San Francisco Savagery Days 1 and 2

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.