Worked at Black Sheets for a few hours, and then came home and put together the April issue of this fine zine, or tried to.

Since I needed to concentrate, of course some new neighbors were moving in upstairs, hauling all their possessions and furniture up the loud and rickety wooden steps on the other side of my bedroom wall.

When they finally stopped stomping around, they celebrated with non-stop full-blast Mexican rock'n'roll, dancing one layer of balsa wood above my head, with a perpetual bass backbeat to rattle my bones. Yeah, I'm going to like the new neighbors upstairs, yes indeed.

♦ ♦ ♦

Unexpectedly, I worked as a grandma-sitter tonight. This yuppie-guy out in the Sunset has his senile grandmother living with him and his wife, and usually, he says, when they have plans for the evening his brother comes over to tend to Grandmama. Tonight, though, his brother wasn't available, so he called the number on my flyer at about 3:00, desperate and apologetic, and asked if I could do it. Lucky for him, I checked my messages at 3:45 or so.

"Sure, I can do it," I called back and said. My grandmother had Alzheimer's, so I know how to patiently answer the same questions over and over again. I brought some zines and a book for leisurely reading, and got to their house by 5:00, as they were getting ready to leave and wondering whether I'd show up. "Relax, man," I said, smiling. "I said I'd be here, and here I am."

Grandmama had already eaten dinner, so he introduced us, and gave me a rushed rundown of my duties — make sure she doesn't wander off down the street or anything. Easy money. "She'll probably just sit in her chair and read her book," he promised.

And indeed, that's about all she did. I read zines, and every few minutes Grandmama looked up and asked, "Who are you?" I patiently introduced myself, and did it again a little later.

Like I said, I'd done this for my own grandmother before she croaked, but I'll also say, it's different doing it for someone else's grandmother. She was asking who I was every fifteen minutes or so, and eventually I became Cary Grant, Billy Carter, Florence Nightingale, or Bond, James Bond. No rudeness intended, but what I answered didn't matter.

She said once that she had to go to the bathroom, but she didn't get up. Her grandson had warned me that after she'd said it she'd sometimes forget, and pee her pants if you didn't get her to the john, so I got her to the john. She took care of her business without assistance, but I needed to remind her to eventually flush and come back to the living room.

After the potty visit, she sat in her chair again, opened her book, and fell straight asleep. Was I supposed to put her to bed like a toddler? Nah. There's a limit to what I'll do for $5 an hour.

She was still sleeping peacefully in the easy chair when Mr and Mrs Grandson came home at about 12:30, two hours later than he'd said. Instead of apologizing for being late, he semi-balked at paying me $37.50 for 7½ hours of mostly reading.

"Hey, dude," I said, "It would be awfully easy to repossess your grandmother. All I'd have to do is say, 'I'm Sven, let's go for a walk'."

Well, of course I was only kidding, but he didn't see the humor in it, got all huffy and said he'd never hire me again. He paid what he owed me, though, so it's OK by me if he's pissed. Hire a stranger, from a notice tacked to a laundry's corkboard, as caretaker for a loved one, and then complain about the price when Grandmama's still alive eight hours later? Fuck off, sir.

There was a drive-by shooting here this afternoon, three quick shots as a car went past. When I looked out the window, there was nothing to see except other people looking out their windows, but as I watched, some lady found fresh holes in a wall and on the sidewalk, and pointed, and shook her head.

All this is routine, though. The cops didn't even come 'round. Gunshots aren't noteworthy when nobody's hit.

♦ ♦ ♦

Another trip to Kinko's, to run a few dozen copies of some early issues that have sold out. And here's a moment:

A pretty woman came into the copy shop, and walked past me. I'm ugly and fat and she certainly didn't notice me, but I didn't think twice about that, or even once. I was standing in line, waiting to talk to someone at the counter, and something was baking inside me, so I mindlessly shifted my leg a little and passed a long, silent, onion & sauerkraut-fueled fart. It smelled awful even to me, and probably I smiled, proud of myself.

Then I noticed that the pretty woman was standing directly behind my behind in line. She made a face as if she was might pass out, and indeed, it was chemical warfare. It had been a silent rippler, though, so I looked around like she was looking around. What the hell is that smell?

♦ ♦ ♦

Checked my messages, and somebody had called, wanting to pay me money for nothing — to reprint some stuff from Pathetic Life. Didn't catch the name of the publication. It was some on-line thing, so I'll never see the words. I'll see the money, though.

It's not the first time I've been paid for my writing. I'm paid three bucks every time I open the mail, and I thank you sincerely for that.

But fifty bucks all at once? Dang good money for a day already lived and written about, words plucked from my brain on some afternoon mostly forgotten.

♦ ♦ ♦

"Where's Terry?" I asked Pike when I got home, after he and I had a few minutes of meandering conversation.

"I'm sure she's on her way," he said, sounding none too happy about it. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I miss her," I said, sarcastically, but with a straight face and sincere tone of voice.

"So do I," said Pike, and I think he said it just as sarcastically.

I've wondered but haven't asked, why those two even pretend they're together. From what I've seen, they're apart, way apart, except when they're fucking. The walls are thin so I hear the sex, and also every word of every argument. They argue over everything — the food, the errands, their friends, what to watch on TV. Everything.

When Pike is alone in his room, reading or listening to music, or when he's talking to me, or when one of his friends comes by, he laughs loud and often. When Terry's here, though, which is most of the time, he and she never share a laugh. All they do is scream and tell each other to go to hell and occasionally screw.

Terry laughs, but she laughs alone, with a screeching shriek that makes the cat run under the bed. You can never guess what's funny to her, and she won't explain what she's laughing at, not to Pike or anyone.

Every morning she gets up while he's still asleep, makes a hell of a racket in the kitchen, leaves the bathroom floor watered from her shower, sneezes a lot, laughs at her mystery jokes, and has a loud conversation with herself until Pike yells at her for waking him up. Then she yells at him for being lazy ("I at least have a job!"), and then she goes to work, and it's sweet to hear the door click shut, and I have to believe Pike likes hearing it, too.

Afternoons are as peaceful and pleasant as possible here in the slums, until she buzzes the doorbell (thankfully, Pike hasn't given her a key). He lets her in, and the screaming is underway almost immediately. When she walked in a few minutes ago, her first words were "Fuck you."

Even Maggie & I at our worst moments never screamed at each other like Pike & Terry do whenever they're in the same room. That's love, eh? That's why I love being alone in life.

Addendum, 2022: If it matters, I'm pretty sure the publication was HotWired, which used to be the online extension of the magazine Wired.

Nothing against the shop, and I still like wearing drag and handing out their flyers, but it's starting to feel like a job, and a job isn't really what I want. Me free-lancing is supposed to be about variety, not doing the same thing every day, y'know? So I used my day off from the shop to paper the city with more of my "I'll do anything legal for $5 an hour" posters.

I got about 60 posters tacked, taped, and glued up in all the laundromats on the N, K, and L lines, until a major Muni malfunction marooned me on Taraval at about 5:30.

The streetcar stopped, and the driver said nothing, but we could see that the track was blocked by another L Taraval. I got out and strolled around, and saw that the L blocking my L was blocked, too, by another L, and another, and another. There were twenty-three L trains to nowhere stuck in traffic, up Taraval and down lovely Ulloa Street.

Was I aggravated, furious? Nah, I had nowhere to be, and there's a soft spot in my heart for monkey-wrenches, so this was a beautiful sight.

At West Portal, hundreds of stranded souls were milling about, asking Muni staff what the hell, but that was a question no-one could answer. You didn't need much expertise, though, to see that Muni had lost power to the streetcar system's overhead grid.

No trains were going in to the Twin Peaks Tunnel, very few were coming out, and when one did emerge from the darkness it was packed, and I mean packed, even by Muni overflow standards. It seriously looked unsafe to be inside that crowd of elbow-to-ass angry commuters.

Muni sent an emergency fleet of diesel shuttles to run between West Portal and downtown, so hundreds, maybe thousands of grumbling inbound passengers were able to leave their stalled trains and clamber into a shuttle instead. I could've made my way home, too, but it was fun admiring the chaos, so I leaned on a building and simply enjoyed the awful injustice of all these people being late for their sitcoms and TV dinners.

Nobody had a kind word for Muni, but other than their ordinary refusal to explain anything to the passengers, I was impressed with how well they handled the clusterfuck situation. At the tunnel's West Portal, someone was clearly in charge, which helped.

With so many trains lined up, blocking cars and trucks and buses, pedestrians and commuters needed to walk blocks just to cross the street, but there was one woman in a Muni uni doing something about that. She stood in the middle of the street, directing the trains in four directions, and she knew what she was doing, and single-handedly got the backlog unclogged, via some clever cross-tracking.

The first inbound M couldn't go into the tunnel, so she crow-barred the track at the switch, allowing the M to roll across the street onto the outbound L tracks. She did this one-by-one with all the different trains queued up on both streets, and while each driver changed the train's signage, she announced to the crowd, "This is now an outbound L-train," or whatever. These were the only plainspoken announcements anyone made to any of the throngs waiting for trains and buses.

Then she did it again with the next train in line, and the train after that, again and again.

That woman was why I stayed an hour longer than I needed to, not because she was a babe or anything — just this once, that's irrelevant — but because it isn't often you see someone doing difficult work, under pressure, competently.

Stepping into the shower, I noticed a big blop of red on the floor of the bathroom, fresh and glistening, directly in front of the toilet. Once or twice a year I might get a random bloody nose, but my nose was dry, so what's with the blood?

Ah, jeez. I knew Terry had showered very recently, because everything in the bathroom was wet and Pike was still asleep.

Being a man unencumbered by any love life, menstruation is a topic I never think about, and I wish I wasn't thinking about it now. I have shared houses with women, from my mother and sisters when I was a kid to Maggie a few years ago, and never before found menstrual leakage. This tends to reinforce what I've already concluded, that Pike's girlfriend is not Ginger Rogers.

♦ ♦ ♦

There were fireworks at work today, let me tell you. First, some proper nouns, so you'll know who's who and what's what:

Unusualia is the second-hand shop where I work. It's on the second floor of a three-story building on Market Street, and there's a patio overlooking the sidewalk. Under us, on the first floor, is Geraldine's, a competing second-hand shop. Above us, on the third floor, is a lawyer's office. None of these businesses own the building; they're all tenants, renting.

A week or so ago, LeeAnn & Stevi began putting merchandise on their porch while the shop is open — a rocking chair, some matching barstools, Beatles posters, etc. It helps announce to people on the street that there's something to see, upstairs.

Today's drama begins: The lawyer on the third floor has complained to the landlord that having stuff on the second-floor porch looks tacky. He's wants the merch removed.

The landlord and the lawyer came by today, together, telling Stevi to take the shop's merchandise off the porch. Stevi is a big bull dyke who backs down to no-one, and she thinks renting the second floor includes the porch, so some serious screaming ensued. She yelled at the landlord, he yelled at her, and eventually he stormed off in a fury after ordering her again, like he's her father or a cop or something, to take everything off the porch.

I was out on the sidewalk during all this, wearing the cape and inviting people to come up to the shop, while everyone was yelling, which maybe made the invitation seem less than inviting.

After the landlord stomped away, Stevi decided to bring the merchandise in from the porch. More about that later.

During the argument, though, Geraldine was standing in the doorway of her first-floor shop, listening to every loud word from upstairs, and smiling. She hates LeeAnn & Stevi, and she doesn't like me, either. She thinks having some bozo in an outlandish costume handing out flyers lessens the prestige of her second-hand shop, I guess.

After the big showdown, Geraldine walked into the clothing shop next door for several minutes, and then into the record shop above the clothiers, and finally, her third stop, was up our building's stairs and into the lawyer's office. Guess we're the talk of the town, and maybe Geraldine is rallying the townsfolk against Stevi & LeeAnn?

A little later, the lawyer stood on his steps and clicked two Polaroids of me in my cape. Obviously, the photos are evidence of something, so I didn't flip him off, but I also didn't smile. Will the landlord come back tomorrow, demanding that I stop wearing the crazy cape and cap? Fine by me; I'll hand out the shop's flyers naked.

My opinion?

First, LeeAnn & Stevi are nice people, easy to like, and they don't deserve any of this. In two months working for them, I don't have any complaints.

As for the porch, they've brought out only their best merchandise, and the display has never been 'tacky'. The lawyer upstairs wants to pretend there's not a second-hand shop — two of them, actually — under his floorboards?

And tacky or not, it's LeeAnn & Stevi's porch — part of the square footage they're renting, and part of the shop. Neither the lawyer nor his clients use it; the stairs leading to the third floor are beside the porch, with a view of the porch, but they have no access.

As ordered, Stevi brought the merchandise into the shop, so the porch is empty again, but she says she's going to call her lawyer. I don't see how the landlord can stop them from putting merchandise on the porch, unless it's prohibited by the lease.

After the landlord left, the ladies were in a grumpy mood. LeeAnn mentioned that business has been terrible, and that they actually had zero sales all day, one of the days I wasn't on the sidewalk handing out flyers.

On the way home, I tacked up a few more of my "I'll do anything" posters, because now I'm skeptical that the shop will be around much longer.

♦ ♦ ♦

A 12-year-old Hispanic girl from the Mission was kidnapped several weeks ago. I found out about this, by reading a photocopied "Have you seen this girl?" poster her family had taped to a telephone pole.

I read the newspaper six days a week and sometimes on Sundays, so you might think I'd already know about this crime in my community, but nope, it was news to me.

When a 12-year-old suburban white girl was kidnapped a while back, Polly Klaas, it was in the headlines the next morning and every day, until her mangled body was eventually found.

Two kids are kidnapped, but only one of them makes the news. You don't suppose the color of their skin had anything to do with the coverage or lack of coverage, do you?

♦ ♦ ♦

Tonight I read two newspapers, and didn't find a word about yesterday's Muni malfunction. Same as a kidnapping, I would've thought thousands of stranded commuters was newsworthy, but nope. Guess reporters don't take public transit.

It wasn't even a sexy dream. Something about breaking into my old office at Macy's to use their photocopier. When I woke up, though, I had a boner that wouldn't bend.

Twenty years ago, teenage me couldn't comprehend what I'm about to say, but it seemed like too much trouble to take matters in hand. Instead I laid on my side, pulled the covers off, and aimed the fan's cold air at my willy. It still wouldn't go down, though. To get back to sleep, I had to apply an ice pack to reduce the swelling.

♦ ♦ ♦

A man on the sidewalk liked by "Upstairs, visit the shop upstairs!" spiel, and he volunteered to give be a 'sound vibe'.

You don't know what that is? Neither did I. "What the hell is a 'sound vibe'?" I asked, and he explained. He works in advertising for Sunkist, they're coming out with Sunkist brand mixed nuts this summer, and the promotional gimmick will be 'sound vibes'.

"It's great," he promised, and then he knelt behind my back and ooooohed loudly onto my spine. It vibrated my innards, ever so slightly, and that's a 'sound vibe'. It wasn't nearly as nifty as those 25¢ magic finger beds at Motel 6, but he assured me that all the cool kids will be doing 'sound vibes' all summer.

Advertising is bullshit, of course, but what do you think? if the power of Sunkist commands it, will we all be ooooohing over each other's backs? Or was he just a perv with a kink for making music on fat men's backsides?

♦ ♦ ♦

What I wasn't in the mood for this morning, I kinda was in the afternoon. It was a sunny day, with a thousand attractive women walking past. Sudden wind gusts from nowhere occasionally lifted skirts off the pretty women's pretty legs. The panty census was one black, one pink, two white, but sadly, no none at all.

Toward sunset, I watched two women holding hands as they approached, one wearing a low-cut blouse, both with long hair, and like any man i was hoping for at least a moment of eye contact and a smile.

As they came closer, though, the blond in the low-cut blouse turned out to be a man. He wasn't even in drag, just a hippie on a day pass out of the Haight.

Anybody here seen my fading eyesight? Everything is a bit of a blur until it's a few feet in front of my nose. I have a pair of glasses, bought at a second-hand store and approximately my prescription, but I only wear them to the movies, because one of the ear loops broke off.

Came to the Castro an hour before work to catch some of the festivities, as the new AIDS Health Project was grand-opening-ing in the former Bank of America building. The crowd was so thick I couldn't see who was speaking, but it must've not been a politician, because what he was saying made sense.

It's a big improvement for the neighborhood. Instead of a leech sucking money out of everyone who walks in, we get a non-profit that helps people. Every BofA branch everywhere should be converted to something useful.

Then some idiots in pick-up trucks drove by and started honking their horns. They beep-beeped and blasted and screamed and cussed back and forth for maybe a minute, drowning out the speakers on the plaza, but from what they were screaming I don't think they were trying to disrupt the ceremonies. It was just, one dumbshit cut off the other dumbshit in traffic, so they both went straight to nuclear core meltdown.

Cars, man, and trucks... Put an otherwise sane man behind the wheel, and at the slightest provocation the sheet metal and glass become a shield, and he imagines he's trotting off to battle.

Anyway, at the ceremony they gave out red ribbons for AIDS awareness, and I took one, wore it all day, and it's still pinned to my t-shirt tonight as I'm typing this. It serves a purpose, I guess, but just sitting here looking at it, thinking about it…

It's 1995. It you're not aware of AIDS by now, you're an ass, so to me the red ribbon just says, Hello, I'm not an ass. And I'm proud to wear it. I'll wear it again tomorrow.

♦ ♦ ♦

After the ceremony, I walked a few blocks to the shop, where LeeAnn told me she had another skirt for me. They sold my first skirt and my second skirt, so this is my third skirt, and it's tomato red. I left my pants behind the counter again, and stepped back into the sunshine on the sidewalk, flaunting my flabby and hairy legs.

Handing out the shop's flyers four or five days a week, I've come to know some of the street people, by face, by manner, a few even by name:

• the suicidal black guy who walks in traffic. Sometimes we smile and wave at each other as he walks between the cars and buses, and today he laughed at my outfit.
• a babbling man — Kevin is his name. We have quasi-conversations most days, though I'm never sure what we're talking about.
• a sad old woman I think of as Mrs Grundy, though that's not her name. She'll sometimes smile and ask me to spin in the cape.
• a pretty woman who's obviously troubled, but I haven't seen her in several weeks. Hope she's OK.

