This is a thread of tiny stories from my travels, beginning in September 2024 with my tour of the Eastern Seaboard. You can check out the first three parts of my travelogue below before jumping into my January 2025 tour of San Francisco.
READ PART ONE
READ PART TWO
READ PART THREE
I’ve been in love with San Francisco since I read On The Road in college. However, it wasn’t until this trip that being on the road felt like I imagined back then. Touring as a companion gives me everything that touring as a comedian promised.
The last time I visited sucked. For a while, I was like, “The city has changed,” and that’s true, but eventually it occurred to me that the reason I’d had a bad time had nothing to do with San Francisco.
It was because I’d sent my Dad a bag of gummy dicks for his birthday. What do you get for the man who has everything besides self-awareness? That year at Thanksgiving he’d made several circumcision jokes while holding an electric carving knife, so I thought dick jokes were on the table.
This one was hilarious. The note inside said “Eat a Bag of Dicks.” What Jewish boomer lawyer does not deserve that? He called immediately. I stood in the rain on a street corner in North Beach to answer.
“Did you send me a bag of dicks? That’s not acceptable! Only my wife can send me that!”
It wasn’t weird until he made it weird.
“They’re gummy dicks, Dad, they aren’t even hard!”
It was an excellent joke and a terrible trip.
For years after this, I hated San Francisco. This year, I became friendly with some Bay Area companions on social media and had a summer whale from Marin, all while in therapy and micro-dosing mushrooms.
Cut to me deciding to reclaim my love of The Golden City.
1/16/2025
It’s the middle of the LA fires, so I am practically the only person at LAX. The flight is easy. I haven’t taken Southwest before. I like it so much I got the credit card. The hotel I’m staying in, a boutique refurbished by a larger luxury chain, is small, perfect, and tucked right between North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf. Here, I will make an exception to the “everything I did that wasn’t you” conceit of these posts. My first client was in North Beach, just a half mile through winding streets in sea air blissfully devoid of the cloud of toxins and unprocessed trauma permeating West Hollywood. On this walk, I see a sign that says North Beach and think about how right now, in this moment, life feels more aligned with On the Road than it ever has.
Upon arrival, I was invited to the bathroom to freshen up, a classic move I always appreciate. I spied an envelope full of cash made from photos of me. As I looked up to meet my gaze in the mirror, I saw portraits of my mutuals above the toilet.
I love gentlemen who are genuinely interested in the work and the workers at this level—enthusiasts. The fans, like the tours, are so much more fulfilling than doing comedy.
Four hours later, he walks me to meet a friend from my Autistic Peer Support Coaching Cohort. We meet at an Italian restaurant – there are endless Italian restaurants. This aspect of North Beach reminds me of the restaurants in the North End of Boston; tourists think it’s great. It’s Italian through an American lens, which makes sense– the Italian community here formed a hundred years before Howl. From 1850 to 1880, Italians streamed west, mainly from the Northern Regions of Italy. The neighborhood still has one of the country’s largest Italian American populations today. Why? The Gold Rush, of course. That’s why the football team is called the San Francisco 49ers. It’s referring to 1849 – the first big year for gold in the region.
The cute Italian waiter even looks the other way when I pour half of my dirty martini into the plastic soup container he’s just handed me.
1/17/2025
I wake up starving, dress quickly, and walk to Pat’s Cafe. It is there that I have my Vonnegut moment. Pat’s is small and colorful, the walls a gallery of local art and photography for purchase. I stand for a minute, taking in these stories of San Francisco that span over a century. I buy a print showcasing the faintest rainbows across the Golden Gate. In the foreground, palms sprout like stubby cigars. Soon I’m dipping white toast into orange yolk with my left hand, Angelica Noi’s All Hooker’s Go To Heaven in my right. It’s not only the best book about sex work I’ve read; it’s one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. It grabs you by the throat, and the world falls away. More than that, this one gives me a sense of solidarity and of being known, or at least, knowable. What I want from a book is not much different than what you want from me – for it to feel a certain way when I’m inside of it.
I’m dipping a piece of toast into yolk with my left hand and holding the book with my right when I notice I am happy and murmur, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
Soon, I’m riding toward SF MoMa. I want to see everything. It’s massive, so I start at the top. I’m wrong, I do not want to see everything. There’s a whole exhibit about professional sports.
I love to go to a museum alone because I can read every placard when the art appeals to me and glide along when it doesn’t. I see a photo that reminds me of New London, my favorite shitty city, and text a friend from there. She’s home sick, so I take her to the museum. This might be my favorite way to see art. Alone, with a friend in my pocket.
Otherwise, the art fully inhabits me. There are enormous polka dot pumpkins, photographs from not long ago that were made in a completely different world, neon installations with nihilist slogans, intricate New England seascapes, Hindi goddesses, Rothko, pop art. The darkest of darks and the lightest of lights are displayed here, in every sense. What strikes me most are the messages of resistance, of solidarity, of affirmation that other people exist that see things the way I do.
And then I go shopping.
I came to San Francisco to reclaim it, even this Bloomingdale’s, as my sister was mean to me here once when I was eight, and I still remember it (she called me a lesbian; she was half right). I bought two gorgeous pairs of jeans that fit perfectly! I need a smaller size than expected, twice!
Inspired, I re-download Feeld, an app I use a few times a year when I want to sleep with a lady. It falls together quickly. I play pillow princess with a gorgeous Brazilian au pair. In between orgasms, she plays with my hair and listens to me yap. We share a cab to a lesbian bar called Jolene’s, where she meets friends, but I am tired and no longer 23, so I let it take me back to my hotel and promise to call the next time I’m in town.
1/18/2025
I woke up earlier and more fully than I expected. I journaled, showered, and thought about what I wanted to do with my last morning—nothing, actually. I just wanted to go home to my dog. So I changed my flight, headed toward the airport, and was home before my flight was even scheduled to board.
It was such an easy, good trip that I decided to create a bespoke San Francisco FMTY offering:
$2500 minimum and one week’s notice to get me there. This breaks down to a three-hour date and a $300 travel stipend.
“It’s an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.” – Oscar Wilde
♥
