I pull my pocket map out in shame, and try hard not to notice when the waitress at the restaurant in Chinatown only asks for my order after she has finished serving the Chinese two tables down. I got there ten full minutes before they did. I had to give her a heavy stare before she even approached me, dropping silverware brusquely on my table (though the Chinese get chopsticks without question; I want chopsticks, too, but I am afraid asking for them will incite a hate crime).

Getting more comfortable with my temporary status in this city all the time, I don’t even notice the homeless people anymore, easily ignore them on my shopping trips. I’m unphased by their rags, timeworn faces, characteristic bundles of scrap cloth and belongings piled onto shopping carts, the occasional decoration of a cardboard sign. Words etched timelessly in black magic marker.

“Starving, any bit will help.”

“Please spare change. Haven’t eaten in days.”

Do they make a new sign to fit the circumstance, or is it just a hashed out catch-phrase, to play on the heartstrings. Some actually vocalize. Only days ago I allowed myself to be suckered into giving someone money for a ride home on the Bart. She was a woman, so I naturally believed that her circumstances were as she claimed. Only a week later I have the feeling that a small purchase was made in one of the sundry liquor stores that day, for something to warm the throat, and that no such trip on the Bart took place. I feel a bit like a fool, though I am unangered with the woman. Perhaps calming the nerves with alcohol is more comfortable than a daily view into a black hole. Maybe the aid of some “rose-colored glasses” from the five and dime is the only way to sweeten the picture.

Did I say I didn’t notice the homeless anymore, I wonder. I’m not exactly certain, but I think I lied.

The only people friendlier than the store owners in Chinatown (“Oh, yes, all shirt very bootiful, only twenty-two dollah!”) are the pigeons. I think they are all friendly for the exact same reasons. And they’re almost as numerous. The Chinese, I mean. I thought for a minute that when the waitress dropped that silverware on the table, it was much like the time that pigeon in the park missed my head by only a foot with his flying excrement. Maybe she would have liked to throw the spoon at me. To give me the sensation that I had somehow been doused in fecal matter.

Shrill sirens screech down Market Street. It’s a banshee shriek, pitifully wailing into the hardened hearts of the Western culture, a frivolous race of half-human consumers who don’t believe in things like banshees. But Buddha and Magick, on the other hand, do capture their hearts. So much, in fact, that they will dish out any amount of cash for a love-promising amulet, or a passion-inducing box of incense.

I find it ironic that I am thinking this and knowing also that I am no different. Who can actually say they are – any different. Maybe each of us in our own small ways, but we are all fundamentally, tiresomely so –

The same.

Wish I could have told the waitress that. She may have thrown my lemon and coke in my face for being such a holier-than-thou bastard.

But my thoughts betray me as a dark person.

Somewhere far across the country, past the Mississippi river (it is past, isn’t it? Shamefully I would pull out the proper map, if I indeed had it), my love is sitting in our new apartment, probably playing a video game, prolonging what little unpacking he plans to do before I arrive. A bit of an internship opportunity is what pulled us apart – and a little soiree with a stranger (my soiree) somehow brought us together, closer than we have ever been. It’s funny how quickly San Francisco seeped into my blood, long before any formal visit took place. The funnier thing is that my love predicted it, knew instantly of my pseudo-transgression. An e-mail stating something to that purpose awaited me when I got home the next day. He’s always bordered on psychic as far as I am concerned (or anything is for that matter). It’s funny to think how almost half of our relationship has taken place on the Internet. I’d almost believe that the phenomena has somehow made us connected by invisible wires, the Mary and Joseph of a new era, the incredibly tech couple. But I digress. The electricity is all in him; I lie in the spiritual realm, powered entirely by a group of fairies that burn pure magic in a combine to keep me going. But I think we are equally powerful, me in magic and he in biomechanics. Such paradoxes, and how comfortably in love we are. What a miracle.

