Bum-fight

Today, as I was waiting for my lunch order to come up, I saw a man walk into the cafe. He was tall with long, dirty, blond hair. He filled two cups at the soda fountain, under the suspicion of the buss boy, and returned to his table outside. My order came up and I found a table over from him.

I had just started to eat my grilled cheese when I heard someone shouting in Chinese. It was a small man shouting at the first man's dog. 

I'm not really sure exactly how things went about, but the dog started barking at the Chinese man, which led him to kick at the dog. In turn, the first man pushed him a way, and they ended up in an all-out brawl. Security cards came to break it up, the cops followed, and a handful of people were recording the whole thing on their phones.

I felt like an jerk just sitting there, eating my sandwich, but I didn't know what to do. I thought about  calling the cops, but they'd already been called several times (people kept announcing that they had or were going to call). I thought about moving, but it seemed like a bad idea at the time. So I sat, and ate my sourdough grilled cheese sandwich as each suspect and and excited witnesses were questioned.

People are such assholes. 

Written with Writer's Block

My school is on a quarter system, so we have classes for ten weeks followed by a three week break. It's a portfolio program and hopefully by the end of it I'll be a decent copywriter. I'm closing in on the end of my second quarter and all my final projects are due this week. I'm busy and totally blocked.

I keep beginning things, deleting them, starting again, and making lists. Nothing is getting done. I keep hoping that maybe if I can get some time by myself that I'll be more relaxed and will be able to organize my thoughts. That hasn't happened. 

I think I started this post about six times. 

Everyone this quarter seems to be on the fritz. I felt that way last quarter. No one is sure if our program will be worth it, or if moving here was the right thing to do, or if they should be closer to their families, and a million other things. I do miss my family, and going out and knowing people already, and living by myself, but overall my anxiety levels are down - I haven't had a single panic attack since I moved here, and I'm finally somewhat content, approaching happy, with most of my life. 

I go out more now than I did when I first moved here, but significantly less than I did in Richmond. I was really concerned about meeting people when I got here, and getting along with the people who are also in my quarter.  They have degrees, some multiple degrees, speak other languages, have travelled, some are married, some have worked in ad agencies before, and overall I felt like a fish out of water. I don't feel that way anymore. 

I'm starting to feel more confident, though more critical of my work. I'm finding it easier to manage my feelings, and I know that to manage my sanity I can't stay home all day just because I don't have class. This was hard at first, but has become easier. When I start to feel overwhelmed I go for a walk, or to a park (luckily I live really close to two). Despite not being able to write in this moment, I feel more focused about my life. 

Focus is a strange thing to have. I've never really had this kind of direction before, or drive - I've always wanted to succeed, and I think of life as some absurd competition, but being around other people who were cut from that cloth is new for me. I like it. 

For the first time in my life things seem to be happening. 

OCD: Part 2

I'm pretty good at falling asleep, anywhere. I take a nap at school at least once a week and have no problem sleeping in moving vehicles. Lately though, I've had difficulty due to OCD's white noise machine. He gets up about 239847 times between 11 pm and 2 am.

I start to doze off. (whirrrrr) OCD goes to the bathroom and leaves his door open. Then I have to go to the bathroom. And then the cycle repeats itself about four more times. 

My body has started associating that fucking noise with bathroom usage. 

And it is constant. 

In addition to being able to sleep anywhere, can hold it for hours. I drove across the country and would only stop if we reached out destination for the day - I am excellent on road trips. So this needing to go four times before I finally fall asleep is new. I try talking myself out of it, and then I go anyway, just because. 

The other night, I kept waiting for the noise to stop when he closed his door, but it didn't. So I got up and closed his door, because only God knows how long he was going to be in the bathroom this time. I think he got the hint, because it hasn't happened since that night. 

But the incessant whirr is grating. It's not just when he's sleeping, it's all the time. It's how I know he's home - that and all the locks I have to unlock when I get home. I don't see the point in locking doors when everyone is home during the day. (Nevermind the fact that we live in kind of a weird spot and I'm pretty sure there isn't another soul who is aware of these apartments who hasn't lived here.) 

The whirr swallows all other noise. If I'm listening to a record, and he opens his door, WHIRRRRRRRR. If I'm doing dishes, WHIRRRRRRR. If I'm watching Hulu, in my room with my door closed WHIRRRRRR. 

WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

IT DOES NOT STOP. 

We've discussed this briefly, it's relaxing, to him and no one else who spends time here. People always ask what that noise is. It's this machine that my roommate finds calming... Yeah, okay. 

