What Would Bukowski Do?

Who can sleep the night before a journey? Woke at three-thirty, four-thirty.  Surprisingly, I had packed everything the night before.  I left everything I would usually take behind.  I brought only my digital camera. Everything fit into one bag. Travel light.

Cat didn't like my leaving.  She knows what packing means.  Cab came before six and I was ready.

Checked in at the airport and got better seats than the ones I had booked only the night before. Everything was easy. Everything was fine.

Got to San Francisco, picked up my rental car, a Ford Taurus, that looked like a rocket ship inside.  Sixty-two degrees, driving past the old Candlestick Park, sky a robin's egg blue.  101 North.  I forgot which exit I should take into town and got off 285 somewhere.  Found Third Street and drove past the S.F.MoMA.  "Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde." It is the Stein collection.  Things looked groovy.

With a bit of difficulty, I found the S.F. Hilton where a room awaited me.  I took a sudden turn into their parking garage and was befuddled.  It was the narrowest, most ominous place I'd ever seen.  Cars were parked between the big pillars, but I couldn't imagine how they got there.  I tried to pull in between two cars and couldn't.  Backing out, I came inches from swiping one of the big posts.  Blessed, I thought.  That would have been terrible.  Just then, the car came to a crashing halt.  I had backed into another pillar behind me.  Jesus Christ, I thought, maybe it is just a scratch.

I drove on, up and up, until I found a place I could squeeze the behemoth into.  Quickly I jumped out to look at the damage.  I couldn't believe it.  The entire bumper had exploded.  It was split in two.  It didn't just look bad. Sick to my stomach, I kept hearing the car rental clerk asking me if I wanted the additional coverage, my voice giving the snarky "no."  I harbored the false belief that my American Express account covered accidents as long as I used the card.  Once in my room, I called them.  I was mistaken.

Suddenly, the trip was wrong.  Everything was expensive.  I thought of the medical bills and dental bills that I was facing.  Now this.  What will this cost me, I wonder?

I tried to shake the gloom, put on my shoes and went out into the streets.  But my head was clouded.  The day was gorgeous, the crowd beautiful.  I was not.  I looked at myself, or rather the reflection of the self that other people see, and thought terrible, unflattering things.  Was I the man I used to be?

On Monday I will be in Yosemite National Park.  I will make the hikes I've made for years, but I am afraid.  I was strong and fit and looked the part.  This thing reflecting back to me was not that man.  He was the sort who clumsily backs into pillars in parking garages, a sad sack of misfortune.  I didn't have that paunch last time I came.  I looked at the beautiful people surrounding me.  They were happy, gorgeous, carefree.  I was the sort of man who pays $44/day for parking at a Hilton for God's sake.  When did this happen to me.  Afraid, yes, that I will not feel strong in the mountains, will not run up the rock like a young god but limp along on bad knees, hips aching, belching and farting and crying Uncle.

"Let it go," I told myself.  "You are dying before you are dead."  Easy words I've learned along the way.  But try it sometime.

I went into the five floors of art galleries on Geary, wandering half-heartedly.  Preliminary, I told myself. I would come back on Saturday.  And really--here there was a Bellocq photo printed by Lee Friedlander.  There were two Diane Arbus images I'd never seen.  Another four rooms filled with Irving Penn prints, many of them from the "Small Trades" series.  I walked into galleries exhibiting contemporary artists.  Here there were giant photographs of a woman with white wings framed in rusty cages sitting on top of old books, all resined into one.  Interesting rather than great, but nice to view.  A man and a woman I'd seen in another gallery are there.  The young woman smiles at me demurely.  She turns her head so that I may look at her, turns back and smiles again.  I look for her boyfriend/husband/father.  The woman at the desk who I take to be the gallery director engages me.  Do I know the artist's work?  No, I say, and so she goes on to tell me about her.  She wants to sell the pieces, of course.  This is not a museum.  But I begin to think, perhaps spurred on by the smile of the pretty woman, of asking how I might show her my work.  I am crazy, of course.  Still, what I see does not intimidate me.  I am bolder now, but not bold enough to say it.  I thank her and tell her I will come back.

I must shake the gloom, I say.  I had not brought my camera.  I think of the packing mistakes I have made. I've left too many things out.  I wish I had a small film camera, one of the Leicas.  It would not have been too much trouble, I think.  I had thought to buy some clothes while I was here, but after crashing the car, all I can think about is money.

I walk up Grant Avenue, through the gates of China Town, through the schlock and slow tourists and slower Chinese, up the hill then down to North Beach cutting through Jack Kerouac Lane past the Vesuvio saloon.  I go into City Lights Books for a moment remembering the first time I stood here in wonderment after college.  My mind is foggy, though, and I cannot concentrate.  Back into the street to stand and gaze.  The Condor Cub: Topless A-Go-Go.  I walk up the street past the Bohemia Hotel where years ago I stayed in the room Ginsburg often wrote in.  I am tired, hungry.  Eating alone like this is such a bore.  I pass The Stinking Rose: We Serve Food with Our Garlic reads the garish sign.  It is early, but inside couples eat at romantic street side tables.  I've eaten here before.  It is plain and good fare for a restaurant that mainly serves tourists.  I go in and am seated at a table for one--literally.  It has only one chair.  But it sits looking out at the street and is lovely.  I watch people parade by.  Only bums, madmen and madwomen, walk by alone.  All the happy people are in couples or with families.  A family is seated across from me, a father, mother, and daughter.  I am fascinated.  The father is a bit younger than I, the mother looking older than he, but perhaps that is ideological.  They are "earthy," she avoiding fashionable clothing and makeup and hair products.  The daughter is twelve or thirteen.  She has a prominent Italian nose, sandy hair.  I watch her.  Everything she does is authentic and wonderful.  I watch her with her mom and dad.  It makes me smile.  If I turn my head, I must look up the skirt of a heavyset woman seated two steps above me.  She is fifty, wears a low cut blouse to show her ample breasts, wears makeup and high heels.  She is with a younger man who seems fascinated.  I don't want to look up at those pale thighs again, so I stare straight ahead at the family.  Chicken, garlic potatoes, a salad, the house wine.  I begin to feel better.  More wine, then, having eaten everything, I order Sambuca.  It is not late.  I will walk 'til dark perhaps, ramble through streets and shops.  I'll look at the old hipsters in North Beach and grow sad, wander back toward Union Square and watch the pretty people.  I'll buy a bottle of whiskey and sit looking out at the city from the 32nd floor window to which I've been upgraded having told the woman at the check-in counter my tale of woe.  I'll grow tired, my eyes heavy with travel and trouble and drink as the city twinkles outside.