2003-09-15 12:47 p.m.

Sunday ho!

I met David Meijer in the Haight at the McDonald's. McDonald's is a great place for the traveller. In most cases they have clean restrooms with hot water, plenty of seats, and most importantly they have those eyesore plastic yellow arches—a universal beacon, a symbol understood by people from all countries. Tell your friend visiting you from abroad to meet you at the ultra–hip second hand record store or the taco kiosk and you might as well consider them lost forever—find a new friend. But if you tell them to meet you at McDonald's you're golden.

David was there waiting for me right at 1:45 PM. We crammed me, him and his luggage into my impractical, tiny car. I don't know how I made it all fit—it felt like the automotive equivalent of inserting a Thanksgiving turkey into the anus of an eight–year–old. Then we sped off to find a proper parking spot near Golden Gate Park, since parking in the McDonald's lot requires purchasing their goods and consuming them on the premises.

HOOPING! Don't laugh, it's FUN! It's even more fun than masturbating or making fun of people who can't defend themselves! Ok, not really. But it is still pretty fun!

We spent almost the entire day in the park hula hooping. In my never–ending quest to increase my Swedish vocabulary I asked David what the huge plastic hoops were called in Swedish. Rock ring, he said. But, he admitted that he didn't know the verb for what one actually does with the rock ring. He got a concerned look and checked his watch. His concerned look now bordered on disappointment. He said it was too late to call his sister. I wasn't sure why he wanted to call his sister, though.

"She would know the verb. But now it is too late to call her. Maybe we should send her an email or something?"

What a nice guy, showing such genuine concern that I might spend an entire day without the knowledge of the verb for what one does with a rock ring! Add this to the long list of things I like about this guy. (Other things I added to the list that day included: 1) he can juggle, and 2) he was juggling and hula hooping at the same time! What a feat for someone who had never hula hooped before that day!)

I learned some fun hooping tricks at Burning Man from the wonderful women next door at the theme camp dubbed House Of The Holy Hoop. Thanks to them I can bring the hoop up from my waist to my neck, then up to my hand above my head, and then back down again. On Sunday I worked on my transitions and added a twist—now I can extend my arm out to my side and spin the hoop around my hand vertically and bring it back over my head to my waist again! It took quite a few tries, but I figured it out!

Now, this may not be very exciting if you were born in the USA between the years of 1960 and 1979 and have a vagina. From what I hear, this is stuff you can do in your sleep if you are a ten–year–old girl. But I am a 27–year–old guy, so hula hooping is all new for me! And now that I don't have a cushy job with an on–site gym, I think that hooping will be my new fitness program!

I am not sure what I am trying to get across with my hand gesture here. I think this was the part of the conversation where I was explaining how funny it would be if I only worked out one of my arms, so I would have one gigantic arm like crabs have. Or, I might have just been looking stupid and not saying anything at all. Now that I think about it, that was probably what was going on.

After a hard day of swaying and tiny pelvic orbits we motored back to my house on the beach. We gathered our wits, grabbed some warm clothes, and headed off for sustenance.

There are a million places to get food in San Francisco. Ok, not really. There are actually somewhere around 7,000 restaurants within the city limits, according to Ray Spears. That sure seems like a million to me when faced with the choice of where to eat, though. I kept waffling about where we should go—I was not being Mr. Pro Decider Guy. David suggested that we go somewhere that was more about atmosphere than food.

Why didn't I think of it sooner? What better place to take my Swedish friend on the last night of his stay in the US than Hooters?

Let me say that I LOVE Hooters. Tollef Biggs and I went there in Minnesota and wrote about it for Bitnet. Andie and I waited outside in the cold for an hour to get into the new San Francisco Hooters the day after it's grand opening. What is so great about Hooters? Duh: It's cheezy! It's classless! It's tacky! It's obnoxious! It's funny! And, best of all, there are cute girls who get paid to have fun and hang out with the customers! (I hear they even serve food there, too!)

I didn't want David to accidentally get something that wasn't deep fried and covered with hot sauce, so I did the ordering for us both. Let's just say that he and I undid any health benefits we got from hooping by eating 10 buffalo wings, 10 buffalo shrimp, and a piece of key lime pie.

Our waitress was a real chatty Cathy, and she came to sit with us more than a few times. I was excited to find out that she was from Minnesota, home of my first Hooters experience. I asked her if she hooped, and she said yes. So, we got out the Hooters hula hoops and we hula hooped together there in the restaurant. I showed her some new tricks, even!

Hooping in Hooters!

Another highlight of our Hooters dining extravaganza happened right after David came back from the restroom:

Justin: I think I need to go pee.
David: (insistent, which is very out of character for him) You need to go RIGHT NOW.
Justin: Um, ok. Why?
David: Run!
Justin: (confused at David's insistence) Um, what?
David: GO NOW. GO FAST. RUN.
Justin: (blindly obeying the Swedish guy) OK.

I got to the restroom and I wasn't sure why he had me actually run there, since the man and woman FUCKING ONE ANOTHER INTO OBLIVION in the handicapped stall would have surely still been going at it had I merely walked casually.

The convenient half–inch gap between the metal stall door and wall made it easy to see everything. They were standing up, the man behind the woman. She had the name Matt tattooed on her right ass cheek. I wondered if the man inside of her was Matt or not.

I thought it was very quaint that they were having sex in the toilet stall, and I thought about how I used to do that sort of stuff with my old girlfriend Anna all the time. Ah, what fun! I could have stayed and watched them more, but the truth was that I wasn't that interested. I mean, although they were really going at it, they weren't making any noise. I just can't get into watching people having sex when I can't hear their breathing or cute little noises. So I walked back to my table, smiling. I was happy to be an extra—even one without a speaking part—in their hot, little sex scene.

After dinner we did some other fun, touristy stuff. We went to a super, mega, ultra–hip bar in the Marina where the bases of the tables were giant letters that spelled out SEX. They had individual flat–panel LCD displays above each urinal playing Moulin Rouge. The walls were covered in purple, cushioned upholstery all the way to the ceiling. It was the sort of place that was just beyond cool yet somehow full of yuppies. It made me wonder if the yuppies deserved to be somewhere so cool or if the fact that they were lacking cool made them the prime candidates to be in such a place—sort of like giving aid to those who need it most.

We trekked out to the wave organ, climbed around the Palace of Fine Arts, and then headed home for some good, old–fashioned sleeping.

If I keep having this much fun, I won't ever have time to write about anything ever again.


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