ON MONTGOMERY, tw0-thirty a.m.
I’m staring straight, at the back of a bald man’s head as he argues with the bus driver about her income, wondering what he looked like in high school. The camera flashes. I look down at my high heels and think of all the events that led me here, to and with strangers. We exit as the driver howls, I’ll show you my W-2’s! You’ll see what I make! and suddenly

There, All-Star Café, dead night. It was nothing but dirt and heathens, bar scum. We enter and just as, two musicians catch our eye. They’d played at Powell and Market and all over underground to make it day by day, they’d give girls “the look” to make a dollar, but they really didn’t care. I didn’t care, they weren’t all attractive and such, we scurried on. Linked arm in arm, dispensing the night’s highlights and musings, the never-again’s—and I agreed, it would never happen again.

Such as the night would move on, I could never fixate. It was a strong drink and a strong drink, a flashback to strolling up the street in heels, privileged white female, rough part of town, and young men spitting across the sidewalk just before my passing. Friday, Friday and it wasn’t what anyone wanted so I

Kept on. Then look on at 10 a.m., through disaster, chin up and walk. Saturday morning with all in their jeans and there was the burst of shame, last night’s everything, walk like a lady. And I did, and stares, and a black man in a wheelchair on the sidewalk saying, now that’s a woman! That’s a woman! But she wasn’t. She was

Not going to pretend that’s what I do, because I don’t. And on Montgomery, through the arguing and laughter, the only woman not wearing rouge lipstick and speaking Spanish, whose legs were coated in black tights, the only woman who was scared—that was me.