see also: last chance to dance trance

I know I haven't gone to San Francisco in a while, but has it really been since July 2006? I guess it might be. The last couple of train trips I remember were probably just to the airport.

On this one, I got to the station a few minutes before the 3:14¹ deadline. The kids whose mom didn't know how to operate the ticket machine were thrilled to find Susan Bananthony dollars in the change, which made me laugh, even though "kids say the darnedest things" is a tired old cliche of a joke when it appears in The Family Circus. Meanwhile, on the bench next to me, Curly Haired College Girl and Very Enthusiastic Asian Man are laughing and talking more loudly than people sitting two feet apart need to do—they are not secure with each other, maybe they just met.

The train arrives and it is more full than usual. College Girl and Enthusiastic Asian Man take seats together two rows behind me, which leaves me well within range of her voice, but not his, since his is at a pitch that is too easily absorbed into the train noise. This doesn't matter much, since College Girl is doing well over 90% of the talking. She is telling him that she just came to the US from some place in Europe, and about how learning English was difficult and so on. Not that anybody asked me, but I am finding this very far fetched since she is speaking perfectly accent-free idiomatic English. There are quite a lot of non-native speakers at my work, but I do not know a single example of one that immigrated here later than about the age of 10 that has accomplished this.

After a brief pause and a new direction in the monologue, I gather that Enthusiastic Asian Man has just told her that he is from Hong Kong. This girl is really quite boring. Or am I only able to see that because it's not me that she's lecturing? After a second such pause, it seems he has just asked Curly Haired Allegedly Euro-Girl for her phone number, because she launches into a story about how she learned her lesson the last time she gave her phone number to somebody she met on the train. You have seventy-four minutes to change her mind, buddy. This phone-number-giving story is short on specifics and I am not buying a word of it either. I wonder if she is playing an extroverted version of the same game as me. Whereas I watch strangers quietly and make unfair judgments and assign them all kinds of motives and insecurities that they probably don't have, she strikes up conversations with strangers to see what she can make them believe.

Allegedly Euro-Girl gets off the train at Belmont. Sorry Hong Kong Man, you didn't have seventy-four minutes after all. Once she is on the platform, she looks back up at the train, but not at VEHKM, directly at me. She holds it for several long seconds and there is no trace of the previous phony smile or distracted eye-rolling aversion; instead she looks sullen and vulnerable. Was I right about her game, and was she onto me, somehow? Now she is interesting, and she is also gone, because the train has moved on.

VEHKM has moved on as well. He has somehow inserted himself into the group of intensely stupid high school girls that occupy the back of the car and have been creating the unholy din all this time. This I know because their shouted "conversation" has also turned to trenchant observations of Hong Kong. So he either thinks everybody is interesting (I did say he was enthusiastic) or he has a different agenda. Their whole party piles into the doorway two stops too early, because they don't know where they're going, and I can now see that they are wearing costumes that the Halloween store must have listed as Naughty Cheerleader, Naughty Nefertiti, and Naughty Blond Sailor-Mouthed Painted-Face Fruitbat.² On the other hand, I have seen similar getups plenty of other times that can't be blamed on Halloween, so maybe that's not what this is about. If you don't learn about a new deviant exhibitionist lifestyle on a trip to San Francisco, then you weren't paying attention.

There is a third possibility, which is that the costumes I am seeing everywhere on the street are for the thing called San Franciso Love Fest. Which is why I am here too, although you wouldn't know it from my not very naughty costume.

Specifically, I am going to the Civic Center After Party. I wanted to go to either the Chemical Brothers on Friday or Crystal Method on Saturday, but Nancy and her roommate did not get off work early enough for either of those. So it goes. The After Party is a full on rave, and it is deafening. I know as soon as I have passed through the door that forgetting earplugs was a big mistake. Thankfully I managed to come out the next day without ears ringing or noticeable hearing loss, mostly because I have mastered a dance that involves keeping a finger in one ear at all times. You can switch hands as you turn around and change which ear faces the noise, it works out. Who's going to look at me anyway, when there are naughty schoolgirls aplenty? Soon, lots of people around me were doing it too, because the noise really was over the pain threshold, and not just for delicate daisies like me. So if you see this new trend next year in Ibiza and Brighton, remember that it all started right here.

No, I did not take any drugs. Yes, that is probably what I would say if I did. But I was the designated driver, and we did get home without incident. It was all very overstimulating nonetheless.

° ° °

I am disappointed that Audrey did not answer my message inviting her to kickball today. Will she ever be mentioned on this famous blog again? I wish I knew.

¹ The Pi Train?

² In case you didn't get the memo, Halloween is now about dressing up slutty, not scary. This was clearly in evidence at last year's Google Halloween.

02 Oct 2007 01:59 PT - persistent link - trackback - 2 comments