In Which a Trip to the Bay Area is Documented

8:00pm Thursday: I'm flying over the expanse of space that separates North Carolina from Minnesota. Then we will sit in an airport in Minnesota for some hours, probably drink more, and get on our flight to the Bay, where at what we know as 3:00 am we will find ourselves in a place where it is midnight and nobody knows why we're so tired. We got on this plane from a place that is approximately ten miles from Caleb's house. I am now about 250 miles from my dog, from Harvey, from Harriet and Zeke, from Lachlan, and all of 'em. My headphones suck and make everything sound really tinny. I took half of a Clonapin a while ago. Fuzzhead. Woody Guthrie is keeping me company. The clouds at dusk are absolutely stunning. We are still many, many miles from Joey, Simon's brother.

Close to 9:00pm Thursday: I can't wait to feel, really feel like it's time to occupy myself with a wider range of things than I have been. Studying Spanish and Tarot seem like the really important standouts right now. My brain is too vacant for my comfort. Can people get dumber? We are still many miles from Oakland. Earlier today, from Caleb: "Thinking of you. Safe travels." Simple but perhaps indicative that he got the message about the significance of small gestures?

Around 8:00 pm Friday: At a bar in Oakland called The Uptown where the music is fucking fantastic and the people are friendly and Simon is currently telling Joey, finally, about all the dirty details of what's been going on with us as a couple and him as an artist. The connection that those two share is so fucking sweet I could just explode. I imagine them spooning in bed as little boys and things being much the same. At least significantly so. And damn, Catpower just came on.

Today we took the BART from Joey's incredibly ratty, enormous communal punk house in Oakland and walked through the Mission, Castro, and Haight-Ashbury to Golden Gate Park, pausing once to talk to a really nice fella named Sean who offered us a cup of coffee and got offered a place to stay in WNC in return, and then again to actually have coffee on Haight and talk to a friendly Columbian heir named Luis. We went to the De Young and took lots of photos for artistic inspiration, especially in the African, Polynesian, and Mayan exhibits. I expect to be painting lots of mask faces when we get home, and I may collaborate with Simon on some designs for prints or stencils.

Now we are headed to a gallery crawl in West Oakland. I am relieved to have some time to think only distantly about all these men and all this simmering drama back home.

Around 1:30 pm Sunday: At a great little cafe in Oakland called Farley's. Apparently, I spoke too soon about the drama being at home. I was made aware yesterday that it had actually come to the other side of the country with me. Ugh. Simon was having a day of intense crazy, and he visited it upon me and his entire family, whom we had met in downtown SF for some tourist action. As I was trying to warn his mother about what sort of a state he was in, all I could think of to describe his behavior were combinations of adjectives connoting extreme psychological disturbance and nouns like "child" and "retard." She understood--after all, she raised him--and recommended that I put more pressure on him to take drugs for his problems. I am ambivalent, of course, but I am coming around to the realization that 1.) He had better do something fast if he doesn't want everything he's fought to create in his life to come crumbling around him, and 2.) He's in such a vaccuum of self-involved projection of his issues on everyone else that he can't even be trusted to make the right decisions on his own. I mean, he almost got in a fight with a fucking picketer yesterday after he knocked the sign out of the dude's hand.

I am trying to get over the trauma of yesterday's scene, but it's going to take a while to allow my judgments of his little display of emotional retardation to pass. I can't stand for him to even touch me right now. This incident has tainted everything with doubt.

On a related note, yesterday I was able to demystify something about why Lachlan seems so appealing to me right now: while he is in touch with himself far beyond what most men can manage, he is also fucking tough in a way that most men around me aren't. He is basically psychologically healthy, he is not on the verge of falling apart anytime soon, and he has a sort of classically masculine sense of separation and energetic distinctness from his surroundings. It would be very, very difficult to get a rise out of him, upset him, or make him angry.

I'm having a moment of compassion for myself for being infatuated with the guy in light of what's stressing me the fuck out about Simon. Lachlan's steadiness is like a foil to all of Simon's recent neediness and emotional instability.

Right now I'm headed to a house party where Simon and Joey will be playing an improvised set together. This house is full of nice hipster kids I am excited to meet...sortof. I'm mostly just excited to go home. My feet and legs ache so badly that I'm having trouble walking, and at least at home I can find somewhere else to sleep if being around Simon is making me feel like I'm going to have an aneurysm.

Later: That party was so much fun! California hipsters are a different breed...