To be Known

The western addition. The greatest neighborhood ever. The worst neighborhood ever. I suppose this depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. The WA was like an extended college experience. You’ve heard of Extended Learning? This was extended partying. I’m sure there were some people who lived in the hood who had it together, but I didn’t know them. Clearly we were running in different circles. Different times. I was beginning when they were headed to bed.

I remember. I remember getting dressed up and heading out. In San Francisco, this meant funky, vintage, quirky--not dressy. I might wear a fancy dress, but I’d top it with a vintage hat and some motorcycle boots. Add to that layers and layers of sweaters and scarves and light jackets because SF was always cold at night. And then, when I was ready, out the door I’d go. As the metal security gate on the apartment building clanged shut behind me, I was off—up the steep hill of Golden Gate, crossing the three-lane, one-way street at an angle, my hobo bag bumping lightly against my hip. Hands in pockets, coat collar turned up to the wind. I can still remember that. The ability to leave. To be singular. Freedom. Even then, before I knew what it was like not to have it, that’s what it felt like. Freedom. Clean break of selfish outing. Off to I didn’t know where to meet up with I didn’t know who. Off to bounce around the city any which way I chose and to return or not return at any time. Most of these nights Gordon was off on his own adventure or, more than likely, was out of town for work. And I’d be fresh out of class, philosophy swirling through my mind, twinged with slight guilt over my not yet completed work. But off I’d go wearing a captains hat or a beret or a newsboy. Always over-accessorized. Always over doing it. But always free to the point of abstraction.

It’s so funny that when you have it—that ability to just walk out the door and not look back—you don’t know yet how much you should cherish it. Now, the thought of it makes my insides turn over with excitement, like new love, like a crush. Walk off? No sitter? No worry? No curfew?

I remember the echo and scrape of my boots crossing Golden Gate, bracing for the rush of wind as I turned the corner onto Divisidero. It always made my eyes water, threatened to ruin my eye makeup. Blow off my hat. And so, one hand on my hat, eyes blinking furiously, I’d walk up Divis, past Rommy’s and the Green Earth, down to the corner that was the locus of my world. Café Abir, Tsunami and the Fly. These were like my homes—like my living rooms. I bounced from one to the next, never sure who I’d run into or what I’d end up doing. Well, actually, I always knew who I’d run into. That’s kind of what made it wonderful, and like living on a small college campus.

I remember sitting in the yellow light of early New England evening, the TV glowing before me, an electric blue, and I’d hear the gathering momentum of “sometimes you want to go—where everybody knows your name. And they’re always glad you came…” That always seemed like heaven to me. To be completely accepted and welcomed and known. In the town I grew up in, which was a small town 20 minutes outside of Boston, there were only three restaurants in the town center. One was Butricks—an ice cream parlor. And then there was Ye Olde Cottage and Ye Olde Cottage 2. I don’t think I ever went to Ye Olde Cottage 2 and only remember going to Ye Olde Cottage the first once or twice. But once, when my mom asked me what I wanted in life, or maybe it was even unprompted—I don’t recall, I told her I wanted to have a place where I could go and say “I’ll have the usual” and they’d know just what I meant. I could chalk this up to a lot of things: recognizing in myself, even then, the need for sameness and routine; an overload of musicals and Capra movies that depicted small town Americana in a light that I couldn’t resist; an innate feeling of misplaced identity which would continue to plague me through a dramatic move at 13 and several bad relationships, including one bad marriage. Whatever it was, the concept of being “known” was completely foreign to me. If anything, I would have liked to have sunken into the background and slinked through life without notice. Although my personality constantly pushed me to the front—gregarious and outspoken, I constantly had one foot in my mouth and was seemingly unable to tame the things that came out of my mouth. But known? I could barely pick myself out of a line up let alone be known by anyone.

“You don’t know me! I’m not like you!” I repeated this over and over until it felt true. At different times in my life, when convicted and confronted by people who loved me and could see how lost and far away I was. “You don’t know me!” I’d shout until it droned out everything. Their voices calling me back and my own small voice that knew they were right. That knew I was an unknown quantity. At times in life, it was easier, less scary, less overwhelming to pretend who I was than to admit I was a variable: a letter standing in for an unknown quantity. “You don’t know me!” I could have shouted at myself. I didn’t know me. It took a long time to strip off the layers of pretension, of personality adopted to fit in, or to define against. To find what I meant when I said who I was or wasn’t. To get down to that small concentrated formula of Lindsay that I essentially was. Maybe during those times what I was most scared of is that if I stripped it all down, I wouldn’t be left with anything at all.

But in San Francisco, I found Me. I encountered me in that city. The first good friend that I made was a French girl names Sarah Fradet, and she lived with a bunch of international roommates and we all sang and played instruments. I remember going out into the city with my guitar case, hailing a cab to go to SOMA where we would gather at their loft and sing and play for hours. I could hear the song from The Sound of Music playing in my head as I sauntered down Fulton street towards Divis, so awkward and self-conscious, “I have confidence in sunshine. I have confidence in rain…besides as you see I have confidence in me.” Maybe if I sang it loud enough to myself and carried my head high enough I’d believe it. And eventually, I did. I believed it.

And finally, at the corner of Divis and Fulton, at the locus of my new world, I found my Ye Olde Cottage—the place where everybody knew my name. I was finally and completely known. But of course, the best part is that I knew myself then.

As usual these posts, once begun, continue on and on and on. In this “space” I’ve created I’m like my first Horse, Greystone, who once let off his lead in the pasture would take off, tail raised, hooves pounding the hard ground, whinny high in his throat. I can picture it exactly, that pause of tensed muscle and motion, body beginning to lean slightly away as I unclipped the lead from the halter—off he’d tear like I was a demon spirit threatening. Like he wanted nothing to do with me. Like I was plague to him. Of course, he was back in a minute or two, but that first lick of freedom, for him, was so delicious, so overwhelming that he’d bolt in a flash of brilliant energy. He was off. Gone. All nervous energy and tension. That’s how I am here. I’m off and away. Running from myself that I’ve been all day, into these fields of white, my fingers pounding, lead swinging loose behind me. Thank you for allowing me the run and being there when I come back.