the mini-series of urbanity: my tiny window to the world seen through my stoop

What she got out of it was the world can be seen from her stoop. For the duration of half a burrito, swimming in extra green sauce with avocado her favorite green stuff, and the reminiscence of an ice coffee slurped through a straw sitting next to one of her closest friends, she had seen more and a lot in the last few moments. She and her sit together their bodies curve the shape of the stairs both residing on the 4th step, the top. Legs outstretched and covered by additional jackets for the breeze of a san francisco evening has begun. They sit perched in their own picture window to ebb and flow of urban life.

A man and woman walked by with in unison towards valencia to the right. The man carrying a surf board. The woman carrying a overstuffed bag. Next three runners in varying heights and in varying gender and a similar slender build run by. One of the girls recognize them but it is too late, they are gone. They return to the back and forth of bench time now no longer on a bench but a stoop. The catching up of life of work of love of dreams of all of it. Until the next image swirls by again. A smallish asian women with a pack of yap dogs start going crazy upon seeing another breed. She stands still with the barking mob mentality until they pass. Owner of other breed and friend laugh at the ferocious brawl. Small creatures barking like it might be their last. Then the roommate of one of the girls comes out of the house to talk of lost cats and happy hours pending and birthdays to celebrate. And then she is gone.

There is then space to just watch and see the glisten of the sun as it begins to dive to to the depths of the earth. The light is diagonal on top of the building makes the pastel painted projects look new. She and her look to the left and see a man, a man who looks at them and makes eye contact but not in a checking you out kind of fashion, eyes that are waiting to do something. And she turns to her and glance away. There is a pop. And a look to the left and there stand the shortish man around manhood stabs the tire again. The air releases out. He never looks at them again. And runs around the corner. What to do when you see a man pop tires of a family who parked not but a few minutes earlier? Random. Or not. What to do? When someone has a knife and long gone? Pause. A man and woman walks by the woman with a guitar the electric variety hugging her hip.

Until a car double parks light pulsing in and out until one, two, three women walk the red carpet home. Two of the three dressed in vibrance of colors of wigs of high heels and intoxicated in laughter. Two drag queens her neighbors are home. And in as the sun sets and the burrito foil is wrapped and as the two stand up again what she got out of it the world could be seen from her stoop. A few steps outside her home. She could sit there and observe it all. And how quickly she can turn around and open the door and go back inside. Deciding again when to come and sit and observe the picture window of her own making. Her own show of urbanity.

true story: i just got hit on by the energizer bunny of linguistics

hey folks- this is based on a quick write for it was a crime. enjoy and as always thanks for stopping by. . .

It was not a crime to walk way from him at the corner of Guerrero and 16^th right before the strike of new day. He sat there- more like stood there-with his appropriate uniform of bartender-but he was off tonight- the tattoos that clung and danced up his arm kept company by his tightish button down plaid shirt sleeves traveling up his arm. His ears had spaces growing for what I could never figure out- it just looks so very painful. Metal circles pushed the space between his ears to what he has created.

Talking non-stop, talking from the happenstance of standing next to him at the bar. At the bar earlier in the evening. It isn't a crime to talk to someone at a bar, of course not. Its the common ground church of the 20 and 30 somethings. The rotary club of our generation. The school of life. Where we put on our best dress-sometimes- and stand together as we befriend each other sprayed in our choices of denial, or release or freedom or poison or just the need to play some trivia on a Tuesday night. The light of a bar the next day always awakens the reality of what happened there in the dark could never with the lights falling down with the sun shining in.

Not a crime to speak to someone I didn't know. For I always do. Its one of my favorite pastime other than making out. Its half the eating up of time and space. But the other half is sometimes a conversation breaths air into my lungs. As soon as this man began talking I knew something was wrong with him. I just didn't know what. See I spent the last 10 hours figuring out what was wrong with others. At my jobs. I didn't want to figure this guy out. This reader of problems and hopes and dreams even deserves a night off. His language quick and fast sprinter like but there was not an end to the 100 meter dash. Just going again and again the energizer bunny of linguistics. He reminded me of myself upon too many coffee cups swigged down my throat. A Carl Lewis of sorts. But the finish line forgotten. I begin to look around the room. For my friends at the bar.

