But still, weird things seem to happy to me a lot of the time. Weird things, most of which I fail to find any metaphor in other than it being a testament to the absurd nature of our existence. Someone doing something that makes no sense likely seems to be a sensible act in their own mind. For example, why would some 81-year-old man decide that it’s a good idea to start talking to the guy next to him on the 1 California on a Sunday afternoon?
“The 49ers sure are bad. They used to be good. I went to that playoff game that time, 1971 at Kezar Stadium. They lost though. They played the Dallas Cowboys.”
You could look it up: the NFC Championship game on Jan. 3, 1971, at Kezar Stadium. Dallas Cowboys 17, San Francisco 49ers 10.
He had limped his way onto the bus on Polk St., he had a whole bus’ worth of places from which to choose to sit, and he sat down next to me, proceeding to start talking to me about a playoff football game from 1971. I don’t know why he was doing that. Perhaps, at that age, speaking with anyone in the world seems like a good idea. Age is isolating. You limit yourself, you turn inward, you feel as if you no longer belong and that the world has passed you by. Just the night before, during our evening-long whiskey bender, I had been telling Geoff how my disinterest in making metaphors of music – mostly due to me being inherently opposed to nostalgia – means that all of the music I listen to is contemporary, but that I never go to any of their gigs when those bands come to San Francisco, because I would feel weird about being the oldest guy in the room by 10 or 15 or 20 or even 25 years. At an age like 81, the world must become so small, so silent and compact. Simply talking to some stranger on the bus would, I imagine, be liberating. If he wants to tell me about a football game from 47 years ago, I suppose that is okay although, to be honest, I think I am listening to him only because my phone is nearly dead. Otherwise, I think I’d have the volume turned up to 11 and be drowning out the world around me for a little while longer.
Which is what I did on the flight, one of those extremely strange and welcome sorts of flights whereby you take off late from one city and arrive early in the other. Due to turbulence all over the western U.S. at the usual cruising altitude, the captain had explained, they had clearance to fly higher in the sky, which also meant they had clearance to fly faster. What’s supposed to be a 2½ hour flight lasted 1:58. I had my earbuds in the entire flight and didn’t notice the commotion, and didn’t really understand why a flight attendant was wearing blue jeans and a purple sweater – not exactly proper work attire, nor did the colour scheme match that of Southwest Airlines. It was only when we landed, but couldn’t get off the plane for 40 minutes, that I took out the earbuds and figured out the reason for the commotion: a flight attendant had fainted during the flight; the stand-in dressed in a purple sweater was an off-duty staffer headed home to the Bay Area who stepped up in a pinch; an entire crew of paramedics and EMTs and firefighters then boarded the aeroplane. Suddenly, the flight that departed late and arrived early was deplaning very, very late. It annoyed me, and then I was annoyed with myself for feeling so indignant about being delayed getting off an aeroplane because of this medical emergency. Jesus fuck, show some compassion.
Where was I going anyway, and what was the need for urgency? The Coliseum BART station, the Embarcadero, the shed alongside Embarcadero Two where you catch the 1 California, which would then amble for 35-40 minutes, having a leisurely Sunday drive westward, up Nob Hill and towards the beach. Wherever it is that I am wanting to go, I am not going to get there very fast. Mostly, the sense of urgency was due to being hungover, and wanting to find some sort of a remedy for the throbbing in my head. I asked Geoff how he was feeling this morning, as he was preparing to take me to ABQ, and he said he was feeling “appropriate.” I then made reference to how, in the era of the Chinese emperors, those applying to be civil servants were subject to rigorous examinations which included a study of their skills as a poet. They were expected to be able to write about, and speak to, all of the important states of life, including being able to write about what it feels to be drunk, and also being able to write about what it feels to be hungover. Drinking to excess, therefore, was necessary. Never before had drinking to excess felt so necessary as it had on Saturday night, so when I awoke this morning, I considered the hangover to be proper and just.
By late Sunday afternoon, however, after my too short-cum-too long flight from ABQ to OAK, I really would like my head to stop hurting. I really would like everything to stop hurting. Flying hurts. I dreaded such a short trip – flight out on Friday, return on Sunday – simply because that much time cooped up in an aeroplane with so little time in between was likely to twist my neck and back into even more of a pretzel than they already are. Being on a 1 California bus with so few other passengers meant having some space to stretch out.
But now I have got this guy, this 81-year-old Chinese American with a hearing aid and a shopping bag full of foodstuffs yammering to me about how bad the 49ers are, but they weren’t bad back in 1971.
“But they lost though,” he shrugged. “Everyone loses sometimes.”
I suppose he has my admiration for his nonchalant attitude towards defeat. I have declared myself to be an expert in defeat, I have made it a point of emphasis in my life to attempt to explicate the nature of failure. Failure is the default in life. Everyone loses sometimes.
But he’s just saying stuff. This happens all the time on public transportation in San Francisco. There is some transient, some crazy guy babbling away. But it’s different in this case – he speaks clearly, coherently, short bursts of descriptives. I just lack any context for what he is saying. Is it a memory? Did it happen 10 years ago? 10 minutes ago? I don’t know. On another day, I suppose it would annoy me. Amazingly, on a day when seemingly everything else is wont to annoy me, he does not.
He then reaches into the pocket of his jacket and takes out some photographs, all of them old, most of them black & white, all of them with torn edges or crease marks or other signs of heavy usage. He starts looking through them, one after another, a smile on his face. There seems to be a smile on his face no matter what. There is a smile on his face as he is hustling to catch the bus on Polk St., having waves to flag the driver down. There is a smile on his face telling me about how the 49ers had lost to the Dallas Cowboys and missed out on a chance to go to the Super Bowl – which, as a lifelong fan, must have been extremely disappointing at the time. He is looking at his photographs, smiling slightly more than he had been before, as they obviously pique and tap into memories. Given the wear and tear on the prints, I suspect he might do this often. I turn my attention elsewhere, as he seems delightfully occupied.
