Sober Alice in Wonderland

There is nothing sober about Alice in Wonderland. It would apparently follow that all parties themed according to this particular story would be anything but sober and mind-altering substances of all sorts would flow freely. This was not the case at the party I attended last Friday, which was very consciously sober. One attendee attired like some sort of dealer had pockets full of herbal blends--mugwort and such. These were to be smoked by people who wanted dreams. Another party-goer costumed as the rabbit mentioned that the blend was good for quitting or beginning smoking. There was plenty of cake, and also tea. Lemonade was the prefered beverage.A few mad-hatters were present, as well as an Alice, who had apparently outgrown her dress, a Cheshire Cat, and an off-duty dominatrix. Many of the revelers were quiet introverted types, or maybe that was just me. I didn't talk to half the people in attendence and the party was small to begin with. The kitchen, and the front stairs were the prefered places of congregation, the latter because of smoking habits and prime view of boxing matches between girls. A brief dance party occured in a bedroom. Only about four people danced at one time. It was difficult to keep the dancing up when all but one other left the room. Everyone ate fruit salad and cake. Some people hid in a bedroom doing crafts. I wandered silently from room-to-room in the small apartment. Everytime a few words escaped my mouth, they were embarrassingly self-referential. I stayed for hours anyway.

Tags:

• alice+wonderland


• alice


• sober


• wonderland


• party

Is Your Humor Gay?

The wind had picked up in North Beach despite it having been an unusually hot day for San Francisco. My friends and I were gathered around a small wire table in the patio of an Indian restaurant/sports bar. Having worn out our previous conversations, we had fallen silent when these two Irish guys strolled up. The one who was packing a fresh pack of cigarettes said, "Can we join you gals, or would we be strifing you if we did?"
"I don't know if I'd call it strife," I-- commented.
My other friend and I remained silent. They stayed at our table offering us cigarettes then immediately launching into that most mundane of questions,
"What do you do with yourselves?"
None of us really wanted to answer the question. Our jobs do very little to explain the intricacies of our personalities or interestes. After I revealed something of my job to the guy who claimed he was an actor, he launched into some drunken rant about corporate media and advertising in which he said almost nothing at all.

He asked us where we all were from, then his friend belatedly introduced himself to me, turning a hand shake into a hand kiss, into the beginnings of a hand-bite.
"Nice to meet you, but just so you know, I am not a fan of licking and biting." We all just stared at the drunk Irishman who seemed to think that his bufoonery was hilarious.

The conversation quickly transitioned to the subject of humor."I wish I could make you laugh," he said, calling me by the name of a girl in x-men because of something to do with my hair. "I don't get American girls. You're so defensive."
"Well, I don't have typical American humor."
"What is typical American humor?" someone commented. It may have been a friend.
"I don't know."
"What is your humor, then?" the guy persisted. And after a brief moment's pause, he continued, "Is it gay?"
Everyone at the table was silently laughing. I gave him a sidelong glance, my face bearing some expression he would never read, and said something to the effect of "Maybe." What I really meant to say was "Yes." When he used the term, it did not quite mean 'bad' as it often is used to mean in American slang. He meant 'queer' in the old-fashioned sense of the term. But both queer and gay being synonymous, his question made sense on two levels. Only one was apparent to him.

When the mostly one-sided conversation dwindled, he turned to his friend and said, "Give me money." He needed to maintain his state of inebriation. His friend was reticent to provide the cash, so they began to wrestle, inches from us and our table. I made some half-hearted comment like, "If you are going to wrestle, can you go over there?" pointing to a more distant spot on the patio. Just then a third friend arrived with a bottle of wine and a slough of glasses.
"I have drinks."
The wrestling instantly stopped.
We left shortly afterwards.

