mmmmmcxxii

Dorky Park

It was a beautiful day.  I was
strolling through one of St.
Petersburg’s most prominent
parks.  Yes, it was a tourist

attraction.  I was a tourist.
On a two-night stop on a
Baltic Sea gay cruise, if you
can imagine that.  I like to

imagine it.  Even though I’m
pretty sure I was there.  I
have photos.  And the port’s
architectural skyline burned

into my brain.  So it must be
true?  Anyway, if it was, as we
were strolling through this
tourist area in St. Petersburg,

suddenly there was a bit of a
louder set of vocal noises coming
from the sidewalk that our tour
guide had us strolling down,

toward some magnificent desti
nation, I’m sure.  I turned around
to see if I could determine what
the hubbub might be and all I

noticed at first was that there was
a group of people of various ages
and heights, women and men, it
seemed, dressed a bit differently 

than the rest of us, and they 

were hauling ass down the side
walk in, around, amongst us naive

foreigners.  It all happened quite

fast, the group sped through and
were gone.  It was only shortly
thereafter that there were murmur
ings of pickpockets – my gay cruise

tour through the middle of St. Peters
burg had been targeted by a professional
gang of pickpocketers.  The stories of
what had been taken started circulating

around – they had done quite a bit of
damage to our little group.  They got
nothing from me, though.  I had been,
as is my habit, walking with my hands

in my pants pockets with my left hand
wrapped around my wallet, which I had
for many years been placing in my front
pocket, for fear of it being pickpocketed.

I wouldn’t have had that much in it.  Much
more, I suppose than I’ve carried around
in a very long time, I’m sure, but for a
foreigner in Russia on a guided tour, not

a lot, relatively speaking, I’m sure.  For
a long while, back when I had friends,
one by one they each began getting
mugged in my city, here in San Francisco.

That was a rite of passage I wanted nothing
to do with.  I’ve no second thoughts about
wandering the city, even some of its most
traditionally shady areas, in the middle of

the night or very early in the morning before
the sun rises.  It’s not a city that is up all 

night, the kind I thought would have been 

inevitably mine, but there is something

calm and comforting to me about walking
at night through a quiet, sparse metropolis.
But I generally stay on the street when I
walk, and move swiftly, always aware of

what’s going on around me.  So, I suppose
fear has been a huge motivator for me.  And 

no doubt motivates many of us.  Ive yet to be

mugged, thankfully.  But in this age of bullying 

and fearmongering, dispensed for power and money, 

I find myself growing complacent. Perhaps this is a 

personal protest to what has changed most signif

icantly, to my eyes, in the world we inhabit. The

pickpocketing gang was more of an amusement
to me at the time than anything else.  But the
pop of a firecracker or the initial rumblings of
an earthquake are enough to make me jump

and run around in a frenzy in search of whatever
impulse has me think of as safety.  Or safer.  I
don’t want to die a tragic death.  This seems a
universal enough desire. But I could be headed 

there.  Sixteen years ago I was on a gay cruise on 

the Baltic.  I visited Russia.  I haven’t been outside
of the San Francisco Bay Area but for a 2-week stint

in fifteen years. I know I’d take the onrush of that

gang of thieves over complacency, over another
ten years of complacency, or just to have another
ten years, just to know, just to force myself back
out into a perhaps more dangerous world, just for

a few more international adventures, maybe
walk the entire night through the streets of a city
that is abuzz at all hours of the day and night. How
to build such actions back into the realm of possibility?

That’s the question I’m realizing, with a lot of sadness,
that I have at the moment.  Forcing a soliloquy on the
possibility of a lack of hope beaten by such an outcome
is worth a try, I suppose.  I hope.  Sure, why not?