2002

Yeah, I’m a black one too. No surprise there, but I didn’t like the quiz very much since there was no “none of the above” category for the movies or the TV shows…

I spent Friday morning going through all my 8mm videocassettes, getting them labelled and placed on their new shelf in chronological order, which was actually a fairly random thing to do. Pop in one and I’m having sex with some shaggy-headed boy in 1994, pop in the next one and I’m in Seattle with Mark last April, and pop in a third to find a department store in downtown Detroit being imploded in 1998. So goes my non-linear life…

I’m pretty damned happy in the current incarnation of said life, I must admit. I have the most wonderful boy in the world living under my roof, I’ll have health insurance again in December, you could eat off the kitchen floor, and Viva Rock Vegas is on this afternoon. Doesn’t get much better than that, huh?

There have been a few (very few, actually) random stresses as we’ve been getting used to each other’s weekday personalities. But we got rid of the final giant pile of trash on Wednesday night, and the last Goodwill run will come tomorrow. The place looks better than it ever has before. And I’m finding it surprisingly easy getting used to having someone sleeping next to me every night, and surprisingly easy going right back to sleep when he gets up two hours earlier than I do…

It’s quite an improvement over this week last year, when it took 11 September to get my mind off my health problems, if only by giving me something else to be freaked out about. Come to think of it, though, it was also almost a year ago that Mark and I began our regular email correspondence. I think that worked out pretty well…

Cool thing found tonight while looking for something else…

I’ve tried to list things which were not necessarily obvious nor readily apparent from other parts of the site. I may have failed.

