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2001-09-21 || 11:45 a.m. || li po. oh no. || li po lounge: random bar in chinatown. there are old chinese men in a corner watching sports on a television above the bar. the bartender is terribly old with a baseball hat askew, mumbling in chinese and pushing the specialty drink, a chinese liquer that years ago michael had bought from a faceless store in chinatown because he had heard that if you drink enough of it you hallucinate. (the brown squat bottle sat on the refrigerator the entire time we lived in the flat in the mission. it became the object of dares and torture because it was so incredibly strong and tasted like pureed garbage. like the juice that seeps from a full trash bag after you have pulled it from the can. rotten vegetables and feet and hair clippings, all fermented and terribly potent. i remember thinking cutting it with 7-up would help, he said hallucinations!, but my eyes still watered and i couldn't help spitting it out sprinkler like all over the kitchen counter.) this is a super secret hang out of san francisco's super secret club of super super tough hipsters of the most intimidating variety and black haired meanies. upstairs there are kids ordering drinks and talking and clogging the aisleway between bar and wall. it looks a little funny, chinatown clashing with severe hair and outfits and make-up. like this is a practical joke. like someone announced that li po is the cool place to go and you get there and ahem, it's all old men and computer gambling and whiskey and sodas served in plastic cups. but there is a current pulling downstairs. stairway to restrooms and then. the basement. tiny room after tiny room with incredibly low plaster ceilings and cement walls. dirt floors. winding hallway. nooks and crannies and ghosts of boxes of glass bottles. the farthest room opens out and there are kids dancing with angry faces and fists. with half shaved heads and ties and tiny low cut very expensive leather boots. fishnet stockings and the tightest pants ever. joy division and the beatles and white stripes and le tigre and depeche mode and christina aguilera. people standing against walls, on fold out chairs, on couches. whizzing by stepping on feet sloshing drinks and dancing. hard hard looks and cool dismissals and the aversion to eye contact. us: a rag tag team scared out of our wits. the bad news bears. we are not wearing black and we don't have severe haircuts and one of us has a black eye from a skateboarding accident, which adds a nice touch to our organization. hoodies and woolen coats and pressed pants. chronic blushing and hemming and hawing and a few terrible cases of wallflower. we are hugging the doorway and clutching our drinks and unsure of the operation. we are giving reserved hellos to the people we know. we(i) are hiding from the people we are afraid of. we hold our breath and go down the stairs, this is supposed to be fun, weaving and dodging and offering apologies. body heat and cigarette smoke and music hit us hard in the face and our delicate composure gets rattled at the edges. we sit on cement and watch people dance. i begin to recognize people i haven't seen in years. one comes over to talk and we hug and give half sentences and quickly run out of things to say, but the music is so loud it fills the spaces. i see a lot of people who populated the parties in our flat four years ago, the ones i was deathly afraid of. the ones i always thought were very mean. now older and a bit haggard and so cool that they have jumped off the deep end and come back once and again to just bad. and i am still deathly afraid of them. we take turns getting air and getting drinks and finding people to talk to. we end up sitting on a couch in one of the smaller rooms. jeff is getting his toes stepped on continually. i notice that my shoulders are completely hunched up to my ears and i have shredded the label of my beer bottle. dove and i are laughing and talking but not understanding a word either of us is saying because it is so loud. but we are having fun. we are in a movie. i feel terribly out of place but i am armed with three boys and a nice wall to stick to. there are other people in this room, on couches, on laps, talking and setting beer bottles on the floor. the boys from belle & sebastian are in this room. mmhmmm. stuart is sitting on the couch across from us. i do not look in that direction for fear i will hyperventilate (i have such the not cool propensity toward starstruckness, oh my. the girl in the herpes commercial to don knotts to hope sandoval in the andronico's to the j church guy ALWAYS at lost weekend video, it does not matter.). and jason is talking to him. jason is not two feet from his face, talking and talking and nodding his head and. and. i am the idiot blushing profusely and trying not to stare and secretly wanting more than anything to get myself to a piece of paper to write it all down. talking to him is out of the question of course. any kind of recognition on my part would make me throw up. oh. so we are sitting on the couch, jeff, dove and i, laughing and talking and getting drenched with spilled drinks and battered from the continual procession of people. dove spots sammy hagar. it's really a lady. i spot rivers cuomo. it's really a kid from the dorms at state. a depeche mode song comes on and stuart can be heard saying 'i'm sorry, jason, but i have to go dance' (depeche mode!). we decide to go outside to let our lungs recover a bit. the upstairs is terribly full now. the old chinese men have been outnumbered and have fled. we make our way to the curb and that is full too. we find more people we know and talk louder and stand straighter and not feel so. hrmm. jason confesses he feels very nerdy. i confess the same thing. and it's not in the chic dimension of the word. it's not in the cuddlecore black-rimmed glasses i wear my pants high watery for fashion dammit dimension. it's in the junior high dimension. the wanting to hide out in the bathroom dimension, although we can't now because we have visions of people shooting up and fucking and doing other tough hip cutting edge stuff we don't even know about. oh my gosh the things we do for fun on a thursday night. but i never have to go back ever again. and i don't have to feel so self conscious about wearing stripes and argyle socks in the real world. guestbook || notes || archives || profile || 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