Living Large at Oyster Point

Oyster Point sits on the hip of South San Francisco’s blue-collar neighborhood; a small harbor docking boats that sport a five-month growth of barnacles, complemented by the come-hither scent of motor oil. Candlestick Park is the side yard, highway 101 the wraparound porch. Beyond the harbor’s dubious shelter lies San Francisco bay and past that, views of the Port of Oakland and her giant loading cranes, perched like storks fashioned from an erector set. The boats have names that sound like they were thought up by some horny old salt during an acid flashback or drunken rail or quite possibly experiencing an acid flashback during a drunken rail: Groovederci, Liquid Medication, Nauti-Gal.

Full-time living on a craft tied up at Oyster Point Harbor is against the rules. Taking refuge on the boat while the ruckus over that tiny incident involving the Jeep and accordion player with “squeeze me” tattooed on her thigh dies down is acceptable. Residing on a boat is a whole new kettle of scrod. There are insurance issues, harbor master rules, City of South San Francisco laws to be obeyed. Letting people live on their clapped-out buckets, away from the mainstream, invited trouble. All the live-aboards knew it.

“Wow! Thanks!” Vick beamed while ripping open the boat/house-warming present I brought her. Indian summer is in full-feathered powwow, rendering the afternoon in amber, turquoise, silver. It’s a day boats live for, and even the sludgy sand’s flatulent smell has wafted off to other harbors. She opened the brass telescope and trained it on a low-flying flock of pelicans, watching as they trundled over the water’s even surface. “Arrr,” she growled.

“I knew you’d like it.”

“Arr, it’s farrrrbulous.”

“Can I see it?”

“Nooooo,” she rumbled, the glass now trained on a boat a few docks down. “Tharrrr’s a good view at land’s end.”

Blame Saturn Returns. Vick Does.

It didn’t seem right that after six years of marriage, not to mention the work I put into landing the guy in the first place, that it would boil down to something as simple as a coffee cup platitude. "You gotta do what you gotta do?" My pronouncement was meant to set off long looks and a dark night full quarters in the jukebox. No lonesome whippoorwill or low-whining midnight train? Guess not. Hell, it didn’t even look like a second beer was in order. Vick pushed a red plastic, paper-lined basket full of mottled yellow popcorn towards me, and I gnawed on a couple of foamy kernels. More disappointing was the lack of a Patsy Cline-and-Wild Turkey sobfest than the notion of becoming a 30-year-old divorcee. But damned if she wasn’t right.
“How?” I asked, too surprised at her forthrightness to be defensive, and relieved at her utter lack of judgement.
“Couple of things. First off, you’re in your Saturn returns.”
I had no freakin’ clue what she was talking about. “Oh, but of course. Saturn returns. I don’t know how I ever missed it in the first go-round, and now it’s back.”
“Being sarcastic is unattractive in a single woman.” She took a deliberate sip of her beer, looked straight ahead, placed the bottle squarely back on the cocktail napkin, and continued. “You’ll end up bitter, and no one will date you.”

About That First Marriage . . .

Lots of people are surprised to find out I was married once before. It's true, and it was when I was teething, I believe, so I had a lot of off-days during the marriage. Reflecting and writing about it has been a challenge, even though the whole thing ended fairly quietly. My very brief, very superficial take on why the first one didn't work:

Tacit and overt. There’s symmetry there, a yin yang quality in which the opposites do their flowy thing, the universe is balanced, and the Big Ohm is achieved. However, when yin’s notion of reckless abandon is trying the peach syrup at IHOP while yang is back home in the basement trying do-it-yourself taxidermy with roadkill, the dynamic is seriously out of whack. Yang will act out just to be a pill, yin will pull in to avoid the unwanted side effects. The curve is warped, and in our case, it was beginning to throw the entire circle off.

Style. It's an Attitude.

