by Teresa Antoinette

Created on: April 26, 2010

I’m currently on Clement and 3rd Ave sipping a Mexican Chocolate mocha at one of the city’s best coffee houses, Martha & Bros. Coffee Company.

The cafe is a cute little neighborhood spot. There are the hipsters of course, even one with an iPad, but there are also mothers and daughters sipping tea, talking about books and essays still not written. Two older gentlemen talking about startups and laughing at jokes everyone else is secretly rolling their eyes at. Outside, the infamous San Francisco fog is looming over the hill, just beyond Golden Gate Park. Babies are being pushed in their strollers. Young people in love are holding hands. Bars are now serving their first happy hour drinks of the Friday evening. The streets are indeed a wondrous chorus, as Rufus Wainwright sings.

I thought about him the entire way up here, over 280 North. Phoenix was on the iPod. "I say it out loud/But you just don’t care/Leisure for the lonely whispering unnecessary unless you’re in." Thinking about the last time I made the same drive, totally unsure and of where things were going with us and an utter, inexperienced-in-love nervous wreck. He hadn’t been returning my phone calls or emails. I accused him of seeing someone else. Never returning my phone calls. His silence speaking volumes.

Passing Junipero Serra Blvd and then 19th St and then Park Presidio, I found myself for the first time this week happy to be in the city again. As I drove by Golden Gate Park, I smiled at the realization that had dawned on me: I was thinking about me, not him.

And now “At Last” is playing on the coffee shop radio, and I’m breathing and everything is fine and people are walking around, the community is carrying itself upon its own strong, unique shoulders. It’s just another Friday afternoon in San Francisco. 

Another realization has slipped itself into my day: the city itself is not capable of breaking my heart. San Francisco, your straight male residents can do what they wish to me.  Over and over if they'd like.  I know that after the pain sizzles and before I've move on, I can step out onto your streets and you'll stitch me back up.  You will help me to forget and then help me to remember.  People leave their hearts here so they have an excuse to come back. My heart and the city are synonymous. A reflection into a jeweled mirror that is the sun over the water from the bay.

I take a sip of my perfect mocha and it feels a little like things are normal again.

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