Chapter Twenty-Six
“So choose to go with the flow.
But others may soon show a
different way to go.”
“Plus the fact that John’s gonna make it to the altar first really gets me to worrying about myself. It’s like I’m done, man, done…”
“Who’s done? Look at those guys over there in the Adidas suits. They’re what’s done…”
“Sad thing is, sometimes I think we could really make a go of it. I mean, once Stacy gets out of rehab…”
Three guys were leaning against a Toyota FJ, more specifically against its black vinyl fender splashguards, the rest of the Cruiser dulled with a film of off-road grime. They sucked on the clear plastic cups of iced Jasmine Lime and Hibiscus Breeze Coolers, chill in their cargo shorts and UnderArmour tanks, getting in a little navel exercise. Couple of ex-Cal rugby players were over from Danville, a center and a wing, with a battle scarred tagalong flanker. The yoke yellow FJ was decked with trail bike hooks fitted to its tailgate tire, gray Thule box and neon green surf boards up top as though just back from Feather River, headed down to Point Sur for afternoon curls.
The trio was swapping spit over a brassy mashup medley of ‘Fidgety Feet’ by Eddie Condon, Satchmo’s ‘Mahogany Hall Stomp’ and the ‘Shake It And Break It’ of Sidney Bechet—having marched back over from that zoot-suited Dixieland sidewalk combo out front of the nuevo-retro Marina Theater—and were otherwise taking in Chestnut Street’s sunny side here, as well as the fully loaded racks.
“Aww, who knows what women want? Hell, I’d go see a good therapist about it myself, if I could find a dude in that racket anymore. Somebody should start a website, like www.man.com, lay it all out there for dolts like me…”
“Why the hell, man? Around here, women all think they’re tens, just want a smiley-face, hoops trim dunderhead with a fat wallet, somebody they can parade around to gallery openings, dinner parties and their best, best girlfriends’ weddings.”
“Well, that leaves me out…I’m getting shredded by threes and fours.”
That’s not to say Reese Paulen and I weren’t ogling just the same. We had crossed back over Chestnut with some Walgreens Advil when, without warning, cleavage was not to be denied. Majestic peaks, heavenly valleys: We had been stopped cold at the sound of that aging Dixieland combo’s rendition of ‘Feelin’ No Pain’, by Miff Mole’s Molers, yet were rapidly reheating over the décolletage on display. Here, the Marina women were more radiant by decree, sizzling by the nth degree—noses pitched to the heavens or deep into their cell screens—speed climbers shopping around like their plastic was going out of style, along the way boldly hawking their wares. At any rate, they were likely out of our price range—mine, anyway.
They were ducking high and hard into a chic little dress shop with rising hemlines, patent foldover shooties and chandelier light reflecting like stage floods off its starburst stamped metal ceiling, as if straight out of Milano. No denying, they were emerging blindingly tuck ’n’ rolled in Juicy tracksuits from a slimline Sun Glass Hut to screen test their Persols and Pradas.
At every turn, we faced rock-firm uppies in halter tops, erect nipples punching through trapeze shirts with hints of areola rising, ripe melons stretching meshies, torpedo alley in ribbed tube tops, wired flex bras, sloppy floppies in graphic tees, provocative V-necks, overstuffed scoopnecks—fleshy mounds tanned, freckled, and every shade burgeoning in between. Pouty dishes in wireless push-ups, tiny cupcakes to full double Ds in body-hugging henleys; passionate come-ons, well-pointed weaponry, 10k legs down to here.
“Come on, bud, you gotta sack up…stop punchin’ holes in your man card, and pull on your big-boy pants.”
“Yeah, suck it up, get me a testosterone boost…whew, can you believe all the cleavage around here?”
“But no touchy, no feely. You touch ’em, she owns you.”
“Don’t stop ’em from hangin’ their business all out there…”
Then there was the occasional silicone set, improbably defying gravity aboard stick-figure frames, bursting full-form tankinis topping off shapely shorts and shapeless skin-tight jeans that seemed better fit for a 12 year old, bouncing to the beat of gliding slides—just more cleavage ranging qualitatively from utters to utterly bodacious, daring bosoms by design. Brazen, up front, out-there enticement: It was the showroom demonstration with negligible prospects for a test drive.
