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February 14, 2003

My Valentine

Why do I love you?

  • Because I’ve never once felt like I had to pretend to be anything other than what I am.
  • Because you have interests which range a little farther than current fashion and “Friends”.
  • Because, while I don’t agree with 100% of your political opinions, I have immense respect for the way you arrived at them.
  • Because you drive me around looking for old supermarkets in strange cities and can at least pretend to be amused by it.
  • Because you find sunshine and warm weather as depressing as I do.
  • Because you never make me watch E! or stupid reality shows.
  • Because you like Jane Jacobs just as much as I do.
  • Because you like Cheerwine almost as I much as I do too.
  • Because you’re a geography major.
  • Because you’re the cutest geography major who ever walked the face of the earth.
  • Because our first dinner date was at Denny’s.
  • Because you’re obsessively geeky.
  • Because you’ll never want to own a cat.
  • Because when I was commuting to Fresno, you always took me to see bands and never dragged me to queer bars.
  • Because you’re the most fun sex I’ve ever had.
  • Because you bought me that “L.A. Freeways” book. Twice.
  • Because you like Saturday morning cartoons and artificially-colored pancakes.
  • Because you think Wal-Mart is a good place to buy toilet paper rather than a vile affront to the proletariat.
  • Beacuse you keep a box of kleenex in your car.
  • Beacuse you leave your Chucks on sometimes.
  • Because you grew up in a mirror image of my hometown, with almost the same phone number as me, and with a mother who worked for the same, ummm, company as mine.
  • Because you’re a Mac supremacist.
  • Beacuse you write good dirty stories.
  • Beacuse you’re a sucker for good carnitas and good grits.
  • Beacuse you don’t get pissed off when my neck snaps every time I hear a skateboard roll by.
  • Because we laugh at the same things on TV (and at the same idiots walking down the street).
  • Because you understand the value of work.
  • Because you liked “Vertigo” and “Harold and Maude”.
  • Because when I wake up next to you in the middle of the night and look over at you, I feel so incredibly wonderful.
  • Because you managed to convince me that I didn’t necessarily need to live the rest of my life alone and refusing to love anyone.

Off to LA

Gone for the weekend, fleeing the bears, fireworks, and assorted chants and clichés in favor of cafeterias, Googie, and the heretofore unvisited Hollywood branch of Amoeba Records.

I love Los Angeles. This is not a sentiment which I’ve ever been embarrassed to admit, despite the fact that residents of San Francisco are not supposed to speak such heresy. But for a series of coincidences in 1991, I might be living there rather than here now anyway, and sometimes I still feel the slightest twinge of regret at my decision.

Yes, I realize that the perpetual sunshine and the relative lack of fog or rain would most likely make me suicidal. I understand that the lack of a real pedestrian focus (although there’s more of one than some people realize) might be annoying.

But LA is a city of magic and of dreams, and it holds a fascination for me like nowhere else, except perhaps Chicago and Detroit. It’s a place where I don’t particularly want to live, but where I could spend untold months exploring without getting bored.

Oddly enough, I’d never before had ample opportunity to do this exploring. My first trip was a quick affair, a drive-by on the way to San Diego in 1991. Later trips were always connected with work, either mine or that of a significant other, and never seemed to allow me any time to do what I wanted to do, see what I wanted to see, etc.

Against our better judgment, we left on the Friday afternoon which began President’s Day weekend. It was also Valentine’s Day. Our original goal was to stop by Fresno and see Mark’s sister, but we learned on the way down that she was out of town, so we headed straight for Bakersfield, with a stop in Coalinga and another for a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at an Arby’s in a truck stop.

This trip would be different. There was no real agenda…