The Blind Date
Soup and Salad Beyond Sight.

The sequined, feathered, topless, and excitingly varied performative queer surround us. No better night to slip under the raidar as we walk into the Mission district ghetto night wearing blindfolds and bearing wallet and camera than Pride Weekend.

We chose our diner location for the following reasons:
* We would both be blindfolded, with no guide. We needed something unlikely to kill us or else Kyle wasn't in.
* I walk past it everyday and know approximate distances and obstacles from here to there.
* We've eaten there before and would order without a menu even if we could see it (We debated: How impolite is it to burden the waitress with our inability [read: unwillingness] to see it?).

Even the planning of this task made me more aware of the tools that I use to make this big big world more manageable: habit, predictability, and polite manners to name a few. These inherently humdrum ways of seeing are given an odd, incongruous newness and importance when my habit of relying on mundane vision is scrambled. Perhaps old haunts and habits are the very best things to see with new eyes.
Perhaps this is why one joins SF Zero.

We venture out, none too steady on our feet, with my left hand on the wall and right arm around Kyle Crocodile's cheating eyes to make sure he's not taking off his blindfold again. Kyle was dragged into this task, kicking and screaming (and loving it). He is flailling going on and on (not really for any actualy gripes, but more for the joy of creating a public spectacle of an unconsensual blindfolding): "...gonnagetmugged, lemmego, how'boutjustyougoblindfoldedandI'llguide..." Someone abruptly shouts, in a overly loud voice, as though our blindfolds have also rendered us deaf: "Oh my gaawd! Is that girl wearing a blindfold?? Whoa." But no questions and we lost his sound trail before we are close enough for an explaination. Maybe my flashed picture scared him.

Around the corner we knew we would encounter a minor dilemma: the landmined maze of street 'yard sales' that are set up everynight from sundown to sunup. Not wishing to displease the generally nice but potentially hostile men running them, we must relinquished our reliance on the wall as our guide to avoid walking on their wears. Fortunately, some nice stranger helped us and told us how many steps to take in each direction to avoid collisions. He seemed confused and concerned (though not interested in an explaination). How nice. Normally the only people that talk to me on my block are drooling and hissing insane things about the 'eeeeeeevil in my eyes'.

Using the cracks in the sidewalks and slopes in the curb with surprising deftness, we felt the rest of our way to the diner. It was a slow process. I found the slowness surprising; I have breezed through this walk a million times, almost always needing to get someplace in a hurry, but now needed patience, depended upon it. I was positively forced to revel in the moment.
We waited to be seated, uncertain we had been noticed until we heard an angry waiter tell us that we couldn't do that in here because we were going to "disturb" people and break things. But then some nice waitress swooped in, relieved him, and was really helpful (big tip for her!). She even went so far as to maternally pick up our hands and guide them to the beer, burger, ketchup, etc. Getting her attention for another round proved difficult, but it forced upon us a more patient mindset, an awareness of and subsequent relaxing of our urgency that we might not otherwise have felt.
We spent our time learning new ways to engage in old habits. The simple high five required practice, but in the end made a louder, more satisfying smack than we usually get. Or maybe we just paid better attention to the sound.

Unable to communicate with our faces, even simple conversation needed to learn new routes. We reveled in the irony of our conversation as we realized exactly how much sight is a part of our own habitual vernacular. ("You look great today. Did you do something with your eye make-up?" - "No, my retinas are still healing from the last time I looked at your ugly ass." - "You're lucky I'm wearing my protective eye gear or I would shoot my laser beams at you.").

We made our way out of the restaurant and back through the streets, illiciting only stunned or disinterested silence and perplexed sidestepping from those around us.
Now, in the aftermath, when walking down my street, I've noticed just a little newness. I find myself paying attention to exactly how regularly the cracks in the concrete come and how many pillars and doors there are to the corner. Its like I've learned the secrets behind these drab things that I would take for granted otherwise. Like I can 'see' the magic glistening just under the surface of my daily routine, waiting to be looked at with the right (not eeeevil) eyes. I'm just a little more aware, appreciative, mindful, and excited, finding a hint of novelty in my same old walk.

p.s. After writing this, I watched this.
Ze Frank has some very spunky SF0-ish things to say about busting cycles to create newness. He is my dear and glorious leader.