I used to have an issue with silence, but I find any sort of constant noise to be more irritating that helpful. Everyone hates that person who taps their pen in an otherwise silent room. It's like that. Except Darth Vader is breathing behind you, and you can't kill him because that dude you live with likes to cuddle with him until he falls asleep.

Roommate1: OCD, part 1

A Darth-Vadar-is-breathing-behind-you machine.

When choosing a roommate, I'm not super picky. I don't want to be your best friend, I just want you to pick up your shit. To me, picking up one's own shit includes taking the trash out when you notice it's full, dusting when you can write things on the TV screen, sweeping when walking around barefoot becomes unpleasant, and doing your own dishes within twenty four hours, etc. Essentially, I just like clean people who don't spread out their things into common surfaces. 

This being said, I love everyone I've lived with, we just can't live together (like your parents). They aren't perfectionists like I am, and admittedly, I was a total bitch about some things to all of the people I lived with in Richmond, Virginia. It took living alone and in an apartment (mostly) free of vermin for me to chill the fuck out. I've been accused of being Obsessive Compulsive, but really I just hate having roaches and mice and fruit flies hanging out on a regular basis - take those things away and we're cool. 

When I moved into my current apartment, it was just me and an exceptionally clean dude. From henceforth I will refer to him as OCD, because that is what he is. I chose to live here based on the potential I saw in the apartment to be cuter by rearranging a few things and how clean it was. It was by far the cleanest apartment I saw that wasn't empty. After I moved in I reorganized the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, he was a bit thrown off by this, but quickly came around. As long as he has "his space" for things he's fine. Though I threw a lot out. I don't think anyone had cleaned the refrigerator in the last year, and no one took their food with them when they moved out - there was lots of stale and moldy things around. 

Of all the things he was OCD about, this was surprisingly not one of them. For him it's about germs and smells.

Each Saturday he "cleans" the bathroom. I say "cleans" because it's just surface cleaning. If I can scratch soap scum off the shower wall, it isn't clean, so I showed OCD how to clean it more effectively. He also has a habit of taking the trash out before he cleans things, which is bizarre because he uses so many paper towels to clean and by the time he's done the trash can is halfway full again. He also wears disposable latex gloves to clean, uses paper towels to life the trash can's lid and to dry his hands. 

It didn't take me long after moving in to notice how frequently OCD is in the bathroom. It's all the time. It's a couple times an hour at least, and he always keeps the door closed - whether anyone is in their or not. This is a problem because 1) I don't always know when someone is in there and OCD doesn't always lock the door, and 2) our apartment isn't ventilated well and keeping the door closed contributes to that gross "moist" feeling that lingers after people take showers - gross.

His case is that because of the bathroom's location directly off the kitchen he doesn't want germs getting from the bathroom into the kitchen. I don't understand this logic, I acknowledge that germs are everywhere, and may have told him that "once you put a dick in your mouth, you don't really worry about germs anymore." Crude? Sure. True? Definitely. Being that he has never had a dick in his mouth, he can't relate. 

But COME ON, keeping a door closed isn't going to keep those germs isolated. They're microscopic organisms. They do and go wherever the fuck they want, without your permission.

We've also had issues regarding cooking smells. He claims that my use of garlic and onions, and our other roommate's use of curry and cumin in everything is "suffocating." I think that's an exaggerating, but I've taken to keeping the stove fans on while I cook and he in turn has significantly reduced the amount of aerosol air freshener he sprays. He was doing it a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. Our other roommate and I both get migraines pretty regularly, so the use of chemicals to cover up natural smells wasn't working out, nor was it an effective way to solve the problem. 

OCD also has a white noise machine. I've heard about people using these to sleep, but he has one in his room on ALL THE TIME. If his bedroom door is even cracked that incessant noise swallows everything else, which I guess is the point, but I like music and movies, and the constant whirr of it drives me batty. I've taken to closing his door without asking. 

We get along alright and can talk about things, but where I can let things go, and relax, he is incapable. I've known a lot of awkward people, a lot of anxious/depressed people who are socially inept, but this is a whole new level. Friends have asked me why I don't move, but despite all his quirks, he's clean, so I deal.  

Over It

I'm sitting in the common room in my hostel. This is the same hostel I stayed in when I visited San Francisco last November, but there's a big difference in staying for a few days on vacation, and staying for two weeks looking for and then waiting to move into an apartment. 

I thought spending two months living with my parents was bad, and then I came here. I've been sharing a room with five other people here, five. FIVE. And at least two of them change every other day. I think I've shared my room with at least thirteen different people in the past twelve days. 

