A long a** jog down memory lane

The resounding question ringing with the cellphone alarm in my ears was Why?  Why am I awake at 3:00 A.M.?  Why are we rushing to pack up our sleeping bags after two hours of sleep?  Why did we sign up to spend 24 hours running along 216 miles of central Oregon highway?  Why would anyone pay money for a weekend of sitting in a sweaty van, eating caffeine gels and granola bars and advil by the handful and yet still feeling fatigued and hungry and bloated?

In my dazed rage and confusion, I swore to myself that I would not be participating in this nonsense next year.  Or ever again.  The nightmares of last year’s relay must have been suppressed somehow or contorted with endorphin-swirled memories of the after party.  But in that moment I summoned the scarce mental energy I had available to imprint a future note-to-self in my brain: This is hell.

I was running the Cascade Lakes Relay with a group of my former college track teammates.  School and family reunions are little shovels that unearth older versions of ourselves that we forget exist under the pile of day-to-day minutiae.  These days, I put on makeup to go to work, skinny jeans to hang out with my cool friends, a furrowed brow when reviewing the wine list on the menu -- a stylish facade over my sweats and t-shirt personality.  But when I’m around the people who knew me when I was 18, I melt a little.  I regress a little, back to the me they knew.  

Sitting around a table with nine of my college friends, I am like Bruce Willis in that horrible time travel movie when he is confronted with his younger self and you don’t know which one is the bad guy.  In my case, I can’t tell if it’s worse to be the sort of person whose all-time favorite restaurant is the Olive Garden or to be someone that judges the sort of person whose all-time favorite restaurant is the Olive Garden. Did I used to be a loser or have I become a snob?

For a former hippie turning into a hipster, it’s difficult to distinguish between maturing and selling out.

I ran the last leg of the race, just over six miles through a winding single track trail along the Deschutes River.  The combination of sleep deprivation, scenic beauty and actual light of the sun at the end of the virtual tunnel of the finish line was enough to induce a religious experience.  My teammates gathered behind me to sprint the last 200 meters down the homestretch and all the farts and bad jokes and politically incorrect comments of the past two days were forgotten and I loved them all like family.  

They are my family.  They, like my blood family, have made their mark on me whether I like it or not.  Regardless of the new bandwagons I jump on or the various ways I “grow up,” I’ll still owe a corner of myself to them.  The corner that likes poptarts more than fancy waffles and listens to pop music and doesn’t need alcohol to have a good time--just sunshine and board games.

Who am I kidding?  I am definitely doing this again next year. 

A Motion for Better Parties

Dear Youth of America,

I would like to put forth a motion.  It is my opinion that the set of norms at the foundation of our social scene, evolved from a long lineage of partiers before us, stands to be improved upon.  Our generation shares a common love for "going out" which generally involves drinking, flirting, dancing, girls in skimpy clothing, and posting pictures online of all of the above.  We lose sleep to indulge in such activities and suffer tremendous headaches for the sake of the enjoyment they bring. 

But there are a few special occasions throughout the year where the masses turn the conventional concept of Party on its head--Bay to Breakers being a prime example.  Instead of staying up until four in the morning, people wake up at four in the morning.  Ladies leave their high heels and asphyxiating mini dresses in the closet and dawn their sneakers and sexiest super hero, Where's Waldo, or zombie/unicorn outfits.  While you can tell a lot about a man by the way he wears his jeans in the club, you can tell even more about a man who doesn't wear any pants at all.  Even the ones who prefer to cover up with a layer of body paint, a kilt or a toga are still easier to strike up a conversation with than your typical Brown Hair Guy At The Bar.  

An urban Saturday night often involves waiting in line outside in the cold to pay a cash-only cover for the privilege of entering into a dark, judgmental room.  Once inside, conversations with your friends are limited to "SHOULD WE HIDE OUR JACKETS?" and "I'M GOING TO THE BATHROOM!" and "OH MY GOD, LOOK WHAT SHE'S WEARING!"  Conversations with strangers are limited to eye contact and (often awkward) body contact.  The air smells like sweat and cologne and sex and egos.

