Tentative and Surreal

Hiking a slope along the eyelash of the Castro last night, the air was diffuse with a familiar scent, a haze which evoked feelings of another place. Returning with a bottle from the package store, my olfactory bulb lit up again and I couldn’t help myself from telling Grimm that the floating odor reminded me of my favorite coastal city Valparaiso; another vertical seaside metropolis stacked high with boxed abodes. Grimm offered a logical explanation, “It’s probably the chimney smoke. Lot’s of folks still have working fireplaces.”

He was right. The wafting smoke emissions effused a homely aroma. Much like in Chile, the temperate Bay Area climate makes central heating unnecessary. The solution is an old fashioned heating source: wood. I was beginning to feel at home.

Returning from the arduous three block walk, we cracked a bottle of Ridge California Zinfandel York Creek. Perusing the shelves I thought I might be stepping out on a limb, but then again whats life without a few financial risks. The 2003 vintage seemed a bit aged for a bottle that might have been sitting right side up in a since its bottling year, but then again this was no ordinary bottle shop. The wine shelves were lined with single vineyard designates and other pricy gems, such as the ’05 Caymus Napa Cab retailing at just under two bills. Juxtaposed against a backdrop of beef jerky, generic soda pops and pre-wrapped deli sammies, the wine gleamed like diamonds in a waste treatment facility. In any other neck of the world, this bodega's main moneymaker would be Olde English and Phillies Blunts, but we were practically rubbing elbows with the San Francisco's gay elite. Welcome to the Castro.

As we pulled up to the counter, a flamboyant Middle-Eastern shop owner, dressed in a pastel button down, open slightly to flaunt a patch of gushing gray chest hair, carried on a hurried conversation with a regular. Where gender was bent, ethnicity stayed the same.

“Hey check out this,” cried the shop owner pointing to a featured wine in the Values/Smart Buys section in a current Wine Spectator, “I just got this one in!”

“Right on,” responded a bald, soft spoken man as he casually checked out with $90 bag of wine.

“Hey what do you think about that “unoaked” Chardonnay you carry. I’ve heard good things?,” queried the man two bottles richer.

“Meh. Some people like it, but me I prefer the big oaky ones. The flabby ones with the butter smell,” answered the shop’s captain from the helm.

Ugh. Even wine has fashion victims. Why eat a stave when you can have a crisp mouthful of citrus? Or at least a balanced chardonnay where a scant oak flavor provides structure and complexity. These were my thoughts, but of course I kept them bottled up. The only thing on my mind was the turkey sandwich soon to be grinding in my gullet.

Back at Grimm’s ranch, the Ridge Zin provided a much needed respite from my traveling woes. One cancelled flight, another overbooked and a third and fourth delayed left my bones aching and nerves fully frayed. Deep, rich and restrained upon opening with dark blackberries brimming in the nose shortly thereafter, the bottle of Ridge offered us another respite from the opulent and fruit concentrated Zins that have come to typify the California style. “Uhhhmm,” I sighed. “Wisely played,” Grimm commented, reassuring me of the selection. Yeah it felt good to be back in California.

Today was another story. Time to face reality, jump three busses to Sebastopol, check in with potential housemates and call work. Stepping out onto the street was lustful and surreal. People bounced down the street in high-cut running shorts and whizzed by on carbon frames fully clad in lycra. At the coffee shop, my voice was raspy and apparently a bit too foreign. Setting down my hulking backpack and mobile suitcase I shyly ambled up to the counter to ask for a “bay-gul”.

Staring me up and down the bemused barista asked “Are you from the mid-West?” Fuck, was I that easy to single out?

“No, Western New York, why do you ask?,” I inquired.

“Oh, well I lived in Wisconsin for a few years and you both pronounce bagel the same way.”

Everything seemed alien, unreal. For starters, people were smiling, jovial. Across the street from the coffee joint sat a prim and snug designer couple, coolly sipping their Jasmine tea over lunch. Winter, to me, has come to represent a brutal, uncompromising and relentless wallop of snow and bone piercing sub-arctic winds. Winter is supposed to be anything but warm, let alone sunny. I was in an absolute state of shock. Buffalo, the barren tundra, had left me frozen and unfeeling. Under the Bay’s blues skies and tee shirt temps, my congealed blood began de-thawing at a breakneck pace, leaving my head spinning and making every trivial task burdensome.

Shooting up to Santa Rosa was just another inevitable headache. The first bus driver, an aging boomer, threatened me before I even set foot on the transport. In an ominous voice he warned, "Now don't think for a second that I won't kick you off this bus if your bags are hogging up another paying customer’s seat.” Before I could push play, the bus trip had begun its downward spiral. Between San Rafael and Petaluma and four sentences into a phone call, an old maid reeking of patchouli, tersely informed me “there is no talking on the phone on this commuter bus.” Santa Rosa’s bus system, like so many others, appeared erratic at best. The transit mall teemed with bottom feeders and preying hoods creating a tense, overcast atmosphere. This was not the California I remembered leaving was it?

To put the nail in the coffin, a heavy homesickness invaded my body making me question my current motives. Everything in CA is tentative: comfortable housing, job success and a social life. Buffalo, throughout the past two months, albeit cold, was a dream. I miss the warm, supporting company of my friends, not to mention the bright and beautiful lady I left behind.

In the words of George Tabb, “Take my life, please.”