Bullets from Paradise - San Francisco

May 10
San Francisco feels like home. I sit on the back door to the granny flat in the sunny patch at the top of the wooden steps and paint my toenails Disco Inferno red. I watch the laser inclusions refract in the spring sun. I look up and watch the overgrown bush of wild roses growing over the wooden gate, a pink cascade; I think I’m back in Queensland or something. Those wooden houses on stilts with the verandas all around, so well build for outdoor living. I hallucinate a scent of frangipani.

I got stung by a wasp at Chrissie Floyd’s. It was one of those silly things that happen. I was sitting cross legged on the leopard print bedspread reading a book on Japanese cuisine and I would’ve never noticed it was there, if I hadn’t stuck my finger right into its abdomen. It was impossible to see what had pricked me, but it felt hot and it stung like crazy. It was impossible to see it, a wasp, on a leopard print bedspread.

May 11
San Francisco is a beautiful city, you would love it very much. It’s filled with things to do: trendy places to eat, elegant cocktail bars, quirky cafés and loads and loads of shopping. I’ve just been bumming around, jumping on to streetcars, riding down to the Mission to see the murals, Chinatown for fortune cookies, North Beach for books. And then there’s Japan town and the Haight where Jimi Hendrix once played a concert for free in Golden Gate Park.

On my first San Franciscan morning I awoke to the sound to doves cooing on the windowsill overgrown with passionflowers. I got up and made a cup of tea and put on our song: You’re The Best Thing That Ever Happened. Since I left Melbourne, I developed a cold, my eyes are red and teary and I snivel a lot. A metaphor for crying?

Strangers smile and street people greet me politely. I notice men looking at me in the street. If I appear beautiful to them, it’s because I’m in love. At the MOMA I stood in the same room with Magritte, Picasso, Mondiran, De Chirico and Ernst and cried witnessing the depth and beauty of which men’s souls are capable. Art is the experience of the divine.

At the Café de la Presse I felt positively cosmopolitan as I ordered a Club Sandwich, the last time I’d made such an order was in a cocktail lounge at the Elephant Hills hotel in Zimbabwe. At Macy’s department store I sprayed myself in a cloud of Havana - because the scent conjures up images of you - and complimented the sales assistant on his tie. He smiled and gave me a complimentary gift even though I didn’t buy anything.

May 12
At last I get around to Yakkety-Yak, an Internet cafe’ next to the school of art. I got tears in my eyes when I read your e-mail. I’m such a suck! How come you get to be so wonderful and handle everything so well? I think I will pinch myself right now and then read this e-mail once again just to make sure... Ouch! It’s true all right, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I love the song, Patience you played to me in your car, on the way to the airport and would appreciate you sending me a tape so I’ll have something to remind me of you when I get to Switzerland. San Francisco is fabulous, thank you for introducing me to Japanese food, at last, I’m a complete jet setter: able to order sushi on my own! Next time we shall travel together. I am tired of this lonely globetrotting thing. I need someone with me to take photos of my glamorous lifestyle and carry my beauty case! That’s it for now. I will check my e-mail again in a week’s time. Remember, you put the happy into my ‘ness. You put the fun into my good times.

May 19
Okay, so I’m in Sand Crab Disco for two more days then in Washington at my sister’s. Haven’t seen her in aeons and she’s been married twice since. In two weeks I’ll be in Lugano, Switzerland; home at last! I look forward to the summer and all the open air concerts and seeing my friends. I don’t know when and where I’ll have Internet access but you’ve got my address in Switzerland, so you can always write. I’ll try and call from Washington. I noticed calling you at work isn’t such a good idea, you get that polished professional kind of tone in your voice. PS: I’m really impressed of your money saving efforts to come to Switzerland, but please, don’t wear yourself out working so hard! Remember to have some fun too, I don’t want you burning yourself out.

May 13
Floydy’s a dancer. She makes French pastries and has an incredible collection of Italian shoes she keeps lined up in the bathtub. In her bathroom there’s a drawer inside the dressing table, filled with complimentary hotel soaps and airline moisturisers from around the world. She’s been SCUBA diving in Micronesia. I’ve never met anyone who has a worse sense of direction than Floydy. After she picked me up at the San Francisco airport we spent 45 minutes searching for her car in the car park. She is small and petite and knees stick out and she has no bum. She wears contact lenses because, she says, “It’s a vanity thing.” She’s also extremely fussy about her brand of chewing gum. She only likes PK’s Juicy Fruit.

May 15
I meet Ben Zipper at Amoeba Records. He’s come to Frisco to research his novel. While we share a chocolate fudge milkshake and a burrito, he fills my head with quirky historical data I can’t remember, but which made me smile at the time.

Later in the afternoon, Floydy takes me for Margaritas in a Mexican cocktail bar in the Mission. Her bed-sit is so small that at night I must lock myself in the bathroom so I can keep the light on without disturbing her while I sit on the toiled and read. The last time I bunked with Floydy was on the East Alligator River, on the border of Arnhem Land. It was at the beginning of the rain season and all the tourists had left. The locals move east before the rains come and the rivers flood making the roads inaccessible. There was something powerful in the air as the dark thunderheads gathered at the horizon. But that’s another story.

May 19
In the city of the Golden Gate it’s not all gold that glitters. In the window displays at Nordstrom a sign announces: ‘Buy two and get one for free.’ Outside the shop windows, a street person bends over his shopping trolley filled with recycled plastic bags, threadbare blankets and a cardboard box folded flat - a shield against consumerism?