On my last day of 17, I realized that I never want my life to go to s**t. Stopping at the MoMA, everybody here is nervous with their twitchy eyes and their gray blazers. It seems like they all want to be in on something, I wish I could tell them what it was. The Andy Warhols and Rothkos and bright white walls that make you feel like you're going insane. Everybody here has lived past 17, why not me? At Fisherman's Wharf everybody wears black zip-up jackets and don't speak to each other, unless asking for a cigarette. I am unhappy and I don't know why. Charlie is down below, picking up coins that fall out of tourists' pockets and yelling 'Have a good day!' to them when they walk by. He jumps in the bay and swims with the sea lions who accept him as one of their own. It is too hot and people here are too skinny and pretty and god one girl looked at me for a second there, didn't she? It didn't mean nothing, just a passing glance but wouldn't it be something if she begged me to take her to Columbus Avenue and show her the big Allen Ginsberg banner up against one of the buildings. 'See baby he wrote Howl, he's all cool and stuff like that and he got kicked out of Cuba or somewhere for trying to be gay or something-' She then cuts me off and leaves with a boy in a letterman jacket. F**k, it's always those f*****g jackets. It is too blue here, too cyan and turquoise and crystal and it's too bad I don't like color 'cause this place would really mean something. I try talking to a big life-size statue of Marlon Brando and he comes to life just to tell me to leave him alone. 'Buzz off kid, you come to me the day of your 18th birthday and ask for forgiveness?' Yeah, I guess so. I am sweating and I need a haircut. The lady down the street offers to do it for free but I have to clean her apartment while she whispers 'You'll never afford this' in my ear. I know that don't remind me. Smoking half a cigarette down by the docks and swatting pigeons out of my face. There are dogs walking people down in Golden Gate Park and nobody bats an eye. Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, walking along somewhere around here I just gotta find the place, and when I run into them I'll get down on my knees and tell them how much they mean to me, Jimmy Stewart will stop me from getting an abortion. Spending all my allowance on bookmarks and parking tickets. Crazy how many people probably pass by the loves of their lives here, waiting for Bart or renting out a scooter. There's a box in the middle of the street labeled 'fragile' and nobody seems to care, running it over with their self-driving cars. What if my heart was in there huh? What next? Would you scoop it up and try to shove it all back together, make those bloody gooey parts stick where they don't belong? Yeah, now you don't know what the hell to do. Late for work trying to step over all the cracks in the ground and seeing twins in denim jackets and red shirts. These people really pop out at you don't they? Homeless guys try to give me criticism on my work; 'It's too long' 'Rambly' 'Anxious' I take them all as compliments. I crush my Coca-Cola cans and admire beautiful women smoking joints up on their balconies. I run from store to store and spot about forty Keith Haring paintings, ice cream drips down from ceilings, gum is stuck on sidewalks. 'How do you write about a place you've never been?' How do you write about heaven if you haven't died? I need to wash my hands and shake myself loose and pick myself up and say 'Goddammit you better not blow this for me!' I try and try to stop babies from crying, men from leaving, Christmas time to come sooner. The fog capital of the world and the center of my universe. This place is no good for a nervous wreck like me, or maybe it's absolutely perfect and I just can't tell a good thing if it was staring me right in the face.
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