MAYBE JUST A FIT OF THE VAPOURS?

Last night while having a last smoke on the front steps of the building, after a late dinner and coffee, I was treated to the sight of someone emptying his stomach across the street. Which is odd. He was, judging by the conversation he had with his friends at the bus stop he was facing, far too lucid to be drunk. And they were not suffering gastric distress, so food poisoning, if that was what caused it, was not shared. Illicit substances? Again, too lucid.


Before covid that would not have excited my curiosity so much.


But the late night food places in the neighborhood close early now, and in-house eating has been nixxed during lockdown. So the only thing I can think of is vegetarian food. If the three of them had a little dinner party and he was the only vegetarian, that would explain it. He wasn't retching and having convulsions, so it cannot have been a meat heavy meal. Probably tofu, prepared by a Wasp for a Wasp. Or something equally nasty and ill-advised.

Maybe I should have gone across the street to ask.

But even in the best of times one keeps one's distance from random people throwing up. Such as we're somewhat used to in San Francisco. People come here from all across America with their problems just to express themselves by puking, or so it seems, and often they are more than a little bit disfunctional.

We're too uptight to do that.

One of my friends remembers, keenly, the last time he upchucked. Which was two decades ago, and abcessed tonsils were involved. Unlike folks from elsewhere, long-time San Franciscans are a hardy bunch; it takes a lot to make us vomit.


I associate such things with cats and hairballs, or dogs and their intellectual curiosity, or fratboys and pizza. Or vegetarians and anything, really.


Not with calm rational neatly-dressed young men in between two parked cars having a well-modulated (though somewhat too loud) conversation with their equally sane and lucid companions. All of them quite well-behaved.

It's odd. Refreshing even. We need more people like that.



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