1. I’m as surprised as any of my friends to find myself with a live-in boyfriend.
2. I never quite got the knack (nor saw the appeal) of swimming.
3. My first post-puberty sexual experience was in a booth at an adult video arcade.
4. I have all 120 episodes of “The Streets of San Francisco” on videotape.
5. Exactly half of the six cars I’ve owned have died violent deaths, one in a crash that was my fault, one in a crash that wasn’t, and one in a fire.
6. I’ve been obsessed with old supermarkets since I was about eight years old.
7. Danny Elfman once rode in the front seat of my car.
8. When I was a kid, I repeatedly got crushes on boyish red-headed girls, starting with Penny on “To Rome with Love”.
9. It took me a disturbingly long time to learn to tie my shoelaces.
10. I will not, under any circumstances, eat pickles.
11. I have a mild phobia about driving on crowded freeways in the rain.
12. I’ve never left my home continent, but I’ve visited forty of the fifty United States.
13. I haven’t had a moving violation since 1989.
14. I often eat cereal at night and rarely eat it for breakfast.
15. In a fire, I’d try to save my books before my CDs or DVDs.
16. I am circumcised and am of more or less average size.
17. I have been known to spend the occasional evening drawing large maps of imaginary cities on poster board.
18. At home, I usually drink either water or Safeway Select Diet Grapefruit Soda.
19. I haven’t smoked marijuana regularly since I was 16 and not at all since I was about 21.
20. My family had cable TV long before most of the other families on the block.
21. My favorite comic strip ever is “Bloom County”.
22. I still believe Beta was better than VHS, although it’s a moot point now that both formats are essentially dead.
23. Among my most prized possessions is a plastic bank replica of a Howard Johnson’s restaurant which I’ve had since I was a small child.
24. I’ve never been in jail, although I’ve bailed out two people.
25. The fact that I use my middle name rather than my first has caused me any number of problems ever since first grade.
26. My parents and my boyfriend’s parents have almost exactly the same phone number (area code excepted); the first six digits are identical and the seventh is exactly one number off.
27. I always sleep with earplugs.
28. I do not own a wireless phone.
29. I haven’t walked into a queer bar in over six months, even though there are about eight within a few blocks of my apartment.
30. I prefer pizza with nothing but pepperoni.
31. I am an only child.
32. My most frequent footwear choices are my black and white Adidas and my black combat boots black Nikes and brown Docs.
33. One of my biggest sexual fantasies is to have a three-way with a pair of brothers; I’ve actually had sex with two brothers, but separately and at different times.
34. I have never camped and I fully intend to keep it that way.
35. I’m good at calculating numbers in my head.
36. I am not at all comfortable in large crowds and I tend to avoid them.
37. I’ve never paid for sex, but I have been offered money for it (I declined).
38. I once broke up with a long-term boyfriend in a McDonald’s.
39. I’ve been a groomsman twice and a pallbearer three four five times.
40. I lived in the south until I was 28 but never had sex in a trailer until I moved to California.
41. I am fiercely allergic to cats.
42. My websites have been discussed in both the San Francisco and London Guardian newspapers.
43. Sunshine depresses me; rain makes me feel happy and secure.
44. I am thoroughly uninterested in sports, both as a spectator and as a participant.
45. I’ve only been on a motorcycle once, at age 32, for about three blocks.
46. I’m one of those people others always ask for directions.
47. I was a double major in Geography and Sociology.
48. I’ve never seen “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” all the way through, and I don’t particularly want to.
49. Some of my friends often think I’m taking extreme positions on issues when I’m in fact just nudging them to use their critical thinking skills and examine their own hypocrisy.
50. I never plan to have children.
51. I was teased mercilessly by the other kids when I was young, which is why I sometimes don’t react well to it as an adult.
52. I’ve always been a bit overweight.
53. Since I had no brothers nor sisters, I was very close to several of my cousins when I was young, but I no longer am.
54. My grandmother gave me her dead husband’s wedding band when I was about 8. I lost it, and I’ve never worn a ring again until this year.
55. My feelings get hurt more easily than I let on, especially if I think I’m being ignored.
56. My dream car is a 1964 Corvair convertible, but I’d settle for a 1964 Dodge with the push-button transmission.
57. I have a few mild obsessive-compulsive habits, one of which is that I’m repeatedly checking to make sure that I have my wallet and keys when I’m outside the house.
58. Another is that I absent-mindedly twist my body hair into little knots.
59. A third has to do with toilet paper, but I won’t discuss it.
60. I do not wear a watch, even though I’m mildly obsessed with knowing the time.
61. I don’t dance.
62. I believe that an occasional swat on the behind does most children a world of good.
63. I believe that parents should be dragged into jail and spat upon for anything more than an occasional swat on the behind.
64. I am particularly annoyed by “faux retro” which bears no resemblance to anything that existed in the actual past.
65. It is absolutely necessary that I spend a good bit of time every week alone; otherwise, I get cranky and neurotic.
66. I’ve had sex, upto and including anal intercourse, while as many as fifty other people were in the room, but not recently.
67. I am a tomato snob.
68. I rarely do caffeine anymore, but when I do, it’s almost always in the form of iced tea or soda pop.
69. If I tell someone I love them, I mean it.
70. I love and trust my parents, but I’m very selective with the information I give them about my life.
71. I’m a firm believer that a hot fudge sundae should only contain vanilla ice cream.
72. I do not like parties, although I can tolerate very small ones.
73. I get extremely annoyed anytime I drive in San Francisco, and this has only developed in the past few years.
74. Actually, I get extremely annoyed when I do almost anything in San Francisco these days.
75. I very much wish I lived in Seattle.
76. I’ve been to three World’s Fairs: Montreal in 1967, Spokane in 1974, and Knoxville in 1982.
77. I do not give money to street beggars and I do not believe that they have a “right” to be supported (nor to a $395/month cash stipend) just because they decided to be homeless in San Francisco rather than in some other city.
78. I was a very well-behaved child, and I expect other people’s children to be as well-behaved as I was.
79. The older I get (and the longer I live in San Francisco), the more my left-leaning tendencies are overshadowed by my nagging respect for personal responsibility and private property.
80. Yes, it’s really true that, before I had a boyfriend there, I sometimes used to drive 180 miles to Fresno to do my laundry.
81. The one place I’ve ever lived where I would NEVER consider living again is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
82. When visiting a new city, I always spend a good 45 minutes leafing through the telephone directory, usually in the bathroom of my motel room. I sometimes even steal it when I leave.
83. I’ve had sex in each of the four time zones of the continental United States, but I’ve only had sex with three four boys in more than one time zone. All of of them were from the midwest.
84. I’m not into leather, bondage, pain, SM, nor any form of torture other than slowing down to 10MPH when someone is tailgating me.
85. I read nonfiction almost exclusively, except for smut stories.
86. I am a Leo; I do not believe this fact has any partcular bearing on my life.
87. I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.
88. One of my earliest childhood memories is of walking around a shopping center in Florida while “Hey Jude” played on the loudspeakers.
89. I was a TV obsessive as a child, and at age 11, I knew the difference between network and syndicated shows and could easily distinguish between film and videotape, both of which are things most adults can’t decipher.
90. I’ve always been fascinated with roadmaps (particularly city maps) and I have a collection of new and old ones, as well as several road atlases from the 1950s and 1960s.
91. I do not have an instant messaging client nor any chat software installed on my computer; I find live chat even more annoying than talking on the phone.
92. My first apartment in Charlotte rented for $230/month; it was large and air-conditioned, and had parking and its own patio. When the rent went upto $265, I moved out.
93. My biggest hobby is commercial archaeology: determining the history of older commercial and retail buildings.
94. Briefs, not boxers. And usually none at all on weekends.
95. I have a rather foul mouth, or so I’m told.
96. I hate flying. It’s not that I’m scared; it’s just that the whole process is so damned annoying. If I can drive, I will.
97. Unlike most former San Franciscans, I do not hate Los Angeles and I recognize that it is — nationally and globally — a far more important city than San Francisco.
98. The climate there is much better, though.
99. It’s even better in Eureka.
100. I can talk about myself endlessly, given the opportunity.