It was not a crime to have him join our trivia team. Our group small against the other big. He was a good team player. Sometimes. In and out. Outside. For a smoke. And back. To the bathroom. And back. The quick fire quick and the movements of the hands jerky. It is not a crime to see a man falling into pieces in front of you on a Tuesday night. But it might have been a crime for me to do something. To try and pick him up and super glue- I think I got some in my back pocket- and say how can I help you. He fell apart little by little I watched as he fell to the sticky bar ground. Just watching. So when his word of me and my beauty. Came. And his love for my last name. Everyone does love it. His desire to find a woman who bears the strength to keep her name. My beauty. He was a lapsed Catholic. You can't leave- we need more drinks. High five, we won. You are so beautiful. I would love to kiss you or have sex with you. You aren’t leaving. You say you will come back. I want to leave with you. Are you hungry?

He trails behind me as I exit from the wooden picture of the city corner canvas. Walking through. Don't leave your friend, I say. Don't worry she won't leave. She owes me a bag of coke. Do you guys want some? I got to give it to a guy who would share in the world of the drug of choice of secrecy. I decline and say I am trying to quit- the standard line for these type of situations even if the truth is my nose does not travel across white lines. It wasn't a crime to walk away from him on that street corner still talking and swaying and moving and begging and falling and complimenting- it would have been a crime to do any more.

they forgot to put that in the manual

hello friends, have an amazingly great and beautiful thankful filled holiday. i am thankful for so much and since i started this project i have been thankful for your kind words and eyes upon this page. be well. check comments on this piece inspired by the prompt saving it at creative caffeine

As I drive my car on this frigid morning down this one-way street. Leaves fly like paper strips over my head. And then there are few stuck. Holding onto this windshield its tentacles not letting go of the glass. The brownish greenish colors grow and starts making that tick tick tick sound of movement upon the car. I ponder those. As the last one drifts away likes the other. There was no saving it.

I drive. Drive as I am already late. Down market. Behind the train or not. Not going to the right lane. And then the strategically placed makeup in between the succession of the lights. I don’t makeup while driving just like I don’t text either. At the lights, I place the tinted moisturizer upon my face, glasses finding a home upon my head. And then the green light is glowing. Glasses back down to the bridge of my nose. Saving it-the mascara until the next. I need two things this cover up and mascara to feel complete. One over the other. Not so sure. Driving around the freeway of this city to market until Portola to I can’t find parking. I can save me not now. I am late. To a thing where some people know me but the ones in charge don’t. Monday Street cleaning everywhere. Every sign. I see one classmate walk. Late too. And another. I stop to yell out my window. Heat on, air in. As I yell, I roll roll past the stop sign until a woman yells at me with her eyes. Shit. Not saving me. But saving her. From me in my haphazardness of running into her. I need to find a spot. To save myself from being much later. I do.

And as I park. An elderly Asian woman stops to direct me. She moves her hand about and laughs when I do the city tap to the pickup truck in front of me. I get out and see her and thank her. Thank her for saving me. But she doesn’t understand me. She understands my thanks but not the words. She smiles and mumbles and walks on. Saving me she did from another ticket or tow or whatever is the wrath of having a car in this city bankrupt like the rest.

I walk into the room during the discussion of crisis. What to do in a crisis in a school-not even 8:30 am yet. Eyes scan across the room. I see I know half the room. I sit and learn how to save yourself and save others in this thing called life. The manual sits upon our shared table at this training. Saving it, saving comes in forms and in ways that don’t always entails a capitol S under a shirt. Saving nonetheless. In big. In small. Ways. Doesn’t matter. A savior we all can be. Just for a moment. And for a moment I savor that. They forgot to put that in the manual.

summer begins in my home, my home of weirdos

have a good weekend folks!