Recent additions to the regular roster:

• a nice blond man who sometimes hands me trinkets he's found who-knows-where.
• a mostly-toothless black guy who asks me to twirl if I'm in the cape or curtsy if I'm in a skirt. Sometimes we dance.
• an old guy who rides up and down Market Street on his kid-style non-motorized scooter.
• Frieda, the sad-faced stinky man in a skirt who'll usually interrupt her singing to chat with me, until I can't stand the odor any more.
• an easy-going Hispanic or maybe Asian guy (hard to tell through the grime) who quietly panhandles across the street, never bothers anyone, but got arrested and hauled away last week — ensnared in Mayor Frank Jordan's despicable Matrix. He was back on the street today, not panhandling, but walking hand-in-hand with a wrinkled old woman I'm guessing is his mother, talking and listening like the loving son he no doubt is.

Among the obvious drunks I'm pretty sure aren't homeless, there's:

• Bill (not the same Bill who runs Black Sheets), a lush who lives in my neighborhood but comes to the Castro to visit the gay bars.
• Jerry, a lovable old queer (that's his word) who keeps offering to roast my nuts.

Despite the frantic reports on TV news, most of the people on the street aren't dangerous. They're maybe more susceptible to the bottle or the needle than you are, or you're just luckier, but they're no less human than the rest of us. Talk to them, and you'll find a person inside their skin who's not all that different from the person inside yours.

Of all the characters I've sorta gotten to know in the Market @ Castro area, there are only two who annoy me. There's the little black guy who tried dry-humping me on the sidewalk (but I yelled at him and he hasn't tried it again), and there's an increasingly psychotic guy I'll call the flyer-flyer.

He's a blond youngish man with a badly blemished face. From a distance today, I mistook him for the trinket man, and it was a disappointment when he came into focus.

The first few times I saw him he gawked at my outfit, but it was mean gawking, not the normal laughing or kidding around. And a week or so ago, he asked for a few extra flyers for his family and friends. Well, I'm always happy to hand out flyers, so I asked how many he wanted.

"Seven," he said, so I gave him seven flyers. "One for my mother — she's dead," and he tossed it in the air. "One for my sister — she's dead," and he threw it over his shoulder. He went through the entire roll call, leaving the sidewalk littered with flyers honoring the dead, or the fictional dead, and guess who got to pick 'em up?

Since that day, I've been less talkative with the flyer-flyer guy. I hadn't completely shunned him or said anything rude, but something in his eye as he flicked those flyers said, Keep your distance, Doug.

Today he came by and got quite cantankerous, threatening to dismantle my face after I accidentally brushed up against the bedroll that was poking out of his shopping cart.

I should mention, since it doesn't come up often in the zine: I am not a tough guy. I'm big, but it's all blubber, no muscle, so when he threatened me, I ignored him. Instead I turned to some passing pedestrians and gave them my usual spiel, offering the flyers and saying, "Delightful shop, upstairs," or something like that, same as I always say. Which was pretty dumb.

"Yeah," said the flyer-flyer nutso vagabond, "you're always talking about the shop upstairs. I think I'll go see what's upstairs…"

What's upstairs is two ladies — Stevi, who could probably pulverize that guy, and LeeAnn, who certainly couldn't. There's also a large assortment of porcelain and glassware that he could destroy with a quick burst of temper. I'm not the security guard, but I'm not gonna stand on the sidewalk and let him make trouble, so as he darted up the stairs, I followed.

By the time I'd jogged up, he was standing and eyeing the jewelry case. LeeAnn was behind the cash register, oblivious and smiling, but Stevi was nowhere in sight. When LeeAnn saw my face, she knew there was trouble already. Then he looked at her, saw she was looking at me, turned and saw me behind him, and he walked up to me and started shouting.

Showing more guts than I'd ever have, LeeAnn put herself directly between us, and politely told him to leave the store, while effectively protecting me with her body. As if this headcase would hesitate to hit a woman?

Well, he did hesitate. He looked at LeeAnn and then looked at me, said, "I'll beat the shit out of you the next time we meet," and then he walked down the stairs and disappeared into the sidewalk walkers.

I thanked LeeAnn, jokingly told her she'd saved my life, but then non-jokingly told her I appreciated her courage. She only shrugged. I think I'll buy her a box of chocolates.

And should I be scared about the next time I see that big blond pimple? I am scared, sort of. He's younger than me, thinner, looks stronger than me. He could probably kill me if he wanted to. It'll be hard for him to sneak up on me when he's pushing a shopping cart, though, and if he has the advantage of insanity, at least I have pepper spray in my pocket.

Oh, wait. The pepper spray was in my pants pocket, but my pants were upstairs cuz I was wearing the skirt. Thanks again for protecting me, LeeAnn.

Addendum, 2022: At the bottom of the page of the original typed text, was this unpaid 'ad' for a few local pirate radio stations:

And I remember typing that...

Living in the Mission, I'd been enjoying Radio Libre 103.3 (Spanish for liberty), with good music and chat most evenings, sometimes in English, and always free from advertising or endorsements. Later, I'd be interviewed on Free Radio Berkeley 104.1, and be very peripherally involved with that station.

Ah, those were the days. Through fierce enforcement and the creation of low-power licensed stations, the FCC eventually shut down almost all of the pirate broadcasters, and we lost something marvelous. All that's left on the radio is homogenized milk, with neverending ads or pledge breaks. I salute you, Stephen Dunifer, and JimBo Trout, and everyone else, names forgotten…

CKON and Green Light Radio are the only pirates still broadcasting in the USA, to my knowledge...

My odd job for the morning was from a voice mail that came last night, in the early evening. A man said he was calling from a donut shop in the Sunset, and the guy who usually works the clean-up shift had a family emergency, and wasn't coming in. The owner (manager?) didn't have anyone to cover, so he left his sob story and a phone number and said, "Can you do that?"

Clean-up, eh? I'd called back and said yeah, but probably sounded less than enthused about being a janitor and dishwasher, so he sweetened the pot: If I'd come in and do the clean-up in the morning, he said he'd pay my price of $5 an hour, plus breakfast at no charge.

"What's for breakfast?" I'd asked.

"Donuts," he answered, and then he said something about sandwiches being on the menu, too, but who cares about sandwiches? I can make sandwiches here at home. I can't make donuts.

"How many donuts?" I asked.

He gave me the silent treatment for a few seconds, long enough that I wondered if I'd torpedoed the deal, but then he said, "Half a dozen." After a moment's pause, he added, "Or as many as you want, if you'll take day-old donuts. Usually we toss what the employees don't take. Tell me you're coming in tomorrow, and I'll save them for you."

"I'll be there," I said, and thus ended our negotiations. I was salivating the night before, eager to be a donut shop's clean-up & mop the floor & wash the dishes man this morning, man. Money is nice, but donuts are better.

As instructed, I was on Irving Street this morning, knocking on the donut shop's glass before the sun came up. A balding Asian man unlocked the door, let me in and shook my hand, and re-locked the door. He apologized, telling me he'd hated leaving a mess in the shop overnight, but I said, "Hey, I'm not the Health Department."

He didn't smile at that — didn't smile all morning, actually. He was no nonsense and very hard-working, a man who takes donuts seriously. He instructed me to wash dishes while he got dough mixing and oil bubbling, but as the sink filled with hot water and suds, I could sense his eyeballs watching me.

That doesn't bother me, honestly. I'm still amazed anyone's willing to hire a stranger from a poster and a phone call, with no job interview, no references, no background check. If I was hiring me for $5 an hour, I'd keep an eye on me too.

After washing the dishes, I wiped tables and the counter, swept the floor, washed the windows (I am not good at washing windows, but I tried), and mopped the floor, first in the dining area, then in the kitchen. That put us within talking distance, so we talked, but only about my cleaning and his donuts. Watching him do his pastry magic, though, I decided he was the owner, not merely the donut dude or morning manager.

Then a second worker came in, a rather pretty Asian woman I'm guessing was his daughter, and he did not introduce me. Oh, well. She helped him with donut dipping and frosting and other sweet sorcery I don't understand, and they'd both done this a thousand mornings, obviously.

I finished mopping quicker than expected, half an hour before the shop opened, so they had me haul around some boxes and bags, and fill the napkin dispensers. He inspected my moppery and windows and said I'd done a good job, which is one compliment more than I received from my bosses in 2½ years at Macy's. He even said he'd keep my number on file, and maybe call me again.

And I hope he does — for a little less than three hours of work, my pay was $20 cash, plus a big box of 23 donuts of all colors and toppings, some with icing, some with sprinkles, some with powdered sugar, all left over from yesterday, but they weren't stale, and anyway, I'm no gourmet. I am a sucker for a jelly donut, and there were seven of them.

♦ ♦ ♦

It should be embarrassing to admit this, but I wrapped my windbreaker around the box before entering the apartment, so's maybe Pike wouldn't see it. The donuts were my best haul in ages, and I didn't want to share.

In my room, door closed, I devoured 17 donuts for lunch, and felt a little sick to my stomach. When the feeling passed, I ate the other six.

♦ ♦ ♦

Pike deserves no donuts. The rent is due tomorrow, and he's $55 short. His scheme had been to share his room — the living room of our one-bedroom apartment — with some newcomer he very vaguely knew, who needed a short-term place. But Pike told me today that our new flatmate won't be coming after all.

So what's to become of the rent, Pike? And the fifty-five bucks? My share of the rent is ready, because I work for a living, but Pike has no job, doesn't seem to be looking, and he hasn't even done any overflow "anything legal" gigs for me in a couple of weeks. All he does is smoke dope and scream at his girlfriend — which is delightful of course, very entertaining, but it doesn't pay the bills.

On the bright side, Terry wasn't there in the afternoon, and even better she wasn't there again in the evening. Between her charming absence and all my donuts, I was in good spirits, and told Pike I'd cover the rent. Again, same as last month, because last month he paid me back.

Still, this is becoming the rent routine, and I'm not digging it.

Illustration by Jeffrey Meyer.

My flatmate's girlfriend isn't in the apartment. She wasn't here yesterday, or the day before yesterday, either. Oh, how I hope she won't be here tomorrow.

Have they broken up? Whisper words of wisdom, let it be, let it be. It would be rude to ask, though, so I haven't said anything to Pike.

♦ ♦ ♦

With no-one to annoy me but the neighbors upstairs, they're doing their damnedest. They seem to have children, aged 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 years old, and all the kids have lots of friends, and all the kids and all their friends love to stomp around on the floorboards that are my ceiling, and play in the stairwell directly behind my bedroom wall.

How loud is allowed, I wonder, when you've got kids? I suppose parents would lose their minds if they didn't grow deaf to the kids' ordinary noises. Talking to the landlord would be futile, and I'm too young to become the grumpy neighbor, so I'm not going to say anything about it. What, are their parents going to muzzle the kids until they're old enough to move out?

Sure glad to be childless, though. It's the only benefit of being unlovable by any woman.

♦ ♦ ♦

Spent most of the day doing nothing but muttering to myself about the neighbor's kids. To celebrate the nothing and get away from the noise, I went to see a movie, but riding the #33 might have been infectious. I sat across the aisle from a lady who didn't appear to be homeless, drunk, addicted, or otherwise disgusting by default, but she wouldn't stop coughing into the air, and never made any effort to cover her mouth.

"Thanks for sharing," I said loudly after her first coughing jag, four mucassy rumblers broadcast to everyone on the bus. She didn't hear me or didn't take the hint, so when she started coughing again a block later, I coughed back at her. We hacked and phlegmed to Ashbury Street, where she got off without even knowing we'd had an argument.

Hadn't noticed until she got off the bus, but some of the other riders were glaring at me, same as I'd been glaring at her. The world is full of rude and inconsiderate people, and often I'm one of them.

♦ ♦ ♦

Before Sunrise is the new film by Richard Linklater, who made the excellent Dazed and Confused, so I had high hopes for Before Sunrise at the Red Vic. It's no Dazed and Confused, but it's good.

Ethan Hawke is riding a train across Europe, when he meets another passenger, Julie Delpy, who's young and French and gorgeous, so of course they get off the train and spend an evening together in Venice.

I know it's only a movie, but do people do that? Seems dangerous.

After they leave the train, the rest of the flick is set in Walt Disney's Venice, a city with no bad neighborhoods, no unsavory characters, no litter, no drugs, and no drunks. Perhaps Venice really is an endless stroll through picture post cards? I'll never know. The closest I've been to Europe is taking the #43 bus to Geneva & Munich.

Hawke and Delpe are both lovely, the scenery is beautiful, and it's everything you could ask of a fairy tale romance. I'm not into fairy tales, though, and would've preferred something more realistic. If you want fictional kisses and quiet moments and movie stars gazing into each other's eyes, you won't be disappointed.

After the show, I was lost in memories of some dames I've cared about, back long ago when there were dames. If art is whatever affects the soul, well, my soul was affected, so I'd say Before Sunrise is four bucks worth of art.

Worked a long shift at Black Sheets, which continues to be just an ordinary office job.The magazine is all about sex sex always sex, and we work inside an enormous party house, where the framed pictures on the wall often include penises, and there's a Playboy Mansion's worth of sex furniture in the basement, and not often but occasionally there's someone naked in the hall or on the sofa — but I'm never in the hall unless I'm headed to the toilet, and never on the sofa at all. None of the fun stuff ever happens in the office.

It's just office work, same as any other office. The phone rings, I answer it. The mail comes, I open it. A subscriber moves or renews the subscription, I update the records.

It's boring, because office work is boring, but Bill continues to be easy to get along with, occasionally funny, and his boss-instructions seem perfectly reasonable. He hasn't asked me to make coffee or change the cat's litter or anything. Oh, and there's another guy working in the office, named Steve, and he's funny and cynical, too.

Just a nice part-time job, but it sure beats working at Macy's.

♦ ♦ ♦

After work, I came home, brought the diary up to day, and cussed at the loud neighbors upstairs, but only from here in my room. Read some zines, while listening to the Giants get slaughtered by Colorado, as if I care.

Talked to Pike about the rent. He's hoping to pay me back within a few days. I'm hoping for that, too.

♦ ♦ ♦

A couple of jerkoffs down the street are arguing, loud and rude. One guy a few doors to the south is screaming at another guy a few doors to the north, who's screaming back at him. Our apartment is smack in the middle between them, so we get it all in stereo.

They've been calling each other n-words, n-word this and n-word that, shouting their insults at the same time, so each probably can't even hear what the other is screaming.

"They sound like a couple of n-words to me," Pike said, though he didn't say n-word.

And in their own words, I guess that's what they are. I'd have to peek out the window to see if either of them are black, and I ain't doing that. They don't sound particularly black, though. Just angry. Just a couple of jerkoffs. In this neighborhood, jerkoffs come in every color.

When I first got the idiotic idea to send out my diary as a zine, I wondered how much I could say about me before running out of anything that hadn't already been said. I'm not an interesting person, even to me, and today feels like the day there's finally nothing left to say.

I'm fat, introverted, and have no friends. Certainly no ladyfriends. Also no career, no money, I'm missing several teeth, and I live in the slums with a drug addict who can't quite pay his rent. This is my life.

Had no gigs today, so I thought about putting up more "I'll do anything" posters, but nah. The posters only last a week or so before someone rips them down, and I'll be out of town next week, in Seattle with my family, so postering now would be close to pointless.

So I gave myself the day off. I'm sitting in my bedroom, killing roaches, petting Pike's cat, reading zines, looking out the window, bored silly. Now you're bored, too. Welcome to my life.

♦ ♦ ♦

Then Pike came pounding on my door, and invited me to join him for a movie, John Carpenter's Village of the Damned. Carpenter is like an anti-Hitchcock, cranking out scary movies that never scare me, with no surprises but plenty of gore. Pike is my flatmate, though — and he paid me the money he owed for the rent (and I did not ask and don't care where he got it). He says he hates going to the movies alone, so we're off to the AMC Kabuki 8, for their 'twilight discount hour'…

… And hello, I'm back.

Like most of Carpenter's films, it was predictable and forgettable, not particularly bad but not particularly good, not worth the bother of seeing, and not worth the bother of writing a review. Instead I'll review the flatmate:

Pike isn't someone I'd see a real movie with. He's a talker, and there are few greater annoyances in 20th century civilization than talkers at the movies. He kept tapping my elbow with whispered asides, but at least he whispered. If it had been a movie I'd actually wanted to see, I would've been seriously miffed, but since it was trash, what the heck, I made a few wiseacre comments myself.

We said more to each other during the movie than before or after, walking to, waiting for, and riding on the bus. He talked about music (I have slight interest) and drugs (no interest) and friends of his and what music and drugs they like (again, no interest). On the ride home he wore headphones and listened to music, so I'm guessing he found me as fascinating as I found him.

We weren't two buddies hanging out. We'll never be friends, which is OK — he's my flatmate, is all. At least I don't see us being enemies, and I don't dislike him. He stays out of my room, out of my life, and he'd be a perfect flatmate if he paid the rent on time, and lost the girlfriend.

When I asked him where his girlfriend has been lately, he said, "Visiting family, but she'll be back." He said it with a sad voice, though, and not even a hint of a smile. I'm starting to think he dislikes his girlfriend almost as much as I do.

Because there's money to be made from anything, something called Our Daily Bread exists. It's a pamphlet of pre-fab daily devotions for Christians, and if you know me, you know I'm not interested.

My mom knows me, knows I'm not interested, but never gives up. She reads Our Daily Bread every day, and she's been pushing it at me for the past year or so.

When she visited last July and again in August, she always wanted to talk about Jesus, and every day she asked me to read Our Daily Bread with her. The first morning, I politely declined, so the next day she asked more pleadingly, more insistently, and I declined less politely.

Since her visits, we've talked on the phone, of course, and she's read the day's Our Daily Bread to me a few times. It's a rudeness, but only a small one, and I haven't (yet) been rude in response. I don't listen, is all. I read the newspaper or look out the window until the words stop, and then tell her again that I'm not interested.

Today I wondered what was in an envelope my mom mailed to me, and of course, she'd mailed an Our Daily Bread pamphlet, with this note:

I am sending you Our Daily Bread and hope you will read it. Just take TWO minutes when you get up or go to bed. I'll probably look up the Scripture that goes with each day's lesson. You can too if you choose. But I'll be happy if you just read each page each day, and you will be too.
I love you so much and whether you believe it or not, God loves you even more than I do. He wants you to love him.
Remember, Doug, it's always nice to worship with other Christians, even Christians you've never met before, and to sense the warmth of Christian love. If you still don't wish to attend church services, you might want to sing "Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love." That hymn is a little glimpse of what Heaven may be. "When we part… we shall still be joined at the heart."
Love, Mother

Good God, is it any mystery why I tend to put off opening her letters? She knows I don't believe and I've told her I never will, but her nagging testimony to God's greatness never ends, so here's an entire letter about God. Did you notice? There's nothing in it about me, or her, or our lives. Only about God.