Yesterday, at my first ever Bay to Breakers, I didn't pay a cover (it seemed like only about half of the people there actually registered for the race).  I didn't wait in line.  I didn't get blisters on my feet from uncomfortable shoes.  I ran around outside under a cloudless blue sky from the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean with 50,000 of the area's finest crazies.   We drank beer and coconut water.  We listened to Get Lucky blaring from ambulance speakers.  We danced with sharks and robots and human tacos to hip hop music.  We high-fived and pointed and whooped. The streets smelled like sweat and sunscreen and bubbles and camaraderie. 

We still exchanged pick-up lines and phone numbers.  We still posted obnoxious facebook photos.  We still took drunken afternoon naps.  But we were so much happier.

I hereby propose that all parties henceforth be hosted outside, start in the morning, require exercise, and involve human tacos. 

Roommate Roulette

If I wanted to flood my email inbox with dozens of desperate messages from strangers, I would have posted photoshoped pictures of myself in a swimsuit on OKCupid.  But I wanted hundreds of desperate messages from strangers so I posted pictures of a less-than-$2,000/month SoMa apartment on Craigslist. 

"I saw your post and I am very interested because I am also a 23 year-old queer lady."  

I never said I was gay.  Not that I'm not but -- was there something I wrote that gave that distinct impression?

"In response to your question of whether I would eat a sandwich out of the trash or throw away an entire pizza, I would say eat the sandwich."  

We have ourselves a candidate!  

"...but only because I'm gluten intolerant and it's more likely the bread is gluten-free than the pizza crust."  

Nevermind.  Next.  

"The apartment looks great!  But I've heard that area of town is sketch.  Do you feel safe there?"

"Dear responder, I have never felt unsafe there.  There is only one homeless man that lives in our alley and he will help you park your car (for a tip) and fight off the other homeless people.  When are you available for an interview?"

No reply.

I attempted to preemptively filter the replies by stating emphatically in the post that germaphobes NEED NOT APPLY.  Then I screened the responses for answers to certain character-revealing questions in the listing, including 1.  Would you rather eat a sandwich from the trash or throw away a pizza? and 2. What object will you bring to the underground human colony in the post-zombie apocalypse?   Those initial filters got me down to nineteen candidates.  My werewolf-like evolution into an asshole happened in the process of getting those nineteen down to a top eight.  Everything started out very tolerant and pluralistic ("They all seem like perfectly nice and upstanding people!").   Within a few hours I was nixing names from the list on the basis of minor grammatical errors, lack of enthusiasm for zombies, lack of enthusiasm for sandwiches, and unfascinating professions ("Mobile tech startup?  Boring. Next.").  

I created a matrix spreadsheet with each responder's name, photo (sneakily screen-shot snapped during the Skype interviews), job, and Rating.  The Rating was calculated using a highly complex algorithm which added the decible volume of their voice to the number of sarcastic phrases used during the interview multiplied by their perceived level of weirdness and/or foreignness.  The higher the Rating the better.  Now that I've weeded out the mousy grad students and personality-less Gap employees, I've reached a conundrum.  The conundrum is forcing me to choose what kind of decision-maker I want to be.  Shall I preference A) a likeminded person who I will easily get along with or B) someone who might drive me crazy but push me to understand people and the world in a new way?

A tangential psychoanalysis to explain this predicament: 

As a member of the Privileged Middle Class, I have a complex. Growing up without ever needing anything often inspires in a person a romantic desire to struggle.   When you have a house and braces and an education and a debit card and everyone around you (at least, the people with whom you socialize) also grew up with a house and braces and tax-paying parents, it is extremely difficult to feel special.  Within this homogeneous flock, a few sheep strive to be the most rich or the most pretty or the most intelligent.  They say to the world, "Yes, I have been given all the glitter in life therefore I will shine with all my might to be the brightest of the stars!"  But the rest of the herd must distinguish themselves by becoming heroes of the hurdles they make themselves.  Thus was born: the hipster. 

