Casual Encounter in a Dark Place

Manuel Jimenez

November 2005

I don't remember my father. I can't picture his face. It's blurred in my memory, coming clear only when I peer into an old family photo album. Although unable to visually recollect him, I do remember the feelings he gave me and recall a collection of actions and events, of which he was a part, that I have filed away only to be pulled out of memory in the darkness of a still night or under circumstances I cannot predict. I was a small child when my father died. I don't remember the loss. I don't remember grieving for him. Yet his absence has left a void in me that I have struggled with all my life.

When my brother died, the situation was different, the effect immediate. His death tore a hole in my heart and cast me into a year long depression that strangled me until I left for college.

But I had never so intimately seen anyone die before. I'd never watched the life slip out of someone I loved. The horror of the experience refused to leave me. I had lost my best friend and all I could remember about him was the shocked detachment and isolation I felt as I held him in my arms, his blood spilling onto me, coloring the sidewalk and glittering red over the broken glass. I tried to picture him in my mind. But the recollections were drowned in the image of his death.

The four of us, Zelda, Ex, August and I, looked terrible. None of us had gotten any sleep the night before. Having witnessed the event, we now sat in The Café , a club on Market Street, blanketed by darkness, strung out on alcohol and exhaustion. Ex was a regular at the place, and somehow we just followed him there. It was just a gay bar masquerading as a club. Saturday night and it was filled with people. To us the people were unwelcome. I didn't want them there. The sheer mass of weekend bridge and tunnel people threatened the solemnity of the occasion.

We sat at one of the small tables at the edge of the dance floor. The smell of stale beer was mixed with spent cigarettes. We talked about Paolo. Over and over the same stupid clichés came out, changing only with the speaker's interpretation. August sat across the table from me, unable to remove his dark sunglasses, southern pride defending his masculinity. Exeter was seated next to him. Thin, wiry and intense, Ex usually carried himself with a combination of detachment and intellectualism which translated into an air of coldness. Paolo's death upset his facade, unbalancing his presence. Next to Ex sat Zelda, an alternative girl, with alternative hair, alternative clothes and an alternative air.

"Another toast to Paolo," Ex said, unsteadily raising his glass in front of his face. He peered into the auburn liquid inside, "The whole fucking world shares the blame for killing him." Ex stood up and raised his voice as if confronting everyone inside the place and yelled out, "You were so fucking envious. You sharpened your frailties and bled the life out of him." A few people turned their heads to look towards him. They quickly ignored him again. Someone then yelled from across the room, "Fuck you too."

"That's more like it," mumbled Ex, "Yeah, fuck me too." He dropped back into his chair.

"He was cool," said August, matter of factly, "But now he's dead," said August.

"Salud." With that we downed another in a long string of drinks. Ex had a gift for stringing together words that made up grossly inefficient sentences. We were drunk and so his toast seemed profound. The four of us were cast into an uneasy silence that lingered unnaturally. The evening passed slowly. We sat getting drunk, suffocating in our thoughts.

I looked over at my friends. None of us were San Francisco natives. We all had come from various and sundry places believing we had found a home in the city. August was from the deep south, Meridian Mississippi. He was a man of contrasts; soft-spoken, but self-assured, always tolerant, but perfectly willing to re-fight the civil war. Tall, square-jawed and solidly built, he epitomized an idealized American manhood. He spoke with short monosyllabic sentences, deriving the effectiveness of his communication from that which he left unsaid. Ex on the other hand was from Manhattan. Columbia educated, he made conversation an art. It was a thrill to cross swords with him on any subject on which he had an opinion. He had a lot of opinions, most of them well thought out.

Where you found Ex, you found his self named friend Zelda. She complimented him. They were a set. A writer, she wrote both poetry and prose. She created great poetry, but dysfunctional fiction. She was the door to Ex's glass closet. Everybody that knew Ex, knew that he was queer. Those just introduced to him, suspected. But with his fag hag Zelda next to him the suspicion remained until he let them know otherwise.

As I looked at them I knew that we had nothing in common. Paolo had been the only one in our circle of friends to have been raised here. He had been the common thread that unified us.

As for myself, I adopted the city soon after completing my undergraduate work at Berkeley, taking a degree and relocating once I'd accepted a position with a San Francisco firm. The transition was natural. Just across the bay, Berkeley feeds many of its new alumni into the city. I had lived there only a short time before becoming comfortable with my neighborhood.

