We surfaced at Civic Center just as the last few floats drifted by on Market. The first one was full of what looked like washed-up thirty year olds with bad tans, every one of them smoking and just generally not looking very gay. The next was this van made to look like a fire truck, ‘cept no one on board was going along with the gag, no firemen or firedikes at all. In fact, mostly more pale 30 yro’s smoking. There was a this blond dude with chiseled bod and golden brown skin wearing a tight hot pink underwear and striking poses at the apex of the firevan. But what the fuck, this is gay pride, shouldn’t he be wearing a thong?

After what seemed like an hour, we were finally able to cross the street. In the CC plaza there were white tents that looked intriguing from afar, but up close it was just over-priced beer, holyfuck-priced margaritas, wrestling masks, and the occasion pseudo-French body lotion tent. I lost my friends immediately and wandered solo for a bit, taking it all in (no pun). There was a really convincing topless tranny over there, a group of really hip 12 yo gay boys in polo shirts drinking fruit punch over there and over there, the first nude man of the day just walked past–as usual he’s really old,  incredibly tan and hairless,  and somehow has wrinkles only on his face if you’re not counting his penis which is actually one small wrinkle– lots of gay boys in tighty whites and black suspenders–that look seems to be in this year–and, of course, too many partially obese straight girls wearing some combination of tie die bra or nipple tape and gold-glittered spandex booty shorts or leggings with or without a thong on the outside. Then there’s the older lesbian and gay couples, modestly dressed and slow-paced, with eyes hidden behind thick sunglasses, eating cabbage and noodles seemingly unaware that this day is any different from other days.

Then I realize it’s very similar to that other day of spectacle in the city–Love Fest. In fact, it’s practically the same, ‘cept there’s just a little bit more Prop 8 fuckers with their clipboards. Even here, at gay pride, they can’t get anyone to stop and sign, not even the gay dude who just passed wearing a “Legalize Gay” shirt. I’ll never feel guilty again for not stopping. This day and Love Fest seem practically interchangeable so that they might as well call it Love Pride and GayFest. Actually, the only big difference seems to be that now they charge you to get into LoveFest. Thank god it’s still free to be gay. 

I’m making comparisons here not to be derogatory or disrespectful to gay pride, but to show how in my experience, it just seemed like another excuse for little kids to come out, get fucked up, be loud, and get fucked. Everything had an ironicness to it, a sense that “because it’s gay pride it’s okay for you to laugh in my face and pat my dick” –take for instance the performance of the Backstreet Boys, who are actually, for those of us who were in middle school and high school 10 years ago, the biggest gay joke of our generaton. And now here we are at Gay Pride 2010, none of us have heard of or given a shit about the Boys in a decade (I thought one of them OD’d and died, you know, that one with the violently scuplted facial hair) and we suddenly all love them. In fact, we love ‘em so much were pissed and feel extremely jipped when they play only 4 songs. As if they even had more than 4 songs.

So what does this all mean?  Has something about Gay Pride Day been lost? Is it more about sex and alcohol than sexuality and pride? In my desire for spectacle am I part of the problem? Are the BSB’s officially gay? Deep questions ruminating below the surface of other more pressing questions: Where the hell’s the closest bar? Is it cheap?

We ended up at Tommy’s Joint on Van Ness where the beers are slightly better for slightly less than the white-tent beers. This is also apparently a sanctuary for confused overweight tourist families, which probably has something to do with its (TJ’s) array of meats and redneck appeal–there wasn’t anything queer in or about this place, which is funny given the name of the joint.  We took a table, my cohorts ordered food, ate, didn’t finish, one of them bought a shriveled novelty condom from a vending machine, the other waved over her two friends, we met them, laughed for a second about nipples, then left.

We walked about a block and then stood for a while in an intersection. Didn’t take long to realize that one of these girls was one of those skinny annoying attention whore girls who feel a need to compensate for their ugly face and crooked teeth by being really loud and overly sexual, and the other girl, her friend, was one of those chubby slightly dark cleavage overload laugh-at-everything-her-friend-does foil to annoying friend-type. Just types man, you know? Anyway, former girl keeps whispering to fat latter girl and laughing at me. She says it’s cuz every time she looks at me I have my flannel shirt positioned differently.  I’ve never been one to get along with really loud girls who are full-on and rude when you first meet them. I’m fairly shy and quiet and girls like this feel the need to prey on guys like me. Usually it isn’t so literal as jumping on my head, ripping at my crotch, trying to stratch my dick, and pulling out my pubic hairs, which is what she did. Twice. WTF? How does one deal with people like this? It was like we were kids on a playground. She needed a time out.