Every path that we trod is too well-trodden and everyone knows that good character is not built on well-trodden paths and neither are interesting blogs!  So we seek out the weeds where we can find them.  We take stances against non-local produce and inhumane poultry.  We bike in the rain (with hooded windbreakers, but still).  We travel to Third World countries and take non-paid internships.  We refuse to be roommates with someone from a similar background.  We bite the very hand that fed our cozy childhoods: consumerism.  Thrift stores and dive bars for life!  No thank you luxury vehicles!  Go home brand names!  We have no time for you.  We have causes to fight for and battles to wage against the evils of the world.  We will not be caught dead making The Easy Decision under any circumstances because easy decisions are for sheep.  And we are special. 

I have a constant fear of comfort.  No human that has known suffering would ever feel conflicted about having a relaxed and well-paying job.  I lose sleep just imagining that one day I might have a relaxed and well-paying job.  Then who will I be?  Just another member of the working class!  Just a straight-toothed, tax-paying, debit card-wielding, iPhone-owning, car-diving nobody.  My friends and my mom tell me that of course I will never be just another starlet who settles for the picket fence American Dream.  But no starlet ever thinks he'll wind up in Unremarkableland.  Yet so many do.  It is a slippery slope.  It starts with with the new puffy jacket.  Everyone should have at least one non-used piece of clothing, right?  Then you're working a desk job.  Next thing you know you only want to be roommates with young foodies who like to journal and play bananagrams.  Before you know it, you're living in a bubble of Democrats in H&M jeans and you're terrified to eat gluten or quit your job because you've forgotten was discomfort feels like.  

Alas, the blessed are cursed with angst and indecision.  The fate of my existential well-being really all comes down to how I pick my roommate...

View from the 33rd Floor

The dark flurries whistling around the thirty-third story balcony felt at once exhilarating and empty, whirring soulless voices singing an eerie chorus.  My silhouette reflected on the silver windows of the Telus building directly in front of the sky scraping condominium where mine was the only light lit at two o'clock in the morning.  In a city of millions, no one saw me.  To the right, glowing yellow beads of traffic rolled steadily through the twinkling maze of Toronto skyline.  To the left, a giant space needle--the ones constructed for the sake of being an icon--blinked hundreds of bright purple eyes, an alien mothership in the snowy fog. 

Between the front door to the apartment and the billowing balcony curtains on the opposite side of the room, there lay a trail of unwinding on the floor: two black high-heeled boots, followed by a knit hat tangled up in a knit scarf, then a down jacket, a pair of pants, a blue sticker from those supermarket plastic boxes of prepackaged food, one paper chopstick sleeve.  The trail was punctuated by its creator, standing at the wide open glass door shoveling sushi into her mouth.  Frosty gusts swept over me.  I had spent a the previous week fretting about the cold, worrying about how I would cope with temperatures 40 degrees lower than my California fish bowl.  I had forgotten about the rush.  I had forgotten about the sensation of actually feeling air enter inside of you--not just a passive environment to be inhaled but a living and burning and writhing thing, at once exhilarating and empty. 

I wondered if the hockey players and young executives and semi-celebrity tenants of this building suspected that I wasn't one of them when they passed me in the hall or stood next to me on the elevator.  Why should they?  I carried grocery bags of Greek yogurt and coconut water just like them.  I had white earbuds dangling from my pocket just like them.  I wore the same straight-forward don't-talk-to-me stare.  I took strides like I was going somewhere and pushed the button for floor number 33 like I'd done it a million times.  It felt like they knew.  What they definitely didn't know was that the only reason I was there was because I was too cheap to stay at the hotel where I was working for the weekend (Air BnB is a wonderful thing).  