People are terrible. They are the worst. They are loud, and they don't flush toilets, or wash their hands, and they take up so much space and don't seem to understand that by, "excuse me," I mean, "get the fuck out of the way." Isn't "excuse me" one of the first phrases everyone learns whenever they learn a new language? Perhaps I should try "excusez-moi" or "entschuldigung" instead. 

Then there are the people that live and work here. I know one of them as she and I shared a room when I was here before. And I don't mind them, it's just that I like having my shared room to myself when everyone else is out being a tourist, so I stay in it in the mornings only to be interrupted by the person who cleans the mirrors, and then the person who vacuums, and the person who cleans the sinks and then the person who comes round to check that those things have been done. 

This is no way to live. 

I'm amazed at my tolerance so far. 

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy being around people, when I have my own place to go home to. I'll talk to anyone, and I like most people when given the opportunity to talk to them individually. I hate having to introduce myself to someone new all the time. The other day someone called me "Judith" and I knew they were talking to me, but I didn't bother correcting them because why does is matter? I figured I'd never see them again. 

Wait, I take that back. I don't mind introducing myself to new people that are potential new friends - people who actually live here, too. That is something that I do like about San Francisco overall, the people are friendly and most aren't from here either. In that way it reminds me a lot of DC - but I won't go on about how much I miss DC. 

A friend reminded me this week that you suffer for the things you want. That's true, this is what I've wanted for the past two years, and I have it now. I may be living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and oranges, but it'll be worth it, right? Right?

"There" is now "Here"

I haven't stopped moving since my last post two months ago. My brother and his family flew in from Basque for a couple weeks. I got my official acceptance letter to advertising school, and had to scurry to find loans to get me to San Francisco. I called my friend with whom I had thrown around the idea of a cross-country road trip together with, he was available, and bought a trailer. Christmas happened. I left, and now I'm writing this from a hostel in the "Tendernob" - the area on the border between the Tenderloin and Nob Hill districts of San Francisco.

Whew!

I live here now. 

In San Francisco. On the other side of the country, and basically the other side of the world. 

The first day here I had orientation, followed by moving my life out of a trailer and into a storage unit, followed by an interview, followed by class. I slept better that night than I had in weeks. Since then I've sent out numerous emails of desperation in response to Craigslist ads looking for roommates. 

I've done this before, I've lived with strangers, and it's turned out alright. But that was in a city that I was familiar with. Though, I did start getting responses, probably one for every four I wrote, and finally saw several places this weekend.

Before I arrived here, I had done some research as to where I figured I would end up living, based on cost and proximity to my school. One area, Ingleside, proved to be much farther, and depressing than I thought it would be. There really isn't anything there, save for the occasional corner store and BART station. I saw two rooms there. The first was in a house that was shared with three gay men - all of my dreams about living with gay men were crushed upon seeing this house. It was messy, and dirty, and there was a craft project taking over the kitchen table, and while the room I would have been living in was okay, I wouldn't have been able to deal with the rest. The second house was shared with two chicks of ambiguous sexual orientation. This house, like the first was also messy and cluttered, and the girls were far too laid back.

I am not laid back. I like things to be done, and in an orderly fashion. Thing have places, and they should be in their places. 

Another room was in an apartment in The Mission, a neighborhood I like, a lot, and have stayed in on a previous trip. I saw this room with two other people, one of which left at the same time I did. As we were walking down the stairs he turned to me and said, "that place was a shithole. I can't live somewhere like that!" Indeed.

There are a few other students in my very situation. All of us are new in town and many are new to this country. One had mentioned that he and a friend of his were looking and invited me to potentially live with them. The apartment they had chosen was in The Haight, right on Haight Street across from a park. It was a corner unit, and all the windows had decorative stained glass along the top. It was small, but sunny, and so beautiful, and so expensive. Part of me wishes I hadn't looked at it at all, just because now I know exactly what I'm missing. But I'm sure they'll find someone to rent it with them.

The room I've settled for isn't in a beautiful art-deco building, but it is quaint, and clean, and tidy. AND it's not full of clutter. I may collect books and records, but do you know how easy it is to dust around those things compared to nicknacks? And do you know how much I hate dust? I hate it, a lot. This apartment will be easy clean! Above all else though is the location, it's in the Inner-Richmond (of course I'll be living in Richmond, I just can't escape it) and close to the Presidio and Golden Gate parks, and just a short bus ride from downtown. 

I'm so excited. I'll have a real place to live in a week!