The fourth of April was officially my Death Day Anniversary and I celebrated twenty-six years of unwarranted survival by catching a ride to Stinson Beach, where I fell asleep in the sun, reluctantly waking up after an hour when I remembered that whole “skin cancer” thing.
Though I just draped a shirt over my face and went back to sleep for awhile.
Later I wandered over to the Mission to eat tacos (have I eaten anything else on this trip? No) and meet up with Hiya and Jonathan, who were staging a typewriter protest (or something). We engaged in complicated negotiations to haul five people in two cars across to Oakland for the birthday party of a person I’ve never met nor heard of.
Upon arrival I was introduced as Bee to a woman who replied Lavender?
This startling call and response sort of exchange was repeated two more times before I decided to huddle under a heat lamp in the garden, where a sinister looking fellow announced that he really really adores me, while attempting to stroke my hair.
Then I went and hid behind a cactus.
To say that my social skills are rusty would imply that I had any to begin with, and that is just not true. But when I lived here I was certainly used to people knowing me by reputation and acting flat out weird when they recognized me.
Five years of anonymity in England has been, by comparison, a lovely respite.