totallygone

travel, at a tangent


Where Eagles Dare

Thursday night, my dear friend Nick's current beau Chris, drummer for an indie band called The Ex-Boyfriends, invited a bunch of us to their gig at The Eagle, one of the city's oldest watering-holes. With its jolly, eclectic clientele of bears, leather-daddies, pierced and tattooed types, and yours truly, The Eagle is a truly great night out (scroll down the home page for a glimpse of the beer bust). After a disappointing date with one of these pseudo-conservative types I tend to attract, pleasant enough but outrageously unadventurous (not a match, really), I was ready for something a bit more stimulating. And sure enough, it was waiting for me at the eagles' lair! Dressed for excess in my leather waistcoat (a customized retro-fit, raven-black with a rust stripe across the chest and Harley Davidson signature emblazoned across the back), I'd soon gathered a crowd around me that closely and somewhat quaintly resembled ZZ Top on acid. Whiskers, nose-rings, leather stetsons, Jolly Roger tattoos, and piercings in places that'd make a crack-whore blush, I was soon knocking back Jagermeister shots and canoodling with a very hot Cuban cutie, who wanted me to "be his bitch for da nite". ZZ Top were in a state of advanced excitement and slammed their shots down with a chorus of ecstatic cackles. In a moment of gay abandon, I accepted a couple of tokes from someone's pocket pot-pipe, and I was soon in very high spirits. (I'm a joker, I'm a smoker...)

Leaving the club at 2am was one of the highlights of the night. I sobered up as soon (or so I thought) as the cool. clear air hit my nostrils, the bright lights of the Bay Bridge twinkling just a half-mile away. My friends and I took a taxi back to the Castro, and I alighted outside the Midnight Sun, with the intention of walking the 100 yards home. As soon as my feet hit the pavement, I realized that I no longer had total control of my body, and that such a task (and my apartment) was way, way, beyond me. So I sat down on one of the twelve steps of the Castro Country Club, in the hope of sobering up a little. Some kind of strange magnetism was clearly emanating from me that night, for within twenty minutes of doing so a small crowd of fellow adventurers had joined me for an impromptu "social". Our group included a young, handsome, and drunken redneck who clearly wanted to be close to me, and cunningly placed himself on the step behind me so he could gain better access to my earlobes, by which he was totally fascinated. I pinched him, hard, and he stopped. To my left was a young French boy stranded in the city, waiting for the first BART home to San Jose (yeah, exactly), but the star of the Twelve Step Show was "Roland", the Rapper.

Rock Your Baby
"Roland" arrived as I was pinching away the ear-tugger. I heard him coming; rollin' down da street with THAT spring-in-the step style peculiar to yardies, he was doing a 21st-century version of Wordsworth's walking composions. "Walkin down 18f, I'm watchin da people/Some is good, but others is evil/Guy on the steps, he's not too sober/Had too much shit, he's waitin' to get over/What he's been smokin'/And boy I ain't jokin." Immediately, I recognized him as kindred spirit, and bade him join us for a menthol American Spirit. He accepted, and soon the four of us were engaged in an anthropological seminar on the topic of San Francisco's streetlife. Very experiential. Roland was a wealth of information, having lived in SF for 30-odd years, and regailed us, for the next hour or so, with accounts of life in the '70s, when the sidewalks were lined three deep with men, the entire city partying to a Village People and Donna Summer soundtrack, and AIDS was yet to arrive and ruin everything for everyone. After having blithely passed Roland a couple of my favourite American Spirits, I was mildly surpised to see him light up his own cigarette, until I guessed (correctly) by its size and shape that it wasn't a cigarette. "Have some," he offered, with a wink and a charming smile.
"It's a joint?"
"Nah, bro - it's rock."
I racked my still-addled brains for "rock." Rock..rock??? And then I twigged.
"Oh rock. Gotcha! Great, uh, thanks, but I'm about ready to turn in, I think."
I realized, as I said this, that I was clear-headed enough not only to stand but also to walk, thanked Roland profusely for his kind offer, and went on my way, rejoicing.

So you'll all be pleased to hear that I'm practicing temperance and moderation, these days.


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