Summer’s end. As the summer ends here it doesn’t-it just turns the page into more summer or our summer it would seem. See we don’t live in a normal place. A place with a typical schedule of the weather. Weather people do not bask in the regularity of our lows and highs for it will be 95 one day and 55 the next. The unpredictability makes it so when it’s nice- when sun is shining in the am. The am. When there is no fog protection or breeze a building you best get your ass outside and quick. Because it might be gone tomorrow.

It might be the only way to live in this city. And get enough vitamin D. Get enough sun to grow your roots. Get enough play in. Because the sporadic piece of our weather- I would love to be a weather person by the way the ability to never be held responsible for your predictions would be amazingly great. The sporadic weather is reflective of here and now of the summers end now beginning into the summer again.

Because the rest of the country mourns the loss of summer-it is just our beginning. Just like in other places people might where clothes during the day- thanks random naked man walking around the castro with a black backpack and small flaccid penis and shoes. Shoes-why ? In other places there is not every listing of 420 this and that on the craiglist search for roommates. And there probably aren’t communal bed requirements in their listings either. Beds. And in other places I am not offered to do a threesome at a bbq when I am sober with my best friend from a mutual friend. And it wasn’t a joke. And and and. I could go on. Because what drives me crazy about this city is the same thing I love about it. Love about it. Because I can never be weird here. No matter what I do. What I do. Never.

I was a weirdo in the suburbs and sometimes in Boston and DC- NYC not as much. But here never. Can I be weird. Shit sometimes I am conservative in my drug use and my bedding repertoire and that I decided to wear a bra or shower or just something risky like befriend a Republican. The craziness in San Francisco is that I am not crazy or weird or strange. No leopard print dyed into my hair or a neck tattooed or wearing all black head to foot on the hottest day of the year- I can’t be weird with these people here.

Or that when I spend one of the last days of summer in the park, Dolores park, breathing in and out the green stuff that if you didn’t know, didn’t know thought it was legal like the public drinking or urination or or or. I sat on the coined hipster hill even though I don’t think I am. Am one. Not yet. I sit upon the blanket surrounded by friends some new and old but we are not signing anthem of the the childhood rhyme song of our past instead. We share our chips sour cream and onion the ruffle variety are the best, the tecate and pbr, the bottle variety of the summer ale. We do the duck duck goose of talking and laughing and shocking and nicknames all inappropriately perfect.

We watch our fellow friends and neighbors. And the choices they made to wear a swimsuit-nice ass we say. Or 7 different layering prints, my friend’s eyes bulge out as she walks by in shock of her outfit. I laugh because I can see her thoughts upon the teleprompter of her mind. I say my butt I don’t have to worry about it as I look around. These people rock whatever even if their butt isn’t perfect. As we drink and play and eat and then new friends old sharing the one pint of salted caramel of the prized birite. Round and round it goes. As the summer ends it begins. And we are watching the summer end and begin around this blanket. Around this place we call home. We might be weirdos but we are normal here.

temporary lapse of feminist judgment- i was once a miller lite girl

Eating alone. I am eating my words of judgment, as I sit alone. By myself in this bar. See I was a feminist before I knew what feminism was. I choose to always study women who stood taller than they should. Susan B. Anthony. I ran to be the only girl in the mock elections in my 5th grade class in the Dukakis v. Bush (I) election. I wanted to be the first woman president.

I used to do things like play sports with the boys even when coaches or teachers said girls weren’t allowed to play. Play basketball in the gym with guys because girls never played when he wasn’t looking. So if he came in and I wasn’t playing I would fail this pe class. In my sophomore year. In my planned community. I took up the challenge. For no one told me no, not because I was a girl. Not now, not ever. I played my heart out as the only female on that court. Sweating and not caring just playing. And every time that teacher walked in his head turned down more quickly. I took the apology as easily as I took the challenge from him. He told me he was wrong, he was.

I got in fistfights with boys. I realized this helped out in my case because no bitches fucked with me. It was risky I realize this now. But two times I threw down over what I thought was justice. First a guy in freshman year started making fun of someone who was jewish. I got up and promptly slapped him across his face. In the middle of math class. We didn’t have a problem again until senior year and he yelled at me for not buying enough donuts for the senior picnic.