She's sent lots of letters just like this one, but this is the first with a copy of Our Daily Bread. I looked at the cover, and what-the-hell opened it (just to make Mom happy?).

It's intended to be a few minutes of reading every day, "inspirational," it says, which sounds great — most days I could use some inspiration. It's 100% God-based inspiration, though, as if it's impossible to be inspired by beauty, by nature, by art, by friends, by human kindness, bright ideas, or anything except an entity which doesn't exist.

I read two entries in the middle of the pamphlet, April 15 and 16, and found this laughable assertion:

In the early part of this century, a group of lawyers met in England to discuss the biblical accounts of Jesus's resurrection. They wanted to see if enough information was available to make a case that would hold up in a court of law. They concluded that Christ's resurrection was one of the most well-established facts of history!

No further details are provided, about these unnamed lawyers' remarkable assertion. Are you convinced? I'm not. Like all other religions, Christianity is based on faith, not evidence. I know the difference, and prefer evidence.

Another day's entry starts with a slam at the ancient Aztecs' "tragically misguided pagan rituals," offering their gods "human blood to drive back the darkness each dawn." For the faithful, it's inspirational to criticize other faiths?

I don't know whether it's true or false that the Aztecs offered human sacrifice. I'm not an expert on ancient civilizations, and not traipsing to the library to research it — but we've already established that Our Daily Bread isn't a credible source, and their next sentence is an out-and-out canard:

Human sacrifice is abhorrent to us — and even more so to God.

Excuse me? Are you talking about the God I grew up with? Ever heard of the Crusades, or even Christ on a cross — what's that, if not human sacrifice? For that matter, what's dedicating your life to God, except the sacrifice of your humanity?

There's a story where God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abe gets the wood stacked high, ties the boy down, and he's ready to light a match before the Lord says, "Gotcha, I was only kidding." It was a test, see, to find out whether Abraham truly loved the Lord, with 'love' defined as following orders, no matter what.

Two quick thoughts on this. First, an omnipotent God would know the answer without a test. And second, obeying whatever the voice in your head commands, with no conscience or common sense — that's Charles Manson or Jim Jones.

No need to test me, God. There are no voices in my head, and no commands to kill because you say so.

OK, enough about Our Daily Bread. I gave it a chance, against my better judgment, but it's worthless to anyone but the faithful, and I tossed it into the trash.

Mom,
I'm still not a Christian, and still have no interest in Our Daily Bread. I've told you this a hundred times, so it would be lovely if you'd drop it.
See you Monday!
Love, Doug

Yeah, I'm flying to Seattle, and visiting Mom and the family next week. I'm looking forward to it... and dreading it.

I was handing out flyers on the sidewalk in front of Unusualia, the shop I work for — so also in front of the evil Geraldine's shop, one floor below in the same building.

A burly balding man was installing a new sign for Geraldine's shop, and as he was finishing, Geraldine came out with her camera, looked at the building, and got ready to take a picture. Out of common courtesy (does anyone know what that is?) I stepped out of the way, thinking I'd stand a few yards down the sidewalk while she's snapping the photo, documenting her new sign for whatever reason.

She clicked her camera, but the flash seemed to be in my direction, so I tried watching out of the corner of my eye as, again, she peered through the lens at her new sign, to take a second picture, maybe from a different angle. Just before pushing the button, she turned the camera toward me, snapped my profile, then aimed the camera toward the shop again, as if that was what she'd just photographed. Then she jogged toward the door of her shop, and disappeared inside.

Wish I wasn't such a slow thinker. If I was a quick thinker I would've yelled at her, and maybe offered to autograph my picture. At least the lawyer schmuck upstairs pointed his camera at me and clicked, a few days ago. He didn't pretend to any other purpose.

What Geraldine and the lawyer are up to, I'm unsure. Presumably they're going to complain to the landlord, but me and the landlord have met. He's seen me in my get-up. He wouldn't need a snapshot.

Maybe Geraldine imagines she'll sue LeeAnn and Stevi, because they have me dressed ridiculous and handing out flyers. Is it illegal to hand out flyers? No, this is America. Is it illegal to dress ridiculous? No, this is San Francisco.

Sometimes it feels like humanity is not my species. I don't understand people. What's the subterfuge about? Why does Geraldine hate LeeAnn and Stevi — and me, for that matter? How can anyone can get so worked up over nothing — a guy in a dress?

Inside the shop, I asked Stevi if I could bring my Polaroid and take pictures of Geraldine and maybe the lawyer, and she laughed and said she didn't care. It was mostly a joke, though. It's not worth the price of the film to snap their profiles, and I don't want to see Geraldine in person, let alone have a picture for posterity.

♦ ♦ ♦

After work, I gave myself a treat I haven't had since quitting Macy's — two burritos at El Castillito. Man, they make 'em so good, and they've never disappointed me, and there's no tips, and no charge for chips.

Sitting at one of the restaurant's cheap, wobbling tables, I watched the people and read The Sentinel, which is the best of the city's several gay weeklies. It's the best because they have Robert De Andreis, one of their columnists and one of the most reliably readable writers in this time and place.

His beat is his life, and Robert has AIDS, so every week he writes about the latest turn in his health, or remembers lovers and friends gone. It's a rare week when his words don't move me, yet he always infuses the ongoing tragedy with a sense of humor, so it isn't as depressing as you might expect.

A few weeks ago, he missed the deadline to turn in his column — first time that's happened. I worried and wondered, and The Sentinel simply said "Robert De Andreis is on assignment." The next week he cracked, "When I die, they'll probably say I'm on hiatus."

I'm writing about my life in this zine, but it's just for fun. Zero gravitas. No meaning to any of it. I'm a schmo and I know it, and so what.

What Robert is doing is the opposite: He's writing about his life, and knows it's almost over. All gravitas. All meaning. And still, somehow, he makes me smile and sometimes laugh.

This week, he's written about a purple lesion that's developed on his finger, and you're thinking ick or so what?, but I am telling you: It's very much worth reading about the lesion on Robert's finger. It's life and it's literature, he makes it worth reading and you have to give a damn. When the end comes, I hope all his columns are collected into a book.

You know what else? Maybe he'd like a word of appreciation. Yeah. I'm going to write to Robert, and say most of what I just typed.

♦ ♦ ♦

At the apartment after dinner, Terry was there — but as a guest, not as a resident. She says she's found an apartment, shared with some friends, and if I hadn't just blown my week's wad on burritos I would've bought pizza and beer for all of us. I am so happy she's moving out, it was worth having her back tonight, just for the joy of hearing that she's leaving.

For old times' sake, she and Pike had a loud argument, and Pike bellowed that he's sick of explaining everything to her like she's a 2-year-old. I could hear it through the walls, so I took notes when he said, "I hope I never again hear you say you thought I meant San Jose, you thought we were going to the club, all the things you thought and always thought wrong. You can't think at all, so why don't you concentrate real hard and try to fuckin' listen when people talk?"

That's scorching, yeah, and you'll want to feel sorry for her — but take it from me, she's earned it. Terry misunderstands the listening half of every damned conversation. Tell her something's on channel 32 at 7:00, and she'll turn on channel 34 at 6:30 and watch for an hour, even though there is no channel 34 so it's nothing but static.

And anyway, they were all kissy-face five minutes after the yelling.

"My prayer... is a rapture in bloom, with the world far away, and your lips close to mine..." Yeah, I was singing on the sidewalk, because what else am I gonna do if there's thirty seconds with no-one walking by?

LeeAnn called down to me from the shop's second-floor patio, and said she wanted me to come upstairs and clean some place settings for sale. As I climbed the stairs she said, "You should join the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus."

I said I'd never sing in public, but oddly hesitated to say I'm not gay, and while washing dishes I wondered about my hesitation.

All across the world, GLBT people are expected to keep quiet about their orientation, so as not to shock or offend co-workers or neighbors, or simply for job security and personal safety. This is San Francisco, though, and the Castro — everybody's out. LeeAnn and Stevi are out, and I guess they've assumed I'm gay and out, too.

Never meant to mislead them, and it's a logical guess, I guess. I do enjoy singing and dancing a bit, love wearing the skirt, and we're at work so I don't talk about who I boink or want to. Should I explain it to them? Nah, what business is it of theirs what gives me a boner?

If word got out that I'm straight, the gay men might stop hitting on me on the sidewalk, but they're rarely a bother and sometimes quite flattering. The pretty lesbians probably wouldn't be so talkative either, so I'm staying in the closet.

♦ ♦ ♦

When I got home from working at the shop, Pike was puffing, and offered to share some of his pot, but I declined. All the anti-drug lectures in school sorta worked on me — I imbibe, but not often, and Pike being Pike, something of a stereotypical pot-head, he's an inspiration to say no.

It's the first time he's offered, and it's only been a few days since we went to that movie together. God, I hope he's not trying to make friends with me. He's a decent kid, but we've been flatmates for a couple of months, and we have nothing in common. Nothing personal, Pike, but nothing personal is what I prefer. Let's keep being semi-strangers in the next room.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Cacophony Society did one of their wacko events tonight, a communally-written short story and/or zine with all the participants contributing one pre-written page each, to be somehow merged together into one big whatever.

Top Cacophonist Stuart Mangrum invited me to participate, and though I'm utterly antisocial I said I would. It sounded like something I'd hate, but they're doing something I like, so I was slightly looking forward to it, hoping it might be worth emerging from my shell for. I even wrote my page!

But then Stevi asked me to work a little later than scheduled, and that was a relief. I don't need much of an excuse not to be part of something. By habit I love not being part of something, so it was sad but not very.

Sorry, Stuart, but anyway, ① my page kinda stank ② I'm exhausted and in a lousy mood ③ and you and Paizley would've been the only people I knew there, and I hate being the stranger. Maybe next time, but probably not.

Didn't get to sleep until past midnight last night, and when sleep finally came — I dreamed that I couldn't get to sleep.

Then the alarm went off at 6AM, earliest I've set it for months, because I'd agreed to work for some guy starting at 7:00. We moved everything out of his garage onto the yard for a big junk sale that started at 8:00, and then he said thanks, goodbye, and handed me a fivespot.

Uh, no sir, there's a four hour minimum — but I paused for a moment, replayed our conversation on the phone from a few days ago, and realized I hadn't mentioned the four-hour rule. I had assumed I was helping him all day, but that was my assumption, not something he'd said. So instead of making $40 or $50 for waking up so early, I got one measly hour's pay, no tip, for an hour when I could've been sleeping. My fault, though.

To avoid having this happen again, I wrote my spiel on an index card and taped it to the wall, including the bit about "You gotta pay me for at least four hours." Problem solved for next time, long as I remember to read the index card while talking to prospective clients on the phone.

So it's unexpectedly almost the whole day off, which I can't really afford. Invited Pike's cat into my room, because it's always fun to watch her pounce and eat the roaches. Thought I'd write some zine reviews, but instead I've rewritten the above report twice, because I keep forgetting to save the file.

Sleep — don't leave home without it.

♦ ♦ ♦

Whoops, so much for a day mostly off. There was a phone call, so now I'm switching into my scummiest clothes, heading out to Twin Peaks to help some stranger paint his house. "Four hour minimum," I told him, and also I said, "I hope you have a sturdy ladder to stand on, cuz I'm fat and I crashed through a light-weight wooden one once." He laughed at that, and said he'd have me paint at ground level, and he'd go up the ladder. Sweet!

♦ ♦ ♦

And I'm back. I need more clients like that client — he paid $60 for six hours work, twice my asking price. He'd said "painting the house," so I'd assumed exteriors, but it was inside, the living room and dining room, and as promised, he did the ceiling work. With the extra money he paid, maybe I'll be able to buy Sarah-Katherine's breakfast at Beth's Café next week, instead of going dutch.

♦ ♦ ♦

Pike had good news, too. He's found a job doing phone surveys, which is the same work we did together when I first knew him a few years ago. The pay stinks and the hours won't be steady, but it's a paycheck. Good work, Pike. Any work is good work. Now hang on to that frickin' job, pay next month's rent on time, and we'll be OK living together here in the slums.

"I'm waiting for a friend," I told the cashier proudly, since that's something I don't often get to say. You generally have to have friends to say that.

Looking for Leef, I ordered a cup of plain old coffee from the espresso bar at Squat & Gobble. Leef does the zine Leef Logic, and he's leaving for Korea, and on his way out of town he's doing a grand farewell tour. He wanted to meet me before flying away. He's an interesting guy who knows me inside out, the same way I know him, though we'd never met before — we know each other from our zines.

Strangers in addition to being friends, we had an hour of fairly relaxed conversation. He's a funny guy. Does a good zine. He actually could be a friend... except that he's moving to Korea, so I'll probably never see him again.

He says he'll try to keep Leef Logic going, and he gave me his new address, which being an idiot I promptly lost. I'll mail this to your previous address, Leef, and hope it gets forwarded to Korea.

As for Squat & Gobble, I had the Lower Haight Omelet, a complicated concoction with zucchini, squash, pesto, and a mysterious green glop in the middle that tasted good but wasn't guacamole. The food was OK albeit fancy for my palate, the meal came pronto, and it was only six bucks with tip, a good deal.

Can't quite recommend a place where nobody says thank you, though. I made four trips to the counter for napkins, coffee refills, etc, and it was like talking to the wall at an automat.

♦ ♦ ♦

Handing out flyers on the sidewalk in front of the shop, some guy with a video camera asked me a few questions as I curtsied in my skirt. I joked around with him, and then he told me — after he'd clicked his camera off — that I'd just been interviewed for a cable-access gay TV show.

Uh, first, why does everyone assume I'm gay? Straight people are allowed to be flamboyant, you know!

And second, I'd thought he was just another tourist, so not only did I not plug LeeAnn & Stevi's shop on camera, but I may have said something vaguely sarcastic about the place. Gonna be in hot water if they happen to watch channel 268-Z or whatever.

♦ ♦ ♦

Later on, the crazy homeless guy came back, and I positioned myself off the sidewalk, so there was a tree between him and me. He didn't say anything about being a bastard last week, didn't threaten me, and instead we sorta nodded toward each other, as if acknowledging our respective rights to exist.

I was wondering whether we'd achieved peace on earth or maybe he just has long-term memory loss, but then he parked his shopping cart and ran upstairs to the shop.

Ah, jeez. I only work there, but I like the shop and feel protective toward it, so I was regrettably ready to be a bouncer. I followed him up the stairs just like last week, and found him leaning over a jewelry case, acting like a customer, though I'm certain if he had any money on him it was reserved for beer and buds.

Discretely, I walked past him to the back of the shop, where I hid behind a dress rack to keep an eye on him. The guy has violent tendencies, but I was hoping he'd behave, and he did. I watched him closely and he didn't swipe anything, either. He asked Heather a few questions about a necklace, and then he left.

Heather, by the way, is Stevi's daughter. She was running the shop today, while LeeAnn & Stevi took a day off. She didn't know the guy was nutso when he walked in, but she figured it out after he'd said a few sentences.

When he was gone I told her about last week, and she thanked me for coming up, like I'm a hero or something for hiding and watching and letting her handle the loony guy alone.

♦ ♦ ♦

Later another homeless guy sprawled out and tried to sleep on the sidewalk in front of the store next door, so I whistled him a lullaby. Someone must've called the cops — don't know why; he was a little in the way on the sidewalk but he wasn't bothering anyone.

By the time the blue suits arrived, someone had accidentally kicked the bum's spare change cup, and he'd long since cursed and collected his coins and moved along.

♦ ♦ ♦

Had a phone chat with Jay, a reader I met in person a few months ago. In addition to seeming like a decent human and being easy to talk to, she wants to hire me.

If I can successfully jump through all the forms and rigmarole required by the City of Berkeley to obtain a vendor's license, I'll be selling Judith's blasphemous 'fish' magnets and stickers on Telegraph Avenue, which couldn't possibly not be fun.

Addendum, 2022: That's all? It surprises me that I didn't explain the fish any further in 1995. Seems to me now, a brief explanation is in order:

The fish is an ancient symbol for Christianity, and in the 1990s 'fish'-shaped bumper stickers were popular among churchgoers. Then several companies started selling somewhat-evolved 'Darwin' fish, to mock the Christian fish.

One of those companies was in Berkeley, and owned by Judith and her husband. They made Darwin stickers and magnets, and other blasphemous fish in a variety of designs — and I was about to become a fisherman.

When Mom offered to pay my plane fare to Seattle and back for a visit with the family, I said I couldn't come. "Sorry, Mom, but I'm barely above water on income vs expenses. There's no money in the bank or anything, so I gotta stay here and keep working." That was the truth.

When she upped the offer, said she'd pay my rent while I was away from San Francisco, I couldn't think of any good reason to decline. Couldn't bring myself to say, "Sorry, Mom, you get on my nerves too much." I'm almost cold enough to say that, but not quite. And anyway, she doesn't get on my nerves all the time, just… often enough I'm convinced it's on purpose.

Now it's a few months later, today's the day I agreed to come, and I'm looking forward to it. Maybe that means I've been away long enough, or too long, and forgotten that some aspects of the family make me crazy. I do love 'em, though, each of 'em and all of 'em, even the irritating ones. Family is like that, or at least my family is.

So later this morning I'll buckle my seat belt and the plane will roar down a runway and rise, and then roar toward another runway and drop, and I'll be in Seattle. That's home, technically speaking. The place you can never go again, says Thomas Wolfe. Score it as a grand success if I don't regret it immediately after the first round of hugs.

♦ ♦ ♦

Not since I was a little kid have I spent much time with the family without itching to get away — some place else, something I needed or wanted to do, or some dame I wanted to see or do, after the family obligation. OR maybe instead of the family obligation. I'm kinda shitty at being a family guy.

This will be different, for the most part. I'll be a thousand miles from anything else I might want to do. I'm not bringing a book, not checking my messages, not lugging the typewriter that might let me escape into writing. I'm planning to see Sarah-Katherine, and hope that goes well, hubba hubba, but other than that, there'll be little escape from Mom and the ghost of Dad, and my sisters and brothers and the rest.