“Stop kiddin’ yourself—all these chicks are loose in San Francisco. If they weren’t lookin’ around for a romp and roll, they wouldn’t be here…”
“I hear ya…the women are looser and we’re just losers…” The trio rattled on, in the wake of another passing hourglass figure. “Still and all, that chick there is so fuckin’ beautiful…”
“Just beware of blondes bearing all black,” said the smaller, stouter of the rugby rats, seemingly less after-affected by all the game-on headers, clearly not one to mince his words. He cautioned along the lines of how the golden-haired could be so wispy, winsome—light as lecithin granules, yet lethal as industrial strength lye—pale damsels coming across as curious, impressionable, elusive, skittish or indecisive, until the emotional hammer fell. “Probably wheels her daddy’s Bentley…making, like, outta my way, dork, I’m way too busy maintaining my aura…”
“Fellas mind?”
“Nnnot a problem…” chimed the amigos, backing off the splashguards.
Must have been the Cruiser’s owner, scuffling his orange and black trailrunner shoes across Chestnut Street, authentic Patagonia, head to toe. Hoisting a bag of provisions from the drug store, he was scowling, restaking his claim, firing an ‘off my FJ’ warning shot across the hood of his Toyota, apparently raring to ride. The jocks-turned-freelance ‘consultants’ begrudgingly obliged, slinking into foot traffic as Mister Off-Road checked for fender scratches or any other aluminum body damage, not to mention a parking ticket or two.
“Can’t believe those guys either, huh,” I dismissed, half blinking, half winking at all the bro and ho stuff as we slow-strolled by well within earshot. A little red-ass trog talk, nothing I hadn’t heard long before.”
“Yes, lower down the evolutionary chain, to be sure,” Paulen replied. “More’s the pity.”
“But nothing pitiful about what I’m seeing…” Although still shaking off the Crabber attack, I had to take another stab at nailing down more of doc’s predilections, what crossed his bright red lines, was beyond his personal ken and pale. “If only they weren’t all so blamed young, huh?”
“Why? Young is beautiful—to a point, that is.”
“What point is that?” We had eased to a crawl by now in rubbernecking awe, despite things otherwise blurring, coagulating, speeding up again. Even though we were veering toward our sexpiration dates, the whole female bodily tease struck me in the groin, just the same.
“Rhetorically speaking, Herbert. But in actuality, who doesn’t love the little ladies to death?” Paulen seemed swivel-necked, yet peculiarly edgy about it all—fully preoccupied, showing frustration, even a trace of aggravation and rancor. “But I’ve seen better, I’ve seen worse. Boulder’s not exactly Lourdes, you know.” Then he just as abruptly appeared to suppress it and turn the page.
“That so,” I edged closer. “Been lucky with the ladies there, have you, doc?”
“Me? Well, of course—why wouldn’t I be? You?”
“No complaints on that front myself…”
Still, this territorial staredown was not nearly so fascinating as the veiled visions of solemn darkness coming toward us—most authentically penitent, head to toe. For amid all the exposed eye candy, all the chatty, calculated wiggle and jiggle, what appeared to be a mother and daughter pairing skimmed quietly along, drawing more second glances than anybody half as clad. Busy as was Chestnut Street, the leisurely shorts-and-sandals crowd hastily cleared a swath for these mysterious Arabesque females in full-figure burqas, a shrouding mass of Muslim black in maid and maiden sizes, hijab veils baring only narrow slits for their wide, darting eyes.
Around Riyadh, Baghdad, Dearborn or Fremont, those eyes might have made quite the fashion statement. But here they looked near…medieval, as though traversing the Koranic Kaaba of Mecca or Medina, only ag least a dozen or more centuries ago. Maybe misdirected enroute to their Divisadero Street mosque, the apprehensive, devotional due made a comparative mockery of any attempts at false modesty by the contemporary Marina hotties. In their own right, by contrast, they could be seen as somewhat exotic, if not prohibitively erotic.
Doc followed the women’s bagging burqa shadows and black billowing flow. Other sidewalkers filled in the wake just left by two apparently Muslim women coursing so far off their divine spiritual path, now scurrying toward the 22 Fillmore bus stop. Many liberated young urbies craned for a double take on what Allah hath wrought. Lord knew we could be counted among them, one wag cracking whether these were observant Muslims or bank robbers in niqab drag.
“Be that as it may,” Paulen said, “you think Israel should attempt to bargain in good faith with the likes of that?”
