I'd Love to Try and Settle Down

I've been doing some more planning on my trip that will take place in about two months. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on how I want it to go. I'm still vacillating between trying to plan and reserve rooms on a day to day basis or if I want to just wing it, so we don't have the pressure of having to be somewhere at a certain time, if a better option comes along.

The other thing I've been thinking about is how to get in contact with the three most important people in my life when I lived in San Francisco in the eighties. Apparently, none of them are Googleable. Two of them have fairly common names and the other must have changed her last name.

I know I've said before how bad I am about staying touch with people. I'm trying much harder now, and now that there are cell phones and email, it's easier, but I'm still dealing with my past mistakes, like losing my three best friends from the mid-eighties. Here's another one of my roll calls:

1.) Neal was my first real boyfriend. We dated from the time we were 19 until we were 22. I think he may have set my expectations too high and ruined me for any other guy who followed. We definitely had plenty of issues, but as I've said before, no matter how heinous or cranky or insecure or annoying, I ever was, (and I was in my early twenties, so just imagine...) he always loved me and told me how amazing he thought I was and meant it. I don't think I've ever had that since.

I'm certainly not interested in anything romantic, I just want to see how everything turned out for him. I wonder if he still eats live grasshoppers to freak people out, or if he still sings the wrong lyrics to songs to see if he can get people to believe him, or if he's still as passionate about the principle of a thing, at the risk of everything else.

2.) I'd also like to see my friend Pitti (a nickname). She was my roommate in San Francisco and the first woman I bonded with in that city. At the time, I was pretty fucked up and not very open or emotional (hard to believe, huh?) She was all emotion and feeling and she laid out all her joy and pain for anyone to see. I thought she was so brave and she scared the shit out of me. She did a lot to help open me up, just by her example.

I wonder if she still paints every day, or if she has found some kind of happiness, or if she still drives around flashing the peace sign out of the sun roof of her car.

3.) Katie was a few years older than I was, and she was a huge ball of happiness and joy. I was still pretty punk rock at the time and she was so good in helping me get over myself. She was a Chinese medical doctor and had us drinking all kinds of weird fungus teas and eating bizarre herbs. I used to come home to find her boyfriend sitting on the couch with gigantic accupuncture needles sticking out of his forehead. I remember one instance in particular with her that makes me miss her to this day. There used to be one day a year where the city of San Francisco would pick up any crap anyone wanted to put up on their curb. On the eve of that day, Katie and I got high and wandered up to Diamond Heights where the rich people lived to look at their incredible cast-offs. We found this really expensive couch that didn't smell at all like cat pee and sat there for hours lost in our stoned tangents, holding our new found treasures.

I wonder if she still works on AIDS patients, or if her hair is still way bigger than mine, or if she still cranks up music and dances around her living room in September on those first few warm days where the fog finally lifts after the cold, cold Summer in San Francisco.

If I had tons of money, I'd think about hiring a private detective, those people are so important to me.