I'm hoping for zen to wash over everything, leaving me and the family smiling and at peace. Maybe I'll finally come to terms with the Holland clan's cast of kooky characters, or maybe not, but a good time will be had by me, and maybe even by them.

Will I be honest with them? Probably not. In family, honesty is never the best policy. Ever since I was a kid, if I'm honest with the family, everything becomes be an argument. It's gone from Doug's skipping school and Doug's jacking off to Doug's not a Christian, Doug's not a Republican, not proud to be an American, not working on a career, not looking for a wife, not always "just say no", not even a football fan? Some day they'll discover I sometimes cross against the "Don't walk" sign.

I don't mind disagreeing with them on everything, especially since I'm right about all the above, but I can do without endless arguments that can't be won.

Thus it became a self-written rule, rarely if ever broken: If I spend an hour with one of them, or a week with all of them, we talk about each other, our hobbies, our jobs, our pets, our memories, but we rarely talk about what we believe, what we are, or what matters. That's the rule.

♦ ♦ ♦

Before roaring down the runway, here's one thing I would like to say to my family, in case the plane goes down in flames: The distance between us has always and only been because of me, not because of you. It's my nature. Not much to say, few friends, keeping my distance. That's me.

Rarely, when I'm around the very few people I absolutely trust, I'll open up and let Doug be Doug. But mostly, Doug is only Doug when he's alone. There aren't many people I trust enough to relax around, even in the family. Especially in the family.

And I open up here in the zine, my public diary — but nobody in the family knows about the zine, and let's keep it that way.

I moved a long ways away to be by myself, and live my life as I choose, with no compromise for the family, no obligatory church events or once-weekly family dinners. Even before moving to California, my brothers and sisters, mother and nieces and nephews, hadn't had much chance to know the real me. They've had almost no chance recently.

Just want to say that's entirely my fault, not theirs. The distance is what I wanted, and still do, and yet... I'm flying northbound to spend a week with 'em, with no distance at all. The seat belt's buckled.

Part 1 — Mom & Dad

So I flew to Seattle, city where I was born and spent most of my childhood...

A vacation is when you shuck off all responsibilities, and that means I dang well did not take the time and trouble to write diary entries while I was up north. My mind tends to shut down around the family, anyway. I took notes, though, and here's one of those memos to myself that sums up everything:

Boy, if I misplace this notebook and it's found by the wrong person — anyone but me, basically — I'm out the inheritance and officially an orphan.

The short version is, saw the family, saw some old friends, maybe some new friends, and it was nice but I'm glad to be home.

Already I can't remember which events happened on what days, so instead of presenting the trip to Seattle as day-by-day diary entries, here's a huge many-thousand word essay, sort of arranged by people and events but basically a mess of haphazard memories. Grab a beer or a bottle of NoDoz, or skip it entirely.

Note from Doug, 2022: For this on-line republication, I'll break one very long entry into four parts, maybe five, and each of those parts will itself be a long entry. The bit about beer, NoDoz, or skipping it still stands.
— Mom —

Any visit home begins with the matriarch of the Holland family, my Mom. Regular readers of the zine have met her, from her visits to San Francisco last July, August, and this February.

Mom is so different from me, it amazes me that I came out of her. She's Christian, Republican, absolutely rated G, volunteers at the church, etc. She was a good mother when I was a kid, and like a lot of people's mothers, she still sees her kids as kids. And OK, I am shitty at being a grown-up, but also I'm 36. She offers motherly advice on all things, without being asked, and tells me when my shirt isn't tucked in, and — yeah, Mom can make me crazy.

If she really loves you, she knows better than you how to live your life, and she really loves me, so she has to tell me how badly I've screwed everything up. Like I don't know? Like I didn't screw everything up on purpose?

She talks a lot. She talks and talks, nags and wheedles, sings hymns and sometimes picks her nose while she's driving the car. And of course, so do I. So do all of us.

She talks, tells me about her church, tells me to go to a church in San Francisco, or better yet move back to Seattle, and when she's driving she slows down for green lights, hoping they'll turn yellow so she can stop the car and talk a little longer.

Some of the talking is interesting, but she's always 'on' and I'm the opposite of 'on', especially when she's talking about Jesus and God and all the mistakes I've made in my life, many of which she's probably right about.

There's also this weird glitch where she'll re-tell an entire story that she told me half an hour earlier, almost verbatim. And again in another half-hour.

Within the first day, I'd memorized most of the updated details of her life, and her repeated testimony to the excellence of Jesus. I'd heard her sing hymns, and been told again about my father's early symptoms, visits to various doctors, eventual diagnosis of cancer, the chemotherapy, vomiting, nausea, incontinence and advancing decline, and then his death, his funeral, her mourning, and her neverending hurt that I wasn't there for any of it. Guilty as charged.

As reported in earlier issues of the zine, she has Dad's funeral on video, watches it often, and when I again told her I abhor funerals and I'd prefer not to sit at the couch and watch my father's, she whipped out an audio tape.

As I didn't have anywhere near the funds to rent a car, Mom drove the taxi a lot while I was there, and she played the cassette of Dad's funeral on a the car's tape deck. Several times.

Why I'm not interested in my father's funeral? It's maudlin, it's emotional, and I don't like dealing with my own emotions, let alone hearing other people's emotional recollections of my father. I'd rather remember him as I remember him, rather than remember a remembrance ceremony.

"Look," she said, picking her nose and slowing to 10 mph in the fast lane of Rainier Avenue, as the car behind us in traffic honked and swerved past, while some stranger sang Dad's favorite hymn on the tape. "That's where your father pulled over and told me the morphine was affecting his driving. He gave me the keys right there (pointing), and never drove again."

Thanks for the memories, Mom, thanks for telling that story every time we drove past that intersection, and thanks especially for going out of your way to drive past that intersection and tell me that story four times this week.

Addendum, 2022: I hadn't remembered Mom's story of Dad giving her the keys until retyping it today, but it resonates. The same thing happened with my wife. Her left leg had been feeling weak for a while, and one day when she picked me up after work, she said braking had become difficult and scary, so she asked me to drive. She switched into the passenger seat, and same as Dad in Mom's story, she never drove again.
It's a sad memory, and it's good that Mom shared it, and I'd share my story with her. But. If I was driving her around here in Madison, I would avoid that intersection and the telling of that story, and if I'd told the story once, I wouldn't loop around a few blocks out of my way later, to tell the story again.

"See that steeple?" Mom asked. Yes, Mom. We saw that steeple yesterday and the day before, when you told me the story you're about to tell again. "I used to volunteer in the daycare at that church, but I switched to the Presbyterian daycare, because the Baptists' daycare program doesn't have a strong enough emphasis on Bible stories."

Less emphasis on Bible stories would be better for a child's mental health, in my opinion, and I may have said that once or twice. What I said didn't seem to matter much.

And then she lost her keys. Again. During the few days we spent together, she misplaced and searched for her car keys four times, and her house keys twice.

Mom's in her sixties, so you're perhaps suspecting that retelling the same stories and losing her keys are signs of senility, but the same stories and the lost keys have been happening for ten or twenty years, maybe for as long as I can remember. It's not old age. It's just Mom.

And I love her, sure, always gotta say it because it's true, only I wish there was a knob to dial her down.

She said grace before every meal, and every grace all week included, "Lord, please use this visit to bring Doug closer to Thee." 'Thee' is the Lord, but I don't want to be closer to 'Thee', and I said so, and yes, it was always 'Thee'. When she's praying or talking about the Bible, she speaks King James Version.

Her apartment is almost as messy as mine, which is cozy and made me feel at home, but hers has a higher percentage of food left out to rot.

I only slept in Mom's apartment one night, but her friends started calling at 6:30 the next morning, and never seemed to stop. Her answering machine was always a flashing light and, "You have — seventeen — new messages."

The answering machine — when we were out and about, she'd often find a phone booth and call home to check her messages, so I'd be standing outside a phone booth for five minutes, every few hours. Might be longer, if she decided to promptly return any of the calls. Often she'd open the booth, hand me the receiver, and play a message a second time, so I could hear the voices of her old friends, some of whom were once my Sunday School teachers, but most of whom I had no idea who they were.

Lots of messages means lots of friends. People do love my momma, and despite my exasperated tone in typing all this, I can see why she has so many friends. She's friendly. It's a gift she has, that I don't. She's upbeat, insistently cheerful about everything. Even when she's telling me that every choice I've made in life was the wrong choice, she enjoys saying it, and says it very nicely.

She gives that answering machine meticulous attention, too, listening to every message and returning every call, and yet... The night I slept at her place, I'd given her number to a friend of mine, because we were trying to arrange lunch together. He later said he'd left a message on her machine, but Mom never told me.

And always she had more stories, usually the same stories, of my father's cancer and death. They're basically horror stories, but even when she's sharing gruesome details I hadn't asked about, she's still cheerful. Like when she first showed me around her apartment: "And here's the veranda, with a wonderful view of the park down the street. Did I tell you about the time your father threw up over this ledge?"

That's Mom. When I'm in the right frame of mind, she's hilarious, and in retrospect I am smiling as I type these stories. Sometimes I think she's hilarious on purpose. When I'm not in the right frame of mind, though, she makes me scream inside.

I'm glad I got to see her in Seattle, but glad I came back to San Francisco. It's complicated.

Visiting on her turf was less hellish than having her visit me here in Frisco, though, because in Seattle I wasn't hosting her. I could escape to spend time with my brothers, sisters, and old friends and new.

Mom told me as I was leaving that I hadn't spent enough time with her, but I had.

— Dad —

"Dad isn't here," I said at his grave, as Clay and Mom and I stood in the wind.

"Of course not," said Clay. "He's in Heaven."

I let that slide, because I don't believe in Heaven but I know they do, but I said, "No, it's more than that. There's nothing of Dad in this cemetery. It's grass and a carved stone, and that's not Dad. You know where I'd rather go, to be with Dad for a while? The Museum of Flight."

Sounds wacky, I suppose, but you had to know my father. He worked for Boeing almost all his adult life, and to him it wasn't merely a job. Flight fascinated him.

From his earliest childhood, when he'd seen a barnstorming pilot's show in Montana, my dad dreamed of flying. The design of aircraft became his life's great passion. He worked on the Saturn 5, the rocket that took Americans to the moon, and on the Stealth Bomber, which takes people to their deaths. I disapproved, and he knew it, but it flies and that's what mattered to him.

I never shared Dad's enthusiasm for aeronautics, but it didn't particularly bore me either. His eyes lit up when he was talking about flight, so even when we couldn't agree about anything else, we could always talk about planes. It was easy for me to listen when he talked about what makes planes fly, because it was about joy, unlike my mother's babblings about Christ, where she sometimes ends up crying that my entire eternity hangs in the balance.

So yeah, I suggested visiting the Museum of Flight. Seattle is Boeing's headquarters, so there's a big museum, and I knew my father would be waiting there.

Nobody else had time to go, so I went alone, wandered among the old biplanes and bombers and jets, and indeed that's where my father seemed closest. I remembered when he explained how aerofoils work, and how the placement of an engine on the tail changes the aerodynamics, and how the wings and fuselage are tested in wind tunnels, and stress-tested to see what it takes to bend or break a weld... I kinda spaced out, remembering all those lessons and lectures from Dad, with factoids I only partially understood, but I absolutely understood that he loved that stuff.

Mom reminded me many times this week, that Dad was diagnosed, withered away, and died while I was on one of my extended absences from the family, a long ways off and intentionally out of touch. She had to have the Social Security Administration track my whereabouts and forward the bad news to me. I'll still plead guilty.

I cried when I got her letter, but never said a real goodbye to my dad, maybe until that afternoon at the Museum of Flight, where he again explained to me how airplanes fly.

As fathers go, he was pretty good: tough and withdrawn, sure, and never all that close to us kids, but he loved us, had good advice, and we could safely rebel and know he wouldn't hold a grudge. I never went hungry, and never went wild until after I'd moved out.

Thanks, Dad. Many happy flights, and goodbye.

Part 2 — The siblings, spouses, and kids

So I flew to Seattle, city where I was born and spent most of my childhood...

Mom and Dad had six children, and I'm the youngest. Also the fattest, and probably the most immature and irresponsible. Let's meet the siblings, along with their spouses, significant others, and offspring:

—Hazel, my sister—
her husband Link, and their son John,
her husband Roy, and their son Roy Jr

When I was a kid she was just Big Sis — the older of my two older sisters. What I remember from then is just laughs, and Hazel getting on my nerves, arguing with Dad, and dating sketchy guys. Your basic sister stuff.

She married maybe too young, and then years ago, in the heat of an argument with her husband, to prove she was right or show her undying love or who knows why, Hazel took half a bottle of sleeping pills. It did a lot of damage, and left her crippled for life.

She lives in a nursing home. She can walk, but it's difficult and she wobbles and it's frightening when she tries, so usually she's in a wheelchair. She talks but it's garbled, and easier to understand if you're accustomed to how she speaks, but I'm not. When she talked, I had to ask her to repeat herself, often, and still I was mostly guessing. She's 40 or so, and has all her wits about her — somehow the pills affected her body, but left her mind intact. She's still my sister behind the damages, but it's gotta be difficult being Hazel.

She's twice divorced — single, in other words — and Hazel is as footloose and fancy-free as you can be in a wheelchair. My family thinks it's scandalous and avoids the topic, but apparently she's the shady lady of the nursing home. She's been in trouble at least twice, because the morning nurse walked in to find her sleeping with a man from the room down the hall. This is apparently shocking, but so long as it's consensual — Mom says it was, and I sure didn't ask Hazel — it's no concern of mine. What, do they expect disabled people to suddenly become sexless?

I barely knew Hazel's first husband, Linc. They eloped, lived a long ways away, and I met him maybe half a dozen times. He was quiet, and at least when I was in their house, he treated her nice. After she took the pills, he had a nervous breakdown, and they divorced. Last I heard, Linc was in a mental ward, and he's completely out of the picture. Their son is John; more about him later.

Her second husband, Roy, married Hazel while she was in her present condition, seriously disabled. I thought he was a nice enough guy, which only shows how little I know about people. It turns out he had quite a temper, and beat Hazel when he was angry. Our family is big on secrets, so I didn't know about it until years later, after he'd been prescribed some mind-altering drugs that mostly stopped the violence. Still, they divorced, and I don't think Hazel and Roy have seen or spoken to each other in years. Their son is Roy Jr.

Given a choice between my sometimes suicidal, institutionalized sister and her formerly violent ex-husband, your fine system of justice has decided that Roy Sr gets custody of Roy Jr. They live together around Seattle somewhere, and Big Roy is on fairly good terms with my mother. Maybe they have to be on good terms, because she wants to see and loves to babysit Roy Jr.

I didn't see either Big Roy or Little Roy on this visit, though Mom offered many times to drive me over to their place. They're family, yeah, but come on, what's the point? Little Roy was born after I left Seattle, so I've never even seen him, and I was in Seattle for only a few days with a busy agenda, and he's a baby who barely speaks.

As for Big Roy, I want nothing to do with him. Beating a woman is despicable, beating my sister is unforgivable, and beating my sister in her wheelchair is so low I'd like to punch him in the face, but he'd fight back and beat the hell out of me, so, uh, no thanks on hanging out with the two Roys.

Hazel's older son, by Linc, is John. He's 20 or so, and was mostly raised by my parents after Hazel was institutionalized. I know him fairly well, since he was at home with my folks often when I came over for Sunday dinner before moving to Cali, so he's maybe more like a brother to me than a nephew.

Like my real brothers, though, we're not particularly close. In his teen years, John was fascinated by the military mindset, couldn't wait to enlist, often used disparaging terms for Asians, blacks, and gays, and just seemed determined in every way to become the kind of man I can't stand.

One of my few attempts to get through to him was when he wanted to see the war movie Platoon. I'd read that it was an effective anti-war movie, so I took him to see it, hoping it might shock him with some tiny taste of the reality of war. But guess what? John loved it, and went back to see it again with his buddies the next night.

I'd considered him a lost soul, and he lives fifty miles away so I didn't think I'd see him on this visit. We got together on the last day of my stay, though, mostly because Mom insisted — and I'm glad she did.

He looks the same, but he's completely different. He never enlisted in the military. Instead he lives in Olympia, where he's attending the hippy-dippy Evergreen College, studying Zen and anthropology, and dating a girl I'm convinced was high but seemed very nice. They're eating a strictly vegetarian diet, and practicing aikido, and — what the hell, my nephew John is kinda cool_!_

Only problem was, Mom was sitting at the same booth in the restaurant, always interrupting to talk about her daycare work or Dad's cancer or something, so me and John and his floating girlfriend didn't get to talk much about things that seemed of interest to all three of us — seeing through the bullshit, slacking off, and the relative merits of San Francisco and Olympia (a city with a well-known counterculture vibe). At one point I mentioned the word 'zine' and John seemed to know what it meant, but then Dad was back in chemotherapy and Mom was reliving his funeral, so that's where the conversation went, and we the living couldn't get a word in.

I got John's address, though. Well, I got the addresses of everyone in the family, but I'm actually going to write to John.

—Katrina, my sister—
her boyfriend, Dave
her kids, George and Kimberly

My sister Katrina is pushing 40, and I've always thought she had her life together more than the rest of us kids. I still think so. She does drugs, never goes to church, sleeps with her boyfriend without benefit of wedlock, and Mom of course mutters her disapproval of all this, but Katrina doesn't seem to take things too terribly serious, she'd rather laugh than yell, and she's capable of conversations deeper than last week's episode of Frasier or NYPD Blue. She doesn't give a damn about God, works for a living, has a good man, owns the condo they live in, and the night I joined them for dinner she said she leads "a boring, all-American life." That's the dream, right?

Dave, her lover (cripes, isn't there a better word?) is a big but quiet doof, a long-hair who goes for the joke instead of delving deep into metaphysics, and you know, I didn't come to Seattle for the metaphysics. His manner is easy, his jokes are funny, and of course I barely know him but I haven't got a harsh word to say about him.

George, Katrina's son by her late husband, is in his late 20s, and if you do the math, yeah, he's too old to be her son, because he was adopted when he was 8 or 10 or so. Like all kids, he became hell when he hit his teens, and all through high school he was either doped to the scalp or high on Jesus, sometimes both.

When he was about 17 and on one of his binges, his father kicked him out of their house, and I took him in. Silly me, I thought giving him one of the empty rooms in our shared house, where things were more relaxed, with fewer rules, and treating him like an adult, like he was another one of the flatmates, might be just what he needed.