I’d spent the preceding night in Winnemucca, Nevada; it was the final overnight stop in my first cross-country automobile journey. I caught up on sleep, had dinner at Subway, and watched TV stations from Idaho and Reno.

Upon waking up on Monday morning, I set out for my new home. After stops in Reno and Vallejo where I attempted to contact the friends with whom I’d be staying, I found myself crossing the Bay Bridge at rush hour. I drove immediately to the Safeway on Market Street where I knew I’d find a parking space and a phone. Within half an hour, I was moving my stuff into a very small apartment a block from City Hall and I had a new home.

My God, has it really been ten years? Have I really spent more than a quarter of my life in this insulated little burgh where reality and common sense rarely intrude? I was so excited to have arrived in a place full of sex and food and interesting streets I’d never walked down and stores selling bizarre merchandise you couldn’t find in North Carolina.

A decade later, I’ve walked down most of those streets and many of the things which initially attracted me to San Francisco now repel me and make me want to leave. I’m no longer a long-haired idealistic twenty-something and I realize that San Francisco is no better or worse than most other big cities, although a part of me will always think of it as home.

Strangely enough, it was in 1996, when I started a website about the city, that I started to analyze it and realize that it wasn’t everything it claimed to be. The more I wrote about it, the more I realized it wasn’t nevessarily Mecca, and that it might not even be the place I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

The city has changed, although not as much as I might like to believe. Some things I miss:

• My old, uncrowded, dumpy Safeway at 16th and Potrero, since replaced with a shopping center containing a Gap, an Old Navy, and a new mega-Safeway.
• Mike’s Night Gallery, the only sex club I ever really loved.
• The amazing Alhambra Theatre on Polk Street.
• My old car, which someone torched in 1996.
• The Emporium, the last of the big old school department stores which didn’t require a credit check or proper attire for browsing.
• Live 105 when it didn’t suck.
• Channel 20, when it was still a quirky independent station with the barking dogs and the Christmas fireplace log and “Streets of San Francisco” reruns.
• The Chinese restaurant down the street, which is, predictably, a “live/work” loft now.
• The old main library (believe it or not).
• My excitement about the city.

Some things I’ll always remember about my ten years in San Francisco:

• Drinking until 2AM, followed by four hours of alternating coffee and beer before going back out when the bars opened at 6AM.
• The first time I had sex with twenty people watching.
• My first semi-public birthday gathering at Tad’s.
• The first time someone came up to me in a bar and asked me if I was “that Planet SOMA guy”.
• Picking up a boy at the bus stop and being a half-hour late to work after dragging him back to my place and buggering him.
• Experiencing my first earthquake while talking to my mom on the phone (while she was staying at a motel across town on her first visit).
• Long walks.
• Touching Jane Weidlin.
• “That used to be a Safeway”.
• Conjugal visits with Mark before he moved here.
• The amazing sight of fog coming across Twin Peaks after the standard three days of heat.
• Sanity breaks in Oakland and Fresno and Sacramento.

I’ve changed a lot too. I’m no longer scared of computers and I got to watch the “Internet Revolution” firsthand, where it happened. I’ve become a weather wimp who complains when the temperatures goes above 70 or below 40.

Politically and morally, I’ve become less of a leftist reactionary after realizing that unchecked (and unquestioned) dogma is just as damaging when it’s spouted by the left as by the right. I’ve become more of an independent thinker, and I’m less likely to scream “discrimination” where none really exists. And I never use the term “homophobia” unless I’m making fun of it.

I don’t drink until 3AM (or later) anymore, and I don’t roam sex clubs until the wee hours. My other activities are no longer dictated by my nightlife needs; I’m more functional and productive (and at more normal hours) and I actually get the dishes washed on a semi-regular basis. I spend more of my disposable income on books and DVDs than on clothes and booze.

I’m in love and living with the boy of my dreams, which is something I couldn’t have envisioned ten (or even two or three) years ago. And he seems to understand my need to flee the city every weekend.

Living in San Francisco for ten years has been a good thing for me, no matter how much my arguments seem to suggest otherwise. I don’t regret coming here; it’s provided a lot of entertainment and memories and it’s sharpened my critical thinking skills. And I’ve made some friends I intend to keep around forever.

My life would be much different if I’d stayed in North Carolina. I might never have seen Winnemucca.