“How could you tell they were really Arab, let alone Palestinians?” I caught that yellow FJ Cruiser roaring its way out Chestnut—surf’s up—a PC green Subaru Outback quickly swinging a mid-block U-ey to nose into its parking spot, looking anywhere to avoid going back down this miasmic road. “Hell, maybe it’s a goof. Ever heard of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence?”
“Hmph, perpetual indolence, maybe,” Paulen said, as we stepped around and between trash barrels and a thicket of real estate magazine stands and flower boxes along this three-storefront stretch, crowned with a silver sunrise Art Deco façade. “Besides, Arabs, Palestinians—distinction without a difference to me. How shall I put it: They’d all rather fight than thrive, except for the mullahs and sheikers scooping the pretrodollars off every barrel.”
“They have much of a choice, do they?” I asked, voice raised costively. Car horns blared at that traffic-stopping Outback as its SoCal-style driver, sporting an Oregon football jersey, ducked in for a Tazo Iced Passion Tea. “The Palestinians, that is?”
“Of course they do. They have from the beginning of the whole Middle East miasma…”
“Miasma—as in the beginning of the…‘occupation’?”
Otherwise, fetching as they were, the Marina’s oversexed secularists were even more appealing because of their overwhelming vigor and tone. Rigor of mind, strength of body and spirit: that was the ascendant religion, the Falak al aflak, the Holy Grail along sunny Chestnut Street today. Work out, work it out, work it into your profile, and let your presence work for you—that was the latest mantra, the key to socioprofessional Elysium here. At least until we hit upon the onset of a neuro-toxic zone—a little old pocket of multivariate chemical enhancement that served as antidote to this newfangled antioxidantal gospel.
Same time, we sidestepped an aged stroke victim in a manual wheelchair, sneaking some chrome-flasked Jaegermeister into his tall Americano, chain-smoking Merit 100 brownies, annoying every wired body downwind.
“That’s your word, not mine. Israel can’t occupy its very own land,” Paulen said, stifling a cough. “Besides, a reading of history demonstrates the Palestinians were like that long before 1948’s partition plan.”
“Like what?” As if I didn’t already know his answer.
“They were already self-detonating when Israel and TransJordan were just pipe dreams—before you could say Ben Gourion.”
“You mean when the UN carved up historic Palestine…” Smoking, I was still cursedly used to, even if only in the secondhand mode.
“Carved up’s your term, not mine,” Paulen huffed. “Point of fact, Palestinians had their place at that table in ’48. They were offered a homeland of their own, side by side…and have been ever since, to no avail.”
“Yes, but under duress, if not gunpoint of fact?” OOps, should I have just said that? Gordian slip, or…
Waving that cloud away, we then soaked in the carcinogenic ambience of the Harbor Lounge, one of the Marina’s last-gasp neighborhood dives—a wombish den of darkness even on this energetic sunshiny day. Inside, old-time mood ringers nursed their malignant growths over Miller draft and Manhattans, swinging from elation to indigo, depending on the ESPN feed. Hunched over pitchers and popcorn baskets, they were largely over-50 league softballers with major boilers and rebuilt knees, mostly lifeless all-day suckers, moldy jocksniffers and plus-four duffers holding over from the A’s and Raider glory days, groaning over the slim draft pickins and grim late 70s-like prospects of Bay Area teams of the day.
Still, a late Giants splash hit sent bar-thumping cheers through Harbor’s open window front, firing up even the dock and cop pensioners huddling around a sidewalk trashbin, glassy eyes squinting, drawing deep and long on their stubby cigarettes, turning this stretch of Chestnut into a slender slice of Casbah. Fortunately, these wheezers were increasingly outnumbered and clearly out lunged—grumpy barflies flitting about this Bayside Lounge, bitterly waiting on The City to excise tax their well drinks.
Once through the smokescreen we could savor the commingled aroma from an upscale little Asian-themed eatery—quiet and understated, with lots of bamboo shoots, rice paper lanterns, framed silkscreen and calligraphy. Dragon’s Head offered Lemongrass Chicken and Tea-Smoked Duck, with Curry Mi Fun to complement the Steamed Hawaiian Butterfish and Crystal Prawns: So civilized, the narrow stir-fry palace had been seeded by some Taiwanese Stanford business grads—Palo Alto casual to the core. Such was this yin-yang side of Chestnut Street: from cirrhotic, cancer stick figures propped up against Chronicle news boxes to vigorous young pillars of health, in the blink of a hazy, irritated eye, nary a whiff of compromise in the air.
