I wrote this piece almost 7 years ago. I was at the height of my despair - I was a corporate wizard - pulling in money and accolades with limitless potential, but as the days turned to months turned to years, I knew more and more that I was buying someone else's dream, and that this other person's dream I was being sold would not lead me to any happiness of my own.
About half a year prior to the events in this story my gf at the time had had enough of me - I was not who I once was - and she left, leaving me even more depressed and confused at the world I was living in. One fine Friday afternoon I decided to buy a ticket to SF and not tell any of my friends I was there but one - David-Ezra - who was a corporate wizard at FaceBook- biding his time until stock options were handed out. I do not know why I went to SF or what I was thinking, only knew I had to go there and walk the streets so I did.
At the time, I had not done anything creative in a couple of years - which was a long time for me and the experience detailed in this story renewed a creative spark that I had seemingly lost. I make no apologies for my actions, have no regrets, it was simply me being me in the moment - doing the best I could- trying to understand - to feel ( or not to feel) something in a world that had gone so cold. As I have my whole life - I always go for authentic - genuine- and I use these great big eyes I have to see it loud and in stereo- I wanted to wallow with the bums and know what that felt like because why not? I am not above knowing a reality that I am aware exists - I welcome all humans existence as valid and in truth - I want to help those who need it most. But I didn't know any of this back then - I was just manic - felt trapped in a world I created that I didn't particularly like - and it only made it more difficult that I was good at this world I had created that I didn't particularly like. I didn't know that the weekend would inspire anything creative - but when I got back - I sat down and wrote this piece on my t-mobile sidekick (bwhahahahahaha sidekick) - while watching an episode of the Soprano's - the memories flooding me - overwhelming me - my fingers moving so fast on that little cell phone keyboard that I didn't even have time to think about what I was writing- as if the story was coming from somewhere else, somewhere, above. It became a narrative that I have performed aloud many times - and though it translates better when I am reading it, I feel it is just as powerful when you read it and hear my voice in your head.
I've written a book "destination now: How a Drunken Angel Got his Wings (or maybe really perhaps how I became a man at age 32) - a project dear to my heart that I am raising kickstarter funds for (donate here! ) and as it would happen - as rich as only life can be - the events in the book start in the very same bukowski hotel where I came to on an SF whim all those years ago -this time, showing up a day early before a friend's surprise bday and not telling anyone - to stay at the mosser for the first time in all those years - called to do so - except this time I wasn't drunk or high or full of anxiety and depression. Please help support me get the book made - so you can read Chap 1 which is either a hilarious look into my own patterns OR that little hotel is a place where the universal magnet works hard and true and perhaps just maybe - I should always listen when that hotel beckons - knowing - radical change seems to occur in life- naked and poetic. Maybe it is just me or maybe it is the Mosser hotel - I can't really say for sure - but if you are ever in San Francisco - maybe check it out - see if the vortex works for you too.
Ladies and Gentlemen - a window into some of my deepest sadness and darkest most lost times - the time when I was the pied piper of San Francisco's street people .......
"San Francisco Savagery" (occurred on September 3, 2007)
DAY 1:
So I get
off the plane in Oakland and hop a cab to San Francisco. I get stuck on the Bay
Bridge at sunset. If you’ve never been stuck on the Bay Bridge at sunset, you
probably don’t believe in god.
I don’t care where the fuck you’ve been at what
time there is nothing like the sun slowly kissing the San Francisco skyline
before it goes to sleep in the pacific.
It’s a prominent affair, which is grand
and phenomenal but at the same time effortless and private. Watching this from
the bridge is like kissing a lover for the first time, like sharing an inside
joke that just you and her eternally understand.
I arrive at the Mosser a
recently rehabbed bio-friendly boutique hotel that 40 years ago looked like a
place Bukowski may have haunted for a few dollars a week.
