Lost and Found in San Francisco
Description
November 2009: I wouldn’t say I went to San Francisco to have my first lesbian experience, but I was open to the possibility.
The bus ride from Vancouver was 30 hours. Back then, I could handle sitting up for that long—took a perverse kind of pride in it, even. I wrote poetry in my tiny notebook and watched as the landscape shifted. Eventually, I got curious about the guy in a basketball jersey sitting next to me.
Paolo was a soft-spoken man who was heading back to Oakland after visiting his kid and his ex in Vancouver. It was hard to live so far away from them, he told me, but he was determined to stay in their lives.
When the bus stopped in Sacramento for a couple of hours, Paolo and I went out in search of lunch but came back empty-handed; it was Thanksgiving weekend, and the city was a ghost town. We picked oranges from a tree on the grounds of the California legislature and ate them on a park bench.
Paolo shook his thick, dark hair out of a tight French braid that fell to his waist and ran his hands along his scalp. I rebraided it for him before we got back on the bus, muscle memory from my years as a Scottish dancer guiding my fingers over and under, gathering his hair into even bunches, holding the right amount of tension for braid to sit flat against his scalp.
When we said goodbye at the San Francisco bus depot, he gave me his number, saying he’d love to show me around his hometown. Paolo: I should’ve called you.
It was verging on evening by then, and the rain was pouring down in frigid sheets. I hoisted my pack onto my back and started walking to the Mission. In my notebook I had the address of a hotel that advertised an incredible deal on their website: $22 a night! But when I arrived, my wool coat soaked through, the front desk clerk told me that was the rate for sharing a room with three other people, and I had to supply those people myself. Not knowing what else to do, I paid $100 for a room of my own and made my way up the stairs.
The room was small, and its window looked out on a column of windows to other rooms. I’d never seen that before, a window that looked not out, but into, another part of the building. I fell asleep easily, relieved to be horizontal at last.
When morning came, it was time to find somewhere else to stay—another couple of nights at this hotel would wipe me right out. My upbringing had drilled into me the virtue of frugality, and so I had only brought what I’d needed for the (unfortunately imaginary) $22-a-night room, plus enough of a food budget to keep from starving. Having blown $100 of that on my first night was not great. Walked around the neighbourhood, willing my soggy coat to dry, I found a brightly painted hostel nearby. Its dorms were $25 per night and I moved in right away.
I headed to the grocery store next, full of dread, wondering how I could stretch what I had left. But America, the nation of innovation, came to my rescue: I found peanut butter and jelly, swirled together, in one very cheap jar. I bought that with a loaf of bread, and mentally prepared myself to eat my least favourite sandwich for every meal. Eventually I discovered a newly opened Cuban restaurant down the street with a $6 plate of beans and rice, so I went there when I felt like splurging.
One of the glorious features of my new hostel was a complimentary continental breakfast—how fancy that sounded! I soon discovered that this meant a cup of coffee or tea and one pastry, which was closely surveilled by a front desk clerk who would’ve made an excellent prison guard. As the days wore on, however, I gained her trust, and developed ways to conceal an extra muffin or three as I darted back up the stairs to the dorms.
Breakfast is where I met Freddie Mercury. This young man was relocating to San Francisco from Las Vegas, where he’d worked as an impersonator. But this man was no ordinary impersonator: he lived as Freddie 24/7. He had the pencil moustache, the unplaceable accent, and the flamboyant sense of style. If I ever knew his real name, it’s long since faded from my memory, because everyone at the hostel called him Freddie.
We met while trying to explain butch and femme to a sweet but clueless straight man. He’d guessed that I, in my button-up collared shirt, conductor’s cap and bare face, was femme, and Freddie and I shared a grin that cemented our bond.
One day, Freddie announced at breakfast that he was going out to look for work, and I joined him. We walked along the streets of the Mission, Freddie flouncing into every store with a bohemian vibe. When we got hungry, he treated me to sushi. He helped me try and figure out where to cash the traveler’s cheque that my mother had insisted was the safest way for me to travel with money. After several bank tellers looked at me as if I were a confused medieval peasant, Freddie’s firm charm got the job done.
The hostel had an eclectic cast of characters—there was the freckled guy in baggy clothes who was looking for a fresh start after a stint in a Florida jail; there were the two men from France who, bored of American, were napping away the days until their flight back home. There was a sweet, shy guy from Peru who smoked me up on the roof of the hostel, a roof which transformed into a wall-shaking night club right about when one might want to go to sleep (perhaps explaining the hostel’s cheap prices.)
When the Peruvian guy left for home, along with a bag of weed, he gave me two white crystals and a stone frog pendant. When Freddie saw them, he whipped a chain, some wire and a pair of needle-nosed pliers out of his gigantic faux snakeskin purse and fashioned me a necklace on the spot. Freddie, baby, if you’re out there: call me. I owe you one.
One of my first days in San Francisco, I saw a poster for a protest against climate change. It was happening outside of a bank downtown, and I showed up for it. I’d never protested in a foreign country before and didn’t want to get deported or banned, so I asked the group’s legal liaison whether it was safe for me to participate in blocking the ban
United States
