This is almost purely a record. I don't think there is much of interest in it for anyone but myself. This is not an apology, just a warning. (Come to think of it, this post is almost completely an apology/explanation for missing my deadline. Nobody gives a shit except for me.)

I saw Karen today. I haven't done that for years. She's still the same but everything's changed around her. Loft in Dogpatch, BMW 300 series, possible summer home in Greece or Italy. I kept staring at her and she kept going, "What? What?" and I just shook my head and said I can't believe it. The way she piloted her beamer around, the way she stressed over her stocks and her exquisite command of BFR (big fucking router) terminology. To me, it was like seeing the ghost of Christmas Future that never came to be. In '97 I was on that same tack - marriage, house, car, etc. She still smoked like a sailor, with the coffin nail hanging out of the corner of her mouth. She still had miles of attitude. We drank wine and talked and her cat walked on me. We drove down Indiana street and admired the waterfront (including the smokestack, which you can see from her place, pictured below).

I wanted to take her on a walk around North Beach. It was hotter than hell. When you hang out with someone for the first time in 8 years you generally try to be pretty agreeable. I think Karen was being agreeable. First we stopped and that place called Enrico's. I've never been there before -- only looked at the idiots eating there. Not that they were idiots for eating there -- just that they were idiots. And we got a table on the outside where Karen could continue chain smoking. There were 2 tall "attractive" blonds eating at the table next to where we were and I gave Karen the view of them. She said, "Don't you want to sit here?" and I said, "No way." And, as if we needed a demonstration of Newton's Third Law of Motion, (that every force, no matter how lame, has an equal and opposite force) there were 3 drunk guys standing up drinking (like the place was a friggin disco or something) next to our table. So I got to watch for 20 minutes while a guy got up the courage approach the two women. Soon the drama moved into Karen's view and I had only to watch his buddy give hand signals while Karen said things that I'm sure had enough air behind them to zoom right past my ears and into the middle of the pickup scene, "That's disgusting."

The guy was playing the "We're just visitors (aussie accent) and we don't know where to go!" thing and to our astonishment, the women went for it. The women proceeded to design their complete "dream day in SF" itinerary as if they were the guy's administrative assistants and also say offensive, couldn't-be-more-untrue-or-unhelpful things like, "It's Wednesday and it's hot so nobody's going to be out on the streets."

The guy's loud, drunk and possibly homosexual friend came by and figured it was time to get in on the action. He succeeded in impressing the women enough that at one point when he was gone, one of them said to the first guy, "Look, there's a bar around the corner called Tosca, if you ditch that asshole we'll meet you there." And the guy said, "Yeah, we're trying to get rid of him too." Thus they set into motion the comedy which played itself out for the next half an hour.

It's all slapstick and I'm not a slapstick writer so I'll just say that it ended with a restaurant patron putting his cigar out on the chin of the "ditchee" and one of the women doing that "oh god - smack the heel of your palm against your forehead" thing after the guy she'd fallen for had fallen over and knocked all the stuff off the host stand. They realized they had been fools, hailed a cab for them (which screeched up simultaneously as she stepped off the curb and flicked her long, skinny white arm in the air) and strode of down the neon-lit street.

It was 11:40 and I was afeared I'd not make the homestead in time to put in a Wednesday entry. Blogger doesn't let you backdate entries. Well, Karen drives fast but not that fast. We took the 280 back to Karen's place and I got in my stinky, dirty jalopy of a car (I used to be embarrassed that it was too nice) and went home.