I took up residence in the Haight, located adjacent to the east end of Golden Gate Park. Most of the residents of the neighborhood are young, coming from a varied mix of experiences. Like myself, many are relatively recent graduates from the local colleges, attracted to the area by its low rents and circus culture. High school drop-outs and run-aways also escape to the neighborhood, their desperate, extrinsic circumstances lending the place a dramatic air. There live artists and pot heads, musicians and drunks, all of whom help define the Bohemian, sometimes surreal, flavor of the area.

Collectively, the inhabitants of the district are flamboyant and self-absorbed, intoxicated with the arrogance of youth. On display, the cooler women wear clothes that steal their spirit from the pretentious outfits of the 60's and '70's, their retro attire defined by their tight tops and loose bottoms, based on thick-soled shoes. Some have fair, ghostly white skin, their purposefully gaudy looks punctuated with heads of unnatural jet black or dark auburn hair, tattoos and peircings. The men wear their hair long, sporting goatees and side burns. They move with accentuated motions and speak in exaggerations. Into this home I was welcomed, into a family of acquaintances, the liquid and unstructured society that makes up much of the city's youth culture.

With Paolo gone, my desire to run away from the place permeated my thoughts. His death brought to surface deep fears and insecurities that haunted my subconscious. Fears that were raw wounds at one time. "What the fuck?" I silently asked in my drunken state, "How could life be ripped away so easily?" If Paolo could be torn down so easily, so could I. I'd seen it so many times before. Too many people I'd known lay down and slipped away; drugs, violence, alcohol, depression or suicide. Who the fuck am I? What the fuck have I ever done? What will I do before I lay down on some street corner and let my life spill out of me?

With his arm propped up onto the table, August rested his forehead in his hand and stared at the floor. Breaking the silence, he spoke, "I can't stomach another drink." There was a long pause as he rocked his head back and forth. He slip his eyes over the palms of his upturned hands to wipe the exhaustion from his stinging lids. He looked around the room with his bloodshot eyes. Then rested his head in his hands. "I'm going to be sick."

Ex turned toward him, "This celebration isn't over."

"What are we celebrating?" retorted August. Another long pause. He stood up slowly. "I'm gonna go."

"Fuck it. I'll go with you," Ex said. He pushed his drink away and looked up to August, "We'll share a cab."

"That's it?" I thought to myself, "The ceremony is over? Now we can comfortably forget the man now deep sixed?"

Ex turned to me, "Let's blow this joint."

I was too comfortable to leave. The darkness was soothing. I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to sit in an empty room and bounce my depression off the walls, letting it reflect back to me.

"Go ahead," I replied, "I'm staying."

"You all right?" asked Zelda, "Can you make it home?"

I knew the fucking bitch couldn't care less is I ever made it home. Her patronizing suggestion of concerns was annoying.

"Yeah."

"Better days," said Ex. "I'll see you then."

"No doubt."

Ex and Zelda got up from the table. August turned to leave. Ex and Zelda followed him. They made their way toward the exit. I watched them disappear through it. I welcomed the solitude. At the same time, I'd never felt so alone. By myself and with no other distraction, I watched the people from the fringe of the place, sipping my rum and coke. The usual cast of characters was assembled. Same people, different faces, sipping drinks and choking down cigarettes. It was late and people were dancing to the thump of the heavily based music. The base structured the environment, acting as a unifying force, oppressing individuality. It set the mood and defined the expressions of motion. The movements on the small floor were filled with erotic suggestion, making up a sexual tapestry. They moved with their bodies while their faces remained devoid of expression. Their humanity had been pounded out of the them by the echo base. I lusted for the women, some of whom were in various states of underdress and falling out of their clothes.

Fuck them. My depression was heavy. My mood darkened. I stared at the dancing people, shrouded by the smoke filled room and erratic lights, as I sunk. It embittered me. I felt the blackness in my soul as I sipped my drink. Dazed from exhaustion and drunk, I moved my gaze away from the dance floor. I turned my head and looked to the exit trying to escape from something.

As my vision panned the distance from the dance floor toward the exit, a beam of light ricochet off something familiar. I thought that I glimpsed someone I knew. It was a recognized silhouette, a remembered figure. Whomever it may have been, they were lost in the confusion of movement. I got up from the table and walked to the dance floor searching for a person I hadn't really recognized in the mob. An irrational sense of desperation over took me. I looked over the people on the dance floor. I accidentally bumped into a woman. She dismissed the jolt with disdain. The look on her face made me want to rip her fucking head off. I continued to search, looking over the collective mass, but at the same time focusing in on the individuals. I failed to find whomever it was I thought I saw.

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