“This is me,” he taps me on the knee to get my attention, showing me a photograph.
He didn’t really ask whether or not I wanted to see his photos. He just did it. I suppose that when you are 81, you just do what you want. You don’t give a shit anymore. Quite frankly, you shouldn’t give a shit anymore at that age, and maybe not at any age.
In the photo, he is dressed in his Army uniform, handsome and standing tall, proud. A sharp looking, strong young man. He must be 19, maybe 20 in the photo.
“1956,” he says. “Presidio.”
Presidio. San Francisco. My old co-worker during my Seattle banking days had served in the Army during World War II, and I remember him telling me about being assigned to the Presidio, and how getting stationed at the Presidio was the plum gig in the army at that time. If you were a scrub the Army brass thought little of, they would station your ass in some dumb place like Great Falls or Nebraska or some other wasteland. But the Presidio? Damn, that meant they thought you were good.
I nod in response. I am impressed.
The 1 California is just passing the JCC on California and Presidio, heading westward towards The Avenues. He sifts through the stack of maybe 6-7 photos, shows me a b&w pic ripped slightly down the middle, stained yellow around the edges, but the image itself remains crisp.
“This is my wife,” he says.
Oh my. She is quite the looker, dressed in a white dress. He sees me nodding with approval and he nods in response, his smile growing in both width and in glow.
He then shows me a second photograph of her, a colour photo, wearing a vivid red dress. It’s a traditional Chinese wedding dress. The fading to blue of the fringes of the photograph contrast that red dress, making it all the more radiant, ebullient.
“Beautiful,” I say.
“She died young.”
He somehow manages to smile when he says this.
“She died young. She was only 62. I am 81 now.”
He goes silent for a moment, nodding and, somehow, again he smiles. I have no idea how he does that.
I’m exhausted. I didn’t really sleep last night. Awakened by a ghost. New Mexico feels haunted. I awoke in a state of delirium this morning, not knowing where I was, hallucinating. For a moment I was 29 again, I was in the New Mexico that still felt like a dream and hadn’t yet become the nightmare it has now become. I am 29 and in control of my life, no longer suffering from any symptoms of mental illness, only to fully awaken to find I am 49 and grieving and feeling that mental illness enveloping me all over again, washing over me and threatening anew to drown me, just as I had started to drown the instant I first left this place back in November 2000.
There have been these moments, here and there, since the end of the ceremony on Saturday in Santa Fe where it has threatened to occur. A few tears have managed to slip from my eyes. It kept happening on the aeroplane, that being a place where I have always felt a certain sense of claustrophobic anxiety which seems to pull out and heighten whatever emotion is deeply affecting me in the subconscious at the time. I’ve been known to just spontaneously burst into tears on flight, crying for no apparent reason. But I held it together on the flight, at the aeroport, and even held it together during the necessary all night drinking session Geoff and I had engaged in after the service was over, having driven back to Albuquerque from Santa Fe and immediately commenced killing a bottle of bourbon in some quixotic but, ultimately, necessary attempt at also killing all of the pain.
Clearly, it had not been a success.
And I had held it together as I stood in the roomful of familiar strangers, people who I’d thought little to nothing about in the time since I’d last seen them, whose aging faces I had to compare and contrast to those making up my memories. None of them had aged well. Maybe none of us ever really do. The service was taking place in a hall near to my old house in Santa Fe, a mediocre neighborhood traversed by Cerrillos Road, the obligatory kingdom of ersatz sort of street you find in any city with furniture stores and rug dealers and strip malls and the like. An ugly, utilitarian part of town. A part of town which, to my 29-year-old eyes, seemed to be beautiful but, to the failing 49-year-old eyes mired behind thick glasses, no longer did so. It no longer felt like home. I’d left that home behind, I’d left New Mexico and moved to a city where I have never, ever truly felt like I am at home. Santa Fe is a place that Kate wanted to be from, but no longer wanted to be, and she wanted to leave so badly that she left me behind. It’s a place that she wound up returning to, and I knew when she made that choice that she would never, ever return to San Francisco.
But I held it together when I spoke, having figured out what I would say in my head the day before on the flight, having committed it to memory, tattooing it to my psyche, creating another scar and spot and stain that I can never scrub out. But goddamnit, I held it together. I’ve held it together all of this time. Go me. Aren’t I so fucking brilliant and so motherfucking proud?
I have my phone in my hand, which barely has any power, but there is just enough juice left for me to pull up a photo. I tap him on the knee to get his attention, and then show it to him:
“She is very beautiful,” he says.
“She died,” I whisper, rendered barely able to speak.
“Oh?”
“I had to say goodbye to her yesterday in New Mexico. I had to say goodbye.”
This is how I come to cry on the shoulder of an 81-year-old man while riding the 1 California on a Sunday afternoon, a man who somehow thought it was a good idea to talk to passersby and show old photographs that, likely, no one other than he would care about.
“You will come to smile again,” he tells me, his arm around me, clinging to a stranger as if he were a son. “You will come to smile.”
We get to 25th Avenue, my stop. I wasn’t sure where exactly that he was going – somewhere further up California St., I suppose, but there are only three more stops on the route, so it’s somewhere nearby. Perhaps he is a neighbor. Perhaps I should try to find him sometime. Or, perhaps, he was simply riding for the sake of riding, which is what many of the supposedly crazy people do in this city. They ride because going somewhere, anywhere, is better than the stasis, the solitude and the stillness.
I stand up and shake his hand.
“Bless you,” I whisper.
“Okay,” he replies with a smile and a nod. “Okay, it is okay.”