A Rat Between The Walls

I met this man on Saturday night. He came over to my apartment because he was a friend of the boyfriend of a friend of my roommate. I found him instantly obnoxious. He made me feel out of place in my own home. There are not too many seats in my living room. It only really accomodates 3 comfortably. There happened to be five people squashed into the small room. Most of us had to sit on the floor. This man in his early forties wearing a tight, faded gray t-shirt and khakis was sitting on my couch talking about his pet rats and all the reasons why San Francisco bothers him. He had only been in town for a day or two, and this is already how he was thinking. He had just sold his house to take a somewhat transitory union organizing job. He would be living in six states throughout the year. When he sold his house, the real estate agent told him that it would be impossible to sell the house to anyone if they saw his two pet rats. He must dispense of them in some way. But, as he was fond of the creatures he refused. Instead, every time he showed the home to any prospective buyers, the real estate agent would arrive ten minutes early, pick up the rats, and drive around with them in her truck for the duration of the client's visit. Every conversation continued in a similar vein. He was a talker. I tried to chime in, to prove that I am not a kid, but all I could think about was how he must see the place: The books on the shelf are a mess. My roommates large laptop is setting precariously on top of the disheveled books, and one shelf is a mess of electrical cords and modems, half of which are not even currently in use. My place is some fashion of bachelorette pad, but I may as well be a bachelor for how it appears. And I didn't even make any contributions to the decor. But I like my apartment. I would just rather that it wasn't populated by these loud-mouthed men who can only talk about rats.

Tags:

• pet+rats


• apartment


• SanFrancisco

Art and the Sole Straight Bar in The Castro

The inside of the bar was hazy with smoke. This is an uncommon occurance in San Francisco where smoking is banned in bars. Somehow, there must be a loophole in the law, because this particular bar is not only the sole straight bar in the Castro, but also a haven for those who need to sip potent concoctions and inhale smoke simultaneously.

We walked up to the bar and ordered cups of syrupy poison. The drinks would aid us in conversing with the artists who were piling into the room fresh from the opening of their exhibition in the southernmost reaches of The Mission. Though no one struck me as particularly interesting, conversations wore on, and I found each one of them amusing. My friend was trying to find a guy to buy her beer.
"Can you point out a guy who you think might buy me a beer?" she said to the man standing next to her. He enthusiastically took up the call and exercised some beer chivalry.
"I'll buy you a beer."
I introduced myself to an artist who was a friend of a friend of a friend.
My introduction was bland, something to the effect of, "I haven't met you yet." It wasn't a good way to begin any sort of attempt at flirtation. An MFA student herself, she insisted that grad school is the greatest. She encouraged me to return to school, a strange discussion for someone obviously intoxicated in some way. Then she said,
"Everyone's doing coke, in case you're interested."
"No thanks." That was the end of that conversation.
I wasn't doing a very good job at flirting. I did espouse an interest in her art, and her graduate program, but somehow failed to ask about the details of her most recent artistic endeavor: painting the bathrooms of galleries. Later, I heard that it was backed by a theory, but I forgot for the time being that this is usually the case with academically trained artists and that it would be a good idea to ask about the underpinnings of her endeavor.
As usual, the evening disappated with various departures, often without even a shred of goodbyes.

Tags:

• art


• flirtation


• exhibition


• bar

Serious!

Everyone knows that poetry is very serious. Yes, those readers of poems at those oft-reviled gatherings known as open mics are a bunch of serious, introverted creatures full of many words that only manage to escape during infrequent bouts of soliloquy in front of audiences filled with tortured-poet-types. On top of lacking senses of humor, poets are self-centered, solipsistic weirdos who like to hear the ring of our own voices.

I happen to be one of these people. I must be careful who I uncloset myself to, because poets are socially dangerous. We can ruin any party. My neighbor hates poets. She thinks they are frivolous. She doesn't know that she lives across the hall from one.

The fact that I mask my lack of social life by going to underground literary happenings is a tell-tale sign that I will have very little to say when it comes to chit-chatting and mingling with sophisticated young urbanites who attend dinner parties. But as long as the poets stick together, the outside world will be safe from the threat of atrophied conversation. We create and inhabit our own little islands. They are physically located inside cafes and bookstores and libraries, but they are highly portable islands. We are poets wherever we go. So the threat never really diminishes.

Last night I attended one of these highly dangerous gatherings of poetic persons. It was a very small gathering. Only two such feared writers brought their work out into the light filtering into the bookstore through a large square window above the shelves. I was one of the two readers of verse. We all sat in folding chairs wearing our most serious expressions and sipping coffee or red wine out of small, disposeable cups. Because of course, we were poets. Then we stood up against a backdrop of bookcases and soliloquized.

After reading, we pronounced our serious gathering to a close, with much seriousness.

Tags:

• Poetry


• Poetry&Writing


• poet


• serious


• open+mic


• spoken+word


• bookstore