TCB, baby...

I was so stressed out over the prospect of what I'd have to do in SF that I couldn't sleep, and I just kept feeling worse. And, of course, being sick wasn't gonna make anything easier. When I landed at SFO, the pain in my ears from all the congestion pressure was almost too much to bear. I saw the skyline of the city through a throbbing drum behind my watering eyes, and it wasn't the beat I wanted to dance to.

Regardless, I couldn't help but smile through the sniffles, riding BART downtown just in time to run up to the street and spit a thick wad of snot into the gutter outside of the Civic Center station.

It was a little after 8 a.m. by the time I climbed into bed at Sasha's house, and half-brain slept for about an hour before the mystery subletters started calling, wondering when I was gonna stop by. I rustled poor ol' late-night-working Sasha up and convinced her to drive the getaway car, Montclair, to my tragic flat in the Inner Sunset just to get the damn "meet and greet" out of the way and find out what the action plan was for these people--and me--to get all our shit out.

I was nervous to meet them. First, I didn't know what the Model might've said to defray any blame on himself, what he must've tried to pin on me, as he said in not-so-many words that it was all basically my fault for leaving it in his hands (although he insisted that was the only way he'd work). But more so, I was pissed that these three, and not TWO, fuckers were largely responsible for me losing my apartment ultimately, and that I'd had to take time off work to come up, with a fucking cold, and move my shit out, blah blah blah.

But when they opened the door--MY door--we all seemed to drop disappointments and judgments in a matter of seconds, and just got down to the task at hand. They were just "dudes," as Sasha noted--young, but seemingly good guys, which made it not as awful as it could've been. We came up with an agreeable plan for moving and cleaning, I (well, mostly burly Sasha) grabbed some boxes of my crap, and proceeded on over the Bay Bridge to Sasha's dad's deluxe bachelor mansion in Oakland Hills.

When Sasha went to work, I crashed out for a couple more hours, trying with all my might to regain any energy I could, so that I could dine with the Thespian later that night. Admittedly, I was a bit of a zombie girl but simply couldn't miss out on what would surely be an entertaining evening. Oh, and it was. Thespian took me to a swanky bistro in downtown Oakland called Levende East, which was all softly lit, low-hanging chandeliers, impressive oversized art, brick walls and dark wood tables, and a lovely mixed crowd of the young, urban and pretentious.

My head was getting fuzzier by the moment but I do recall something like scrumptious gorgonzola-stuffed figs (or was it roquefort-stuffed dates, hmm...) and Thespian downing tequila gimlets followed by a Schramsberg Rose he found appealing and then a pinot noir of some sort and I'm not sure but there might've been another tequila gimlet in there somewhere but this was not a good idea because I think Thespian possibly forgot that HE DOESN'T DRINK. And our polite dinner conversation turned into a comedic-for-me but apparently dramatic monologue about the plight of medical marijuana and the political downfall of law and the scandal of mainstream media and it was finally determined in all of this, at least according to Thespian, that "SOMEONE MUST DIE!!!"

And I don't think he meant it really, but diners had stopped dining, and had taken to leaning in closer to pick up any subtle nuances they might be missing out on, and although I was enjoying the intellectual spark, I understood that Thespian's tone and volume were perhaps distracting but it annoyed me to no end that nearby tables couldn't engage in their own interesting distractions. Still, I collected my dear dinner date and deposited him safe and soundly to his pad before I ambled back to Sasha's dad's, where I proceeded to crash out for the next day and a half.