Take It Away

There are few times in my life that I have been genuinely embarrassed, I don't much care if I'm thought of as a fool. There is plenty of regret, plenty of moments that I wish I could go back say what I said just a little differently, but there are only a handful of moments that I'm embarrassed about, and only one that I really hang onto.

I'm hoping to exorcise it here, it's ridiculous that I'm still holding onto it.

Come here, take my hand, let's go back to San Francisco in the early 90's. Grunge was the rage, Tarantino was the name on all the film freaks' lips and I have no idea what was on television as we didn't have one that worked. Oh, and my roommate and I were smoking a lot of pot.

Now the best way to go about having that sort of daily pot habit is to have a steady dealer, or at least know someone who knew of a dealer. We did not, we relied on buying in with others when we heard about it, or lord help us, buying off the street. Back when I first moved to Magic Town, you couldn't walk two blocks down Haight Street without being offered pot or 'shroomies.

Our first street fishing experience paid off well with some transient looking fellow tossing down a baggie of green onto a table of the Happy Donuts at Shrader and Haight; a bag of some of the stoniest green I'd ever experienced by the by. Every expedition afterwards seemed to end in tears, either waiting restlessly at 6th and Mission while the rest of the expeditionary forces tried to figure out how they were going to tell your parents that you were dead, or walking away with a bag full of rolled up green paper.

So Robo Nixon comes for a visit from Chico and asks, amiably enough, if we have any green. We did not. No fears, he says, he knows a guy who lives on the San Francisco State campus who probably has some. He feels the need to go visit for a couple of minutes while he's in town anyway.

Well, Robo's friend lived in the new student apartment building on campus. The two of them stood in the living room catching up while I sat on a chair and thought about just how much money it cost to live in this place, stewed in the jealousy of friend's film major roommate's ability to have a 16mm camera lying haphazardly on the floor with the laundry. Not really paying attention to the conversation, I only picked up on the words, "titty joint."

Mistakenly thinking that he was complaining about purchasing a small joint, I threw out in commiseration, "Every time I buy drugs in this city I get ripped off."

When I took a moment to take in the bewildered and somewhat annoyed looks, and a quick moment to try to rewind the brain's recording of the conversation, I realized that Robo and friend were actually talking over a story of visiting a strip club. My irrelevant non-sequitur sat there like a monkey turd on a lace table cloth.

It must have seemed like I had a specialized form of tourette's where instead of uttering nonsensical profanities, I threw out nonsensical stories of attempts at purchasing narcotics. And granted it's not as if I had bawdily told a story of having my filthy way with a particularly nimble older woman only to discover that, after a few well placed comments as to location and household decorations, I had actually fucked this stranger's mom, but it was ridiculously embarrassing for me nonetheless.

I think that a lot of it comes from feeling out of my element to begin with, but then seeing Robo Nixon try to inelegantly bridge the chasm between conversations I had created just made me feel even worse. I feel like Robo saw me as this ass that couldn't wade through 7 minutes of pleasantries before jumping into why we were there like some axe swinging barbarian.

This one clings to me for some reason, haunts me at the oddest moments. I hope that writing it out sets it free.