It�s my houseguest�s last night � really, an apartment-guest, but that doesn�t have quite the ring to it � and he, my boyfriend and I decided to drink a beer and go to the playground across the street from my building. You�ve probably seen it: from the playground you have a view of the Painted Ladies (or the Full House houses, as I like to reference them) and City Hall and the Transamerica building and the rest of San Francisco that�s worthy of the term �view.� We brought the dog because he loves the playground like any normal five-year-old. To the tunes of Leonard Cohen covers we slide down slides and swing on swings and monkey-bar across the monkey bars. My houseguest, a starving musician, serenades us as we relive childhood and then I�m swinging, eyes shut tight and tears burning their way down my cheeks � I�m not sure if it�s cold or if it�s �the baffled king composing hallelujah� � and I could be eight or eighteen or eighty but it doesn�t really matter when the stars are as bright as they�ll ever be and they stay in the same place while my body courses through the near-freezing (for a Northern Californian) temperatures.
The cushy playground floor supports me more than your average city foundation as I light a cigarette and walk away from the still-swaying swing. (Harsh nicotine does a cynic good in these situations.) The houseguest is still singing while the boyfriend coaxes the dog down a slide and I observe this scene � a strange juxtaposition of adolescence and senescence � and the cigarette burns away any sentimentality I may have found in those few moments studying the stars. I throw the half-smoked butt somewhere and round up the troops and we head inside to toast each other�s goodbyes and lie about how we�re going to keep in touch.