mlle. h. bean

"Always Stay in Your Own Movie"**

Today was Joe's turn. He took me up to Dolores street, past the park and then down to the Castro district. From there we took the F-Train down to Hyde and 8th, and then we met Eric at work and went for some Thai cuisine just down the street. Thai iced tea is like a creamy orange-colored concoction that tastes of boiling maple sap--an amazing flavor. Then I checked out the Asian Art Museum for a few hours, with its massive collection that was almost too much for my brain to process. There were huge sections on every Asian country, from India to Korea to Tibet and Bhutan to the big two, China and Japan, and many others I'm not naming. They spanned time--from the Bronze age to the present day, and there were all kinds of things--jade, ceramics, baskets, tapestries, paintings, statues, jewelery, manuscripts, holy artifacts from Tibet... I'm not kidding when I say it was more than my brain could handle. And I managed to get reprimanded by security guards not once but twice...the first time I was running my hand over a statue from 100 B.C. ("Excuse me m'am, but please don't touch the statues") and the second time I accidentally left the flash on my camera. ("No flash in here!" "I know, it was an accident!") With the statue-groping, I'd been feeling the surface of various ones for about 10 minutes already, but I guess hadn't been seen. Ever the sensuist, I believe in appreciating artwork in more than one way. I guess they don't. Fully understandable.

After the art musuem, I wandered into City Hall and apparently right into the middle of prep for some big shindig--there were crystal glasses stacked all over gold-cloth-covered tables, and lighting guys setting up their stuff on the second-floor balconies. But what I wanted to see was the inside of the dome, and I went up as high as the elevator would take me and then sat on the fat railing and just stared upwards. When I came back down I asked someone what was going on there, and they rolled thier eyes and said "Some big fancy thing, probably for the opera."

After that I walked down Market street, trying to find interesting condoms, and while I passed plenty of girly show theatres, no erotica shops. Oh well. Then took the BART back to the Mission, and while walking back to Eric's I had to explain twice what my cblocals hoodie was all about, to two consecutive black men who didn't know where Nova Scotia was. One was an older security guard named Winston, and when he made some allusion to my 'uncle being mad 'cause he was flirting with me' I took my cue to leave. All in all, though, a harmless guy. Keep on defending the Bank of America, Winston!

It was another beautiful day in Frisco. I'm so lucky to have these three crazy guys putting me up (and putting up with me), and feeding me delicious veggie meals and putting sweet-smelling roses in vases for the dinner table, and taking me around and answering all my questions. Mondo kudos to the uncles and Francisco. G'night.

**Can you guess who said this? Why, it's....