holiday recap, part 2: no summer of love

a quintessential sf row in haight-ashbury.

for about 26 hours i felt very romantic.

at 6:36 am i was on my way to oakland international airport. 12 hours later i was deplaning at san francisco's airport. students of american geography will note that oak and sfo are an hour apart. so why the half-day commute fro and to the same place?

the night prior, my friend xtie and i drank, danced, the clubs had closed and then i had to pee. a friend's friend lived nearby. for 25 minutes, we chatted with the home owner and his friend. for 5 minutes i experienced an unusually forward (tho asian-ly untawdry) string of compliments and innuendoes by a short and cute japanese guy. i didn't remember his name, but he was fetching, unbetrothed, and he asked me to postpone my early am departure.

no doubt because of my chronic internet dating (please see: man plan), the purity and spontaneity of face-to-face happenstance flirting is exhilarating. so, in response, i called my airline but there were no seats on the next day's flights and a new ticket to seoul was running $2-5,000.

with same sex marriage in california starting in just 3 days, god intervened to remind the world he loves homos. thanks to Him, my flight to seattle was delayed due to a mechanical mishap. since i'd miss my connecting leg to tokyo, i spent 3 hours in seattle haggling with airline folks to get back to sf and my future husband. the upshot was a first class seat back to the bay and a re-route through hong kong the next afternoon. sure, i'd booked a hotel and meetings in tokyo, but what's a little time and money... for love?!

on a bus going to golden gate park. basically sums up my personal philosophy.

i was giddy with adrenaline and lack of sleep. but once reunited on the dance floor, he was insufficiently flattered that i'd manipulated my travel rigamarole for us. ya, there was dance floor make out, but ho-hum was an inadequate response. so, no, we aren't talking about moving in together and getting a puppy as a precursor to children (do we find a surrogate or adopt?). we won't have to navigate the tricky politics of korea v. japan. in fact, we didn't even exchange emails. he did, however, fulfill my daily quota of being asked, "are you on facebook?" nope, i'm not. i think this is our generation's way of saying, "uh... see ya around."

the summer of love is not. but while taking it easy on the internet dating front might do me some good, it felt nice to jeopardize rationality in pursuit of statistically insignificant hope.