Let me describe the five of us walking down the street: 1. Doesn’t give a shit 2. Bi-chick who likes to argue 3. Possibly Black and Definitely too Much Titty 4. “You don’t know that I’m totally into farts”  5. Pass me a joint.

Now we’re in the Castro of course, and we scamper to this bar called Trigger, which is actually more like a club. But it’s really actually more like boner club. It’s expensive, everything’s made of glass, and there’s little conrete inlets at each corner of the square bar for dancing. It’s mostly the same fit black dude in green underwear. 

First thing the physially abusive girl does: Lays on the bar with her shirt pulled up and some guy takes body shots off her stomach. Me and my cohort who doesn’t give a shit have a bet to see who can get a drink from a gay man first. I give in. I buy a drink for myself and wander into the crowd. Mostly gay men, and a few ambigious girls. I wonder if they can tell I’m straight. Gay dudes don’t wear flannel.

I’m at the bar talking to these two young Latinos.

“You see those two over there?” one of them says. He’s sleaveless. “That’s my roommate hooking up with my best friend who just came over from Mexico.” 

I look over. They look exactly like the two guys I’m talking with, except on E.

“Oh. Nice,” I say, “Are you gunna stop them?”

“No. I’m gunna join them!” he screams and runs off to 3-way kiss.

Then me and the other guy get to talkin’ about surfing. SF surf spots, beaches, boards, wetsuits. I’m thinking this is it. It’s gotta be. I’m gunna get a drink outta this Latino guy. I mean we’re talking about surfing, and I don’t even really surf, and he probably doesn’t either and…  But something happens. There’s a moment of silence. The friend runs back. There’s hesitation. Smiles. Confusion.

“You’re not gay.”

But I’m already gone. Outside, where doesn’t give a shit is smoking against the wall.

“I couldn’t take it in there man. That’s not even a bar. It’s a club. I fuckin’ hate clubs.”

“Me too.”

“Everyone eyein’ you man. Fuck. Now I know what it feels like to be a chick.”

“It’s different though. I feel like some gay dudes are overly sexual, especially at a place like this.”

“Yeah”

“It seems like because they’re gay, they’re defined by something sexual to begin with, so especially at a gay bar, they’re gunna be oversexed.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

 ”I’m startin’ to feel like this whole day just feeds that image of gay people as whores. But then again it seems like we’re all whores today. Selfish, at least.”

“Fuckin’ A. Let’s find another bar.” 

We find a straight bar down the street. Lucky 13. But even that sounds kinda gay, so I judge by the crowd that it’s a straight bar. (Incidentally, the bar at the stright bar is literally straight, the gay bar’s was “square”.) I order a couple cans of PBR, cheapest thing they got, and the bartender gives me flack.

“Oh you gotta be kidding you fukking pussy.” he says bitterly. Yep. Straight bar.

Pool is free tonight. Not cus it’s gay pride, but cuz it’s Sunday. I lose a couple of games to doesn’t give a shit (who I’m pretty sure gave a shit in one of those games). Then this group of girls sits down at a nearby table and the tall one calls next game.

My cohort racks ‘em. The tall chick delivers a killer break. CRACK! Suddenly, it gets intense. She makes two in a row. I’m standing at this weird midpoint between the game and the table of girlfriends, partly because I’m shy to just sit down at their table but mostly because they’re not talking, jut staring at the pool game like zombie chearleaders.

Then my cohort goes on a 4-ball run. Tall chick gets taller. Ties it up. She doesn’t say a word. The cherleaders sip fiercely at straws. 

Tall chick misses a crucial. My cohort capitalizes. Now he’s got just the 8-ball. He leans down into the light. We’re all watching; we know he has a shot to the corner pocket.

Tall chick is perfectly still. I can see everything but her head. It’s creepy.

My cohort doesn’t blink; he pulls back, aims. CRACK! It’s in. Game over.