My room is the size
of a closet-the Hudson in NYC has larger rooms-but this one had a window that
opens up to the roof of the building over so I walked onto it to smoke a
cigarette and breathe in the view.
This is rarified air.
This
isn’t Chicago air,
this
isn’t NYC air,
this is
NOT helL.A. air.
It’s
unique, different, yet I am too new to place it-to verbalize the magic.
Shower.
Change.
My born
bruddah David-Ezra rolls over with a bottle of goose.
Pop a
couple of Norcos.
Politik
on the goose with DE.
Hit the
car, drive to the Mission district to a spot called Delirium where I sit down
in a smoky back room full of people going dumb and whackin lines. I’m blacked
and I head to the bar.
They have
Pabst on fucking tap.
There’s a blonde next to me and I have no idea what I
said but I end up sucking face.
I get
bored and go outside.
I have no
idea what’s going on.
Bar time
creeps up and a street full of kids on skateboards descend upon the mission. I
cop a ball of chalk off some skater warrior I’m spittin' nonsense to and start
wandering. I run into a bunch of
homeless addicts.
They ask
me for a dollar.
I give
them a bump.
All of a
sudden I’m the pied fucking piper of San Francisco street people.
The only
way to really get to know a city is to know its street people.
Who better to
know the heartbeat of a city than those who sit and watch it…..everyday….all
day…..which way people walk….which wear what, who makes eye contact with who.
Some homeless cat rolls up to me who I ended up nicknaming “Riverside”- because
he was from my neighborhood back home and went to the local high school- maybe
with my father in the day.
This cat had a suit on and a fresh haircut and shave
and I rap with him about Locust St. on the Eastside. Addicts are crawling out
of the gutters to see what white kid is rapping away about the dangers of
drugs, of the pain that they cause as he is handing out p-funk bumps – keep the
cigarette- thank you very much.
So I pipe my way over to the 711 and announce
I’m buying drinks and cigarettes for everyone.
The 711 is swarming infestation of bums. 7 packs
of smokes and a bunch of drinks later I’m signing my debit card to the most
bewildered Indian clerk ever (Patel). I find it hard to believe that nobody
ever treated a bunch of wacked out bums to chips and stoges and shit….this is
after all, the BAY.
I hand Riverside the remains of a 20 bag and he trades his
drink for a point, and mainlines that shit under the phone booth at the 7 spot.
I watch him carelessly jam a needle in a vein in his arm and inject. I tell him
he is disrespecting our hood and his people.
I tell him to look at himself in a
mirror to see what a cool-cool cat he could be.
He looks up at me and grins as
wipes the blood from his arm and says that God sent me to get him high.
I laugh
and tell him that I sent myself to tell him that he was better than his
situation.
He asked for a $10 for some H so he could get a speedball in him and
I gave him a $20 but told him that this $20 would be his last.
I bet ya
old Riverside died that night, in his suit, with his fresh shave and hair
combed proper.
I know
it.
I felt
the money I was giving him was his death, and I warned him, but he didn’t care.
Maybe I did him a fucking favor, because life hurts.
With
Riverside gone I walk. I see some serious old timers sitting on lawn furniture
on the pavement at 330 in the morning in the Mission. I stopped and offered my
peace for a piece of history of the Frisco street junkie.
Old
Hank had been around, man…….he had been arrrround….he may never have left this
one corner of the universe during his entire life,
but he
had been around…..he was pushing mid-sixties and he’d been nothing but an H
junkie for 40 years. I offered a blast and asked what he was doing 40 years ago
during the Summer of Love….he replied hanging on Haight watching white kids
twisted on Owsley Stanley’s acid while he hustled for H. I asked him about the
A’s in the 70’s and Sal Bando and he smiles and says Sal Bando was a helluva
ball player.
Love the
mustaches.
Love the
green and yellows.
Love the
70’s A’s.
He warns
me to be careful so as to not get jacked but I tell him whose going to jack me?
