered over the past few months and of how they’ll probably never get answers now that they’ve been moved into email purgatory.

So, once again, I’ll ask anyone who didn’t get a response to forgive me. It’s not that I don’t like you. As a matter of fact, if you said something that pissed me off, you probably would have gotten a really fast response (although you might not have particularly liked it). I feel guilty about that, too, because it means that I’ve often given a higher priority to anonymous assholes than to generally nice people.

All in all, though, my email is overwhelmingly positive, which is pretty amazing given that my site is pretty visisble and that I am very opinionated. So to the nice people (and to all my former friends who were current friends until I got so bad about answering email), I once again say thanks and I’ll try to get better.

Maybe. Right now I’m going to point the fan directly at my bed and try to go to sleep…

So Dan, Jamie, and I went on our usual Friday night dinner thing, this time to a barbecue joint in Oakland. Afterwards, we decided to take a drive up into the hills before grabbing some dessert.

After twisting through Glenview and Montclair, we ended up on Snake Road, which is very aptly named, as it twists and turns up and down hills with no lights, few guardrails and (mercifully) little traffic. Apparently, it’s the place of choice for partying East Bay teenagers.

Jamie started remembering ghost stories from her childhood about strange sightings on this road (which sounded remarkably similar to the ones I grew up hearing about Old High Point Road in Greensboro). This is one creepy, deserted stretch of road, so imagine how startled we were to nearly run down a hitchhiker at 10:00 at night.

It was probably stupid to pick him up, but we felt sorry for him (and he was quite adorably scruffy). Anyway, we figured we outnumbered him no matter what happened. His name was Seth and he looked even better close up. He said his car had broken down. There was something strange about him. I figured he was stoned.

I think Jamie was craving him, but I could tell he liked boys when he kept brushing his hand against my leg in the back seat. He said he was headed to a party in Lafayette (almost a contradiction in terms, I thought) so Dan agreed to drive him there. I was glad, because his absent-minded hand motions were getting a little more aggressive and pointed.

By the time we got to Lafayette, I think we’d pretty much arrived at the official point of “petting”. I advised him that he needed to come back to San Francisco with me. He agreed, but said he had to go into the party for a minute to let his friends know.

Dan, Jamie, and I waited more patiently than you might have expected from any of us. I think they were being nice because of our Krispy Kreme fiasco last week. But finally, I went up to the house to get him (if just to tell him to “fuck off” for making us wait so long.

A guy about my age answered the door and I asked if Seth was there. His face lost most of its color and he asked “Seth who?”. I described him and his face lost the rest of its color.

“That’s Seth Turner you’re describing.”

“Great. Is he here?”

“No. He died. Ten years ago tonight, as matter of fact. He was killed in a car wreck on Snake Road on his way to a party here. It was just after midnight on April Fool’s Day 1990.”