Well I didn't see this coming.
Or maybe I did. It's hard to say since I've spent the bulk of my adult life stuck in that hometown loyalty vortex that challenges the imagination and stuffs your brain with some things Dodger blue. It was just that I thought I'd always live, love, thrive and die in Los Angeles, except for those 14 months when I lived in New York.
But looky here, I ended up in the Bay Area, that place that weirdly became the gay Mecca I was ambivalently resentful towards for no apparent reason than a chip on my shoulder is just like my default mode sometimes. But I'm here. Now. Any why not? Love and career are some of the most compelling reasons to uproot yourself. And I did. And it's GOOD.
Like last weekend for instance, marked the end of my fourth week and San Francisco saw a hint of an early Spring. The sun was blooming. The sky was a bright cornflower blue. The clouds were few but powder white and succulent in the sky. I drove into the city (because I live in Oakland!) and arrived to a bagel brunch organized by Beth and Ali, held to welcome me, the new butch in town. Isn't that the nicest thing ever?
I walked in, holding my sweetheart's hand and a canvas bag full of bubble water and sparkling wine giddy with anticipation. I've reached a point where I don't really get social anxiety or expect my fun to come from anywhere else other than my own guts and heart and brain meats. I'm optimistic to a fault so I was super eager to transfer my inner fun onto a new world peopled by beautiful, talented, generous artist/creative types. I can't help it. I'm just like a naturally curious sentient being and I ask questions and offer my own solicited intimacies in ways that enable me to continue being generous to humans. It was NICE. To get out of my head and into my body. To get out from under the burden of screenburn and amplified noise vis-a-vis social media and into the faces of strangers turning acquaintances turning friends.
For three hours and then some I was welcomed by a community. It's an
idea I think we should all honor whenever the opportunity reveals
itself. I admit that for the bulk of my life I fetishized the small town--mostly because I've longed for a sense of belonging. You think you might get that because the less-ness of bodies brings us closer together, hungry for warmth. Scarcity doesn't make a community.
I realized recently as I saw the constant thread in my life emerge, the thread of creating community. You work at it and then you work at it some more. And you see the fruit, the investment and you put some in the community bank and you see it grow and it's there and now there's so much of it wherever you go.
Whether it's goods to share, food to eat, tales and glory to gather around, the important part is doing.
Connect.