his coffee smells like whisky, or, this is vanilla city
Glenn the carpenter is working downtown building out a store. A random neighbor stops by and asks Glenn if he can build him a sex club in his basement.
“I was just telling someone San Francisco used to be a lot weirder. Guess it still is but what happens is we get older. Freaks go directly to the young ones. When’s the last time a stranger gave you drugs or tried to rape you?” Glenn says.
I remember the older man, my age now, asking me to go to the beach and throw the frisbee around when I was 19 and hanging out on Haight Ashbury. Glenn had a point.
Later, at a garage sale in the sleepy avenues an older woman is reading a magazine waiting for customers. I’m the only one.
She is so happy to talk, reveals that her mother passed away and she’s fixing up the hardwood floors and getting rid of junk and she is a teacher’s aid since she got sick from the improperly vented x ray room at a clinic where she worked with women with breast cancer.
It was a lot of talking. Then she said, “At some point you become invisible.”
She was talking about her sexual attraction, her feminine charm ceasing to broadcast to the outer world. Which is the same as weirdos leaving you alone.
Why do we stop fucking? The arc of intercourse in a long term relationship describes a steady diminishing in frequency and intensity. We become familiar (less weird?) to our partner just like we become familiar to the general public. Another grouchy truck driver, another guy who works construction and his coffee smells like whiskey.
San Francisco is still weird, but I’ve been dating it too long to notice any more.