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(9/23/06) for Dottie Lasky. San Francisco, Haight Street, where sexy Anton LaVey used to walk his pet lion. Tonight the fog rides the wind at street-light level, white shapes zipping through the frame of light, apparitions, lovers, food. I want to climb a pole and meet it head-on, mouth open, fog in the mouth, I want fog in my mouth, to never stop knowing how delicious this world can be. Last night I read with my friend Magdalena Zurawski at SPT for the very generous Elizabeth Treadwell. Are those readings recorded? There's a man in a booth at the back of the room which feels like -- you know -- SOMETHING is going on, BUT I would LOVE to listen again to Magdalena's sex chapter, to where the room's gasps and laughter came in. When I heard her read this in Philadelphia we were tense and breathless through the sex and the wound -- Is this hurting her? Is this her pleasure? The laughter last night was a strange comfort, and I was sitting next to Kate thinking WE LOVE YOU poet, novelist, whatever you're calling yourself these days! Very good time later on too, drinking with this city's marvelous bunch of poets! Magdalena and I both drank entirely too much. Her whiskeys put her out till the bartender shook her awake. After my fifth martini I forgot this is San Francisco instead of Philadelphia and lit a cigarette to the exclamation of several voices around me, including the bartender, who had just about had enough of us. I put it out in my martini and declared there can't be a law against drinking tobacco, then threw the drink back, laughing. Stupid fun. If I had a video camera I would record this fog tonight, hours and hours of it whipping past the lights. Have you ever loved an element as much? I want to climb the pole, undo my pants and suck fog inside me, my sphincter, my gulping, fog-swallowing sphincter. Earlier tonight I was on the Haunted Haight Tour with Magdalena, Kate, and Elise. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS TOUR! Jim Jones lived here, and signed the cement sidewalk, dated 1976. Another block later we stood where a young man was killed in front of Janis Joplin's apartment. A residual haunting can still be heard of his heavy boots running to where his blood soaked the street corner. Then there's the garage where Charles Manson once lived. And then the house where the ghost of a little girl hides CDs in the freezer, and hates the photographs of other children, which the residents can never find again. They buy her dolls, and keep them on a shelf for her. Levi Strauss & Company was excited when Potter's Field was dug up because the century-old graves revealed hundreds of skeletons with their Levi jeans completely intact. Capitalist SCUM marketing on the memories of men too poor for proper burials! But can you believe city officials MADE Anton LaVey give his lion to the city zoo, saying it was too dangerous to walk in the streets? Who had to deliver that message? There's a curse bearer for sure. "Don't kill the messenger" not just an expression. Hmm, and I wonder if LaVey went to the zoo to share raw steak with his lion friend? While on the haunted tour I saw two more examples of my favorite graffiti in this city: fig. All lower case, the "g" such a flourish it reminds me of squid. Figs and squid, two of my favorite things on Earth. Magdalena says squid tastes delicious, but I prefer squid swimming, shooting ink out the ass. I would LOVE to shoot ink out the ass! The THINGS I would do if I could to THAT! The guide on our haunted tour was a gorgeous barrel of a man whose talk of Quantum Entanglement turned me on like few men can do! GRR HE'S HOT! I wanted to take him back to Jim Jones's house and make out on the sidewalk, our cheeks pressed to the cement signature. And later I would use my newfound squid super powers and blow ink out the ass, spelling on the street, "I'M NOT EXACTLY SURE BUT I THINK I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU BEAUTIFUL HAUNTED HAIGHT TOUR GUIDE SIR!" I would LOVE to have sex in Charles Manson's garage (yet another seemingly unrealistic goal to manifest) HOO-RAH!