Surprisingly yet predictably (therefore paradoxically) this win leads to no conversation. It is not the entry into barroom banter that two young men might expect. There is no exchange of names, no ”better luck next time”s, no gay pride comiseration. Only a feeling that somehow this loss is an assault to their womanhood. That the chearleaders’ ferocious sipping is no nervous diversion, but a carefully concentrated and deliberate hex dispelled from a hive mind of feminine frustration. Femstration.

They leave through a backdoor to smoke cigarettes. We see our girls sitting at the bar, the aggressive one hunched over with her face hidden, thank god. There’s a full beer in front of her. I snag it. I drink it in three gulps.

“Let’s go outside and smoke cigarettes with those girls,” I say to DGAS.

“Okay.”

We go out the back door expecting an intimate smoking space but are disappointed when it turns out to be a patio-sized patio with tables and inlets and alcoves even. They are in one of course, the corner alcove, and we can’t see any of their heads because of hanging plant blockage. We take the only open table and smoke the shit out of our (his) cigarettes.

“They seemed to take that loss really seriously,” I say.

“They’re probly dykes man.”

“You think?”

“A couple of ‘em at least.”

“You think they would have said something to us.”

“Dykes man.”

We get up to go back inside, and as we pass their corner DGAS turns toward them and for a moment he looks like he’s gunna say something to them, but then he turns back, and we go inside. Doesn’t give a shit.

The rest of the night I sit at the bar alone waiting for our girls to either vomit or take what must have been poos, before we walk back to the BART. On the walk back aggressive girl is relatively tame. Seems her excess has finally caught up to her. She’s broken. However, her sudden calmness creates an aggression void in which bi-chick who likes to argue boldly fills. She begins flailing her arms and gurgling. She’s like a huge drunk baby who’s been attention-starved all day at the fair and lashes out on the way back to the car. My ear somehow becomes the victim of this lashing.

“Why did you hit my ear?”

“I didn’t hit your ear.”

“You hit my ear.”

“No…. I didn’t.”

“Why is it stinging?”

Silence.

I deliver a low blow: “You just wanna be one of the boys don’t you.”

More silence. She appears to be fuming. We’re almost at the BART. I can feel the ticket in my pocket. Salvation.

“We have to walk [aggressive girl's name] back to her car.”

Bullshit we do. It’s all the way back up at T’sJ. Fuck that.

“I’m going home,” I say and split off. It’s a magical release. Everything I’d hoped for and more. 

Alone, I descend into the subway porthole and go home.

I believe there are a set of expectations an American has when he goes to see a band that falls into the category of “world music.” These expectations are similar to those that accompany any band that fits a certain genre–Classic Rock, Grunge, Punk, Folk, Emo, etc. ad diarheam. But world music is more than just a genre. It’s more like a category containing many genres, kind of like how foreign films can be its own section at Blockbuster, or more accurately, a cultural signifier (a word that suggests a culture or region) affixed to a genre, like Afro-Cuban Jazz, or Desert Blues (in the case of Tinariwen [ who's name is from a Fulani word that mean "deserts".]) 1  Notice how ”world music” seems always to come from third world countries or regions. You’ll never be at a friend’s house and hear them say, “Dude check out this crazy German reggae-funk orchestra.” But chances are you have heard a friend say “Dude check out this crazy video of this Nigerian dude playing guitar with a spoon.” My guess is this stems from the adjectives which we ascribe to world music–we call it traditional, indigenous, folk, cultural, ethnic, non-Western–hairy words with a whiff of imperialism.  I’m wondering if the dark bearded kid next to me, sporting a tightly wound orange turban could pick up a 2-string guitar and sing the alphabet backwards and it would be considered world music.

World music then, brings along expectations both of a genre, and of a curiosity, that is, of a something foreign, non-Western, and therefore novel. It has a unique element of spectacle for the American show-goer, because he is expecting to experience something beyond his expectations. He wants to be taken to the edge of what he knows, what is familiar to him, and shown something else, something dazzling and new, but he can recognize this only in relation to what he already knows. It’s kinda like paying to see the Elephant Man, but then feeling jipped if his faced isn’t fucked up enough or, on the other hand, feeling very confused if he just turns out to be a rhinocerous.        

What we are expecting: a new sound, new instruments, a new look,  a new language, a unique conversation between band members that could be called a new style.

