Pride Weekend almost killed me. It started with a text urging me out to Pink Saturday, I smoked a hearty bowl, got dressed, and waited for the 33 at the Children's hospital with some guy in a marijuana themed doo-rag. The driver looked like a fat Morgan Freeman, and was telling a loud and BLACK BLACK BLACK passenger about how he loved the night shift, because he could just get a little high and drrrive. Marijuana obviously meant a lot to all of us, and the bus got smaller.

Too small, in fact, because at Geary we are raided by femmy high schoolers and their Avril tie wearing gay companions. Swigging from the plastic bottles that said Mountain Dew but smelled spiked I was immediately crowded upon by people representative of the reason I thought it was a shitty idea to go to this dance in the first place. I left my seat and went to the back of the bus at the next stop, which left me across from some twee Asian kid who did everything he did so as not to be noticed, but clearly wanted to exchange smiles. The guy in front of me used to be -one second, as I'm typing this at the school library, somebody keeps saying "It's GENO!", and I'm thinking of Dexy's- somebody I served coffee to at Whole Foods, a quiet Britisher with bad taste in cafes. Geno woman is insisting that "she gave it to me", and I am no longer thinking of Dexy's. The youth on that bus kept erupting in their early alcohol experience, the normal politic of high school amplified by raging emotions and chemistries and public exposure. They were the reason I stayed on the bus after the stop of the dance, with it's simplistic bass fast enough for MDMA, young enough to make the cops wear pink wigs.

I instead got beer and tacos. They say anorexics do what they do because they can't accept adult sexuality, and the girl who lured me out there seems to be on the verge of overcoming that. Which is to say, she was comfortable with adult sexuality, but only when it was the conclusion of a series of errors and non-decisions on her part that left her standing naked in somebody else's room. I am sniffing the white powder again, and it is everything that metaphor suggested it would be, except it doesn't make me a total asshole two hours after the fact. She woke up at seven to participate in the Pride parade, and I waited for my mom to give me her usual post-church call and meal. I found her bracelet next to my bed this morning, an archaeologist to my own civilization. The condom wrappers still litter my room to give it that spunky, jazzy smell I know and love as my own. One of the Cockettes used to bake cum bread, the "secret" ingredient being his own ejaculation. The Cockettes are a shining example of pride done right, pride for the right reasons.

My mom did eventually call, and we saw Mongol. The geezers and I in a very hot theater, tensions raised to twenty, such that one of them says to no one in particular "Man the cinematography is just breathtaking". I used twenty minutes of the movie for a private shit, film related muzak pumping me through the occasion, overlooked by the face of Warren Beatty on a film poster barely visible through the crack of the stall. Hi, Warren Beatty, I will be done in a second.

I didn't smoke that evening because my throat was at this point primarily just a sensor for pain, as it was abused by all the fucking and drinking and smoking and night walking I put it through. As a result, my dreams were remembered. San Francisco was starting some kind of Dub institution, a minaret of reggae and rasta preaching. A lot of specific people were involved, but mostly I just remember a kind of Sumerian temple, blood red, with beats. I feel like I know Marcus Garvey personally.



Even if the person at the transcendental spirituality bookstore made fun of me for asking if she had books about him. They totally did, despite her scuffaw and overt reminder that I was in the transcendental spirituality bookstore.

Jeru the Damaja is friends with Rasta Powers, and so am I.