PORTSMOUTH SQUARE: IT'S AWESOME

After buying some bittermelon and gailan, I smoked my pipe while wandering through Chinatown, eventually ending up on the edge of Portsmouth Square. I chose a bench far from the streetpeople.
And not too close to the dissolute gambling retirees.

While I was sitting there, a subfunctional black gentleman tried to tell me about the time of his life that he was presently at. So I moved.

On the way to a new bench, a very disturbed white gentleman trotted past, screaming angrily in gibberish. By the time I sat down again, he was jumping up and down near two Chinese ladies, who just looked at him as if to say "go back to your home planet, you have reached the end of what anal-probing can teach us". He howled in fury at some children, who ignored him, then stumbled out to harass the chess players further down the slope, invisible behind the shrubs that marked the periphery.
We could hear him cussing up a storm, and occasionally outbursting.
His voice gradually faded as he drifted further away.
Out of sight, entirely out of mind.
Finally out of hearing.


Meanwhile a large black woman with a tee-shirt too short and small swanned around the park, her enormous goobly stomach wattles and wrinkles providing an element of visual pollution. She came near me twice, but I stolidly avoided catching her eyes. She settled on an elderly Mexican, who upped and left in a hurry, muttering something about his "madre".
I'm guessing she looked just like that. Or not.

Seriously, I hope nobody's mom looks like those woobly-gooblies. It's enough to give a man nightmares. I don't mind exposure, near-nudity, or even nearly entire nudity, but I will still insist that I should have a choice of who I see, where I see her, and why I am seeing what is to be seen.

She scored some vodka from a friend, and retired to an empty bench conveniently close to the public rest-rooms. There were a few other folks there, lying on cardboard and a sleeping bag. By their looks they had all had a rough night of it, one of several in that exact same location.
Companionably they passed the bottle back and forth.

Her stomach now overflowed her belt, and a glob of it reposed in the space between her sternum and her thighs. I expect that her navel was also there somewhere, but I dared not look intently to make certain.

A worn leathery texture twixt cracked mud and a relief map of the Atlas mountains -- canyons, gullies, ridges, cliffs, and declivities and all, is NOT presentable, even if the weather is summery warm. May I suggest some peachy golden gams and nicely sculpted upper arms instead?
The roundings, the curvings, and the smoothings.
Now, that, we can all get behind.


I became aware of a conversation behind me. When I looked around a bearded white type was having a deep conversation with a nearby tree trunk. He seemed very upset about something -- being too far away to actually hear the details, I cannot report what -- and the tree just stood there, patiently listening, and occasionally doing nothing at all in an understanding manner.

To my right, three dumpy Filipinas modelled for photos. To my left, a dumpy blonde family from Europe did the same.


There was an intense smell of grape jelly. Not cheap perfume, or the fragrance from any food, I realized that a hobo had lit up a flavoured cigar nearby. I spotted him hovering over five old ladies playing cards.
They ignored him. Like they ignore so many non-Chinese.
All of whom are manifestly nuts.



I did not light up a pipe while I was there. Firearms,drugs, smoking, and alcohol are forbidden in San Francisco's parks.


You have to be crazy to break the law.



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