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you’re speeding up to slow down, down, down

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The last twenty-four hours have been a blur of friends and errands and phone calls and appointments.

I’m actually amazed at what I got done during my time off.

I woke up Sunday afternoon, the sun almost completely set, and set to writing. Before I could finish, the appointed hour arrived where I was to meet friends in the Presidio to go bowling, so I hopped on my motorcycle and zoomed up Franklin to Pine to the Presidio gate and down the hill.

I actually brought bowling shoes, having walked off with a pair some nine years earlier at Serra Bowl when I was drunk.

I sat around with a couple of old friends, talking shit, bowling a 144 and eating free unlimited shitty pizza for a couple of hours before I went home and finished my daily blog.

Then I picked up the phone and talked to my friend in New York City who’s coming to visit before the holidays until after midnight, when she had to sleep and I had to watch the season ending episode of Boardwalk Empire.

While I watched Nucky Thompson and Chalky White dance about my computer screen, a newly sober friend had a very minor meltdown to me via text. It was so minor it barely even registered, which is not to downplay the seriousness of her distress, but as the layers of a lifetime spent being high as a solution begin to get peeled back, people are raw and exposed and confused.

Which I understand completely when I remember what I felt like a week outside of the bottle.

When I managed to make her laugh, she apologized and I told her it was nothing.

Welcome to club human being, I wrote to her. It’s all good.

And it was all good, so I went to sleep.

I woke up rested some seven hours later, made some tea, brushed my teeth and hit the door. Drugstore, bank deposit, and produce market in a furious lap around 16th and Mission that took me less than fifteen minutes from leaving my apartment to walking back in again holding avocados and bananas.

Then I played it close to my third eye appointment in as many months and hit the grocery store first, making another furious lap around the store to load up on chicken and yogurt and cottage cheese before jumping back on my bike and hightailing it to my house. I parked on the sidewalk, ran upstairs to unload the perishables into the fridge and was back on my bike as quick as I could.

I was only five minutes late for my exam and I walked right into the office and thirty minutes later I was dropping off my frames at the optometry department upstairs for the third set of lenses.

Turns out I have a mild astigmatism in my left eye that the last doctor didn’t catch, and as much as I’m pissed to have had to go to such great lengths to get my vision corrected, at least I’ll have glasses that work.

I jumped back on my bike and hit the TL for lunch, leisurely eating a bowl of combination pho from Pho Tan Hua on Jones before heading over to Powell Street to get some new clothes. Usually I abhor shopping, but as I’ve lost a little more weight since the last time I went, it’s easier to look at myself in a pair of jeans when you’re no longer fat. I ain’t skinny just yet, but another two pairs of 32 waist jeans went in the bag, along with a couple of shirts, a scarf and a couple of hats.

I am officially set for winter as well as the holidays, save for a new pair of combat boots for riding my motorcycle.

I looked at the time on my phone, bombed down Market Street to my house, dropped off the backpack full of new threads and cruised out to the Sunset where I had agreed to do something I absolutely loathe.

Public speaking.

The kind related to sobriety.

The kind that it’s important for me to do and the kind that hopefully helps other people while it helps me.

I arrived early enough to get nervous and when it was my turn to get up in front of a room of almost complete strangers and talk for fifteen minutes about my experiences in sobriety, something happened that has only happened to me once before.

I had an out-of-body experience.

I remember some of what I said, but mostly I just went into what felt like a fugue state for the bulk of the time that I spoke. When I finally sat down, I got some serious applause and for the rest of the time as others shared their experiences, I was thanked by almost each of them in turn.

Apparently, I know a thing or two about sobriety – who knew?

Not me.

No, when it comes to staying clean it feels as if I know nothing, until I open my mouth and other people tell me that maybe I’m not as useless as I like to believe that I am.

And then I got a text about dinner. My Burger Club companion was going to hit a friends and family discount at a new spot opening up on Nob Hill she was being wooed to help manage and did I want to tag along?

Yes, I did.

Since I had my extra helmet with me, I told her I’d pick her up and twenty minutes later we were walking into a tiny little Italian restaurant on Nob Hill. We ate pork chops and burrata and prosciutto and squid ink pasta with sea urchin and fennel, then panna cotta and persimmon sorbet for dessert.

After the check came, I remembered that on my way back to her house was Bob’s Donuts and I realized it was Monday night.

Monday night, when a friend of mine works as a “sugar pusher,” slinging freshly made donuts on Polk Street.

So we climbed aboard my motorcycle, sped up and over Nob Hill and stopped in for a maple bar, an apple fritter, and a glazed, all still warm from the fryer, gave my friend behind the counter a hug and a tip and sped off into the night so I could drop my friend off in the Richmond and head home.

To write this blog.

And now, I’m going to drink a cup of tea and take off my shoes.

Nothing like a day well spent.



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