HOW A BAND MIGHT SUCCEED AT THIS

That band from Senegal at the Berkeley World Music Festival succeeded in this. Their instruments included a kora, balafon, talking drum, djembe, and electric guitar. With the exception of the guitar, all of these are African instruments, and therefore look and sound different and thus are played in a way that looks different, so that the visual playing of the instruments becomes an integral part the experience of the performance. Also, these instruments sound distinct from each other.

WHY TINARIWEN FAILED

They failed because most of their songs sounded like up-tempo western blues songs, which ironically, were the songs the songs that everyone seemed to be enjoying most. The other songs were kind of soft and boring and vocal-heavy. Sometimes I would stare at the rhythm guitar player for what seemed like hours and he’d be playing the exact same riff of three chords over and over. The lead guitar player used the top string as a bass note in every song, so that the same low “D” or “E” note rang out constantly. I’m not explaining this well.

Remember back in 2001 when that crazy Texan lady Mrs. Yates drowned her five kids one-by-one in the bathtub and then confessed to the police telling them the gruesome details of how she laid them on the bed and wrapped each in a sheet.

I remember this story because I was in the 8th grade at a turning point in my life when I was beginning to question certain attitudes and perspectives and issues, that for my whole life it seemed had been “pre” -scribed for me, written in religion textbooks, preached to me in church,  and at the dinner table. It was the general milieu of my white picket -fenced town where everyone had an ocean view. These were the days when I realized this world of light I’d been living in was only half of reality, only a tiny sliver of the real world, which was actually full of darkness and violence and what I then perceived as a mystery, of which I could partake only in my imagination. I was curious of this other world and I  noticed I urged to be a part of it outside of my mere thoughts, for something to actually happen to me. So I began to pay attention to stories in the news like the Yates ordeal. (The strange thing is: the Yates incident occurred in June of 2001, just months before something did actually happen to me –my brother was hospitalized after his car was hit by a bus on September 10th, 2001, the day before something happened to everyone.)

It’s not my intent to compare details of this incident with the killing of Oscar Grant, that would be irrelevant. The former was mass filicide deliberated by a psychotic mother, the latter an impulsive shooting of an innocent man by an emotionally-charged BART police. Both entail hugely different and particular moral issues. There’s nothing similar except that innocent people died. But I do think there’s something about the way my mind thinks dfferently about these two cases that reveals how the media over the past 9 years has had a powerful influence over my ability to grapple with a moral issue, murder, by puting myself in another person’s shoes. That is, trying to imagine myself as both killer and victim, family member or bystander.

Imagine yourself as a crazy person, morally deranged, psychotic. Now imagine your normal self as audience to this pyschotic version of you, unable to control your thoughts and actions, sort of like being forced to watch a weird horror movie of your life, without even being able to get up to piss. Also, you are a devout Christian with 6 kids. That’s sorta what I tried to do in 8th grade when thinking about the Yates lady. She killed her children and she was wrong in doing that. But she claimed to be depressed and even confessed the details of the murder.

For some reason, I got no problem with this. Mass murder of your own children is definitely wrong, but my mind has no problem writing it up as insanity, and as a juror I would probably say this chick needs to be in a mental institution, rather than a penal one. Now isn’t that weird, that there’s a place for crazy people and a place for criminals, but when the two things overlap, when you get a crazy person who also commits horrible crimes, there’s no third place for them to go. No. It always comes down to a decision whether this person is insane and commiting a crime because of it, or whether this person is sane and commiting an insane crime for reasons that “normal” people commit crimes. It’s all very ambiguous if you ask me. Especially cuz in court the defense often uses the term “criminally insane” as a plea to keep the defendant out of prison. AND then, us regular people, when we hear about a criminal going on a killing spree, we can him ”insane”, “fucked in the head”,  ”crazy.” Seems to me there’s too much overlap. There’s gotta be tons of normal criminals who’ve gotten out of prison for claiming Crazy, and then tons of Crazy people thrown in prison cuz no one beleived they were really Crazy. Or maybe they weren’t crazy enough. How the fuck do you know?