The door handle made a tiny metallic zzz when I waved the round black key in front of it.  I unwrapped and unloaded the layers of the day across the room with each step as if I'd done something important that merited absolute indulgence and abandon.  Do people aspire to this lifestyle?  I couldn't sleep that night for the hopeless spaciousness of the bed that was not meant for one.  The wood-floor studio was odorless but it made me want to smell like mint and alcoholic perfume and sex and money.  It made me want to listen to modern jazz music and drink expensive liquor.  I couldn't even put my finger on why, exactly.  It was just a room, really, with some designer floor lamps and a square bathroom sink.  But it wasn't a hotel--people lived there.  People my age.  I lived there.  For a few days, this was my apartment, this was my life: eating sushi in my underwear 400 feet above the ground at 2:00 A.M.   It was at once exhilarating and empty.

Down in Georgia

I wear the lazy afternoon like an expensive wool sweater in summer -- once so coveted, but then so unbearably warm and itchy. I have been back in California for less than an hour and I am already restless.  It is too quiet and there is too much space and it is too goddamn hot.  It is 55 degrees outside and I want to be cold.  I want to see my breath come out of me as frozen smoke and then swallow liquid nitrogen straight into my lungs.  I want to be naked in skin tight neck-nape-clenching leg-tangled embrace with an ice-veined human.  I want to be hungry or tired or late.  I want necessity to mandate my every movement.  But instead I have space and time and freedom and the carefree Sunday turtleneck clings to me, safe and toasty warm.  

Swallowing the Daily Routine pill after a few days on the road is only slightly better than trying to choke down a grape-sized multivitamin after tripping on shrooms.  It seems wrong that this grayscale world of erganomically correct chairs and cell phone alarm clocks is the "reality" and the polychromatic world of travel is the hallucination.  I put on my tennis shoes and run down the broad and beautiful palm tree-lined streets, feeling the asphalt hammer tiny fractures into my shin bones with each stride, willing my mind to retrace the rapidly blurring outlines of the past four days...

   

Tears welled up in the valet's bony eyes and I worried for a moment that the hyena laugh coming out of him might actually break his spine.  "Dat's dee ride you want to park heeuh?" he asked in his Jamaican grandfather accent.  Apparently there aren't many bikers that visit The Hyatt in Atlanta.  Still I didn't think it was that funny.  But the fact that my bike had no brakes and that I rode it standing up because the seat was six inches too tall for me and that I was carrying a five-foot poster tube duct taped to my backpack like an arrow quiver may have contributed to the old man's reaction to my arrival at his parking garage.  I would have walked to the hotel or attempted to lower the seat or inspected the brakes if I had either A) Not woken up an hour late or B) Gotten more than three hours of sleep.  But neither of those were the case because I had borrowed the bike from Cesar, who had also given me a free tour of "The Real ATL" the night before. 

The tour started with a drive down the Freedom Parkway Overpass to see the city skyline and then to Martin Luther King Jr.'s house and the original church where he used to preach.  The next church on the tour was less traditional--a bar called "Church" founded by a transexual artist named Sister Louisa who has a passion for offensive parody.  A placard reading "Jesus wants to be inside you!" hangs over the front door.  Eighties-era paintings of Mary with an autistic trance stare from the walls next to dinosaur figurines and fluorescent cross rosaries.  Upstairs in the "sanctuary" there are pews in front of  a lectern where patrons dawn priests' robes and sing karaoke.  Two white women belted out the last words of "My Heart Will Go On," fists clenched, eyes closed, possessed by the holy spirit of Celine Deon.  Cesar gave me a sideways shoulder shrug which tried to understate his opinion that this was--no big deal--the coolest bar ever.  "This is the side of Atlanta that you wouldn't see if you followed your hotel's map."  We had not, however, seen quite enough street for one Wednesday.  Thus onward we marched to the Claremont Lounge, infamously known as the place where strippers go to die.  

