Holding P’s Hand

Yesterday, Sunday, I got up about 11:15 and talked to my mother on the phone, mainly about extensions for Firefox, of which she had found some good ones. She was having fun testing the various features. She’s way more computer-literate than I am. She’s built her own from the ground up. She’s also way more enthusiastic than I am about customizing her PC experience. I would never bother, for instance, to change the colors of my Firefox tabs. I say, if white was good enough for my grandfather’s Firefox tabs, god rest his soul, it’s good enough for mine.

After we got off the phone, I went over to the Lumiere to see One Last Thing, which I thought was great. I laughed, and I cried and cried, more than at any other movie I can think of. The second-saddest movie I’ve seen in the past couple of years was A Home at the End of the World. If I’d been alone in the theater, I would have thrown myself on the ground and howled. But then, I also cried almost all the way through School of Rock.

After the movie, I walked down Polk St. until I had either passed Fields Book Store or it had disappeared. I consulted a phone book (not touching the plastic cover, which had obviously been spat upon) and walked back in the other direction five or six blocks to visit the bookstore. While I was there, a 65-year-old hippie began to share his frustrations with the very nice and patient cashier. It seems his parents/stepparents still don’t understand him.

I had read that A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books might be sold in the near future so I walked over there to see if they were having a massive sale, which they are, but not for a week (and it’s a Mother’s Day sale), so I didn’t buy anything. My policy on books is to borrow them from the library and only to buy them if they’re books on Buddhism, and in the latter case preferably to obtain them from Stacey’s on Market St., where you always get 10 percent off.

It was getting so toward the end of the afternoon that I feared it might be too late to call P. by the time I got home, as who knew where else I might go, so I decided to pay him a surprise visit. I would have taken the 49 to Mission and 26^th, but traffic was very slow on Van Ness, so I walked down to Market and took the J Church instead.

I found cheerful Ed sitting on the front porch with a mystery novel. “What’s new?” I asked. He beamed and said, “Not a thing!” and knocked on wood to ensure his continued tranquility. He said he was enjoying the book, but that he’d sworn off trying to figure out the endings of mysteries once he realized it qualified as work, as why should he work when he’s reading for pleasure?

I found P. lying on his bed, staring into space, with his pants undone. We visited for a bit, and then I went to see Lourdes, who told me her parents are gone, but she has nine (or ten) grandchildren. Her brother fights with his wife: bing, bong, bang! She asked if I had eaten, how far away I live and how I was planning to get there. She always asks these things. She said they might have a Christmas party.

P. and I went outside so he could have a cigarette. On the phone he often says, “I want to hold your hand,” so I said, “I’d like to hold your hand,” and we held hands until I left.

Then I went to Papalote at 24^th and Valencia and had a marinated-tofu burrito. When I got there, there was a line out the door. They have several vegetarian burrito options, including soyrizo, and very tasty house salsa.

I thought I might get a peanut-butter cookie at the Mission Creek Café, but they were out so I came home and there you have it.