Money is just money and if they stick a gun in my face and take it, well,
apparently moneys as easy to get as sticking a gun in someone else’s face. Hank
goes up to his room to shoot up. I say peace and hail a cab.
I
hit some all nite diner and meet two Hispanic broads, both about 21 and cute
but possibly prostitutes. I slide into their booth and buy them breakfast. And
ask which one deep throats better. Maria, the cuter one does. (yay!). I stare
at the Denver omelette I ordered and poke it with my fork.
This
omelette isn’t getting eaten.
I
take Maria up to my hotel room. She puts a hat on Jimmy and starts blowing me. She can DEEPTHROAT. She furiously bobs up and down but I’m not cumming. Not
tonight, not at this point….not coked up at 530 am with a dome on. She gags on
my cock awhile longer but my thoughts turn to my ex. She won’t let me fuck so I
buy a pay per view porno (filthy porn sluts 7) and jerk off on her while she
gets on all fours and fingers her ass and plays with her pussy.
I bust.
She
leaves.
And I go
to bed mind twisted with the absolute savagery of this new drug I call the BAY.
SAN FRANCISCO SAVAGERY Day 2:
I awake
head fuzzy to the sun insidiously passing through my window. The events of
previous night are still buzzing in my brain and something else too……something
new, and old.
Get up.
Get out.
Get up.
Get out.
Get up
Get up Get up
Get out
Get out Get out.
I don’t
want to though, a depression gripped me overnight.
I no
longer wanted to venture out alone, in a city that to me, was synonymous with
love, a love that had recently left me.
Instinct,
circulatory adrenaline won as I stepped into pants and ate two yellow
painkillers to cure the hangover and gear up to go.
Where’s
my bank card? Did Maria jack it? One of the bums? Did I leave it at the diner?
Call B of
A.
Charges?
$5.50 at
a gas station and $7.37 at Denny’s.
You’re
welcome. Whoever the fuck you are, I would have gladly bought you the Grand
Slam had you asked.
I cancel
the card and hit the pavement.
Fuck…..it’s
gorgeous.
Fuck…...it’s
celestial.
Fucccck……..it’s
depressssiing.
Life just
seems brighter here, everything-even if it is in the shade – is illuminated.
It’s as if the on this one small piece of earth, the lights just work better.
Fuck.
I walk
nowhere which takes me to the Wharf. Tourists.
Farmers
Market. Tourists.
Up Market
St to City Hall. The landscape is rougher, older, seedier, but the universal
lights work better here too. A woman sits on the lap of a legless homeless man
in a wheelchair and cocks her head back and
laughs.
Even the bums laugh and revel in this light….I am jealous of this legless
homeless person.
I want
his happiness.
Nob Hill.
Rich people.
Tenderloin.
Poor people.
Muni to
Castro. Gay people.
Hoof it
to Haight. Street kids and wannabe hipsters.
None of
this bothers me. Inhabitants of distinct neighborhoods conform to unspoken
stylistic parameters set….yet, still….something different here.
Painkillers
are a funny drug.
The
yellow guys in my stomach give me a sunny disposition to match the sunny day,
but there are strange vibes on this sunny late summer day in the BAY.
Depression and happiness intermingle in my head. I walk up lower Haight and
stop in a dive for a pint. The jukebox saturates the place in the soothing
I-rations of dub.
Do I
choose sadness or happiness?
I still
don’t know.
The grip
of a lover lost is tight, and although she is long gone, she holds strong,
because I didn’t convince myself to love her, it simply was. Whereas in the
past I loved a girlfriends looks, the sex, social standing, intellect, or
wealth, with her it was Complicatedly Simple Love. She could have been dumb and
paralyzed with chronic halitosis and looked like Godzilla, and I still would
have loved her if her Soul was intact. The pain I am feeling is magnified by the how lost I was in my own life. The domination - the winning - the money - the cars - the women - none of it could mask the emptiness I felt inside and although I smiled at my success, it was blackness that filled me.