Thank goodness for the free coffee in the ballroom lobby of the Hyatt next to my exhibit table.  Caffeine bathed my countenance in a pool of sunshine and extroversion as I glad-handed deans of private universities and associate professors of international relations.  "We are so excited to enable folks like yourselves to really leverage the power of this technology!  Have you checked out the swipe-to-add feature yet?"  Theatrics is my favorite part of traveling, the ability to play the part of any character I fancy.  The double role I had cast myself in--die heart tech nerd by day, vagabond street urchin by night--was especially exhilarating. 

I hoped to impress my next host with my Clark Kent transformation.  As I walked to his house (five-foot quiver in hand), I rehearsed the story of how I walked into the ballroom lobby restroom with pinned up hair and khaki pants and then slipped out only moments later wearing sunglasses and a hoodie.  I imagined him asking about the sign.  "Oh, this? I'm coming from an association event downtown.  I just threw my work clothes in my backpack."  Applaud me for my thriftiness and adaptability!  I will bow and accept your award for Most Interesting Person.  But when the door to the house swung open, thick beats of hip hop music spilled out in a gust that blew my hair back.  I didn't even have time to say my name before a young man in a classy pin-striped vest was shouting, "Get on in here!" beckoning wildly for me to dive in to the party.  

David is a hot potato boiled in Red Bull, wrapped in bacon and dipped in Fireball whisky.  Next to him Charlie Sheen looks mellow.  His house was overflowing with sorority girls clinking and tipping around in cocktail dresses and stilettos.  Beer dripping ping pong balls flew across the room; lips smooched to outstretched arms reverse-holding flashing cameras; shot glasses slammed down on countertops.  I had barely set down my backpack and I was already halfway through the presentation of David's iPhone photo slideshow.  "Check it out, check it out," he held the screen in front of my face swiping through pictures of his "absolutely insane" gym workout that morning, some "ridiculously f**kin' delicious" plates of food, his car, and an entire series of photos of him with Tina Fey, Jane Krakowski, NBA players, Dave Matthews, Wyatt Cenac, and Jack McBrayer (Kenneth from 30 Rock).   These were not OMG-here's-me-with-a-celebrity! pictures.  They were hanging-out-at-bars-with-my-friends pictures.  I still do not understand. 

I licked my fingertips and snuffed the flame of my dream to be the Most Interesting Person. Isn't California supposed to be where all the special people live?  Who knew there were so many characters in Georgia?  First Cesar, then David, and then there was Norma.

Norma pulled out her glasses from her handbag. It was actually just one half of the glasses, part the nose piece still attached to a single lens which sprouted a jabbing stick of the snapped-off ear piece.  She held the stick between her manicured thumb and index fingers and brought it up to her left eye while closing her right one, a black female version of the Monopoly Man with his monocle.  She reviewed the menu, reading every description, some of them out loud.  "Chicken enchiladas wit' sour cream for eight dallahs, burritos--what's con carne?"  The other six women at the table--all middle aged black women except for me--had already ordered and we were trying to come up with a name for our trivia team.

"Wha'd we do last week?"

"I don't remember."

"I suggested the Ho Ho Ho's but ya'll were trippin'."

"So--we have to put our name on every paper?" Norma interjected.

We had already explained the rules to her three times.  She never understood the points system or rule about not saying the answers out loud but she somehow knew the name of the German World War II general who commanded the 7th Panzer Division.  She also knew the disease treated by levodopa and the three states that house the Goodyear blimps.  The woman was a trivia phenom.  While the rest of us scratched our heads, scraping the bottom of our memories for clues of random data, Norma blurted out the answers (while we sushed her) in the same laxidasical tone she used to give advice about hair care.  "You outta try baking soda. If it's still like blah after that, you just comb it out with the blow dry.  And I'm pretty sure Sargent Shriver was the democratic running mate in '72." 

Then there was Jason, the one-armed vegetarian rock star who played a mean acoustic guitar and cooked the south's finest fried eggs.