What does all this add up to? Well, I think it means that we’re really good at putting ourselves in a crazy person’s shoes. (Think about how lady Yates first gets convicted of murder, and then after an appeal a couple years leter she gets not guilty by reason of insanity, and she’s release to a psycho ward). But we (I) really suck at putting ourselves in a police’s shoes. Especially when that police kills an unarmed 22 year old man. I cannot forgive Mehserle or shrug this off or make excuses for him. I cannot imagine the shooting as an accident, the taser thing seems like complete bullshit, I can’t even imagine a trained police officer being so stupid, so rookie, so untrained. Why can I rationalize the Yates murders but not the killing of Oscar Grant? Why I am able to refer to the Yates ordeal as “murders” and still shrug them off, and yet I have trouble referring to the BART case as the “murder of Oscar Grant” though I cannot look past what Mehserle has done. I call Yates ‘murderer’ and Mehserle ‘dumbfuck’, yet I forgive the murderer and persecute the dumbfuck.

Why do I do this? Why am I unable to imagine myself murdering 5 children but unable to imagine impulsively killing one person? Probly cuz of Youtube. In the latter case, I have video access to over ten actual points-of-view of the shooting. Through video footage, I am able to be there, be a witness in a way I could never be with the Yates crime. I sacrifice my powers of imagination for hard data. I don’t feel the same need to put myself in someone else’s persepective because it’s literally done FOR me. This effect of this closeness is immense: I’m no longer the idealist who wants to believe that people are basically good and accidents happen. No. I’m the rationalist saying look at this right fucking here, he shot him for no reason, what a piece of shit. Questionable analogy: It’s kind of like when a white idealist thinks racial profiling is wrong and then gets robbed at kinife point by a black dude and suddenly changes his mind.

What I have been trying to imagine is the effect of all the cameras on the whole situation. It’s tense enough to be a cop in a hairy situation with a hundred bystanders watching with their eyes let alone their iphones. Are the cameras at all to blame? What do you think?

I warned them as we approached the scientology building so that when the guy at the front door said “Wait a minute. Can I ask you guys a question?” I was ready. I said, “Wait. Let me ask you a question. OK. What is scientology in one sentence?”
 
“Won’t you come in for a second, look aorund, c’mon, most people, they just keep their minds closed and jump to conclusions,” said the man. So we entered. fukk it. We knew well not to oppose anything this night might have in store. 
 
It was then that I thought of the man’s face, sad and furrowed like a pale dog. Then he was gone and we were in a big room with posterboards and talking screens and L. Ron Hubbard books everywhere. In fact, the more I walked around and scoped all the reading material, it was all about this L. Ron Hubbard. (I’d heard his name before. But I always thought it was Elron.) 

Who the fuck is that guy? I thought. I’ve heard of him, don’t we all know him, he’s a science fiction writer. Nothing there was about scientology so much as it was about this Hubbard. Fuck this, it’s another magic trick another method of puting off that definition I was looking for. I stole a mini waterbottle from a basket. No Guilt. Then we left. 

At the threshold, dogfaced man appeared again. “I have a gift for you guys.”

He went back inside. We waited on the sidewalk for him to return because we wanted a gift. We are suckers for free shit like everyone else. When he came back he gave us a couple DVDs with volcanoes erupting on the cover. I noticed that his lips were red and cracked, and his face was still sad, like a clown who has come home, hung up the pieces of his costume, showered, and now stands naked in front of the mirror looking at his face for a little, before he lathers it with shaving foam and becomes a clown once more. 

As we walked on, Mike D put the DVDs in his jacket. “Did you see that guy’s lips? They were so scabby and gross.” We laughed, but I felt bad for the guy. Nevertheless, I made a good joke out of it: “Yeah, he looked like he just gave a blowjob to a scarecrow.” 

Balm lips. Not countries. 

We ate dinner ate the House of Nanking after waiting outside the restaurant first because it was packed. While we waited, I looked over and saw a man drinking a Red Bull and staring down at his baby in its stroller. Or I just assumed he was the baby’s daddy. He seemed angry. At one point, he stormed into the restaurant, jamming the stroller through the door, and ripped his jacket off one of the chairs. At the table, a read-headed lady and an older bald man gave him a look as though to recognize his anger and suggest that there was nothing to be said at that point, not there, not now. He stromed out and down the street a little, waited for them to come out and then started along his way before they coould catch up to him. That is the table that we received, where we ate fried saucy eggplant (slime), saucy chow mien, and saucy sesame chicken with these strips of saucy sweet potato, and white rice to sop up some of the sauciness. It was a very saucy meal, and when it was over, we all agreed that the eggplant was a bit much (rubber) and a better choice would have been the braised dry green beans, which would have balanced out the soft wetness of the other dishes. I Knew all along we should have gotten them, but sometimes you must hold your tongue and sit back. Sometimes you must let yourself be ushered into buildings to take free tours and receive free gifts. 

