To Marina with Love

Marina Marina
my angel
the sun shines in your eyes...

Marina was my first friend in San Fransico.

She rented me my tiny second story studio on O'Farrel Street in the infamous Tenderloin.

She was working for the Realtor, working her first "big girl job" in that crazy colorful seven by seven mile city by the sea.

She was wearing a velour sea green blazer, flowered flats and a liguid light smile.

Her long blond hair got tangled in the sunlight.

I knew immediately I wanted to be her friend.

I had known her not 10 minutes, but after we signed the paperwork I couldn't help but give her a hug. And she hugged me back so graciously.

We went downstairs while my lover pulled the truck around the block to park, and she helped me fight off the cab and the crazy California drivers that flocked like sharks to the fresh kill of a open parking spot.

We were definitely friends then.


I cemented the deal a few days later when I wrote her a note.

"Application For Friendship"

It read,

and listed the terms.

I don't remember now what it said, but suffice to say she signed on the dotted line.

We went out to Thai food after word and ate fat noodles and kind of fell in love.

We were pretty much inseparable after that.

That was before Bobbie Sue moved from Seattle with Ben and the accompanying full cast of dark romantic comedy drama that became our life.

Via La Boheme.

At any rate, she was the only living soul besides my Jason that I knew in the Frisco Bay.

One day she showed me a little spot off the real Marina, right next to the Country Club on a little rocky outcroppig of the beach where the grass grew high and there was a stone bench with concrete tubes all around it that amplified the sounds of the surf.

We used to sit there and talk , sometimes laughing and swearing and drinking wine, and once late at night after the fog rolled in talking about lost love and her grandfather. We were both single again then.

And we drove away into the foggy night probably laughing again.
We sung a lot too, once she parked her car in front of the room I was renting on Potrero Hill. It was such a safe neighborhood, and I was drunk on whatever adventure we had just returned from, all dressed up and ready to crash,and I didn't think to lock.

She slept on my air mattress like an angel.

The next morning when it was time to go, after our cigarette looking out at the view of the tower on Telegraph hill which looked like a cathedral in the clouds from my balcony...


we went to the car. And it was broken into.

The stereo was gone.

I felt so sorry. But she wasn't angry.

And we drove from then on singing Bobby Magee instead, windows cracked with the rain beating on the windshield, keeping the beat.

We were partners in crime then, secret compatriots against the backdrop of the rest of the world. We had a following. We always knew where the party was At. We were the party.


Our crowing achievement was my 27th birthday party. We invited everyone, told everyone to dress in python skin, feather boas, big sunglasses, bring champagne, rock steady in the style of the all the dead rock stars that never saw the dawn of there 28th year.

And they came, at one point there was six people in my room, and as many bottles of champagne, feather boas and all.

There must have been 100 people there that night, and in the morning there was three whole garbage cans of empty bottles of bubbly, wine and beer...


A week later we had a much smaller party, just the two of us, our lovers, and my two house mates, a lovely young couple and two very dear friends I had met at Burning Man years before, and we split the ounce or so of pure MDMA that her tall dark and handsome had brought.

We all laid together on a mattress in the living room, covered in a plush tiger stripe blanket and pillows. There was a Buddha on the table, bedecked and surrounds entirely by candlelight and half empty wine glasses...

We laid in the light and languished...

We carried on like that merrily, taken by Ecstasy and the immediacy and transience of each glorious moment until, it was suddenly all to much, and I left them there, and stepped out alone.

There was a truth I had just come to. I hated to tell her. I was't sure if I could.

She found me sitting on the porch alone.

She asked me what was wrong, and I told her.

"I have to leave San Fransico" I said, and as soon as I did there were tears in her eyes. We cried.


She took me to the airport a few weeks of that...

Me in my suede trench with lambswool trim coat, a crocheted flower on my orange and green knit hat just over my ear, me with six or eight mismatched vintage suitcases, my easel in one hand and my heart in the other.

We sung "leaving on a jet plane" and cried some more.

And then she smiled for me, that liquid sunshine smile, hugged me close and let me go.


I 30 now,in Albuquerque now, with a different lover, now my husband. She is back in San Fransisco after various adventures a sunlit soul like her could conjure.

She is like Alice, creating wonderland wherever she steps.
The sound of ocean follows her.

Marina Marina

some day I hope to wash back on your shore shore.

California Dreamer

It was around ten o clock in Albuquerque when I got the news. My Best Friend Bobbie told me on Facebook chat. She said she had news. Ben Spurgin died the other day. Her bittersweet ex-boyfriend. Boy genius. Idiot Savant. Chuck Norris Enthusiast. Heavy metal guitarist.Composer.Video Gamer. Visionary. Drug Addict.

When Bobbie game me the news it didn't seem real. How I had all but forgotten the man. Oh But how can you forget a name like Spurgin? Or a man like that?

I guess we had just lost touch, spent 3 years lost in our separate little lives, no even any more occasional blips on Myspace. I think I wished him happy birthday last time. He was thirty one years young.

And suddenly, he is gone.

Heroin. The white pony? The dark horse. He rode this seductive beast for who knows how long, rode and fell off, got trampled under the hooves. A tragedy. Especially for a man who dreamed as big as him. Larger than life. He wrote rock operas. Where is he now? Do the angels play Iron Maiden?


When Ben left he took with him a tiny thread stuck to his shoe that I didn't realize was unraveling the screen between me and a whole section of my life. The life we shared in San Francisco that is only half shod memories now.