Well, he lived in our shared house for about a month, drove all of us mental, until I followed his father's example and booted him out on his ass, for smoking my pot, spitting his chewing tobacco all over the living room, making a pass at my girlfriend, and a hundred other obnoxious moments.

Very soon after that, George was arrested for something petty, but it wasn't his first arrest, and a judge ordered him into the Army. Surprise — it's not just a movie cliché. I offered to organize a family pool on whether he'd make it through basic training, but there were no takers, and everyone else thought my idea was in poor taste. A pity, because I would've won big when he was dishonorably discharged.

Fast forward to 1995, and George is doing fairly well. He's in AA, said he's been off the bottle for four months, but he then immediately asked if I wanted to step outside and smoke a doobie with him. He's a Christian, but the kind of Christian who tells bawdy jokes, and doesn't judge me. He drove me to a store and back while his license was suspended.

Mom told me that Kimberly, George's kid sister, was into drugs, too, but when Mom said 'drugs' with that sinister tone of voice, I assumed she meant pot. Nothing wrong with marijuana; it's generally good for you, if used in moderation.

Apparently, though, Kimberly is way beyond pot; she's a month out of rehab for heroin. The Big H. Cripes, that's scary stuff, and she's barely 16. I've seen heroin-addled emptyheads on Mission Street, and that's not what I want for a kid I used to babysit. She's in a teenage version of Narcotics Anonymous, and goes to AA meetings with George, too. Kids today, I tell ya.

She's run away twice, so we have running away in common, but unfortunately, Kimberly and I didn't really talk. Nobody much talks with her. To adults she says a word or two at a time, curt and sarcastic if she's talking to her mother or Dave. She doesn't say much to anyone except her best friend, Sheila.

And everywhere that Kimberly goes, Sheila is sure to follow. They're so very close, it wouldn't surprise me if they're more than friends — matching crew-cuts and purple twists of hair, hand-holding and whisper-talk and giggles.

A lesbian granddaughter would certainly test my mother's faith, and keep the family dysfunctional. I've long thought that someone gay and/or an interracial marriage is all that's missing in our brood. Too bad Sheila isn't black.

Mom said "Praise the Lord" and suggested that Katrina should be sent to a Christian boarding school she's read about, in Kentucky. I said emphatically Don't.

My opinion doesn't matter, of course — I'm barely part of the family, don't know Kimberly at all, and what I do know about her is based on stories from Mom, who's not the most reliable source. Had to say something, though. Kimberly is a teenager, that's all. It's her job to be surly, and she's working on the drug problems. None of that warrants being sent to some Kentucky Christian prison.

I wrote Kimberly a letter several months ago, which seems to have gone down without inducing vomiting. I'll write another. Maybe it'll help. Probably cant hurt.

—Dick, my brother—

Dick has a college degree in music education, but he's working on the assembly line at a brick factory. Seems to be doing OK, and seems like he's the same Dick he's always been. He's smart and funny, Christian but not offensive about it, and we can talk, but he never wants to talk about much beyond football and music.

And the mystery remains — why was Dick in prison for a couple of years?

I was away while he was arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned, and nobody in the family talks about it, so it remains hush-hush what exactly his offense was. When asked directly, Dick won't say anything, and I only asked once. When he sidestepped answering, that made it, to me, something I won't ask again, because I believe in privacy, even privacy from your brother, and even privacy if you've committed some gawdawful crime.

Whatever the crime was, I do think it was gawdawful, though. Our brother Ralph has been in and out of prison since he was a teenager, and every time he's been arrested, everyone in the family knew the charges: Burglary, auto theft, trespassing, check fraud, etc. Nothing's a secret.

With Dick, it's all a secret, a huge secret, which makes me think he's a sex offender. Terrible thing to say about your brother, of course, but follow the accumulating clues.

Circumstantial evidence: Dick's marriage. Last time I saw him, he seemed to be quite happy, with a wife and young daughter. The divorce came down at about the same time as Dick's court case, and his ex-wife and daughter now live many miles away, with no visitation.

Family members who were here when it happened seem to know the details, but like Dick, they don't answer questions. There are allusions, though, sometimes in words, sometimes in gestures.

Like, at one point during the family barbecue, Dick mentioned his ex-girlfriend. It's unclear to me whether she broke up with him or he broke up with her, but he said, "She was only 19, and I felt like I was robbing the cradle." Bear in mind that Dick is my older brother, and I'm 36.

At that remark, you could almost hear all the eyeballs in the room rolling, and George indiscreetly excused himself with, "Aw, jeez," and walked out to the patio. I followed, of course, and he said hearing Dick talk about "robbing the cradle" was too much to stomach, but — nobody's told George the actual facts either, so like me, he can only suspect.

Another clue came from Clay. He and Dick have been talking about a trip they might take together, to visit me in San Francisco. Clay's wife can't come, but Clay would bring his two young sons, and the four of them — Clay, Dick, and the boys — would share a two-bed hotel room.

At the barbecue, me and Clay and Dick were talking about this potential trip, and when Dick stepped away to get another hot dog, Clay said in a quiet and suddenly serious voice, "Of course, the kids will share the same bed, and I'll sleep with Dick."

Uh, you tell me, but that sleeping arrangement goes without saying, doesn't it? Unless there's something else that goes without saying. So my suspicion, from all the not-talking about it and from what little I can surmise, is that Dick's crime involved a child, or someone under the legal age.

He's still my brother, no matter what, but it's unpleasant to say the least. Whatever the specifics, my position is: Dick got caught, spent time in prison, and now he's out, so he's "paid his debt to society" as they say. I'm not interested in giving him any further punishment or judgment. I love the guy, so I'm done asking, but I do remain curious. Obviously. Such are the Holland family secrets.

— Clay, my brother —
Karen, his wife
Tom and Michael, their sons

Clay brought his family to visit San Francisco (and me) last summer, subscribers might remember. Their house was my home base during the visit, but I only slept there three nights, and my schedule was complicated, so there was only one meal I shared with them there.

They're a very Christian family — devotions are part of every morning and evening, church two or three times a week, grace before meals, prayers before bedtime, no taking the Lord's name in vain, etc.

Actually, Clay's family reminds me very much of our family, when I was a kid. Mom's proud of him, and Dad would be, too.

Me, I can't figure out how to relate to Clay. Wish we were closer, like we were before he got all Christian. I blame God, but it's mostly my fault, probably. It's hard for me to relax, when I have to watch my language and censor my wisecracks. In any conversation, give Clay a few minutes and he'll bring up Jesus, or give me a few minutes and I'll say something inappropriate for a Christian household, or I'll catch myself and won't say what's inappropriate, but instead I'll have nothing to say.

Karen is smart, works at some high-science job for Boeing, and she seems a little nervous around me, which I recognize because I'm also a little nervous around her. I'm nervous around anyone if I don't know you well, but knowing you well takes a long time and a lot of effort, and I've never really gotten to know Karen.

She's funny, though, knows how to bring a few words out of me when I'm super-silent, knows how to rein in my brother when he's getting too preachy, and she's really good with the kids, I think. What do I know about kids, though? When she tells them what to do it doesn't sound like she's a Marine, but they do what they're told. That's "good with kids," right?

When Clay and Karen went to some church elders' meeting and asked me to babysit, I thought there might be a chance to get to know the boys, Tom (8) and Michael (5), but nope. Mom invited herself over, or maybe Clay and Karen thought I'd need her help, I dunno, so instead of having some time to get to know the kids, it became an evening of Mom time. I wasn't watching the kids; I was watching Mom watch the kids.

Mom, Tom, and Michael outvoted me, so they watched insipid Christian cartoons on a cable channel. When I couldn't take it any more I wandered into the dining room and scribbled the outline for a short story about an evil mind-eating cyclops that hypnotizes young children and their grandmother, sucks their brains out through their eyeballs, and gives them Bible verses instead.

Clay and Karen came home earlier than expected, and soon all five of them were in front of the tube watching The 700 Club or one of its clones. I tried watching it with them, but mostly I marveled that adults could choose to endure this. If you can 'splain it to me, please do, but soon enough I said good night and walked down the hall to the guest bedroom, where I closed the door and read the paper until I fell asleep.

— Ralph, my brother —
and Anna, his fiancée

Ralph talks too fast, and it's never so much a conversation as a monologue. He likes telling the story of his life, but that's understandable — he's had an interesting life.

He's been incarcerated a number of times (he may know the number, but I've lost track). He's spent more of his adult life behind bars than in our so-called free society, so he talks like the tough guy he is, through pursed lips and often skeptical eyes, and sometimes he slips into prison dialect that's tricky to decode. Like, "three years and a wake-up call for B & E" — that's breaking and entry, but I never figured out what a wake-up call could be.

We were talking about a TV show wherein one of the characters goes to prison, and since Ralph knows a thing or three about prisons, he mentioned Charles Campbell. I don't know if Campbell is famous outside of Washington, but his crimes got ample local coverage so he's basically a local celebrity. He was a rapist, murderer, and scumbag, executed by the state of Washington last year, but he lives on in my brother's memory, because they were briefly on the same cell block, and Campbell raped my brother, twice.

Immediately before that story, we were laughing about memories of floating down the Cedar River on innertubes. Immediately after that story, Ralph and Anna and I talked about a Chinese restaurant they like. That's the flavor of chatting with Ralph; he's a man of a thousand interesting stories that could pop up at any moment.

Anna is a therapist of some kind, very big on uncovering what you really mean when you think you're just making light chit-chat. She's honest, sometimes painfully so, and it's jarring to see that much honesty around my family.

Like, at the barbecue when my brother Dick was telling me the details of brick-making or some such, she mingled and lingered long enough to say that conversation between long-lost brothers shouldn't be so damned superficial. She was right, of course, and she urged both of us to listen to each other instead of simply talking at each other, and we both gave it a try.

She said stuff like that a few times, tactfully but earnestly, and it always seemed like, frankly, good advice. Unwanted, but good. Not sure I could stand to live with someone as hellbent on honesty as Anna, but seeing her a few times over a week in Seattle, she was always a reality check. Yeah, I like her. Ralph's done good.

He seems to be living a lawful life now, and while I'm rooting for him and don't mean this to sound negative, gotta say — he's seemed to be living lawful in the past, too, until he was arrested.

All that aside, though, he's clever and charming, and he's the family member least likely to judge me harshly for not being Christlike or for moving to San Francisco, etc. Even if he wasn't my brother, Ralph could easily be a friend. Despite the toughness, he's very likable, and there don't seem to be any forbidden topics, so when we get talking we click.

He's proud to say that he hasn't been arrested "on a felony charge" in several years, though there have been misdemeanors, including a DWI for totaling his car last December. He said he's been clean and sober since then, thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous, and when he said that, what popped into my head was that I sure hear about AA a lot in my family. Maybe all the Hollands should go twelve-stepping together.

Addendum, 2022: And that's the last time I ever saw Ralph.

♦ ♦ ♦

Well, that's the family. Now, the friends — some people who didn't seem to begrudge me for moving away, wanted to see me, and provided a fine excuse for a few hours at a time to get away from the Hollands.

Part 3 — Friends, old and new

So I flew to Seattle, city where I was born and spent most of my childhood...

It's hard making friends in a new city. I've been living in San Francisco for several years, so for me it's not really a new city any more, but still there aren't many people there I'd call a friend. Probably fewer who'd call me a friend. My friends are still in Seattle, and it was good to see them, and sad not to see the ones I couldn't.

— Bruno —

Bruno has been my best friend since we were little kids, almost as long as I can remember. For a lot of that time, he was my only friend.

As an adult, he's maladjusted to life on planet Earth, much like me, but unlike me he hasn't given up. He hasn't been on a date with a woman, I suspected and he said, for at least fifteen years, but he still hopes to meet the right lady and settle down, get married, maybe raise some kids.

If that's what he wants I'm all for it. I'd like it too, except for the 'raise some kids' part, but reality stares me down, and I doubt happily-ever-after is going to happen for either of us.

I love the man, and it worried me when he said he's susceptible to bouts of depression. Then again, every time I level with anyone about some sliver of my perpetual pessimism, they tend to translate it as suicidal, so I know it ain't that. I gave him a hug and we changed the subject, like men do.

As always, we picked up pretty much where we'd left off years ago, eating fish'n'chips and disagreeing amicably about politics — gay rights, women's rights, abortion, Dr Jack Kervorkian, and whatever else — and religion — he's a Christian, and even teaches a Sunday School class.

We disagree about everything, but we're two fat loners who'll be friends forever.

Addendum, 2022: And that's the last time I ever saw Bruno.
— Leon and Stu —

Leon and Stu are two old friends, basically a matched set, and for years we were a pack of three. We were 'guy friends' like you'd see in a Budweiser commercial, except we met going to the same church, where booze is a sin don't ya know, so there's never been any Bud Lite with these buddies.

They're good guys, but I gotta admit, they're 'partial friends'. We joke around, slap on the back, used to go bowling, or to ball games or maybe an action movie, but we've never, ever talked about what we believe, what we care about. Just guy stuff — baseball, women, camping, porn, and so on.

During my visit, I went to a softball game with Leon, but he was playing left field and coaching at first base, so we didn't get to talk much.

Stu came to the big Holland family barbecue, because we've been buddies for so long he's basically family. He brought his new wife and little urchin, and I offered my condolences.

Addendum, 2022: And that's the last time I ever saw Stu.
— Corby —

Had lunch with Corby, one of this zine's regular readers. He's nuts, but most of my favorite people are nuts, so that's not an insult. He has a gun fetish ("to compensate for my small penis," he said) so we went to a shooting range in Mountlake Terrace and fired a few hundred rounds out of two .22s and two .45s.

Look at me, typing .22s and .45s like I know the difference. I don't, but it was enjoyable, and loud, and my upper arms were sore for days after, from holding heavy pistols with both hands, tight against the recoil. They never mentioned that on Gunsmoke.

I know more about cars than guns, and I don't know jack diddlysquat about cars, but Corby's gunning enthusiasm is infectious. Best of all, his pistol play was accompanied by impassioned complaints about the government. I rarely say but do believe, anyone who doesn't fear the American government doesn't understand the American government, so me and Corby were generally agreed, except for a few nitpicky particulars.

Curiously, he works for the federal government, but he has more fervor for the rights of the people than some anarchists I've known. One fine day, if Corby loses his temper and becomes a headline in The Chronicle, I'll be proud to say I once went shooting with the guy.

— Karl Myers, Maria Tomchick, and Bill —

On Thursday, I had lunch and laughs with Karl Myers, the zinester behind Permafrost, Maria Tomchick, who publishes Enclosed, and Maria's housemate Bill, who's one of those weirdos who doesn't publish a zine at all. Get with the program, dude.

Had a fine time, which surprised me because I know me. Usually I'm barely able to endure a quick one-on-one conversation with a stranger, so being with three strangers who already knew each other should've squelched the minimal personality I possess.

I was pretty much at ease, though, and the four of us traded funny and almost-funny stories for longer than I'd intended. We were an easy-going bunch of oddballs and it was nice, and probably I'll never see them again.

— Sarah-Katherine —

Big sigh. Saving the best for last, Sarah-Katherine is the woman behind the zine Pasty, a zine I particularly like, and she's a person I particularly like. We've been exchanging letters for months, with the running gag that she's my stalker. I wasn't sure what to expect as we finally met in the flesh.

We're arranged to find each other at Beth's Café, and as always when I'm antsy about something, I wanted to be an hour early so I wouldn't be a minute late, and also for pacing and fretting. The bus routes have changed a little since I lived in Seattle, though, so I got misplaced and arrived at the restaurant only twenty minutes before we were supposed to meet, leaving me barely enough time to worry myself into a frenzy.

Dunno why I should be so nervous. From our zines and letters, we knew each other already, but it's easy to ad lib a wise crack to a typewriter. It's more difficult to be clever face-to-face.

And it had been so long since I'd been on anything resembling a first date, I'd forgotten how crazy all those emotions can be. How's my hair? Is my fly zipped up? Breath mint.

I had a semi-clever line rehearsed for a great first impression, but instead I simply screamed in terror when I recognized her face from the photo she'd sent. She did not run and hide, but instead calmed my jitters with a quick kiss before we stepped into the diner for dinner.

What we talked about while our omelets were frying, I have no idea, but we both laughed now and then, so maybe someone said something witty. Wouldn't know. I was barely there.

She isn't what I'd expected, to be honest — a bright, funny, perhaps ever-so-plump woman in her late 30s. Instead she's a bright, funny, lovely woman in her mid 20s, and really only plump by society's insane standards. Certainly she's not fat like me.

And I'm not sure how she lost ten years. Maybe I mis-read her zine, but I thought she'd be older, and she'd sorta promised me she'd be less attractive. Instead she's a major babe, to use the loutish male terminology.

She's talkative enough to be interesting, but not so talky it ever felt like she was doing most of the talking. She's not afraid of occasional moments of silence, which are inevitable when talking with me. She's witty without trying to be witty, and unlike some jokesters she's also capable of serious conversation. She's clearly twice as bright as me, but never once made me feel only half as smart. There might have been something we disagreed about, but it didn't seem disagreeable, and now I can't remember what it was.

Also worth noting, she ate all of her omelet, hash browns, and toast — she's not one of those dames who eats like a bird and worries about her figure. Her figure worried me, but only in a good way.

We had a nice evening — at least I thought so, and she didn't yawn even once. It lasted late enough that she invited me to sleep over, something I certainly hadn't anticipated. We'd agreed by mail that sex was not happening, so we simply slept together, snuggling and kissing between the snores. It was a fabulous finish to the evening.

Seeing her once during my week in Seattle was all we'd arranged, all I'd hoped for and better than I'd expected, but during dinner she invited me to the following night's midnight movie at the Seattle International Film Festival. Not sure if she noticed, but a piece of hash browns flew from my mouth as I stuttered, "Sh-sure."

The next night, she was deep in the ticket-buyers' line when I got to the theater, but the ticket-holders' line snaked halfway around the block. Admission looked unlikely, and we decided the movie wouldn't be worth the crowd anyway.

Instead we strolled down Pike Street under the midnight stars and streetlights, holding hands. In San Francisco, a late night walk downtown would be frightening, but Seattle is a more civilized place, and anyway, I think Sarah-Katherine might be a black belt. She's certainly tough enough to keep us safe from muggers and miscreants.