Black
Uhuru dubs along.
I think
of this, of these things…of her-I can’t help it.
I sip my
pint of Stella.
The
beauty of this neighborhood fucking hurts.
I leave
the dive, struggling to break from the musical chords of the place, but I must
do this.
The last
time I walked these streets I was in love.
The last
time I walked these streets I had my lover walking with me.
The last time I walked these streets I was excited at life and all it's possibilities.
The last
time I walked these streets my Soul smiled, emanating Love and Happiness.
Today I
walk these beautifully imperfect cracked concrete streets alone.
And it
fucking hurts.
Smiles on
every face I see….I try to muster a Soul Smile, but I can’t.
I stop in
a corner store and buy a 22 of Heine and drop another painkiller in the beer.
5000 mgs
of hydrocodone aren’t working.
I still
feel pain.
What a
blatant misnomer.
I brown
bag my 22 and cruise down Haight. What I need is a painkiller for the Soul so I
hoof it to Amoeba, my personal Mecca. I check my beer at the door and copp some
ridic roots muzak: Cornell Campbell, Eek-a-Mouse, Barrington Levy, Mikey
Prophet – among others, and momentarily forget the burden of scorned love.
I leave.
Some
streetkat asks if I wanna buy some sheet music. I don’t play anymore I tell him
but buy it anyways. My heart may sing again….you never fucking know.
I walk
back to the Muni with a heavy heart. I think I may just go to bed. Wake up
tomorrow and leave this beautiful hell never to return, Soul infinitely
tortured by the knowledge of a place so beautiful.
I pass a
bum on the street looking for a handout.
This time
I stop and take a long look at his poor sad face and asked him if he knows
where I could find God.
He smiles
a toothless smile and says he goes to church every Sunday.
I sort of
grunted and said no and asked if he had ever shook God’s hand….before he could
answer I palmed him 5 bucks and walked on…yelling as I passed that if he found
God to tell him I was looking for him.
Pfizer
doesn’t yet manufacture painkillers for the Soul, although I am confident that
they are trying. And honestly, chicken soup just doesn’t fucking cut it.
I’m going
back for a nap, and I hope that this all turns out to be a beautiful nightmare.
My phone buzzes and its DE ready to do the town.
My Soul,
my Soul, is at the pinnacle of its agitation.
I don’t
know if I can do this.
I stop at
a liquor store near my hotel and grab a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and some mini
bottles of Powers Irish Whiskey.
I don’t
know if I can do this.
I just
don’t know.
I don’t
know much of anything anymore- a great tragic tumble from the Arenthian height
of knowing it all.
To look into someone’s eyes and have the comforting feeling
of a secure future teleported into your Soul, and then you wake up one day, and
that persons eyes are closed…….you feel lost…..
I am
nothing now.
Although
I walk and breathe and talk and laugh my Soul bleeds internally for a girl that
doesn’t care. But I care, still I care - and I don’t know why or how to stop.
I’ve searched my body over but can’t find the switch to flip caring off. (Maybe
it’s somewhere I can’t reach?).
I trudged
up the stairs of my little Bukowski boutique hotel, each ancient step creeks in
sadness, they too feel my anguish.
What the
fuck am I doing in this city?
I turn on
the shower, undress and sit on the corner of my bed naked.
I look at
my hands, hands that have been with me through everything.
These
hands have hurled in anger and embraced in love, and languidly idled by my side
in apathy.
I look at
my hands and do not see dirt. But like the trunk of a tree I can trace the
rings of my life: love happiness depression apathy joy sadness all in the lines
of my palms.
I get in
the shower and the water is scalding.
It feels
good.
I put one
hand in front of me and lean into the steaming hot water with my head down.
Baptize
me.
Cleanse me.
Forgive
me.
I shampoo
and scrub and although the water is too hot I do not back away.
I want
Redemption, and the burning water is not as hot as the burning pain that reverberates
my Soul.
