Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

[John just felt my forehead and seems to think I'm finally tipping over the edge, succumbing to the cold that's been brewing over my viral horizon for over a week. I tell you, it started as I was training my airheaded replacement at the (drum roll please) place I don't work anymore! All during the trip to Santa Barbara, and yesterday's and today's orientation sessions at New College, I've felt like I was just about to come down with something. Tonight, with three loads of laundry downstairs, the rest of Antigone to read for Torts, and a badly overdue Diaryland entry burning up my fingertips, I can barely sit upright.]

[I'm gonna try anyway. Pizza and a yellow sheet cake bade me farewell on Friday as I left the building management industry behind forever (watch those rash statements, boy.) I picked up the fairly ugly rust-colored Neon from Dollar, almost got John and me killed as I dropped him off at McLaren Lodge where he needed to make a Golden Gate Park reservation, settled the terrified screaming match he and I had as a result just in time for me to leave, shrieked "I just wanna get out of this fucking city!" and inched my way out the back way, down 19th Avenue.]

[Insane getaway traffic in the South Bay delayed my arrival in S.B. until 9PM, but Max and I HAD to go out anyway, to the new queer bar in town, Hades. It seems S.B. can only support one gay dance floor at a time; this one had a not-bad Satanic theme and way too many familiar faces, even as I start to celebrate five years away. Max and I held up the bar, consumed cocktails, chatted, and let the party come to us. I was so happy to collapse on his futon after 2:30.]

[The next day was breakfast at Summerland Beach Cafe (an old fave) with Max, and visiting with Jessica and Caleb, who have a cute place atop San Marcos Pass, part of a larger house nestled in the Santa Ynez Mountains near the source of the serious 1990 ('91?) Painted Cave Fire. J, C and I did a brief State Street stroll (a few blocks were enough to remind me of what a homogenized shopping mall it's become)(note to Casey: Zelo's still there, if you can believe it), and then walked their two dogs thru the idyllic Wilcox Park, a blufftop preserve above the Pacific that reminded me of what I do still miss about Santa Barbara. And, at last, I had dinner at the best little gourmet taqueria in the world, La Super-Rica on Milpas.]

[Viewing the perfect waves from Wilcox made me yearn for the beach, so Sunday I exposed my lily-white carcass to the sun. After a delicious and nostalgia-filled breakfast at Cajun Kitchen (nothing better than hearing "The Reflex," "What Difference Does It Make," and "Cruel Summer" over the patio loudspeakers while reminsicing over homefries with the woman who introduced them all to me), Jessica and Caleb sent me off to Gaviota State Beach, where I got decently (but not painfully) red, and way relaxed. I'd almost forgotten that a really stiff neck and shoulders aren't my normal state; I'd also forgotten how ordinary most of the bodies on most nude beaches are.]

[That night was barbecued tri-tip and fixings with Mike H. and Melissa, ex-coworkers and friends tied to Jessica in a concatenation I'm too delirious to explore now. Suffice to say the company, the food, the wine, the Radiohead and Rufus, and Jess's serious new pot habit made the priceless view of the mountains, Goleta Valley, Isla Vista Mesa, and hazy Pacific beyond that much more delightful. "And so the conversation turned/until the sun went down..."]

[Tomorrow: What It's Like To Go To Law School.]

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