Then we bused to the University District for a beer at the Blue Moon, a combination tavern and library where I occasionally drank and read years ago. It was nice seeing the place again, and the place had never seen me with anyone but myself. We shared an oversized booth and two beers, as a drunkard performed a medley of Beatles songs for everyone's amusement.

In a quiet moment, Sarah-Katherine recited some poetry just for me, something I'd ordinarily have little patience for, generally abhorring poetry. Hearing it from her, though, gave the words a power I'd never have noticed if I was merely reading the poem myself. And what was the poem? Damn, I wish I'd written a name, an author.

It was then, as she spoke a song, that the room began spinning, and there wasn't enough alcohol in either of us to account for that. Swear to golly, it's a good thing we were sitting down, because the poetry hit me harder than the beer. My eyes watered. Didn't want to be corny then, don't want to now, either, but as I watched and listened Sarah-Katherine became maybe the prettiest woman I'd ever had a beer with. A deal is a deal so we'd stick to it, but our "no sex" agreement seemed suddenly stupid.

After the beers and poems she kissed me again, and we bused toward her house. Then we kissed one last time, said good night, and she got off the bus, while I rolled on toward whoever's house I was staying at that night, a detail no longer remembered.

To my happy surprise, though, Sarah-Katherine called and left a message for me at Clay's house, the number I'd given her. She asked me out again, a third time, and you bet your ass I said yes, cleared an evening for her, but it went sorta wrong.

I don't know why, but that night I couldn't find my sense of humor or anything much to say, and I was doubtless glum company. Hope she enjoyed her date with the world's fattest mime.

It's frustrating to be with someone you like but have simply nothing much to say. That was the 'me' I usually bring on a first date, so what Big Quiet Doug was doing there on our third night out, I have no idea, but it felt like I'd completely belly-flopped the evening.

Sarah-Katherine, though, seemed to sense my muteness wasn't going to melt, so we walked to a video store, rented a Hitchcock movie, and went to her place. For an hour and a half, we had a good excuse to be as speechless as I'd already been, and by the time the movie was over, whatever had muted me was letting me say a few words now and again.

Despite my blankness during most of the evening, Sarah-Katherine was charming, cheerful, enjoyable to be with. She saw me at nearly my worst, yet somehow made me feel it wasn't really that bad. It was, though. I'm hoping there'll be a next time, but lots of miles are between us and nothing's promised except no sex.

Probably it sounds like I'm totally enamored, but my head's still attached, honest. I'm 75% enamored, maybe. She's swell is all, and it's nice to have feelings again.

And honestly, who wouldn't be infatuated? I spent three evenings with a brilliant, beautiful woman who made me laugh and feel something. If I was a man who could fall in love, I could easily fall for her. Not planning to. Not likely to. Not sure I have any love in me anyway. As daydreams go, though, she's a sweet one.

That last morning, when we kissed goodbye and I walked to the bus stop alone, I didn't feel quite so alone. For that and for everything else, and for things unmentioned here, thank you, Sarah-Katherine. You can stalk me any time.

Part 4 — It never rains in Seattle.

So I flew to Seattle, city where I was born and spent most of my childhood...

The trip's highlight, by far, was seeing Sarah-Katherine three times, but other stuff happened, too. Some of it was grand. Most of it was nice. Some of it was frustrating, and a lot of the latter seems to involve my mom.

♦ ♦ ♦

She has never been on time for anything in my recollection, which always made me mental when I lived in Seattle. If Mom is supposed to be somewhere at noon, you tell her to be there by 11:15, tell her it's urgent, and there's a good chance she'll there by noon. If you want to be sure, though, tell her 10:30.

This visit, since I usually had nowhere to be, I tried to relax and watch her dawdle, enjoying it as performance art. Like when she and Ralph came to pick me up at the airport. The plane was scheduled to land at 12:30, but when Ralph told me on the phone that Mom would be driving, I knew she'd be late. It was just a question of how late she'd be.

The plane was about ten minutes early, and Mom and Ralph were about twenty minutes late. Not bad, really. After the required hugs, I asked what had happened, and just smiled at the answer from Ralph. "Mom made a detour to point out where her ex-pastor's former daughter-in-law used to live, and the corner where I was arrested when I was 15…"

"I'll bet that was a happy memory," I snarked.

After getting my luggage, we left the airport, but Mom had another change of plans. She wanted us to have a "quick visit" with the parents of some kids Mom takes care of in the church daycare center. The quick visit lasted about half an hour, and the parents spoke only Lao. I don't speak Lao, and neither does Ralph, but Mom speaks about half a dozen words of the language, and she repeated those words for half an hour.

"You're not too talkative today," she said to me, while trying to communicate with the family that spoke only Lao. I'm shy around strangers, yes, and surrounded by strangers who don't speak English, what am I supposed to say?

"Sorry, Mom," I said. "It must be the jet lag." Ralph laughed, but Mom didn't get the joke.

♦ ♦ ♦

While the church was mostly empty one weekday, I accompanied Mom inside to pick up a casserole in the kitchen, which she was supposed to deliver to a bereaved friend. Someone else was in the kitchen, though, so Mom began a conversation. After being forcibly introduced to this church lady, I excused myself to use the boy's room, but instead for a few minutes I wandered the building alone.

This was the church I grew up attending, with its giant sanctuary that seats hundreds in theory, but in fact seats dozens most weeks, and maybe, maybe a hundred on Easter. With the House of the Lord almost empty, I walked many a hallway through the labyrinth of classrooms and meeting rooms and other rooms, and saw younger me everywhere.

That's the choir room, where I learned that adolescent boys shouldn't sing in public.

That's the Sunday School class where Rita slapped my face in seventh grade. It's the same room where years earlier, Bruno wet his pants when he was maybe six years old.

That's the room where we rehearsed the Christmas play.

That's where I argued with Old Man Amos, just once, and he was so dang angry.

That's where Mrs Bedford fell down the stairs.

That corner over there, behind the drinking fountain, is where I snuck a smooch on Lily when nobody was looking.

That's the room that used to be the church's library, where you could borrow only the world's most boring books.

That's where a homeless man wandered into the building one Sunday, and Old Man Amos helpfully showed him toward the door, back onto the street.

That's the furnace room where Richard invited me to "play a little game of sex."

That's the room where my mom attended a sewing circle for a few years, until there weren't enough ladies to make a circle, and the final week when my mom said she was the only person who showed up.

That's the room where we held our church membership classes, back when I thought I was a Christian, and I made the pastor miserable by arguing some picayune point of Biblical principle.

So much of my childhood took place in that big building with the ugly carpet, when I was that skinny smooth-faced kid who'd believe anything.

♦ ♦ ♦

Later in the week, on another of Mom's many detours on our way to someplace I wanted to go that instead led to places she wanted to go, she took me to A & H Drugs. There she introduced me to the lady who works the cash register at the photo supply counter, and let me tell you, that was a thrill.

At the back of the store, though, they had one of those old penny scales, so I weighed myself. I'm down fifty pounds from a year ago, or the scale's busted but still takes your penny.

♦ ♦ ♦

Mom's mission to make sure I met everyone she knows in King County brought us to a public library branch one afternoon, where I met another friend of hers, someone who works there. Nothing wrong with the friend, or particularly memorable; just another frumpy church lady.

And I like libraries, so I very briefly leafed through some magazines on the periodicals shelf. And then Mom said let's go, so we left the library — or tried to, but a scanner beeped as I walked past.

You get used to those damned devices, scanning you at every door you walk through out in the world, but other than at the airport, where I have to empty all the junk from my pockets and backpack, I've never been 'caught' before — and 'caught' was clearly the librarian's reaction. Still the obedient boy I'd been at 8, I politely and cooperatively emptied my pockets onto the counter by the door.

She glanced at my stuff, which of course included nothing interesting or incriminating, and in a bored voice she said, "Jacket, please."

That's the moment I snapped out of my Mom-induced stupor and said "No_!_" loud enough to startle the library lady, embarrass Mom, and lift the security guard's eyes across the room. He walked over, slowly, and while he was walking he said something innocuous (I don't even remember what), but I started bellowing that if he wanted to strip search me he'd better call a real cop, 'cause I'm not gonna get naked at the library for some Brink's minimum wager.

To be clear, he hadn't asked me to disrobe. Not sure he'd asked me anything. Was I out of line? Well, hell yeah, I was out of line, but I was pissed.

"Hey, I didn't even come to the library to read," I said or shouted. "I didn't touch a single book. I was dragged along to meet my mother's friend, and nobody's gonna search me without a fight, or at least a warrant, or maybe both."

The guard and the librarian just watched me rant, didn't interrupt, but when I was quiet the guard said, "We need to see what's in your pack."

"You know what's in my pack? A presumption of innocence. Call a cop or show me a warrant."

The guard looked like he was afraid of me, and rightly so. Sometimes I forget I'm big and fat and twice the size of a normal man, but sometimes it's to my advantage.

The head librarian emerged from her office, to shush me I assumed, and she was level-headed, unlike me. As expected, she started with he index finger over her lips, even said shhh. Then she explained that sometimes the magnetic strip on a credit card can cause the scanner to beep erroneously. She apologized, and asked me to walk through the scanner at the door again, but without my wallet.

Well, I haven't got any credit cards, of course, but I handed my wallet to my mortified mother, walked again through the scanner, and this time it didn't beep. Later I went through the contents of my wallet, and yeah, my California ID card has a magnetic strip on the back, which probably encodes my vital stats, driving record, police and dental history, social security number, preferred brand of toothpaste and underwear, and mother's maiden name. And apparently, it sets off alarms at the public library.

My mom apologized — not to me, but to the head librarian, the security guard, the junior librarian, and all the readers and patrons who'd watched my show.

As we stepped outside she started scolding me, but I was still angry and in no mood, so I sort of angrily explained my philosophy of what freedom, privacy, and good citizenship mean, and Mom of course disagreed. Her view is that the librarians and guard were just doing their jobs, and since I had nothing to hide, she couldn't understand why I hadn't simply cooperated, emptied my pockets, emptied my pack.

To me, it's not about whether you or I have anything to hide. The point is, you have a right to walk around in public without being forced through scanners and emptying your pockets at every doorway — especially in a library.

It was Mom, though, so this was an argument I couldn't win. She's earnestly trying to live her life within the Ten Commandments, and doesn't give a hoot about the Ten Amendments. She kept saying I'd had nothing to hide, nothing to hide, and asking me why I hadn't simply pulled all my pockets inside-out.

For the rest of the week, Mom told and re-told the library story to my brothers, my niece, a long-ago neighbor, a lady at the grocery store… and always she added her summary at the end, "If it happened to me, I wouldn't have made a scene. If they'd asked me, why, I would've stepped into the ladies' room with the librarian, and let her search me until she was satisfied I hadn't stolen anything…"

I believe Mom would do that, and do it smiling. And the horror of her words isn't complete unless you could see the sincere, serene, proudly compliant look on her face each of the times she said it.

♦ ♦ ♦

My eyes watered a little on my second trip to my father's grave, this time accompanied by Katrina and Kimberly and Sheila (who never knew my dad), and George and his girlfriend, whose name I never caught, and of course Mom was there. I didn't cry, though. My grief is private, and I don't like crying in public, which seems to be the point of a cemetery or a funeral.

Anyway, if I'd cried in front of Mom I'm sure she would've later described every teardrop and recited whatever I sniffled for everyone she knows, and she knows everyone in Seattle, so I decided there would be no tears, no words. I prefer keeping everything inside, at least around her.

Different people grieve in different ways. Mom grieves by spending half her waking hours remembering and discussing every painful detail of Dad's cancer and chemo and death and funeral and burial, even now, a year and a half after his demise. I try to remember him in his healthy years, when I think of him at all. Both extremes are probably signs that we need counseling (doesn't everyone on Earth?), but my method allows much more leisure time.

♦ ♦ ♦

I don't preach it, because I hate people who preach anything, and anyway, I'm flexible about it, but I don't eat meat. Or at least, not often. "I do eat a hamburger now and then," is my general line, "but my health is better and my bowels flow smoother if I eat green instead of red." I don't think the penny scale was lying.

I said it once each to Katrina, Clay, and Ralph when the subject came up, and ten or twelve times daily to Mom, who kept trying to push hamburgers down my throat.

Telling people was awkward, but Katrina and George accepted it without even a shrug, like, OK. They didn't try to push a pot roast at me. Clay made it a running joke, always offering me bacon at breakfast and beef jerky as a snack, which was funny the first few times. Mom wrinkled her nose perplexed, but mostly the words seemed to bounce right off her ears and fall to the floor. And ten minutes later she'd say, "Here's a McDonald's, would you like a cheeseburger?"

♦ ♦ ♦

Oh, and the big barbecue was something, and not just because of all the meat.

It was exactly the party I'd specifically asked my mother not to throw for me, with the entire family all around all at once, and old friends of mine, old friends of the family, old faux friends from the church, and utter absolute strangers all telling me how marvelous it was to see me. I hate, despise, can't abide, and don't attend parties, can't handle dealing with people in such numbers, and it was entirely awful.

To my mother I said, "I asked you, told you more than twice, please Mom, no 'welcome home' party, please," but she stared at me and smiled and said, "This isn't a party. It's a barbecue." Then she stepped away, to tell someone else what had happened at the library.

And so it came to pass that thirty people, some I love and some I like and some I don't and some complete strangers, spent hours eating hamburgers and hot dogs in my brother Clay's back yard and living room and cul-de-sac.

The food was fine (and I'll admit, I had some bratwurst cuz it smelled soo good) but the conversation was almost inescapable and always about nothing, and how many times could I explain my odd employment to how many people?

Zero. I lied, and told everyone I was still working at Macy's, keying price changes in an eighth floor office I haven't set foot in for months.

Hazel talked, but nobody could quite make out what she was saying, Katrina and Dave talked about Kimberly, Kimberly and Sheila whispered sweet somethings in each other's ears, George and Ralph talked about AA, Dick talked about his new girlfriend who's surprisingly young, Clay talked about the church, Karen talked about Sunday School, Ralph talked about prison, Mom talked about Dad's cancer and death and funeral, mystery guests talked about whatever they talked about, and I briefly hid in a walk-in closet.

George, Dick, and I had a bizarre, unpleasant conversation about my sex life that doesn't exist, and they (jokingly?) theorized that since I live in San Francisco I must be gay. It's required by city law, don't you know. It's not the first time it's been whispered in the family, but the barbecue was the first time I'd heard the theory spoken aloud in 'polite' conversation.

Mom was eavesdropping nearby, and I suspected she'd asked George and Dick to ask about it, and decided to have some fun. "Enough already," I said, "I can't keep up this pretense any longer." Mom's eyeballs got bigger, and I got hammier. "You're my family, you have a right to know," and I paused, trying to make it a soap opera scene. Half the barbecue crowd seemed to be watching, and the room was so quiet you could head a cliché drop.

"It's true," I announced. "I'm a— I'm— (pausing and making a pained face for effect) "— I'm a lesbian. I have always been attracted to women."

To this, a smattering of nervous giggles from the family, and I'm sure half the crowd still thinks I'm gay. Hell, I'm almost 37 years old, never married, no girlfriend, I don't agree with the Christians that gays should be crucified, and clinching it, I moved to San Francisco, the international city of sin, so of course I'm gay. The fact of the matter is moot; the family has decided.

♦ ♦ ♦

On Wednesday morning, too early, I was supposed to meet Mom at (sigh) McDonald's, to shake hands with my father's best friend from Boeing, a guy named Jack.

Mom and Jack met at Dad's funeral, and they quickly became McDonaldland buddies, meeting for breakfast every second Wednesday morning, where Mom gives Jack my dad's subscription copy of Aviation Week and Space Technology, and they talk about Dad over coffee. It's innocent, maybe heartwarming if you have a heart, and Mom had insisted (and nobody can insist like Mom) that I had to meet Jack, so my intent was to be there.

However, I'd slept at Clay's that night, and he was my transport, and he took me to the wrong McDonald's. By the time we figured out where we were supposed to be and Clay dropped me off, Jack had already gone, and Mom was getting on her bike, ready to pedal to her daycare work. I apologized for being late, and she shrugged and waved and rode away.

I walked inside and ordered a cup of McDonald's styrofoam coffee, and sat on a plastic chair alone, listening to the Muzak, wishing I was asleep, and wondering what I'd do with a wide open, unbooked day of my own in Seattle. Decided I'd start by sipping the scalding, shitty coffee and reading the restaurant's free copy of the previous day's Post-Intelligencer, before busing around the city, seeing some forgotten sights, and then—

Mom burst back into the McDonald's wearing a smile too big for her face, and I knew instantly I was in trouble. "Why don't you come with me to daycare today?" she said. "You can meet [Bland Blah and Blah, the names of several infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers Mom had told me about many times already)."

"Ah, no thanks, maw," I attempted. "I was planning to kick around the old town today, maybe call a friend, or just relax and ride the bus alone…"

"Oh, you wouldn't want to spend the day alone," she corrected me. "Come with me to daycare!" And Mom being Mom, thus began fifteen minutes of whispered argument, as she became late for her daycare job, while reciting again and again all the reasons I should spend the next nine damned hours at a daycare center in a church, and me again and again explaining that I don't like big bunches of children, don't want to spend all day in a room that reeks of urine and graham crackers, and also, just plain no.

"But I really want to show you my life here, and I love the daycare. I want you to be with me there."

Christ, I wanted to say but didn't, do you want me to be with you, or to simply be you?

As she repeated everything about why I needed to be at daycare with her all day, the coffee kicked in and I recognized that this was all a remake of a movie I'd already seen. It was exactly like when she'd visited me in San Francisco, and insisted without end that we should switch rooms in my rez hotel.

And, no.

"No," said I, and she started up again. "No means no, Mom, so goodbye, and have a nice day at daycare."

Since she was already late I won the argument, but also won her scowls then and again in the evening. Freed from her plans for my day, I rode a bus downtown, and replayed the argument with my mother, especially this line that seemed so perfectly Mom:

"Oh, you wouldn't want to spend the day alone."

Yeah, actually I would, and actually she doesn't have any notion at all what I'd want.

When I was a kid, I rarely brought friends home, because I rarely had friends, and generally preferred to hang out in my room alone, or play outside alone. For most of my adult years, I've described myself to everyone, certainly including my mother, as a loner, a recluse, or more poetically as a solitary man. When Mom visited me in San Francisco and asked to meet my friends, I had to explain repeatedly that I have no friends there to meet. And in this week in Seattle, I'd already said to almost every family member I'd seen, usually with Mom standing beside me, "Sure, I haven't written or called in 3½ years, but you know, I'm a hermit."