Later, I was donned with the nickname Tyson. After the ear biter/rapist/boxer/tattoo slurrer we call a boxer. Tyson was my name because I stood up against the injustice of a partial canning (when you literally put someone in a trash can) by a guy who was a year ahead of me in school. Canning was a type of flirtation of high school. I kicked my legs against the metal aluminum in the middle of the school quad of all the eyes on us. I got out of the trashcan. And saw all dots staring my way. I didn’t have any other choice. I swung my fist back and punched him square in the face. In front of the whole school. At lunch. Tyson they called me. I walked a little lighter.

See I was raised by my father so the limits of femininity were never mine. I never ate them. Consumed them. Threw them up as a bulimic. I didn’t starve myself beautiful. I didn’t squelch in fear that I couldn’t. A father raising a daughter is a sociological experiment and I am the researcher and the subject. See I had ideas about my mind v. my body and my looks. I always knew that my mind would always trump what was on the outside but it wasn’t until I left the black and whiteness of things. That I had to eat my words.

Poverty does that-makes your ideals and stances and soapboxes diminish. I didn’t strip, or pose or anything that would have been too much. But I was a miller lite girl once upon a time. For a few minutes of my life, for a few months. I don’t even drink such shitty beer even when I was poor. My snobbery of beer was mine even then. I ate my words every time I put on the whole black outfit. I put the real me-the qualities of wit and mind- somewhat on the shelf as to do my job. Everyone at each bar mostly guys were surprised I actually had a brain. Because miller lite models are idiots. Or so we thought. Women who use their bodies and faces to sell things are. I ate my words alone at the bar. I took the words in of claims for idiocy and stupidity and I swallowed my words when I ran into my former college classmate across the country where no one knew me. I wasn’t just a miller lite girl- I wanted to say. But I just ate my words. Alone. At. The. Bar.

test drive of the humidity cloud

what i would do for some heat right now- we are in the midst of a san francisco summer-thanks mark twain for putting it so simply- i had forgotten. and for the brave souls in places where humidity is on speed dial- this one is for you. . .


Heat. You long for it. You desire it. And then it comes in waves so unbearable that the game of toss and turn at night begins. Because this Victorian is not built for heat. I am not built for too much heat either. In my redone attic where my bedroom rests the heat rises to the top and calls my room home-it’s permanent residence- the lease forgotten. At first it feels great until, until the one leg comes out and the tossing, tossing and turn. Oh the heat. I have a love and hate relationship with you I do. I want the sun to shine on my face and my body preferably in a bikini near a beach or pool or in a park. I want the sun and the heat. But then it is too much; too much when the heat surrounds me in a bubble I can’t break. Cold showers I began to take them when I realized what real heat was. Because the mini waves of heat in San Francisco is nothing compared to the humidity of the bane of my existence in the east coast.

A northern California transplant in a foreign city. The first time I felt it. The humidity. I said to my friends. My friends. What is going on? Why does it feel this way? I remember I was sticky and sweaty and miserable and hotness permeated from the sidewalk the cooked egg done in less than minute. It seeped out of my armpits and crotch and face. I was miserable. I gave them my puppy dog beach desiring west coast greens and they said Kate it’s humidity and then they laughed. Laughed. Because see. They hadn’t had the luxury of heat without humidity but I had. I have. They were midwestern folks so they were well aware of the springs and summers friend and companion of humidity.

The heat killed me that first summer. It did. Nothing I could wear without sweating through. I had go from the T to a school site back to the T back to the office. Smoldering humidity cloud followed me everywhere until the reprieve of the over air conditioned box of the train or the office again. My only refugee then was the nights- the warm nights of running around and seeing my first fire flies- I thought they only lived in my books my parents read to me at night- fiction like the rest. The nights without a sweater and playing as a child while becoming an adult in a place where I could be anyone. My other refugee was dunkin donuts. I had tons of vanilla iced coffees- they poured the coffee, the ice, the milk and sugar to your liking. The heat of the night and coldness of the iced coffee got me through.