We were browsing Jest Jewels at the Embarcadero on our lunch hour, me on the hunt for something to make me look fetching for a date with a new man. Gravitating towards the hats, I tried on a little brown tweed number resembling the ones worn by English schoolboys; close-fitting dome crown with a short bill, and snappy gold buttons on each temple. In the right light and when I tilted my head just so, the best I could manage was a slight resemblance to the Monkees’ Davy Jones. With boobs. Which might be OK, if you're confident enough with yourself to carry off looking like a boy-bander in a dress. I'm not.
“I just don’t know,” I pondered, turning from side to side in the mirror. “Something isn't working.”
“Here, Just wear it like this.” Vick took the hat and put it on her head at a little tilt so it half-covered one eye. She framed her face with her hands, turned her head like a screen star from the 1920s, and batted her eyes. “See? Very Puckish. He’ll melt.”
Fine. Out-cute me. Puck this, sister.

Mean Vick and Loma Prieta, part 2

Creaks belch from the walls as if the building ate something that did’t agree with it. And though we’re standing in what we’ve all read and heard is the safest place during an earthquake –a doorframe – that comfort is cold as a broker’s heart. We could fall. The floor could melt right out from under us we’d tumble through space, floor by floor, until we landed in a pile on top of the desks and credenzas and coffee cups of the previous 17 floors, and it’s gonna hurt. I’m struggling to plan a way in which to fall so it won’t hurt when I land. So far the plan's not coming together.
“It’ll hurt when we fall.” I inform Vick.
“I know.” She’s clutching Mosby’s waist, who’s doing a sort of shoulder hug with Tom the married guy, because even in the throes of a natural disaster that’s messing with the intestines of steel buildings, God knows you don’t grab the waist of the nearest warm body for solace. Word would leak out, and next thing you know they’d be calling you “Kitten” at the gym. “You know what’s worse, though?,” she aksed.
Brand me a loon—something about the half-light and creaking girders hinders my thought process. “I can’t fathom.”

Loma Prieta, Meet Mean Vick

Working on a story, and remembering the Loma Prieta earthquake. Funny how the smallest details come back once all the distractions are (mostly) cleared away. Here's part of the tale:

She was telling me about her favorite college gig as a backup singer in “a cheesey nightclub act.”
“Yeah, that was fun. I played tambourine, which didn’t work out so well. I had no sense of rhythm.”
“Why’d they keep you?” I asked.
“Because I’m cute. Well, plus I agreed to wear a tube top.”
I nodded. “Ah.”
“The tops would creep down during ‘Proud Mary,’ so the other girl and I figured out that if we flung our heads down,” Vick dramatically threw down her head “our hair would cover our fronts enough that we could surreptitiously pull up our tops.” Vick really did use words like “surreptitiously” in conversation, even when she was upside down. “Then we’d throw our heads back up, and it looked really cool, and our tops were fixed.” She righted herself, holding her hands at her side, imaginary tube top back in the safety zone. Flushed and a bit winded, kept going. “Next time you go see, like, Pride and Joy, watch how the . . . “
A low vibration, and the potted fern quivered.
“Suppose that’s a truck?” I offered.
“Oh, sure.” Vick shrugged before continuing, “. . . watch how the girls in the back all turn or bend down . . . “
But the floor continued to rumble under our feet, jostling pencils in the cups and causing the fluorescent lights to swing.
“ . . . at the same time . . . shit, that shaking isn’t stopping.”
The fern’s quiver progressed to an agitated tremor. A message pad perched on the edge of Vick’s desk plopped to the floor, and we stared at it as if it hollered “Geronimo!” on the way down.

Nosey Question

Have you ever gotten a feeling like the fates came around with a silver platter of toast points covered with warm brie, and you were too tired or distracted or some stupid thing to accept one?

While exiting Macy's the other evening, I had two strips of paper that you spray perfume on, one in each hand. The perfumes were Issey Miyake and Dolce & Gabbana Blue something. I was sniffing each strip alternately as I walked out of the store, in my own little universe. Out of the blue, a 20-something kid wearing one of those hooded sweatshirts that northern California surfers favor - the ones that looks like they were made from a nubby blanket - looked up from his iThingie long enough to offer, "Do you need a second opinion on that?" pause, smile a little, and keep on walking.

You see my allegory here. Or metaphor - whichever. The offer to help was the brie-covered toast point. I'm still not positive what prevented me from saying, "Sure, what's your vote?" Surprise, yes, but throw in preoccupation and some long day lag, and boom, you're wondering where your hors d'oeuvre went.