Ah. The violin is at a pitch. The essence of perfection can catch you quite unexpectedly, bit it will usually catch you with cappuccino in hand, as you sit at some table, inside or outside of one of sundry coffee shops. The real kind, not a Starbucks (he hates Starbucks). A sea of Gap merchandise is all you will find there, plain cotton shirts adorned with human heads that swallow coffee, and hands protruding from the sleeves, holding Styrofoam cups and making the transfer. I’m at the “Cable Car Coffee” shop right now. Work has ended for many folks, and many of those working class heroes have stopped by for a sip of something warm; maybe to fend off the sharp breeze, maybe to fen off the chill that comes from thinking of the remainder of the evening, which they will undoubtedly be spending at home. Perhaps the fellow next to me, with his slicked-back brown hair and pinstripe suit, has a $1500 a month studio apartment, freshly vacuumed last month, a bottle of ketchup in the fridge, and his anorexic girlfriend keeping the floor warm, pacing back and forth anxiously. She paces a lot.

He knows her habits. She’s in one of her moods again, and has noble plans for a suicide, the kind that, for some reason or another, never pan out. So he’s going to wait it out until he thinks she will be asleep (she’s usually out by nine because of the drugs, two 50 mg Zoloft and a Valium for safety’s sake). If he takes the Bart at 8:20 p.m., he’ll have just enough time to walk home, miss the event of her falling asleep, and make it in time for his favorite sitcoms.

That girl could have been me. Thank goodness I’m finally seeking the middle path, and not sitting at the table with that guy.

But life isn’t so dark for everyone here – I’m sure the two old guys next to the cherry red cable car are having more fun playing chess than all of those people shopping at the Gap two streets down. Their concentrated stare at the board sends shivers down my spine; it could be the wind, but I think it’s because I am, for the first time in my life, looking forward to old age. Mom always told me to choose to spend my life with someone I could picture myself eating Jell-o with when I turned eighty. Funny, I read the same thing in a book not a month ago, right after my boy and I made up for the last time. I can see us at that chessboard someday, throwing empty insults at each other and laughing. The wish to be as old as these guys is comprised of a deeper wish, a wish to possess that sagely wisdom and patience that make all decisions precious; especially that decision pertaining to moving the Knight in that perfect position, the one that leads to intellectual and spiritual victory – Checkmate.

My mate. I’m not sure that he knows how I really feel about the whole thing. I think I led him to believe that my soiree with the Norwegian fellow was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life. It was indeed monumentous, and pleasant; I made the mistake of telling him so. Randall, my dear – you do not know how dearly I love you. It took a hard journey and a few misplaced searches for even me to realize it.

My hands are getting too cold to write, so I go inside the station. I’m afraid to stop writing lest I lose the fervor, but my hand is shivering too badly. Quickly I find the true source of the rose petals caressing my ears; the violinist is inside the station. A Latino guy – his eyes are half closed as he plays. It is shocking to me to see someone so comfortable with making love (to his instrument) in a public place. My vivid imagination likens him, without sexual connotation, to a courtesan, working for mere pennies. It is an amount that is insanely incomparable to the amount his musical kisses truly deserve. Still, I do my best to bestow some change on him for the gift, leaving a noble note as well, folded within the weathered dollar bill. It expresses my gratitude for his music. I hope he reads it later and realizes the magic he possesses. If he doesn’t already know.

Makes me think of this story. Another underhanded attempt to let him know how much I love him. Randall, not the violinist. So underhanded, in fact, that I didn’t realize what was unfolding until it was half written.

As I sit on the train, the lights of the tunnel whir past me, the birthing swish of the tube the vehicle travels through accompanying my thoughts. The violin music itself makes me think of Randall, so complex, so beautifully intricate that the commoner might not truly appreciate it, his, greatness. Yet they respect it, nonetheless, for its greatness. For his greatness. He possesses the general aesthetic rules of art that all great works own. It’s this innate beauty that drew me to him. He is what he eternally seeks in his companions.

It is always important to be true to yourself.

And that’s, fortunately or unfortunately, what happened when I decided to spend the evening with the Norwegian guy, Fren. I was being true to my heart. It happened before Randall’s heart so miraculously opened before me, like the watery gates of Atlantis as it rises from the deep. It happened precisely three days before.

Somehow I thought I needed this. I traveled afterward, miles of walking and reading in succession, meeting and talking to other strangers, before I realized that a spontaneous romance without consequence was not truly what I sought.