There was Matt, the red head carpenter who out-danced all the brothers at the underground hip hop club. 

There was Miguel, the sweaty salsa dancer from Lima, 

the denture-less old man at the bus stop, 

the snoring accountant…

The initial withdrawal symptoms are dulling.  Splotches of color and silver linings resurface around the edges of the day-to-day.  The intoxicated life is not a sustainable one, whether the drug is chemical or spiritual.  But I wonder how long it will be before I'll need another fix.

The Mechanic

Craig Bedford walked around the register counter, held out his rolled-up denim-sleeved arms and nodded while his fingers said, "Come 'ere."  We hugged.   

I had only known him an hour, or rather, I had known him for an entire hour, which is a long time considering I had only come into his shop to pick up my keys.  When I walked through the door he was chatting with an Asian kid, college age with square glasses and a smile that would have been charming if it wasn't framed by flaking acne.   I didn't interrupt or even try to look impatient because I felt guilty for showing up late, right at 5:00 P.M. when the shop was supposed to close.  I stood by the door and admired the overcrowded gallery eccentrica that was his 12x12 office.  Not an inch of wall space was left unadorned.  Side by side hung two identical photographs, the size of road signs, of a man (who I assumed to be a younger Craig) standing and beaming next to a sky blue Volkswagen van.  Next to them, a water color painting of a yellow VW beetle in the center of winter landscape.  My eyes scanned the collage of postcards and car calendars and bumper stickers and they eventually landed on a poster, still in its plastic cover, of America comprised entirely of license plates carved in the shape of their corresponding states.

"She must be stoned out her mind ha ha," Craig had finally acknowledged my presence. "Just look at her over there in La La land!" 

"It's a cool poster," I said with a marijuana smile, "and so what if I am?" I am an Easter egg when I meet new people.  Dunk me in a pot of sailors and I swear, in a pot of housewives and I gossip.  I assume the color of the people around me.

It worked.  Their low chuckles baptized me into their ring. "Yeah that's a new one I got, haven't decided where to put it yet. My dad painted the one next to it," Craig indicated to the yellow beetle watercolor.  "Bona fide artist my old man." He said artist like arteest to sound... French I guess.  "I've dappled here and there myself," he pointing with false modesty to a giant canvas covered in red and white dripping swirls.  It looked like an entire bag of peppermint candies had melted on it.  He showed us a few of his other pieces, mostly "abstracts," mostly red.

I couldn't tell what his relationship was with the Asian kid.  Boss/employee? Mentor/mentee? At first I thought they were old friends--they seemed chummy--but then I realized he might just be another customer.  Craig was not a clam.  Craig's the guy that sits next to you at a bus stop or on a plane, unzips his jacket, and then unzips his chest and spills his entire heart on your lap before you even get a chance to shake his hand.

"But my real passion has always been acting."  Without warning, an angry Clint Eastwood was snarling at me to get the fuck off his lawn.  Then an angry Al Pacino was shout-asking why the fuck! was it so hard to find a goddamn sandwich in New York--heavy accent on the yawk in York.  Craig--back in jovial non-violent Craig persona--pulled up his Facebook profile to show us pictures of him in costumes and a YouTube video of a movie trailer featuring him as an albino mafia man.  Before that video finished he was already loading another one of an internet talk show featuring him as the guest star Al Pacino, which led to us watching an interview with the real Al Pacino so that Craig could repeat each sentence to show us how uncanny his impersonation was.

Meanwhile, the Asian kid was taking every possible opportunity to ask me out. 

Craig- "I do stand up comedy at some local places around here." 

Asian kid- "Cool!  I'll have to take Katie there this weekend." He casts an unrequited sideways glance.

Craig- "This girl probably doesn't even know which car is hers, she's so toasted, ha ha."

Asian kid- "I have a bowl, we should go have a light."

Me- "I should probably go soon, I need to grab some dinner."

