[ 2:30 p.m. music being listened to: Sergei Prokofiev's Concerto #5 for Piano and Orchestra Sviatoslav Richter, performing ... angry, dissonant, confused, sad, powerful music. ]

I awoke this morning feeling anguished. At first, I thought this was a vestige of some terrible dream just past, but then I suddenly remembered what happened yesterday in San Francisco.

His mind filled with a conflict of anger, letting go, revenge, resignation and the dreamy sleepiness of waking up too early in the morning, he stands at a bus stop, in the mist and fog enshrouding Noe Valley, waiting for the 48 24th Street bus, which will take him to school. I imagine he is heartbroken still, regardless of the front of stoic bravery that he showed me last night...

heaven
Yesterday afternoon in The City started out great. I had borrowed my friend Gary's bike, as Trev said he wanted us to go biking around the Mission and Twin Peaks, looking for old cars to take digital pictures of. Got to the 24th Street BART station midafternoon, and didn't have to wait long before Trev appeared, astride his brand-new bmx bike... the kind which you can do tricks on. He had spent his hard-earned ATDP TA money, and other savings, to buy this particular bike, which he had made to order, and which he had waited patiently a long time for, to get. And it was quite a handsome bike... low-slung, shiny black tubing, and these awesome titanium-looking pegs extending out from all sides of both wheels. And surprisingly heavy! I could barely lift it with one hand.

The first place Trev took us to was his old middle school, Horace Mann. There were no cars in the yard, as it was a day-off for all SF kids (ergo, no teachers), and he showed me the one or two tricks he could do... not many yet, since he only had the bike for three weeks. Then we biked around the corner where Trev ducked into a mom-and-pop grocery store where he got us a couple of ice-cold Stewart's root beers--the kind that come in those cool, dark amber bottles--before tackling the really serious hill roads of Noe Valley and Twin Peaks. From the store, we meandered along the streets of the western Mission, looking for old cars to take pictures of, then up towards Twin Peaks.

I felt so happy, seeing the delight on Trev's face as we found car after old car, as he snapped pictures from various angles. In his company, I felt like a boy of 16 again, with a whole afternoon to do nothing but bike around with my friend, looking for seriously cool old 'Vettes, Mustangs, Thunderbirds, Karmann Ghias... along the streets of a city district full of mystery, grit, grime, story. And steep streets reaching up to the incoming rivers of fog flowing unimpeded down from the lips of hilltops.

dear Trev,
You were right. the stuff WAS soupy. But good, to judge by how quickly you wolfed down the meal, as Jorge and I sat watching in abject astonishment. Or else you really were starving. The food was good, tasted home-cooked... I liked my taco del chorizo, even if I didn't finish it. But what else is new. I would go back to that place again in a heartbeat... were it not for the fact that doing so would just remind me of what happened next.

hell
Part of the problem is that Trev comes in such a sweet, innocent-looking package, that no amount of spiky crimson hair or dangling wallet chain or street-cred clothes will disguise. How else to explain his being jacked twice (at least) last year outside his school, and in the process losing his treasured jacket and CD player to hooligans? And now this...

We were all standing outside La Taq, me untethering Gary's bike from the parking meter, all of us getting ready to go walk up 24th to the bookstore for the Pullman reading, when these guys passed by and stopped... one of them had a bmx bike too, and his friend asked Trev if he could try his bike and show us some tricks. Trev said okay, sure... and handed the guy his bike. Who then proceeded to show us a trick, perched on the front and back pegs. Glided up the sidewalk... and around the corner -- his real trick. Meanwhile, the guy's friends started slithering across the street the opposite way, and Trev looked at us with a look that said "uh-oh..." Walked to the corner, stood there looking down the block for a few long, interminable seconds... said "this is fucking bullshit..." then took off, ripping his bike helmet from his head and flinging it to the sidewalk.

Under ideal circumstances -- i.e., no 'bad people' existing on the surface of the city -- the Pullman reading would have been the perfect capper to a wonderful day. Tomas even showed up, late, as he had school that day (unlike the SF kids) as well as an optometrist appointment AND a visit to the orthodontist (!). The evening at Cover to Cover Bookstore was really marvelous, and the author's talk and reading clever, delightful and magical... except I didn't enjoy it as fully as I could have, with Trev's sad face lingering in my mind the whole damn time. He probably would dispute my characterization of "sad" here... as Jorge and I walked back down to the store (having left for a walk for a bit, as we got to the reading early), we encountered Trev trudging back up the street on his way home... informing us bravely that he would get his bike back. And moving on past us, without another word, or a glance back. Yes, his body language was that of a sad kid.

While this isn't the kind of life-or-death issue that some of us are confronting in our lives, it also is, in other ways. The death of innocence for one thing. Mine, mostly. Not Trev's... i'm sure his way of looking at the world is no longer as pure as that of a child. But regardless of how old each of us is, we always have some innocence in us, in one way or another. Trev lost some of it yesterday, as did Jorge, Anna, Tomas and I. After a bit of your inner child is ripped away, who can you then trust on the city's dark, vibrant, murderous, seething, scabrous streets?

Trev lost more than a thing, of course. He had worked hard to earn the money for this cool bike, both as a TA (and he was clearly one of my best and most devoted TAs last summer) and on his own as a web designer for an auto website. He expended much imagination and anticipation on getting just the right bike so he could learn to do the wondrous X-Games-like tricks that people do... he dreamed about it a lot. And it was taken away as blithely as a sadistic bully does when taking candy from a child. In front of us, his friends. On his neighborhood streets. On a day that had begun so well, and so joyously.

And from being a boy of 16 again, in one awful moment -- looking at the profile of Trev's face as he gazed with a fierce horror down the block at the receding bicycle thief -- the bubble burst and I aged 60 years all at once, my shoulders sagging under a weight of cruel fog, and things shifted from colour to flat, featureless gray.

heartbreak is a boy with hands and fingers wrinkled in an odd condition that makes him appear ancient, if that's all you're looking at...

is a boy with size-11 feet and bony angles all akimbo when teetering on the gleaming tops of yuppie cars just so he can take cool pix of ancient 50s roadsters parked behind...

is a boy with red, spiky hair and green eyes who gives you the gift of an afternoon with images and motion, excruciatingly uphill and fast downhill, and who asks for nothing in return...

heartbreak is when you lose your faith and there's nothing and no one to give you any, except promises that may be filled, or not...

depending on where you are when something steals into you like a dagger or a vicious glance. like the night with hidden worlds in it, inaccessible.

{ net.casting }
^