Now it was time to drink which meant it was time to find the cheapest drinks. We entered a couple places here and there–one place we left becuase the sign said 1 dollar PBR, but it ended up being 3 bucks for a can. Fuk that. We turned a corner left, right. On the front of this 2 story restaurant, we saw a sign that said $2 Beers on Tap. We entered, showed I.D. at the foot of some stairs and went up. 

It was nice, they welcomed us, a couple asian girls, one wearing the uniform of the place, jeans and a collared purple shirt to match the purple walls and the other wearing a shkimpy blue dress. The place had leather couches and TVs but we wanted to sit at a table and we did and they gave us the menu. On the walls everywhere was that same sign, $2 Beers on Tap. The menu said it too. Sierra! Sapporo! Fuk, and it’s on tap. 

We ordered Sapporos all around. And we did that five more times. The purple shirted asian waitress hept giving Matt the drink with the most head, and every time she did it we would make a joke about her giving him head, and how fun it was for him to receive it. Why do they laugh at anything you say? Is that a waitress thing or an asian girl thing or an asian waitress girl thing. Or am I just a fuknut.
 
Before I knew it we were meeting up with Arthur and Jason under the triangle building. Question: why did they even come when we had to catch the last BART train in an hour and a half? It’s kinda lame when friends do that, push themselves on you when you’re trying to get away from all that poop, tryin to catch a break. 

So we took them back to the bar and when we got there the asian girls went crazy. Yeah! We brought friends! We didn’t stay for long and all i know is I didn’t pay for my drink and I left the box of leftovers I’d been carrying. It’s proabably still there, saving my seat. 

On BART we got in a verbal fight. It started when Arthur was making fun of this gay dude who was on his phone. The dude hung up and got in Arthur’s face. Arthur told him off with a few snappy jokes about pheasants. I forget but it was pretty sweet. Somehow that inertia rubbed off on the dudes across from me and Mike D, and we got to talking about hardcore vs. punk. They were sayin that Black Flag is hardcore, and we were like “Fuck you, Black Flag is punk.” We got loud and rude. “I’d like to see you in the pit asshole, so I could punch your face.” Some Kiss-Misfits comparisons were made. “We’re from Hermosa Beach,” we said. “Fuck you.” (We’re really from Manhattan Beach.) 

We got back to da house and Jason invited a bunch of fools over. I had just enough time to micromave some chicken before they got here.

Did you ever think that if the Romans had invented motion pictures first then the beginining of every movie would look like this–V  IV  III  II  I.  I didn’t til just now. 

I woke up this morning with a good idea:  Time should be recyclable like bottles and cans. Then, you could waste time by getting drunk and eating canned junk, guilt-free. Then at the end of the week, turn it all in for an extra day, that day being somewhere in between Saturday and Sunday. Hey, if time is money, then money is time, and that means time can be bought and sold, traded and stolen, squandered and laundered, and surely all the cans and bottles I empty should be worth an 8th day of the week. Maybe my neighbor Big Ed knows this, and some bums too, and those crazy asian ladies on campus that go from trashcan to trashcan with a pushcart screaming “Hail!” at the first drop of ice from the sky. It’s raining candy!

Maybe that’s really why homeless people and fukk-ups collect can and bottles, cuz they’re trying to get back lost time, or at least to a time when the bottles were full and the cans were ready to be can-opened.  

I’ve been stepping on crunchy things a lot lately and not even looking down to see them. I imagine they are fortune cookies I will never read. It’s better that way because then, when something fortuitous actually happens, I can think it probably happened becuase I was completely ignorant of its possibility. That is why we must not look at the crunchy things we step on. 

One day you look up and you hate your room. You notice the shit up on the walls, stuff hanging from the ceiling, books on the shelf, and you say “Who the fukk is this guy?” And then you look at the black screen of your your lifeless laptop and beneath the dust you recognize that old pair of eyes. Time to re-fukking-model, don’t you think, fartfucks! oh, you never do this? sor.