Asian kid- "Man, I'm starving!  Am I invited?"

I put my credit card on the table.  It felt like whipping out a text book at a party, so square of me to try and conduct business when we are all having such a chill time.  I attempted to make a joke about how he could keep the change to distract them from my uncoolness.  As he was reaching for the card his hand lost its way and found a small clay dish on the table.  "My dad made this too, he's a potter."  But then he noticed the price tag still stuck to the bottom and pondered, "Or did I buy this one?"  From the Mary Poppins bag of his shelves he pulled out more and more show and tell trinkets: Santa riding a motorcycle, a giant red button that shouted "Bull shit!" when pressed, light up bottle openers, etc, etc, ad infinitum.  It was a collection rivaling even my grandmother's, a midwestern Catholic connoisseur of figurines and prank novelties.

The Asian kid, who had finally introduced himself as Jason after the first seven pickup lines failed to gain him any traction, was still interrogating me about my dinner plans.  It was rain on the parade or set up camp for the night.  I extended my arm straight out in front of me, palm up, "Keys please?" Every party has a pooper.  Craig made me close my eyes and put a rubber spider in my hand.  I laughed, but not too much. 

I promised Craig a raving five-star Yelp review and told Jason I was meeting a friend for dinner.  I drove out of the parking lot, $300 poorer, one good story richer. 

The Stakeout

"Is this your first time?" he asked.  He was already a round man but the tan down coat made entirely of goose feather pillows gave him the exact shape of a giant cream puff with a tiny black cherry on top that was his head.  He was trying to load minutes on his little Nokia cell phone with a prepaid card but his fingers were almost too podgy to push the buttons.

I thought about it... it couldn't be.  I majored in peace studies.  I am a connoisseur of all quasi-homeless activities--The Houseless Challenge of 2008 (wherein middle class college kids attempt to delve in to the plight of poverty by swearing a vow of possession-lessness for one week), dumpster diving, fasting for ceasefires, fasting of Africa, backyard camping, hitchhiking, etc. etc. 

"I guess it is, technically," I said.  "You?"

He laughed and the cream puff part of him bounced along with his chuckles.  He was Number One.  He had been there since 2:00 A.M. and it was 5:00 P.M.  Later I realized why my question struck him as funny.  Apparently there is not an insignificant population of Americans that do this sort of thing on a regular basis--food stakeouts, that is.  There is an entire community, an entire movement.  They know each other.  There are heroes and legends among them.

"There's this family of four," says one of The Cousins, "they got pop-up tents and space heaters.  I saw 'em at the Chic-Fil-A grand opening in Modesto last month."  The Cousins are in their late thirties, in between jobs, knowers of all card games.  This is only their second stakeout but they've made it clear they have been around the block (literal and proverbial) before.  They are scheming ways to get power from an extra-long extension chord and working to unite the group to share resources.  They warn us novices to strategize night watch shifts so that people can run to get food and use the bathroom around the corner.  We should exchange numbers, they say, so that we can call each other immediately in case of The Roll Call.

The Roll Call is the attendance check performed at intentionally sporadic intervals by The Keeper, the omnipotent ruler of the temporary universe we reside.  She is the employee in charge of this gig and, as any god, She is both respected and feared.  We want to win her favor and yet we burn to rebel against her the moment she turns her back.  She is The Keeper of The List, the list of The Chosen Ones (i.e. the first 25 people in line for the opening of this restaurant and thus the recipients of a year's worth of burritos).  It is The Keeper's duty to ensure that the people who get in line early actually stay the entire time because everyone knows that the whole point of a stakeout is the agony and desperation of anticipation.  If anyone could write their name down and go sleep in their beds and show up the next morning to claim their prize, it would defeat the entire purpose.  This is unquestioned.  Comfort, expedience, productivity and efficiency are not concerns here. 

