Chained Girls

Who and what is a lesbian? Where can they be found? Are they happy with their lives? These are a few of the probing questions raised in a wonerful 1965 documentary that Gf got me to watch the other night. A fascinating slice of objective reporting, using actual I kid-you-not statistics from real genuine medical publications. No, but really. I particularly enjoyed the gang-bang style social event: a young and unsuspecting debutante/recruit is lured in the lair of notorious lesbians. After much hair-brushing and chatting - the impending tension leaves you sitting on the edge of your seat- the scene closes with her lying on the floor in a pool of her own tears as the circle of inverts closes around her for god knows what unspeakable things.
Oh, and the vicious cat-fights were cool, too.

I'm being all cultural here.

Politics

GF's view on royalty :

Oh my god if I were the Queen of England I wouldn't be able to go for a slice, I'd be so annoyed I'd pull my pelitos out."

Clean Hippies

Miles away from the nearest Starbucks, we baked in the relentless sun for two days, stretched out on wooden benches ; naked bodies by a green pool; long-legged hares and giggling wild turkeys came to peer at us. At night we floated in dark and smelly waters, and looked up at the sky, wondering if that was the Milky Way.
We glared at sociable Philadelphians who wouldn't behave in the appropriate way, splashing in the pool and ruining the zenness of it all. We smoked pot and played ping pong, bearing the rattlesnakes in mind everytime we lost a ball. I taught gf how to play Scrabble and she understood why I loathe it so. We laughed at the very butch dyke behaving awkwardly in the naked area; it can't be easy to behave like a butch when you're naked.

Back in the City of Fog, I'm still radiating heat. Thank you Wilbur Hot Springs.

I am unbearable

-So, what do you want to do tonight?
Why do friends always ask that question?
Whenever a friend makes plan to go out with me, they ask what I want to do. Always. I can't believe i only have friends who can't make decisions.,and have tor resort to asking me. Me. How would I know what we want to do?
Do I look like someone who makes decisions? Do I sound like someone who can make decisions in a city I hardly know?
Well they ask anyway. I suppose it's only polite; and I would complain if they didn't.
Unless they try to take me clubbing, in which case at some point in the evening I find myself cornered wth no means of transportation; they all know it's the only way to get me to set foot in a club. And sit it out, gritting my teeth in a mixture of despondency and acute longing for silence, and a bed.
More about how much I hate clubs sone other time.

So, I don't know what I want to do tonight. I've always thought that this what that very handy verb was invented -to hang out. no equivalent in French- I'd like to believe that it's because people are more purposeful, but I doubt it. Let's hang out. It makes me think of colourful bedsheets drying out on clothes lines in the sun. Hanging out.

All in all

It's been four days of complete, sloth-like, deliciously untainted and undiluted idleness. (Remember to write something on the virtues of idleness at some point.)
Now, gf is taking me to Green Apples books !
There'll be barbecue for dinner!
We'll also find out if we've won the lottery!


She won't let me adopt the orange cat and take him home, though.

House blend

Sitting in a house on top of a San Francisco hill is not unlike being on a ship. The wind makes the walls rattle; from where I sit, only the very top of some distant trees is visible, topped by the fog rolling in at high speed. It's a constant presence.
And it's nice weather for November.
I find myself reviewing all the warm items of clothing I should decidely have packed and didn't, in my eternal optimism. Denial. Whatever. So I wear just about everything at once, and alter the order of the layering every day to look like I have many more clothes than I really do.
I'm teaching gf to act French; she coaches me in acting american. She makes a much more convincing job of it than I do, I feel. She's got the shrug all worked out, and her disinterested glare is nothing short of perfection. I can't get the 'ohmygawdthisis justaboutthebestthingintheworldever' quite right. I'll keep trying.

Gone missing

I'll be internetless for the next week or so, looking after an orange kitty somewhere in San Francisco. I'll be back.

Things to pack for a summer month in San Francisco
Or : what autochthones don’t tell tourists :

A/ First Principle: San Francisco in August is bleeding cold.

B/ Second Principle: Within one hour, you can get sunburnt, then need a woolly hat and scarf.

C/ Third Principle: after 6pm on most days, you can’t find your way round because of that incredibly sly fog that’s moved in when you were not watching. Pfuuuuuuitt. Like that.

D/ Therefore: heed your friends’ advice and, when packing, think of onions; think layers, socks, long sleeves - the whole autumn paraphernalia. Just forget about Summer; over there ,it’s a myth until after you’ve gone back to London.

So far I have made piles on my bed:
- Favourite jeans, grey cords for normal onion-like days, assorted jumpers
- Light linen skirt and assorted flimsy tops for intense sunburn days
- Knee-length lace up boots just because
- Smelly trainers to try and blend in
- Jacket and woolly scarf
- Bikini
- Misc.clothes in various shades of black

I’m trying to not obsess over looking like a tourist.

Apparently Not Necessary:
- moose soft toy called Emilio

Administration

The good things : I now have a new passport and I only queued up for an hour with fifty other sweaty and frustrated people at the Embassy. I can now leave the country.

The bad thing: I'm stuck with this fugly picture for ten years.

Pèle-mèle

I’m home.
Isn’t that’s what we call our parents’ house?

Maybe regression is inevitable when going home. Although, it isn’t home anymore, of course. I don’t like the idea of regression, so I hold myself in check, so as to not slip back into obnoxious teenage mode. I am silent and unquestionable, but as considerate as I can manage.
Yes, it is good to be here.
I have spent most of the past six days in horizontal position under a tree, reading my way through a pile of novels; few of them have managed to fully capture my attention; maybe they just do’t talk about me and my own self centered vicissitudes enough... Maybe I should stick to classics.

I have reintegrated my old room, still dark, still full of my Goth velleities. The old plastic spiders are pinned onto the wall; the cupboard is still full of black rags. There are also stacks of old letters, held together by purple ribbon; I was such a romantic.
My mother never acknowledged the right to privacy, and only gives a perfunctory knock on my door before barging in. She is glad to have company, albeit the silent kind.
She has given away my brother’s clothes but kept his books and his collections. My brother was a serious collector: notes, coins, stamps, postcards, exotic paquets of cigarettes, lead soldiers, rocks, sand from deserts from all over the globe, poured into little glass vials. His bedroom was, and still is, a display case.
In every room but mine, there are pictures of him, taken on one of their journeys together in Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Laos, Turkey, Afghanistan. One of them shows him, minute, walking up a gigantic dune. How appropriate. He against the world?
I went into town and looked proprietally at things and places; so many changes! no one consulted me before digging up huge holes in the town center.
I went to visit my grandmother, who will tell anyone who will listen that I am her favourite grandchild. With me she is brisk, dismissive of gestures of affection; I tried to hug her once, a few years ago. That wasn’t too successful.
She gave me money. I won’t cash the cheque, because her monthly pension is probably less than what I make per week.
My grandmother is 85; she won’t let anyone else wind up her old clock, which involves climbing onto a chair and standing on the kitchen table. Her house is full of hazards, which she dismisses cheerfully; she barely allows her sons to chop her wood for her.
She showed me pictures of my cousin’s wedding; her husband looks like an idiot; my grandmother and I agree.

I have decided to go to San Francisco after all and see if my relationship can be patched up.

Normal service and proper paragraphing will resume on my retun to London.