The conclusion is cliché, but the cliché is so eternally true. I wanted love. A love deep and trustworthy, a love with an essence much like the baritone voice of the train driver, announcing the destination at regular intervals, guiding the way, carrying a view of the world in his trail. At this moment my love affair with Randall is exactly where it needs to be. My doubts are few, and lie mostly within myself.

It’s amazing how conveniently I ignored my own problems while focusing solely on his. And now he is finally blameless and I stand, as it were, squarely before the golden statue of Buddha, naked and alone, my spiritual eye forced inward. It’s a cold dark place at times, and only creeping forward allows the warmth to creep in.

I exit the train, now in Colma, to make the 20-minute trek home. Taking odd pictures is my way to pass the time, to try to ignore my freezing ears; they’re giving me a headache. Two blocks from home, two Hindu girls on bicycles bid me, “Good day.” Actually, it is the older one who speaks. Her voice is crisp and sweet, like fresh-cut cantaloupe. I bid her the same, and think that the spirit is warmer the further from the city I get.

I’m home because I have run out of money. The cat greets me on the stair, his tail slithering behind his massive body as if it were an entity of its own. I think my roommates (to be wed in two weeks) are still having the same argument that they were having at four in the morning. The only difference between now and then is that they were screaming and slamming doors at four in the morning – now they are in two different rooms, silent as a park ambulances. But I know emergency is due to find crisis point again, and again the sirens will wail, all the way to Market Street, until they tire themselves out with the journey, realizing at the end of it that no one was going to die in the first place – and fifteen wasted dollars is nothing to make a precious day of life miserable over. Well, they won’t realize that last part. But I can see it, plain as day, and hope that I will one day learn to choose my own battles more carefully, as I prescribe. Instead of taking the wise old woman playing chess route, I often take the same screeching ambulance approach that these two take – and knowing this makes me feel like the greater fool.

No, that evening with Fren was not a mistake, though it pains me to think the pain Randall feels holding the knowledge of the encounter in his breast; what’s worse, he’s a good enough man to hold no bitterness over it.

Ouch.

Buddha stares back at me and doesn’t have to tell me that it would do me good to show such a patient streak as my now two year lover. Instead I have often responded to minor issues with a jealous streak, a streak I often hide well from everyone but myself. And though I hide it from him, he knows it exists… and he duly reminds me of his knowledge from time to time. He’s quite innocent of his innate skill for putting me on guilt trips. He knows it exists, as well, but has no clue of its natural potency. It makes me want to be a better woman.

Lounging in the Lazyboy in the living room (as he is often wont to do), I wonder where all of this is heading. The city, the job, the strange evening that tore things apart and put things into place. It has a thread throughout it, a blue-green ribbon bridging every distance, like the delicately-tied decoration on the fair, pale neck of a maiden whose life is alien to the life of the city. This common thread is Randall. He is with me in all of it, patiently biding his time for my journey home, waiting with open arms, to love and live life with me – waiting for a new day where we can forgive each other our transgressions (an ability to trust on his part, a lack of faith on mine). Wishing I were outside of a coffee shop with a cappuccino and pen in hand…

Is like wishing he were here.

Now I know the most important thing about my life with my true love – it is like being at home inside myself wherever I go. To know that another human being will live forever in my every action, in a sort of idol worship, and for me to not have to change anything about who I am or how I see the world, is truly an amazing thing.

I forgave the waitress before she finally smiled at me – she smiled because she had forgiven my white skin. I forgave the girl at the pin-striped guy’s house for doing stupid things like taking pills and trying to commit suicide, because I began to understand that we sometimes go down such roads to get to the truth. Randall loved me in those moments of forgiveness. Forgiveness is who I am, being able to brush aside the past in preparation for the future. It’s all so strange how our wires are always connected.

And it is only now that I realize fully that I was writing this down all for him. It’s the same as if I were writing it for myself.

California’s always had a way of making me feel wise beyond my years. Maybe I’m not such a tourist, after all. There are times when a map is neither appropriate… or available.

Like in my love for Randall. Who can explain it, or say where it will lead? But I’m in it for wherever it takes me. It’s so wonderful to know that he is, as well.