“Oh, this is really interesting!” said Roxane, after getting her first good look at the Latin American Club on 22nd Street near Valencia Street. It was a sunny afternoon and we were day-drinking. They were just opening up when we arrived, so we’d sat outside for a few minutes before being let in, the only customers in the joint.
“When you said we were drinking at the Latin American Club, I pictured something more mariachi and touristy Mexicana. But this is more …” she grasped for words. She lived in Mexico for a few years, and lives in Barcelona now. She has no shortage of experience with international Spanish-speaking culture.
“… surprising,” she finally finished.
The bar is something of a marvel to behold, a combination between a traditional Latin festival and an underground San Francisco art party. It’s one of those spaces that I’m profoundly glad has survived the pandemic (so far), because if we lose it we’re never getting anything like it back.
“I hope you have a reservation,” one of the two bartenders joked as he let us in. There’s a sign near the door saying that they will check your ID and vaccination status, but none of that happened. We sat in a booth by a window to absorb the sunlight.
“Is San Francisco back to normal now?” she asked me. And I was speechless, attempting to answer that question.
“What I mean is,” she said, “can you have fun?”
“Sure, but … not always in a straight line,” I said. “Because everything is open now, everything is happening again, and then suddenly things get shut down all the time because we’re in the middle of a covid spike.”
The last three events that I’d been involved with, before the one we met at, all got canceled because somebody in the production got covid. It’s happening everywhere, event organizers are going crazy trying to keep up with the impact of people abruptly needing to isolate. Party planners are kind of throwing up their hands. The weekend before this one, I went to an art camping event a couple hours out of town; there were maybe 1,000 people there, and a week later there were at least 60 confirmed cases of covid from the event. Which means that covid is now burning its way through another community full of people who had plans to do things … ”
I shook my head. “Yeah, we’re having fun, but … I dunno … right now everyone’s doing their own thing as far as covid protocols, which means that it’s impossible to really understand what risks you’re taking. And case rates are rising.”
She nodded and waited to make sure I had wound down. Talking to me about covid isn’t fun, and I regret that, but I can’t help myself. “Should we get a drink?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m just going to get a margarita. It’s the house special.”
“Oh, I love margaritas!” she said, standing up. “Oh, let me.”
“You’re going to buy me a drink? Sure.”
She walked over to the bar. We were still the only customers, and the bartenders were having a conversation about how Kate Bush is having a moment thanks to “Stranger Things.” A moment later, Roxane called over to me: “Full size or half?”
“Full,” I said.
“Salt on the glass?”
“Of course!”
She came back a moment later with two glasses. She’d ordered a half size, and she stared at it dismissively. “I should have ordered a full. This is like a child’s drink.”
Still, we toasted, and found happier things to talk about.
Roxane works in international aid and so is constantly on the move. She prefers hot climates (“I have been freezing in San Francisco”), and enjoys going to art events, where she dresses up as a fairy, and offers people readings from a fairy tarot deck. The year before the pandemic, she rearranged her life to spend more time traveling to every continent for pleasure instead of for work, and it was one of the best years of her life. The first year of the pandemic she was injured, isolated and trapped, and it was one of the worst years she’s ever been through.
I had a lot of near meltdowns during the pandemic, but the last real one I’d had was at the end of 2018. She asked me about that, so I filled her in on some of the details.
“You can often grow from these experiences,” she said.
Yeah, you can, and I did — a lot. But goddamn, it was hard. I don’t want to say good things about it.
Two more people walked in the Latin American Club. They would be the only other customers there while we were. I have no idea if weekday afternoons just tend to be slow like this, or if the slowdown is pandemic-related. At this point, how can you tell?
The margaritas are a solid choice, wonderful for day-drinking, and we talk about art and connection. About the way in which I spent much of my pandemic trying to keep people feeling connected in some way … and about how, even before the pandemic, we all seemed so alienated from each other.
“It’s not just here,” Roxane told me. She’s worked in many countries and went to festivals all around the world just before the pandemic descended upon us, and “everywhere, it was the same thing. Everywhere, people wanted to connect, were trying to figure out how to connect, were desperate for connection. Some places make it easier than others, but everywhere they are feeling the need for more connections, deeper connections. To the extent there is a common culture in the world now, it is not connecting, it is disconnecting.”
I deeply, deeply, resent the way in which covid has taken bars from me: Even when everyone is behaving like it doesn’t exist, it’s still hard for me to walk up to strangers and strike up a conversation the way I used to. I miss that so much.
Roxane has written a book about some of her experiences. It’s her first book, and will likely be coming out in the summer.
“You’ve done this a lot,” she said. “I don’t really know what I’m getting into. What should I be asking you that I don’t even think to ask?”
I took a deep breath. Contemplated. Finally held out my hands. She took them. “You’re not expecting to make a lot of money with this book … ”
She shook her head, “No … ”
“ … and that means you have a certain freedom. Because when you sell your creative work, even when it’s a passion project, it gets commodified, and that means you can be alienated from your own creativity. Don’t let that happen. Find ways to make talking about your book fun and surprising to you, even if it might make it harder to sell. Orient towards the ways your creativity can bring you joy, even if it’s not commercial. Don’t let the need to sell cut you off from your own psyche.”
She nodded. “Remember to walk towards joy with it,” she said. “That’s good.”
“And anxiety,” I said. “There’s a certain kind of anxiety that is actually telling you that you want something but are afraid of it. Walk towards that, too.”
She squeezed my hands. “Thank you.”
The two other customers were at the Latin American Club when we left, having their own casual conversations with the bartenders. The kind I used to eavesdrop on, back when I felt comfortable casually getting close to strangers. Tomorrow, Roxane’s off on a plane. Maybe we’ll see each other again someday. We said we intend to stay connected, but that is very difficult in this world.
Before she left, Roxane chatted with the bartenders, the way I used to do. It turns out one of them was working at the event Roxane and I had met at, just the week before. “I thought you looked familiar,” the bartender said.
“Coincidence?” Roxane asked me. And I think that while it’s hard to stay connected, perhaps I don’t give the world enough credit for creating new opportunities.
Fabulous in a wistful, ‘…and yet there are still challenges…’ kind of way.