And still, no matter how many times and ways I say it, Mom doesn't get it.

"Oh, you wouldn't want to spend the day alone." Yes, Mom, I would want to spend the day alone, I did want to spend the day alone, and damn it, I spent the day alone and had a wonderful day.

Downtown, I laughed myself silly at the giant animatronic "Hammering Man" outside the new and improved Art Museum, wandered the gloriously fishy Pike Place Market, bought a few zines at Left Bank Books (and saw my own zine on the shelf), and walked a few blocks to a building I'd once called home, in a slummy neighborhood where there's a cheap sandwich shop that had fed me thousands of times, years earlier. And just like old times, that day it fed me two egg salad sammiches and a can of diet root beer.

Then I bused to the University District, and lower Queen Anne, and Ballard, where I needed some change to call a friend, so I went into a thrift store and scored a 99¢ pair of used glasses that almost exactly match my prescription.

With the world in better focus, I could watch pretty girls from clear across the street, and that's how I spent the afternoon at Alki.

Then a bus took me to the city limits, and the house where I'd grown up, where strangers live now and it's painted the wrong color. I didn't stare long; it's not home any more. Not my neighborhood, either. Walked a few blocks toward the woods where I used to play alone and skipped school so many times, but now the trees are gone, replaced by new streets with apartments and strip malls.

Everything's changed and still changing, maybe including me. And then I bused to my first date with Sarah-Katherine, and the changes seemed for the better.

And to think, I could've spent the whole day in a Presbyterian daycare center, watching Mom watching tots and hating myself.

♦ ♦ ♦

Mom and I had other arguments over inane things, like when she washed my clothes — I hadn't asked her to, but thanked her — and she insisted that I change shirts.

"Put on this shirt, it suits you better." My most boring blue button-down shirt, instead of the tie-dye tee I was wearing? And it was almost suppertime, not first thing in the morning. "It's too loud," she said, meaning my tie-dye.

"Is there a noise limit for shirts in Seattle?" I asked. She gave me her fatal sneer, as if I'm being disrespectful to wear what I want to wear.

♦ ♦ ♦

Maybe the essential Mom Moment was our breakfast with Jesus. It's not visiting Mom if she doesn't have a chance to cry over my lack of Christianity, so there's always at least one long, boring for me, painful for her conversation about my soul. Actually, I'm surprised there was only one all week.

It was at a McDonald's of course. While I ate a muffin, she asked about my "walk with the Lord," though I've made it clear for a long, long time that I'm not a Christian. Then she prattled on and on about Jesus and the disciples, loaves and fishes, and where on Earth am I going to meet a nice Christian girl if I don't go to church?

"I don't want to meet a nice Christian girl, and I'm not going to church." She knows how I feel about all this Christian crap, and I know how she feels about it. My preference would be avoiding the subject, but if she brings it up I'll answer the questions, which always makes her bawl, but never stops her from bringing it up again.

Typed a few more paragraphs about this, then clicked them away. It's all happened before, the questions and the crying, and I've written about it before, and just because she re-enacts it every time we're together doesn't mean I have to re-write it.

♦ ♦ ♦

Since everyone else in the family, maybe all of America has a cable-ready 36-channel outlook on life, I watched some television during my time in Seattle, and wow, getting rid of my set seems more and more like the sanest thing I've ever done.

Clay and Karen insisted that I see Home Improvement. "It's the funniest show on TV," Clay promised, so I sat and stared at it for half an hour. Never once had an urge to smile, while Clay and Karen roared louder than the laugh track.

The next night at a different home, Katrina was watching Ellen, so I couched myself and braced myself. It made me giggle once or twice, but there was a long lag between smiles, and it all seemed like the kind of silly slapstick Lucille Ball did better 40 years ago, and I never liked Lucy either. What a grump I am, I guess.

And the commercials_!_ They're 30-second thought-free zones that come one before the next in an unbroken line until the shows and the ads merge into one long void. Each commercial feels like a new insult, as if the announcer is saying, "Buy this, moron," in exactly those words.

♦ ♦ ♦

Speaking of tedious, I ate at a lot of chain restaurants, and I'm no gourmet but what could be blander than breakfast at McDonald's?

Everyone in the family bought me food, though, and I said thank you a lot. Most of them I was able to nudge toward good diners and coffee houses. Being cheap and poor, the only meal I was planning to buy was at Beth's with Sarah-Katherine, but she slyly paid for both of us while I thought she was going to the ladies' room. I owe you dinner, gorgeous.

I wrote reviews of the better meals, but I've been long-winded already and can't afford extra pages for this month's zine, so I'll simply say Beth's Café is still the best, same as when I lived in Seattle and ate there weekly.

Seattle's other good eateries, endorsed by me, include The Green Man Café at Pike & Boylston, FranGlor's Creole Café near the Kingdome, the Puss Puss on Pike Street, The Colliery in Renton, and oh yeah, that Mexican place on the hill.

♦ ♦ ♦

And despite Seattle's wet reputation, I didn't see a single drop of rain the whole week.

♦ ♦ ♦

It's almost over. Thanks for sticking with me, if anyone's still reading this.

♦ ♦ ♦

During the flight home, I was as depressed as hell. Not from saying goodbye, but from learning the lesson yet again that the Bradys and Cleavers and Waltons are only on TV. There are no real families like that, and mine isn't like that, either.

There are families far more dysfunctional than mine, of course, but mine's the one I'm stuck with, and it's never quite a Hallmark card. I wanted to see them, and I saw them. Wanted to connect with them, and I'm not sure I did. Not sure I ever have. There were hugs and conversations, memories and laughs, and I love all of them and they love me, but most of them I honestly don't understand.

Blue me was looking out the window at a blue sky, when I realized that I was involuntarily humming the last hymn my mother had sung at the airport, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty." Even at thirty thousand feet in the air, it's Mom and God.

I tried to override it by summoning Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," but the battle of the bands was interrupted by a shriek of terror from a few rows ahead.

Pretending to read a newspaper, I watched through the seats as a college-age tough boy cried into his companion's arms every time the wings tilted or the plane shook, as we made our slow descent toward San Francisco Airport.

It had been a completely routine flight, but he was terrified, and she soothed him with soft syllables and a long hug. My dad would've recited the statistics that flying is the safest way to travel, but I didn't say anything. It was free entertainment, that's all. He looked about 25, way past old enough to be an adult, but he wouldn't be calmed. He would've been screaming instead of whimpering, if his girlfriend hadn't been there.

As the plane gently touched down he let out one last horrendous wail, and she kept her arms around him as we taxied to the terminal. When the pilot announced, "Welcome to San Francisco," there was a small round of applause, and I saw several people reach out to pat that schmuck on the back. People nicer than me, certainly. He laughed and kissed the dame who'd comforted him, which garnered another smattering of claps.

I'm not white-knuckle about flying like that young man, but sometimes I'm white-knuckles about life, and there's nobody like that dame of his, giving me a hug. Ah well, no complaints. I'm tough, right? Waited for my suitcase, scowled at a bum who wanted spare change, then caught a bus for a long ride home to the slums.

San Francisco is kinda filthy. Kinda depressing.

There's trash blowing everywhere, graffiti and cockroaches on the buses, and rudeness is the city's official habit.

Today's no worse than any other day here, but by comparison, a week in Seattle felt like a small town. And I've never felt so alone in this big city.

Usually alone is a good thing, but for the past eight days everyone in Seattle wanted to see me, or so it seemed, and some of them I wanted to see, too. Now there's nobody again. No friends, no family, no beautiful woman happy to hold my hand. Alone is usually my preference, but it might take a few dawns and dusks to get accustomed to the solitude again.

And if the general ugliness of Frisco and the loneliness in me isn't enough to get me down, there's the smell. Due to the hecticness of coming home and my own exhaustion and laziness, I didn't shower yesterday, and there's a slight, sweet whiff of Sarah-Katherine on my windbreaker, maybe on me.

♦ ♦ ♦

Pike had a job when I left, and lost it while I was gone. He was supposed to be 'on-call' for his first few shifts, but when they called he was drowsy from a night of drugs, told them he couldn't work that morning, and they haven't called since.

He sounded surprised when he said they hadn't called again, but of course they haven't called again. They'll never call again. Any job involves a certain amount of ass-smooching, and you can resist it and you ought to, but you can't blow off your first shift at an entry-level shit job. Nothing could be more basic. Even Pike had to know that.

So he's unemployed again, and the rent will be a monthly cliffhanger forever. That's annoying enough, but it gets worse. When I wanted to be alone, there was a crowd.

His girlfriend Terry is back. I could hear her carrying boxes and thumping them down, waking me at 7:00 or so this morning, and now she's sneezing seven times in a row in the next room, saying she's confused about whatever Pike said, and her clothes and junk are piled high in the kitchen. When I went out there and gave her an unenthused hello, she told me she'd had "roommate problems, and I just can't live with those girls." I'll bet she didn't have 'roommate problems' so much as those girls had Terry problems.

So she's back here with Pike, and by default, with me, and I'm nearly out of patience.

Pike is a decent guy for a bakehead, but I don't want to always wonder when or whether he'll have the rent together, and I'm sick of the sight and sound of Terry — her screeching voice, her clumsy sentences, endless confusion, stinky perfume, the sound of them fucking, and also I agree with Richard Dreyfuss, I don't like the panties drying on the rod.

To survive in this city, I need to be able to shut the door and have space and sanity without someone I can't stand saying stupid things loudly all morning midday and night. Pike and the rent is a mid-level problem, but Terry is the most annoying human I know. And 12-year-old me might find this unbelievable, but it's not even sexy to come out of my room to go pee and see them fucking on the couch.

Leaning on my doorjamb, the three of us talked for a few minutes, and I asked her, and she said, "I'm not sure how long I'll be staying here — a few weeks, maybe."

A few weeks, my ass. She's already been here for months, and she'll be here as long as Pike is here. It's time to register with Roommates Unlimited — not Terry, me — and see about getting into a better situation.

Handing out the shop's flyers on the sidewalk in the Castro, I've come to know a few of the locals, including a guy named Dale, who's younger than I am but won't get much older. He has AIDS.

We've talked several times as he's walked by, and he walks slow. I like him, so it's always "Hey, Doug" and "Hey, Dale," and some brief banter.

He's always in good spirits, even cheerful, but he's plainly weak and struggling. He has visible lesions, he's wobbly, and sometimes in obvious pain. Ordinary clichés like "How ya doin'?" or even "See you tomorrow" seem almost ominous — he's not doing well, and there's no telling how many or few tomorrows he'll have.

During the week I was away, Dale went from walking with difficulty to walking with a walker. It's an improvement, because it seems less likely he'll topple, but he's so frail he's still a walking worry. And yet he cracks jokes, and they're funny, and I'm glad to see him.

Today we talked about the weather (nice) and my trip out of town (fine), and I complimented him on his walker, which has very nice rainbow striping. He smiled big, and told me he'd gotten it as a birthday present yesterday. He's 24.

"Happy birthday, Dale," I said, and he smiled again. We traded a few more quips, and I gave him a hug and said goodbye before he started slowly shuffling up the hill. Don't know if he saw my eyes welling up.

Happy birthday, Dale. Twenty-fucking-four years old. If there's a God, he needs to be assassinated.

♦ ♦ ♦

Another change while I was away: Unusualia's new sign was installed. It's bright and very visible from the street, which ought to help bring people up to the second floor. Maybe it'll put me out of work.

On the new sign, there's a new motto: "Drag for every persuasion," because the shop sells a lot of ladies' wear to men. Stevi, though, told me that the lawyer upstairs has already complained to the landlord about that phrase — "Drag for every persuasion." He says it's bad for his image.

Jesus H again. A lawyer who thinks he can practice law in the Castro and keep every hint of the lifestyle off the building? I told Stevi she should call The Sentinel, see if they're interested in covering a gay-bashing lawyer in San Francisco's gayest neighborhood. "And it might be good publicity for the shop, too," I added.

She said she might do it, but not yet, because she hasn't heard the lawyer's complaint with her own ears, only the landlord's paraphrase of it.

Gotta love Stevi, though. She retaliated by dressing a female mannequin in a pointed cutaway bra and crotchless panties and nothing else, and put it in the shop's front window, right next to the door that the lawyer's clients pass through to get to his office on the third floor. Stick that up your image, lawyer ass.

♦ ♦ ♦

Later on, after Dale and the lawyer had slipped out of my mind, I was vacuuming in the shop, and LeeAnn asked me, "Why are you in such a good mood? Did you get some?"

"That's not a workplace appropriate question," I said, "And how did you know I'm in a good mood?"

"Well, you're whistling and singing and sort of dancing with the vacuum cleaner," she explained. I hadn't noticed, and then both ladies started teasing me, suspecting I'd fallen in love with some special man while I was away.

Well, it isn't a man, and I'm immune to love, but Sarah-Katherine had been on my mind, yeah. Hence the upbeat attitude. She was nice to me up in Seattle, and in my memory she's getting nicer, funnier, prettier every day.

Maybe I'm in like with her, but I'm not silly enough to think she's my one true love or anything. Not sure I even believe in "one true love," and certainly it'll never happen to me. Anyway, I don't know Sarah-Katherine that well. I have a crush on her, sure. Any sane straight man who spent time with her would feel the same way. That's enough to make me sing off-key, is all.

♦ ♦ ♦

Margaret is coming to visit next month. She's my ex-girlfriend, a bit kooky, has violent tendencies, and even though we've agreed about being exes, she still presents herself as more than a friend. She's complicated. Everyone's complicated, of course, but Maggie seems extra complicated and maybe it's on purpose.

We've done the final farewell a few times already, and we've been officially past-tense since her last visit, last summer, and unofficially for years before that — and yet, here she comes again.

When she's here, I'm going to buy her a cup of coffee, and explain maybe more plainly than we've said it already, that we're over. Being friends is fine, but romance with Maggie is like kissing steel wool, and no, she can't sleep in my bed this time.

Once, someone shoved Dale Carnegie at me — How to Win Friends and Influence People — so I read the book. It's a little stale, but it could be very helpful for people who want to win friends and influence people.

In a moment of personal liberation, though, I understood that wasn't me. You have friends or you don't, but I never want to "win" friends, like a plush puppy at a carnival. That's a game I'm not playing.

I won't pretend to be outgoing, or listen with a smile to boring people. Better to have no friends, than the kind of friends you have to 'win'.

♦ ♦ ♦

On the phone, I was making arrangements to help some guy move on Tuesday, and he said the job would go smoother if we had a second man. I said I'd see what I could arrange, hung up, and of course asked my flatmate, Pike. He's taken my overflow work in the past, but we've never worked on the same gig.

The work starts at 7:00 in the morning, though, and that's usually about the time the drugs have worn off and Pike is ready to fall asleep. So he said no, and I kinda snapped.

"Jesus Christ, Pike. It's work, and you've got no money in your wallet. Couldn't you lay off the speed, crank, or whatever for one fuckin' day?"

"Don't give me crap," he muttered. "I'm just saying, there's no way I'll be in any condition to work at 7 in the morning. You'd rather know now than then, wouldn't you?"

"Well, what about the rent? Will you have the rent on the 1st? I'd rather know now than then about the rent..."

He didn't say anything to that, which means the answer is no, he won't have the rent.

"Jeez, man," I said. "You've gotta put the bong down long enough to do a day's work and pay your way." I kinda regretted it as I said it. It's true, yeah, but it sounded like my mother.

Pike started to say something back at me, but Terry interrupted, and said, "Doug's right, Pike."

Oh, I hadn't mentioned that Terry was there? She's always there, like the furniture — furniture that talks, and says stupid things.

"You're a lazy bastard," she said — to Pike, "sponging off my food, my drugs," and he started hollering at her and she hollered at him, and I tactfully faded back into my room.

One, I don't want Terry on my side in any argument.

Two, I don't want Terry in my apartment.

And three, she says Pike is sponging off her for food? I thought she was sponging off me, eating my food, or maybe both of them are — there's a few fewer slices in my loaf of bread than there were yesterday.

Five minutes later, they're still arguing in the next room, and I'm in my room trying not to listen, and deciding I really don't like sharing the Mierda apartment on Slum Street with those two.

This is a long shot, but is there anyone reading this who might rescue me from my flatmates?

I don't smoke. Don't play loud music. Rarely cook. I'm easy to get along with, provided you're not an asshole. I need to be near a Muni rail or BART line, inside city limits, but that's almost all I need. A cot in a closet would be enough, long as there's an electric outlet and toilet and shower access. I don't want to pay much rent, but I will pay it, and on time.

My number is ███ - ████. Leave a message. Please.

I was handing out flyers in front of the shop, wearing the short skirt and telling people to visit the shop upstairs, when I saw the lawyer from the third floor, down the street. He was parking his annoyingly oversized van, and he left his headlights on.

Did I say anything? Of course not. I don't like the guy, and he doesn't like me, so I gave him a big cheerful "Good morning" as he walked past me on the sidewalk. He said nothing, of course, and climbed up the stairs to be a lawyer all day. A lawyer who'd left his headlights on.

♦ ♦ ♦

Later on, some stranger in a bad 1970s polyester suit approached me on the sidewalk, gave me a long lookover before he said, "You're pathetic."

"Hey, buddy," I sorta snarled, "It's my job."

He smiled a little, and said, "No, I mean you're Pathetic Doug, right?"

I frowned, no hesitation, and said, "My name is Lou."

He studied me skeptically, probably knew who I was but I was ready to deny everything, so he dropped his smile, mumbled an apology, and walked away.

Sometimes I get letters from zine readers who call me 'Pathetic Doug', but until today nobody's called me that in person. Like I want to converse on the sidewalk with the kind of dweebs who'd buy my zine?

No, man, if you want to talk to me, call my number and let me think about it. Give me a choice, damn it. Buy me a cup of coffee, maybe, but I don't welcome unexpected zine chat while I'm working.

♦ ♦ ♦

Lawyer-guy came down the stairs a few hours after that, but by then he had no headlights or battery left. He sat in his van and turned the key and nothing happened, and I just grinned and watched him fume until the triple-A truck arrived.

♦ ♦ ♦

Then I slipped out of the dress and into my ordinary clothes, and rode home on the bus. A semi-familiar face from the Castro was riding in the seat across the aisle, an older gent, gay and gray. Had no idea who he was or where I knew him from, but he smiled at me, and said, "Delightful shop upstairs," mimicking my dumb grin on his face.