“Gunpoint? Not in the least, Herbert…and what exactly is your point?”
“Just that I’ve heard the Palestinian detonating was not all self inflicted…”
“Trust me, Palestinians do indeed have that capacity. They never miss an opportunity to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory.”
“Where have I heard that before?” Reflex response: In fact, She said it over and over, as I recalled, mainly about me. Suddenly I was confronting my own frontal lobe, semantic memories remaining somewhat fuzzy. But a slight paring back of the parietal pulled up painful experiences past—episode by unsettling episode.
Slowing the flow to a DMV crawl was yet another sign of the Chestnut times, ‘Close Out. Lost Our Lease. Everything Must Go Before We Do’. Only this fire sale was particularly painful, being as is was for a Marina shop that predated the very advent of the high technology being newly canonized in the Apple computer cathedral directly across the street. Penman’s had forever been the district’s stationary stationery store, and was now sadly moving decades worth of analog merch at any cost. Out with the old: everybody browsing card tables lined neatly along the sidewalk were heaped with dusty three-ring binders, pocketed presentation folders and outdated photo calendars of New England foliage and Yosemite falls.
Inside Makeshift wooden shelving added willy nilly over the years creaked with graph tablets, reams of colored construction paper, cartons of compasses, pencil sharpeners, T-squares, right angles and protractors. Long-time regulars pored over Penman’s dead tree remains, consoling the sisterly spinster owners as if paying respects before the casket of a full life’s work. The writing was Garfield postered walls: Here was a paper artifact in a virtually paperless world, hard copy when a soft PDF would do.
“What who said?”
“No-body…nothing…” I noticed as how the Dixieland combo was fading out with some fanfare and a drumroll into their 90-proof brand of take five in the sunshine. Drowning them out further, an orange on white Volkswagen convertible passed blaring a hip-hop mashup of ‘I Can See Clearly Now’. To this day, every time I heard that rasta number, things seemed to turn hazier and occluded. All this cross stimulation was ricocheting off my occipital lobe, side to side. “Besides, it’s all ancient history, right?”
Pulling up closely behind the rolling VW igloo was that head-banging Ninja ranger, once again revving his dual glass-packs to accelerated effect. Tripping the car alarms of parked Ferraris, Lams and Carreras along the way, he appeared to have victory lapped around by way of Pierce Street— velocitized by the American Graffiti-style rod and custom rallye over at Mel’s. There, the Bay Area’s primo vintage rides periodically spilled out of the Drive-In’s palmy parking lot.
The airborne vet likely saluted ’32 Ford T roadsters, chopped and channeled, running Jimmy-supercharged hemi’s, stroked and bored—chromed-out spoked rims and candy apple metalflaked. The ranger had to have air horned toward an array of mid-50s small-block Chevys: Bel Airs, Nomads, early Corvettes, a two-seater T-Bird or two—magnetos firing, chromed-out lakes side pipes aflame. Hand-rubbed lacquer outside, rolled and pleated interiors, burning wide-white sidewalls on magnesium slots.
Nevertheless the ranger circled back around to Chestnut Street, seemingly cruising his aging torque and horsepower in our general direction. Guess he still didn’t get that chicks may dig horsepower all right, but chicks ditch horses’ pitutes. And what was the former GI doing still buzzing around El Presidio Real anyhow? It hadn’t been an Army post in well over a decade.
“Defeatist Palestinians—ancient history? Good god, it is still playing out to this day,” Paulen glanced askance, as if vetting another textbook case of male inadequacy and/or pedal envy behind the wheel. “And what do you know about it—or who for that matter? By all indications, you really are in need of a good, quick history lesson yourself about now.”
“Forget I said anything about this, okay?” The stress resumed crashing through my globus pillidi, super colliding with the superior colliculus at my subthalamic nuclear core. In two shakes, on came a bad case of the tangled cranial and trigerminal nerves, jimjam tremens setting in—Advil of minimal relief—yet more Marina backfire. “Just a figure of speech, another poor choice of words.”
“Ah, but you must always remember that age-old Jewish admonition, Herbert—never, ever forget…”
Care for more?
Chapter Twenty-Seven. Add a canine element
to the equation, which only tips the balance
toward more biting, searching exchanges…