Hot Hot Hot!!!

[Hot job, hot apartment, hot lover.]

[As you must know by now, those three criteria for a good life were posited in Tales of the City as being attainable, but never at the same time. Having arrived a short time ago at Maison le Trou after a lovely night out, I feel like taking inventory.]

[1. Hot Lover: Well, no. But I feel as though most of the things having one is "supposed" to do for you I've been getting lately from my friends. Whether it's a night out carousing with Allen and the Angry Young Man, an in-depth talk with any number of one-on-ones, an opportunity to be a shoulder to cry on, a hug or a good kick in the ass, I've been having the emotional equivalent of what independent contractors call multiple income streams. And it's been good.]

[But, as Hedwig once sighed, what about sex? Well, no. But it's OK. And easily fixable, if I ever feel like making the effort. And anyway, the occasional buzz I get from running into extremely old flames in the most unlikely places certainly reminds me of what it's like to feel like making the effort.]

[2. Hot apartment. Let's talk about Maison le Trou for a minute. Hot by no stretch of the imagination, but I'm reminded fairly regularly that the location is in fact hot, and the rent's cheap. While the rest of the country's property values are going the way of the dodo, San Francisco's don't seem to know any direction but up, so cheap and well-situated is about as hot as one can ask for at this time.]

[Also, my roommates are sane and agreeable. Mostly. That's kind of a big deal.]

[3. Hot job. OK, so tonight the three of us - La Liaison, Max's Dad, and I - went to what was billed by its sponsor, Opium Magazine, as a Literary Death Match. I'd heard of poetry slams and such, but never really felt the need to go someplace where "spoken word" seemed to me more like a snide challenge than anything.]

[This friendly goof-off was nothing like that. It didn't hurt that it took place at the friendly cave of Rickshaw Stop, a club right around the corner from work that I've meaning to check out. Also, two Red Room authors were contestants, and two more were judges. I'll probably write about all the performances, etc., on my Red Room blog tomorrow, but La Liaison expressed what I was also feeling. She said that all the time she was working in New York, home one has always thought of as the biggest and best literary scene in America, she'd read about 826 Valencia and Litquake and McSweeney's and, as a Bay Area native, want to be back here instead. I got what she meant, and understood that I've lived here for years, but never had taken advantage of the opportunities this city has to offer, the ones that I'd always fancied myself being a part of.]

[I'm only doing it now because of my job. And of course it's a side benefit, and I love doing what I'm actually being paid to do more than anything I've ever done. Life's not perfect, and I've still got messes to clean up. But feeling that I was exactly where I was supposed to be all day today and tonight? Well, it's hot.]

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