my girl

Not to sound chauvinistic, but I was ready to go to San Francisco at 7pm on a Friday night while she was hardly packed. But it really wasn't her fault: she had an unexpected visit from a friend of hers.

A tall, skinny guy named Gibby showed up out of the blue, bemoaning his lot in life: the place he'd been staying had been raided, and although his father had recently passed away and left him a sizable inheritance, he had no means to cash his check. He was also trying to kick a bad glass-smoking addiction.

Gibby looked me over jealously. He didn't know she'd been seeing me. I, in turn, sized him up and down and got a decidedly bad vibe from him. There's an old saying: "You can't con a con man." However, I didn't say anything because I knew it would sound as if I were merely jealous instead of aware of this guy's bullshit.

We finally got on the road close to midnight. I had to call Rose, my friend up north, and tell her that we would probably make it into town by the morning. This gave us time to drive at a leisurely pace, stopping every now and then to eat, use the restroom, and gaze at the night stars as we made our journey to the Bay Area, a part of California that my girl had never been to before.

We arrived around El Cerrito by the sunrise. She and I were so excited to be out of Los Angeles that when Rose gave us a bed to rest, we only slept for two hours.


*/*


Over breakfast, she and I were loopy and delirious. Rose was as accommodating as she could be but I could tell she was sort of put-off by my girl's distracted manner of conversation.

As we waited for my girl to finish up in the restroom, Rose (whom I'd had a short-lived crush on when I first met her the previous August) said to me with a brave face, "She's... nice."

"I know she seems a bit odd," I said, "but I really dig her."

"Have you two... you know... have you--"

"No, not yet. And to be honest, I'm in no hurry."

"Wow, I guess you do dig her then!"

"Absolutely."

After breakfast, we all took the BART out to the city. We had lunch near the Embarcadero at a diner named Fog City. Then Rose took us to the COIT Tower by way of The Steps, a long and circuitous stairway with quite a scenic view of the Bay. We marveled at the mural painted along the inside of the tower, and it was while I was taking photographs for posterity that I noticed Rose and my girl were getting along, having a normal conversation based on art and beauty.

We made out way to City Lights, the famed Beat bookstore formerly owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I was astonished that, in all my past visits to SF, I had never paid a visit to this remarkable historical monument: after all, this was the location of the first public reading of Allen Ginsberg's legendary epic poem "Howl".

I looked all over for a book by Alfred Jarry-- not a play or a biography, but a work of fiction, something very rare by my normally obscure standards. Just when I had exhausted all hope of finding one, I spied a column of books in the "Surrealism" section that I had not perused. Sure enough, there within its volumes was a slender tome by Jarry entitled The Supermale, a richly comic science-fantasy concerning Perpetual Motion Food, bicycle racing and alcohol imbibing.

To celebrate, we stopped in at Spec's, a hip bar across the way from City Lights. The atmosphere was downright "writerly": An argument between the barkeep and a patron was the first thing I noticed when we walked in; a man looking like a cross between Guns 'N' Roses guitarist Slash and Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula (top hat and all) sat by himself in the far back, nursing an ungodly concoction; an old bluesman played for tips outside the front of the establishment, hitting every note and making his axe cry with ecstatic tremolo.

I bought the ladies a round and poked my nose into the Jarry book, as Rose and my girl giggled at my boyish enthusiasm for my rather extraordinary find.

Before we ventured back to Rose's place, we stopped off in Chinatown and ate a sumptuous meal. It was a bit on the expensive side, but we were all feeling very decadent and figured that life was too short to squabble over petty monetary restrictions.


*/*


The next morning, my girl and I joined Rose for one last breakfast before we made the trip back to Los Angeles. I dropped her off in time to get to work, then I went home and slept.

The following week was filled with passion and intimacy, fueled on by the success of our SF getaway. Before the end of the week, she and I consummated our love with an evening spent at my flat. We painted on a canvas and smoked and drank and I wrote some of my novel as she washed loads of her laundry for free in my washroom.

Then she spent the night with me, and it was everything I ever hoped and expected.


*/*


Gibby, meanwhile, was trying to weasel his way back into her graces. But she had already caught him in two lies: one, his father had not really passed away; two, his former home had not been raided. By the time she figured these out, however, he absconded off with her Mac laptop computer.

This would not stand, not with me nor her roommate Mitch nor Brotherman, who immediately accompanied Mitch and I as we made a trek to retrieve the laptop from the place he was staying at in the hills of Los Feliz.

We didn't get the laptop back that night, but we put such a scare into the owner of the place that he contacted Gibby and urged him to return the computer to its rightful owner.

Within 24 hours, the laptop was back in her possession.

My girl could not thank the three of us enough. She had learned a hard lesson, but it was something she had to find out for herself. It would have made no difference had Mitch and I voiced our opinions to her, because she would've merely dismissed them as overprotective ramblings from the two most important men in her life.

I have to always remember that she is ten years younger than me, and although she possess much wisdom she is also headstrong and fiercely independent. I have to learn to be patient, and to not judge her or make her feel badly when she uses bad judgment, such as in the case of Gibby.


*/*


Last night, as I held her in my arms and watched A Clockwork Orange on DVD with her in her bed, I told my girl that I loved her and she told me that she loved me too.

We marveled at the short time we've known each other.

It is marvelous because we feel like we have known each other all of our respective lives.

I feel like I have waited for this girl to arrive ever since I was a young boy.

She said to me that I make her feel like a young girl again.

Never in my life have I felt such passion, and yet I also know that she is my best friend, and my partner in crime, and my perfect mate.

She is my girl. I am her man.

We are going to be together for as long as it takes.

I have a feeling it will be something close to forever.

Or am I just being silly?

Whatever. All I know is how she makes me feel, and how I make her feel.

That is all I want to know.