The heat. The heat was the worst right after I finished grad school and with no job in sight meant there was no air conditioner in sight either. On my fourth floor upper west side on the color line next to Harlem apartment, it cooked. I had a fan. But a fan can’t cool off heat like this. Humidity like this cooked in the sprawling repetitions of building and asphalt and movement hitting you in your face. I took cold showers and put ice in my armpits and swore to remember this. This that when I had money, when I had money I would buy an air conditioner. And the luxury of the heat and the humidity and the relief from it would be like the test drive of my new vehicle one day.

the home sweet home search on craigslist

for my readers who only choose to read one or two paragraphs- i would read paragraph 3, 4 or 5.

It was a test. The test of finding the right fit. The right fit for a roommate. A roommate in an urban area. A test. It always is. Because it doesn’t matter how well you read the craiglist ads or find a friend who has a place or use your guts to decide you can in fact live with someone, live with someone. The test of urban living is one no matter how long you do it, is a test within itself. I started to think about the other day about the passing the test of being chosen as the roommate. The roommate- I have passed the test- the initial smiles, and interview like questions, and the formality of the first date of cohabitants without the cocktails without food in the formal dining room or one room bedroom. Some perfectly cluttered others messingly clean. Still awkward always is. I have passed this test, test to be chosen. Because I seem to have a good first impression. I am chosen they will write or call. And always I have thought this time it will be different. Different. Because I passed the test. But the multiple choice of city college or community college of roommates is easy to pass and study for but the blue book essays of graduate school no way you can pass through without studying, without trying, without making concessions and making friends.

And after living in urban domain for the last few years 14 to be exact- I have lived through the test and trials and tribulations of urban roommates and what you will accept for a place to live a place to live in the city, the city of new york, or san Francisco, or boston, or dc. What you will put up with to have a place to live. Live. Fuck the suburban space of conformed spaces. I want to live in the city and swallow what I will to have my own room in a victorian or on the upper west side or on the u street corridor.

I have came home before to find, find my roommate an older jewish woman walking around the house at 3 am after my night of drinking she stayed in. Braless in an oversized t-shirt- leggings with holes in the crotch and not just kneepads but also elbow pads on her walking around, around the house. Now I if she had a guest and they were being adventurous in the bedroom that would make sense but no she was just walking around the apartment like that. But for an apartment on the upper west side for under 700 dollars you will accept crotchless leggings and kneepads.

For my first noe valley apartment- I accepted notes, emails, and requests from a man, a man who was a self-proclaimed fashion designer but not once did I see him make anything. Anything except maybe a bowl he perpetually smoked or the “love” he made to a different lady each night. See he was also a narcissist and a possibly closeted gay man. 4 black and white pictures of him framed in dramatic poses around his room. Throughout our apartment sorry more like his he hung his dresses- with attention to detail and work of a child around the house. He wrote me emails I needed to put down the toilet seat- I am a female- no one needs to tell me. Or I should wear flip-flops in the shower because I have dirty feet- well you have a dirty crotch. Or my dirty laundry caused ants. Ants to come in the house. And I should return from Sacramento to fix it. Or how he awoke me with his lady friends who thought my room was his more than once. They were lost. Lost. See we take what we can to live in a good neighborhood for good rent.

So finally finally I got to my current residence. Which is great except for the white board. The white board- I wanted to take the passive aggressive token and break in two. People would write shit like whose dishes, whose compost, who took my, who, who, who. It drove me crazy. I never played the white board game and finally it went away. Away. Relief. But the other morning. Went I went to the bathroom first thing in the am and not only peed but took a shit and I saw that someone in fact had not replaced the tp again- again- and no one was at home- to help me, as I walked around the house with my panties and pj bottoms around my ankles, with an ass that needed a wiping. I thought about how much how much I wanted the white board. The white board to say who took the last of the tp. But the white board was not longer. No longer. I found toilet paper wiped my ass and accepted it. It.