Bobbie Sue was my best friend. I remember when she first met Ben. I was living in Seattle at the time with my lover Jason. Bobbie and I had been single and fancy free and used to go to Linda's on Pine and drink Black Labels and look at men, but I was suddenly out of the market and Bobbie was lonely. It had all happened pretty fast and she had begun to get bitter and loose hope when she met him. She was so proud of herself because she had talked to stranger on the bus as I often did and the stranger was Ben. He wound up getting off at her stop and walking her home I think and it was not long before the two were pretty inseparable.

I remember when I first met him too, he was lanky and tall with a little paunch and a died black mop of hair with sandy red roots. He was less handsome than charming but he sweet long face with heavy black glasses perched over milky blue eyes and light eyelashes. He has a funny, easy way about him and seemed crazy about her. He dressed like buddy holly in funny old sweaters and button up shirts and cords and sneakers but dressed like a rock star when he played with his goth band. He read exclusively old pulp novels like the kind you get at garage sales except they were all Post Apocalyptic. He could quote the Wrath of Kahn like the bible. She was a goner. It wasn't long before he moved in. We would go over there a lot, Jason and I, two couples in love and it was great most of the time until he started doing drugs again...It was meth at first, he said it helped him think.

He would stay up all night making music and doing his flash animation or playing video games and then would sleep all day. We didn't come over much anymore, and I hardly saw him awake. When he was awake he was always talking about the next big gig, the next dream, the next city they would live in, the next business they would start.

So when Jason and I had finally saved enough to move to Cali on a lark and a whim to live La Vie Boheme in San Fransisco she and Ben weren't far behind. They had been involved in some hard times and needed somewhere to start over, to be free again. And where is better to be free than San Fran? Even if it was the Tenderloin...Oh the Tenderloin.

We had found a little apartment there in an old building not to far from Civic Center and the trolley turn around on Polk street. It was small all had old pipes but it was San Fransisco and it
was ours. We had a futon and an overstuffed chair with an ottoman and we were broke but we were happy and in love. It was the spark of spring in San Fran and Seattle was still in the grey drudges of Winter. Bobbie sue was miserable. The SpeakEasy she worked in got busted up and
So they moved in with us that April. Just months after we got there ourselves. And we lived all together in a tiny dingy studio apartment on O'Farrell street, in a sea of convenience stores, delicious and cheap ethnic eateries, Peep Show Parlours, crack dens and broken dreamers.

Ben wasn't working, but he was off the drugs and determined to be a famous musician and flash artist. Every day he had a new idea that was going to be the big one. Every week a new job lead that would really pull him through this time. It was going to be "SWEEEEETTTTT..." as he would always say.

In the mean time the four of us were very nearly starving. We had two jobs between the four of us and three cats. We once all went through all of our pockets purses and couches to get enough money to buy two boxes of generic macaroni and cheese to share amongst us. We shared cat litter and treasured every cigarette, often splitting one four ways.

Bobbie and him weren't working out. None of us were after a while. Living four people in a studio does things to you. Especially in that neighborhood. At night the hotel across the streets fire alarm would go off almost every night. But during the day the sun poured in the big old windows and you could hear the sounds of children playing in the community center lot down below. And there had been good times too. For a little while we were all California dreamin'. We used to dress up in crazy costumes go out on the town or cook extravagant meals made of leftovers and drink Miller High Life out of crystal goblets Bobbie got at a thrift store. We laughed a lot and Jason and Ben would jam together on the guitar.


After two weeks of this though, or was it two months? It all blends together...it is so like a dream now...things started to go sour. Bobbie and Ben started snipping at each other. So did Jason and I. No one had any space. Bobbie was depressed and Ben was despondent. Jason was restless and I was pulling out my hair trying to keep the peace. Eventually we got enough money together to get them their own department. I think I paid half their deposit in exchange for a painting of Bobbies. For a while there things looked to be looking up.

Their new apartment was beautiful, just down the hall, apartment 205. They had a bay window looking down on the neighbors courtyard. Ben had his guitar and Bobbie had her old record player that used to belong to her dad.

They seemed ok for a while. We were all better for it. But they broke up anyway. And Jason and I shortly thereafter. All the poverty and stress and scraping by and clamoring for space had already sunk in to deep. No one was happy. And then we had this crazy idea. It was probably mine. And so I moved into 204 with Bobbie, and Ben moved into 202 with Jason.

And things got a little better again. Bobbie and me would do art long into the night and dance to Neutral Milk Hotel on the record player. The boys would play video games in their dirty socks and record songs together. Ben found a freelance job and got in a band.

He lost weight and looked happy. And we had some good talks sometimes, and sometimes it was fun to go over and hang out with the boys. And sometimes we wouldn't go over there for days and there just wasn't enough room in the world for the four of us.

And finally Bobbie Sue got tired of it. She packed the van and left for Sonorra to go live with her mother. Ben moved somewhere else with Jason and I moved to Portrero hill, a nice suburban family neighborhood on a hill overlooking the twinkling city, far away from the crack and the sounds of the city that would howl and honk and murmur around the complex all night long.

And we all kind of lost touch then for awhile. I hardly ever saw Jason or Ben. Six months later I moved back to Seattle and it was suddenly hard to believe that we all used to sit together and share two servings of mashed potatoes with them and it would be the first meal they'd eaten all day.

And Ben met a new girl and seemed like he was doing great. I ran into him once at the Mission Goodwill and he looked happy and was wearing a Vintage suit jacket and a grin all full of his next get rich scheme. He said he was moving back to Seattle, or Boulder or the moon and I believed him.

Ben could sell you anything. He was a "wild and crazy guy".I can just hear him say this perfectly.He was great with voices and celebrity impersonations.
And now he's gone.

Your mother misses you Ben.
So do lots of people.

Come back next time when you can stay a little longer.

And stay off the dark horse.