Thus The Keeper, just and noble and wrathful as She is, randomly marches into our "camp", clipboard and striking pen in hand--a general inspecting the barracks--and starts shouting names. Should any name not be echoed by a voice declaring the presence of its owner, there is a fatal slash of her hand and the unworthy soul is off the list, cast from the garden. The Cousins try to coax information out of her but her ways are indeed mysterious.  "So you'll wake us up, right?" they say, "In case we're sleeping when you come… around 4:00?"  She doesn't bite the bait.  "How many spots are left?"  She clutches the clipboard to her chest and shakes her head.

She appears to call roll again and when she disappears a crowd forms around The Freshmen.  They are Stanford physics majors (one is still undeclared but his inner physics major is apparent).  One is a curly vanilla wafer the other is small-faced and brown, both are bundled and boyish.  Their labrador puppy grins never droop from their cheeks once the entire night, despite the fact they packed a box of chocolate chip biscotti instead of a tent for a drizzly 30-degree night on the streets.  The people gather around them because they used an iPhone to secretly record the audio of The Roll Call like CIA agents recording an incriminating confession.  We are counting the number of names as we listen.  The camp is fairly condensed but people keep milling around and going in and out so it is difficult to tell how many are still officially on the list. 

"That's 26!"

"I only counted 24."

"There are two Alexes."

"No, she just said his name twice."

It was 7:00 P.M.  Fifteen hours until opening.  Stragglers were still showing up, hopeful and then dismayed to see such an impressive group already gathered.  They pulled up in their cars and on their bikes and scooters, asking us how long and how often and where was this List and the Keeper and did they have a chance?  We commiserated with them like American Idol contestants hugging the one that just got voted off.  "We support you and your future endeavors!  But we are on opposite sides of the curtain now."

And for that space in time, there was a line drawn in the sand.  It was a circle and it separated all of humanity into two groups--those inside and those outside.  Those who shall eat free burritos, and those who shall not.  And for that space in time the other speckled details of our lives faded out of focus.  Our names and jobs and ages and families did not matter.  Number One was making calls on his $10 cell phone (how he dialed the number I have no idea).  The Cousins were making jokes about "funemployment."  The gaged-ear gang of high school punks had a husky puppy on a leash and the grad school couple in the REI gear had a tired golden retriever.  The old man in the Bill Cosby sweater had devious smile poking out between his up-curled mustache and his wiry beard that looked like it could scrub steel pots to a shine.  The cool teens from Sacramento (this was their seventh stakeout) seemed older than all of us, effortlessly dopping into conversations with anyone about almost anything. 

It's hard to imagine any other circumstances that might have brought this group together, huddled around a table outside at 1:00 in the morning playing Settlers of Catan. 

This was my first official stakeout but certainly not the first time I've gone to extremes to get free food.  There were the college days of attending lectures on U.S. foreign policy in Uruguay just to get the luncheon afterwards.  Then there were the potlucks hosted for the sake of the leftovers and the triathlons and 5ks run for the sake of the breakfast buffets.  There was the six months masquerading as a food journalist for the free meals at new restaurants.  I once ate a funnel cake off of the top of a trashcan at an amusement park (it was a dare but, let's face it, I wanted to).  This is insanity for many people and I have no defense.  I am not destitute by any stretch of the imagination, it's not about the money.

When the doors finally and gloriously opened at 10:00 A.M. it smelled like elation with a hint of cilantro and lime.  We were punch drunk and dizzy with cold and hunger and excitement.  The staff must have had three weeks of intensive enthusiasm training in preparation for the event.  Everyone was wooping and high-fiveing and hugging like we'd just won the World Series.  The Keeper shook each of our hands and gave us each our Rewards Card--I felt prouder than I did on graduation day--and then we all got a free burrito.   I took it to work for lunch but I didn't finish it (it's a three pound burrito) so I offered it to my coworker who politely declined.  I, naturally, put it in a tupperware and in my backpack. 

"You just won a year's worth of free burritos and you're going to the trouble of saving less than half of one for later?"

Yes, yes I am.