"No, man," I said, "it's delightful when they're paying me, not on the bus afterwards." He didn't say anything else, but he'd already said more than I wanted to hear. Too many people smiled at me today. Too many people wanted to be buddies or something. I dinged the bell and got off the bus two stops earlier than I'd planned.

One of the big advantages of living in the city is disappearing into the crowd. I'm anonymous, OK? Paying three bucks for the zine doesn't mean we're friends, and maybe I wear a skirt and hand out flyers all day, but once the skirt comes off my performance is over.

From the lawyer to the zine reader to the guy on the bus, I'm starting to feel like too much of a known commodity in the Castro. Jay's offer to sell fish in Berkeley sounds like fun, and if it is, I'll be wearing the skirt on Market Street less often.

On Wednesday I'm supposed to kiss the bureaucracy's ass, so I can get a vendor's license from the City of Berkeley and be a fishmonger on Telegraph Avenue. Why people have to show ID and pay a fee just to sell their wares on a public street, I do not know, but I'm looking forward to the change of scenery. And wearing pants again.

There's ample time to think when you're pacing the sidewalk, handing out flyers for a second-hand shop. Wearing a skirt and saying, "Delightful shop upstairs," a thousand times a day doesn't take all my minimal mind's puny powers, so there are other thoughts.

Since visiting Seattle and meeting Sarah-Katherine last week, I've been thinking what a fool I'd be to let her become a memory. Or only a pen-pal again.

I've written her a letter, sure, and got a short one from her since returning, but are letters all I want? We clicked 2½ nights out of 3 in Seattle, and it's been a long time, maybe never, since anything clicked like that.

There have been a few women in my pathetic life, some of them intelligent, some with something interesting to talk about, some who made me laugh, think, wonder. Sarah-Katherine is all that, and I knew it from her letters before we met.

In person, she's like her letters only more so — capable of deep thoughts and dumb jokes, sometimes in the same moment. She's genuinely interesting, and I'm curious tonight, to know what's going on in her head and in her life. She'll tell me in her letters, but I'd rather hear it in her voice across a table, sharing breakfast and coffee.

That's a surprise. I always choose solitude, being a hermit, having no friends and no romance, because being by myself is better than being with someone else. Anyone else. Almost anyone else.

Sarah-Katherine read the zine, which is most of me, and when we were together she saw the rest of me. Very few people see that. The rest of me always stays hidden, because people aren't interested, or they'd be offended, or they'd laugh when I'm being serious and tell me to seek psychiatric help when I'm joking. Most people are only frustration wrapped in skin, and I live as a hermit to keep them away.

Sarah-Katherine wasn't most people. There's very little 'most people' in her at all.

After our third and probably final date, we said goodbye without a word about any future. Realistically, our future is trading letters until we lose interest, or lose track of each other's addresses.

Seems like a sucky future to me, but it's pointless to daydream of anything more, ain't it? I'm too plain, too dull, too old for her. She has friends and a social life in Seattle, while I have neither in San Francisco, so our few hours together must've meant more to me than to her. We had three nice evenings, says my sane side. Now let her go.

I never much follow my sane side's advice, though. If I did I'd be a long ways from San Francisco, and there wouldn't be a zine, and I wouldn't be writing at all, and I'd be miserable or dead, instead of confused and infatuated.

When I think of Sarah-Katherine, there's a smile on my face. That's the only certainty in all this.

If the feeling isn't mutual, so be it. If seeing me three times is enough, I'll fade away politely. It would be double-damned dumb, though, if I didn't at least tell her what I'm thinking, so... as soon as I figure out what I'm thinking I'll let her know right away.

Radio Libre 103.3 is pretty good pirate radio for the neighborhood, but listening tonight they had some woman talking about how much satisfaction she gets from her job. For that much horseshit, you usually have to listen to the commercial stations.

If your job is helping people somehow, if you're a nurse or a firefighter, maybe. Hypothetically. She said she was a security guard, though, and what's the satisfaction in that? She had a long and stupid explanation, but the real answer feels like nope.

Protecting the property of rich folks is not a path to satisfaction. It's a job, same as any other. Someone's got to do it, and if it's you, congratulations, you're employed.

Nothing's wrong with working. It pays the rent, maybe buys trinkets and clothes and other stuff you need, and long as you have to work, there's nothing wrong with working hard. I usually put some effort into it, not from pride or anything, but because I want to be worth my wages so they don't look for someone better.

Deriving actual satisfaction from work, though? So much satisfaction that you want to talk about it on the radio? That just seems sad. Self-delusional. I'll go through a hundred jobs before I'm dead, and maybe they're all the wrong jobs but I haven't smelled a whiff of satisfaction from any of them yet.

No, please. You want satisfaction? Create something. Build a shelf. Make a stew. Fix your toaster oven. Adopt a cat. Do someone a kindness. Hell, do someone a meanness, and take satisfaction from that.

♦ ♦ ♦

Sarah-Katherine showed me the clipping when I was in Seattle, and three other readers have sent copies or congratulatory post cards, all because my zine was mentioned in The New York Times last Sunday.

Am I supposed to take satisfaction from that? I wouldn't mind it — I'm not immune to that crap — but the article is an indifferent piece of piffle, your typical mainstream media coverage of 'a trend', and as I'd expected, there's no contact info. Even if someone's intrigued by the article's description of Terry Ward's Notes From the Dump, or Maria Knopp's Sludge Pond, or my Pathetic Life, they can't send for a copy.

The article is neither kind nor cruel nor even caring, and not very informative. I spotted two mistakes, one minor and one whopper, when it claimed zines were birthed by punk rock. That's bollocks. Zines have been around since at least the golden age of science fiction — the 1930s or '40s — and probably before that, for as long as there's been pens and paper.

Four paragraphs about the article are five paragraphs too many, so I'm done with it. I don't regret not cooperating with the reporter when he called for an interview. Even if he'd wanted to know something about me, which I doubt, there's not much to know that isn't in the zine. I write it and you're reading it, so what's the point of an interview?

Today I helped some old guy load a moving van in North Beach, until he wrenched his back and couldn't lift anything any more. He was bummed out because, in addition to the pain, today was his only day off, and someone else is moving into his apartment tomorrow. "I can carry boxes," I said, "and help you carry a couch, but I can't carry the couch by myself."

He frowned and said he'd carry his half of the load despite his back, but I said that sounded like a great way to end up in traction for a month, and suggested a different strategy. "Let's go downtown, and hire some wino to help out, if you can dig that deep in your wallet." That last bit was me being a semi-smart-ass, because he seemed like someone born to money.

To my surprise, he thought that was a great idea, reached for his wallet and handed me a twenty for homeless hunting. But he didn't want to come. He was in too much pain.

People can be so damned naïve, you know. I could've simply stuffed his twenty in my pocket, come home and kicked my shoes off. This is America, after all — who but a rube expects an honest deal?

Nah. I bused to the Tenderloin, picked up a scruffy sort who looked fairly muscular and didn't particularly stink, and we bused back to the house for a handshake and some heavy lifting. He got twenty bucks for two hours of work, and I got twenty bucks for four hours of work, so who's the rube here?

♦ ♦ ♦

Then I BARTed to Berkeley to do housework for Judith most of the afternoon. She's a reader of the zine, and even insisted that I take home a few items I've mentioned doing without, in the zine — a soap dish, and some deodorant. Or did she give me the deodorant because I smell funky? Well, I did come straight from moving that guy in Frisco.

I washed her dishes, cleaned her stove, vacuumed her rug, swept her steps, and played with her dog. Basically I was Alice on The Brady Bunch, but without any annoying kids to look after. Housework is a strange job for me — at my own place I'm a slob, but for money I can be Mr Clean.

She has a house full of odd flatmates — a shy gay guy who lost interest in me when I mentioned Sarah-Katherine, a science-fiction supergeek who spoke mostly in Tolkien, and a third guy who didn't say much — plus Judith told a few interesting stories while I scrubbed, so it seemed like less than the six hours of work it was.

♦ ♦ ♦

The skies were sunny all day, but my own private clouds blew in when I checked my maildrop on the way home, and there was nothing from Sarah-Katherine.

But it's silly to worry about that, of course. It's only been a week and a day since I last saw her, and besides, USPS took a holiday yesterday. Hope I wasn't too mushy in the letter I sent a few days ago.

Maybe she's thinking everything through as slowly as I am. Maybe she's busy. Maybe she's not in the mood to write a letter. And of course, she's conventionally attraction, unlike my ugly self, so she probably has a life going on. I sure don't.

Most likely she has the smarts to know a big fat mistake when she kisses one goodbye.

Ah, shut up, Doug. Gotta re-wrap my heart in its unbreakable box, put a padlock on the damned thing this time, and go back to being pathetic.

I just knew something would go wrong when I stepped into Berkeley's bureaucratic labyrinth to obtain a vendor's license. They'd demand a background check, a urine sample, or a note from my mother — something impossible.

See, for years I was a libertarian, and I'm still about 20% "get your damned rules out of my way," so dealing with a government office is a guaranteed indignity. As indignities go, though, it wasn't bad at all. The big surprise was that there were no surprises.

I stood in the wrong line for 15 minutes — entirely my fault. There was a sign that made perfect sense, but I read it wrong. After my own screw-up, it only took 25 minutes in three lines, and everyone behind every counter acted approximately human, and now I'm legally permitted to sit in the sunshine on Telegraph Avenue, and sell blasphemous fish to make a living. Thank you, City of Berkeley.

♦ ♦ ♦

After that, Jay and I drove around Berkeley and walked Telegraph Avenue, to judge the customer flow on the sidewalk. I've been to Telegraph many times, and occasionally bought stuff from the vendors. Now I'll be selling.

We strolled through People's Park nearby, mingling with the mix of students and homeless. It's a marvelous place, all the more so if you know something about its history. I don't know much, but I will now enlighten or bore you with that knowledge:

In the late 1960s or early '70s, the university down the street, U-Cal Berkeley, used eminent domain to seize and destroy a block of houses. They were planning to build some kind of facility where athletes could sweat, but then they ran out of money, so instead of a sweat-house, it was just an ugly swath of mud near the city's downtown.

That's when the hippies moved in. They made the mud into a park, without permission, of course. They built trails, planted grass and flowers, smoked weed, and spoke of peace and freedom.

After that came one-sided warfare, with hundreds of cops rioting and shooting at hippies and locals and anyone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Police killed one man who was eating a sandwich and watching the mayhem, utterly uninvolved.

The story is everything you'd expect, except an unexpected ending: The park is still there, still beautiful, and the university's student-athletes sweat elsewhere. It's not officially a city park — the trails, gardens, and compost bins at People's Park are maintained by volunteers. The signs are hand-painted. The rules are easygoing. There's a free lunch daily for anyone who's hungry, and a big shed full of clothes, free for the taking.

When you come to San Francisco, stick a damned flower in your hair, sure, but you should also BART over to People's Park in Berkeley. It's a tiny slice of hippie paradise, and one of the bay area's most beautiful places, marred only by the tragic volleyball courts.

Jay is incredibly outgoing, and she struck up a conversation with a couple of teenage drifters in the park. They were friendly, just finishing their Food Not Bombs free lunches, and told us how the local cops love to hassle anyone who doesn't look like a shopkeeper or customer. "Of course they do," I said. "That's the unspoken mission of every American police department."

Leaving the park, we wandered into a few cool shops, and Jay seemed to know everyone. That's what it's like being an extrovert — everywhere you go, people know you. I shudder at the thought.

She introduced me to a few spike-haired friends and pretty women as "Doug, who does the Pathetic Life newsletter," which was embarrassing. Of course, most of these people had never heard of the zine, but one of them had, which really surprised me.

Afterward, I asked Jay to keep my zine identity quiet. I like writing about my life, but the whole arrangement only works because nobody around me knows I'm writing.

♦ ♦ ♦

The fish work will be four or five days a week, so on my way home, I stopped at a phone booth and called Stevi at the shop, to tell her I'm quitting. Friday will be my last day, at least as a regular cast member, though she asked and I agreed to come back occasionally as a special guest flyer-boy, as needed.

♦ ♦ ♦

Well, that was an ugly few minutes at the apartment. Pike wasn't home, but his girlfriend Terry was. She's always here, and she always gets on my nerves.

Tonight she was sitting on the floor right outside the bathroom, blocking the entrance when I needed to pee. I could've said "Excuse me" or something, but it seemed like such a stupid place for anyone to sit, and I don't like Terry, and I don't like talking, so instead I stepped over her, except I misjudged the distance and my foot came down on her toes, and she screamed.

I will insist until eternity that smashing her toes was an accident, but I do despise her, and her scream startled me, so it took an extra moment for me to mumble, "Sorry."

"You could say you're fucking sorry!" she yelled at my backside as I walked into the john.

"I did say I was sorry," I yelled back, "but I don't yell every word like you always do."

"Fucking fat ass!" she screamed.

"Impressive vocabulary," I said through the bathroom door. "Did you go to Yale?"

"Fuck you!"

"No, fuck you!"

She kept screaming while I peed and flushed, and we screamed at each other as I walked through their room to get to mine, and she screamed at my closed bedroom door for a few minutes more. Now there's blissful silence, as I ponder what happened. It was an ugly few minutes, as I already said, but also it was delightful.

I've hated Terry for as long as she's been here, which was about Day Two after Pike and I moved in. Tonight was our first exchange of profanities, though, and it's about time. My first argument with my flatmate's awful girlfriend, and it won't be the last.

My patience is threadbare now. I've always tried to remain civil with Terry. I've talked with her but not much, laughed at her jokes that are never funny, but mostly I've tried to ignore her. No more ignoring.

♦ ♦ ♦

My room is a shambles, like my life. Haven't made even the slightest effort at tidying up since the day I moved in, so now there are zines, old newspapers, dirty dishes, skidded underwear, and empty envelopes scattered everywhere. Almost typed 'disaster area', but it's such a cliché and my thesaurus is buried under the rubble. The room is starting to have an odor, so it's time for a spring cleaning.

Not tonight, though.

Instead I stupidly poured half my heart into a letter to Sarah-Katherine. I wrote it, then read it too many times. Can't decide whether it's sweet or stupid, whether it reveals too much or not enough. It doesn't really say what I'm feeling, because how would I know what I'm feeling?

There's a lady. I like her. That's what I'm feeling.

Some things aren't for public consumption, though, so I'm not printing my letter here. Three bucks for a copy of the zine does not get you absolutely every thought in my fat stupid head. Most of them, yeah, but not all of them.

Sometimes there are long letters from readers, and I read 'em and enjoy and appreciate 'em, and then a few weeks later there's another letter from the same reader asking why I haven't answered. Two readers have recently included a self-addressed stamped envelope, thinking that will get me to reply.

That won't get me to reply.

May I ask cordially, politely, what the fuck is wrong with you? On almost every page of every issue, there's evidence that I'm generally anti-social, and it's not an act. I really am generally anti-social. I don't want to be your pen-pal. If you send me a SASE, I'll scratch your name and address off the envelope, and use your stamp to pay the gas & electric.

Please send money, send zines, send gifts, and sure, send cards and letters — I like 'em, whether you love me or hate me. Don't expect a reply, though. Even if I had the inclination (I don't) to carry on correspondence with the dozens of readers who regularly write, I'd never have the time.

… there's something I don't understand in the March issue. Why did you settle for less than time-and-a-half overtime pay when you went into overtime hours? Money is money and you were entitled to overtime…

—Cindy Wallace

Life is a negotiation, Cindy. I need five bucks an hour. Stevi needed someone to hand out flyers that day, but not for $7.50. We all choose which rules to break, and by mutual choice Stevi and I broke a rule.

Honestly, it's hard for me to imagine a life so painted by numbers that we all follow the rules all the time.

In a way I guess I can identify with you, even though my circumstances are not the same. Could it be life, if it is really looked at honestly by everyone, is the same pathetic piece of shit?

—David R Wyder

Probably.

[on letterhead]
Howdy. Don Reimus here, assistant music director for WOUI radio station in Chicago. I just read a short listing in Milan's Zine concerning Pathetic Life_. Needless to say, it caught my interest. Can you please send me further information on how to obtain a copy? Any info will be greatly appreciated._
—Don Reimus

Now and then I get letters like this one of yours, asking for "further information" on "how to obtain a copy" of my zine, etc. Like I don't see enough panhandlers on the sidewalk, now I get panhandlers in my mailbox. Are there really people who respond to such letters by sending freebies?

Mister Reimus, I have never seen my zine mentioned in any review that included an address but not a price. The price is three dollars. Is it worth it? Some say yes, some say no, but it costs me money to print it and money to mail it so I ask three dollars. Ya put it in an envelope and mail it to the same address you mailed your request for "more information."

As you may have guessed, I am an asshole, but based on your company letterhead, I'd say you can afford the price more than I can afford the freebie.

As you can see from the Milan's Zine review (enclosed) no price was listed. I simply wanted further information and in no way intended to get a freebie. In short, you are an asshole (your words not mine).
Also, Milan's review was rather uninformative. Enclosed is a stamp; please send a more detailed description. I am still interested in your zine, but I am slowly slipping into a nervous bankruptcy (looks like we are all in the same boat).
Thanks again for your time. Insult me, love me, reject me…

—Don Reimus
PS. WOUI is a non-commercial, non-profit, student-run organization. We get no financial support from our institution. My request was personal and had no connection with the station other than the stationery.

Hey, who are you calling an asshole? Just kidding. It's me. I'm not always an asshole; sometimes I'm asleep. Please accept my apologies, my embarrassment, and these two sample issues.

No excuses, but I'll explain myself briefly: Milan's review is of a very early Pathetic Life, when trades were preferred. Eventually I noticed that about 90% of the zines people sent in trade kinda sucked, so I added a price tag. Eventually I quit my real-world job, and eliminated trades entirely. "Everybody pays" is my default setting.

And then, shortly before your first letter came, Factsheet Five named Pathetic Life as a "publisher's choice." Anyone who does a zine should *pray* to never win this alleged honor. It's flooded my mailbox with trade requests, and "please send more information" requests, and letters seeking "review copies" for magazines I'm almost certain don't exist.

All that adds up, makes me impatient, and you caught me in a bad mood on a bad day, and your filched stationery set me over the edge. Again, my apologies for being an asshole. I gotta be me. What else can I be...